Technology | The Guardian

The improved surveillance bill would force tech firms to tell the government about any new security measures - before they are introduced. Strangely, Apple won't stomach itWay back in 2000 the Blair government introduced the regulation of investigatory powers bill, a legislative dog's breakfast that put formidable surveillance powers on the statute book. This was a long time before Edward Snowden broke cover, but to anyone who was paying attention it indicated that the British deep state was tooling up for the digital age. Because the powers implicit in the bill were so sweeping, some of us naively assumed that it would have a tempestuous passage through the Commons.How wrong can you be? It turned out that the vast majority of MPs whom we canvassed seemed blissfully uninterested in it. It was, one remarked, just a measure designed to bring telephone tapping into the digital age". Of our 659 elected representatives, only a handful - and certainly no more than 10 - seemed at all concerned about what was being proposed. The most intriguing thing about the process, though, was that most of the work to improve the bill on its way through parliament was done, not by elected representatives, but by a handful of peers (some of them hereditary) in the House of Lords, who put in a lot of late-night work and trimmed some of the excrescences off the bill, which became law (nicknamed Ripa) in July 2000. Continue reading...

One-way video interviews, CV screeners and digital monitoring are among the ways employers are using tech to save time and money on recruitment. But do they work?Investigating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the world of work, Hilke Schellmann thought she had better try some of the tools. Among them was a one-way video interview system intended to aid recruitment called myInterview. She got a login from the company and began to experiment - first picking the questions she, as the hiring manager, would ask and then video recording her answers as a candidate before the proprietary software analysed the words she used and the intonation of her voice to score how well she fitted the job.She was pleased to score an 83% match for the role. But when she re-did her interview not in English but in her native German, she was surprised to find that instead of an error message she also scored decently (73%) - and this time she hadn't even attempted to answer the questions but read a Wikipedia entry. The transcript the tool had concocted out of her German was gibberish. When the company told her its tool knew she wasn't speaking English so had scored her primarily on her intonation, she got a robot voice generator to read in her English answers. Again she scored well (79%), leaving Schellmann scratching her head. Continue reading...

At a religious festival in Bangladesh, the photographer captured an extraordinary sightFrom a highway in Tongi, on the outskirts of Dhaka in Bangladesh, Azim Khan Ronnie surveyed his fellow worshippers. Ronnie, a Bangladeshi who now lives in France, had travelled back tohishome country toattend Bishwa Ijtema. The annual meeting of millions of Muslims from around the world isthe second largest Islamic congregationafter the hajj, in Mecca.Every inch of tarmac and pavement was filledwith worshippers," Ronnie recalls. Thousands of Muslims gathered to pray, bringing buses andlorries to a grinding halt. Many passengers were praying; the drivers were, too. In thebackground we could see the colourful tents where the pilgrims sleep. Some of the buildings also act asshelters." Continue reading...

Rogan's podcast has been exclusive to the app since 2020, with the firm saying its revenue grew by 80% last year compared with 2021Spotify Technology announced a new multi-year deal with the comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday, in a bid to tap into the popularity of his show to drive its advertising revenue.The multi-year deal with Rogan, which is estimated to be worth as much as $250m, involves an upfront minimum guarantee, plus a revenue sharing agreement based on ad sales, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The company declined to comment on the terms of the deal but in an email response said the estimated value of the deal mentioned in the WSJ report was incorrect. It did not provide a figure for the contract, however. Continue reading...

Recall of more than 2m Teslas will be done with a software update as company comes under increasing scrutiny from US officialsTesla is recalling nearly all of the vehicles it has sold in the US because some warning lights on the instrument panel are too small.The recall of nearly 2.2m vehicles announced on Friday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is a sign of stepped-up scrutiny of the electric vehicle maker. The agency also said it has upgraded a 2023 investigation into Tesla steering problems to an engineering analysis, which is a step closer to a recall. Continue reading...

Four years after Robyn Cory's daughter was groomed at 15 on Meta's platform and sold for sex by a gang, she is still missingRobyn Cory's daughter Kristen was 15 when she was allowed to open her own Instagram account. We thought we'd been responsible and done everything we could to make it safe," says Cory. Months later, Kristen disappeared from the family home after being groomed on Instagram's direct message service by a criminal gang, who then sold her for sex on the streets of Houston.Her daughter never recovered from her ordeal, Cory says. Kristen returned home but has since gone missing after being trafficked again. Her mother does not know if she is still alive. Continue reading...

We want to hear from young people and those who work with them about the misinformation and divisive narratives they are seeingFollowing research finding that a third of UK teenagers believe the climate crisis is exaggerated" and a backlash against feminism among young men, we want to learn more about the spread of misinformation and divisive narratives among young people in the UK.In the US, a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that teenagers were significantly more likely to believe online conspiracy theories than older generations, likely underscoring the impact of social media. Continue reading...

The fighting game was once at the bleeding edge of what games could do - as well as being great fun to play with your mates after the pubFriday night, back from the pub with your housemates and a few hangers on. Staple 1990s yoof TV show The Word has just finished with a raucous live performance by some up-and-coming grunge band and now it's time to play video games.In the decade of the original PlayStation and the Sega Saturn, there was no online multiplayer - if you wanted to compete against human beings, you did it in your living room with friends, and anyone else you found in the pub at closing time. It had to be something accessible, something competitive, something that allowed two or even four people to play at once. It needed to have short rounds, because everyone wanted to play. Invariably that would mean one of two options: a footie sim or a fighting game. Continue reading...

Genuine moral dilemmas are frustratingly rare in gaming - change that, and we could learn more about ourselves than any book might teach usI am at a fortunate stage of my parenting journey where I have a son old enough to have a girlfriend smart enough to give genuinely thoughtful gifts to her boyfriend's dad at Christmas. This is how I came to unwrap Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us (About Life, Philosophy and Everything) by Jordan Erica Webber and Daniel Griliopoulos. Books are a risky thing to give as gifts because they, like video games, require an investment of time. You don't throw them on calloused feet like a sock or slap them about your tired face like an aftershave. Or vice versa depending on the smell of your feet or coldness of your face.I find academic books about video games personally ironic because in the 90s I wrote and presented a BBC Radio 4 show called Are Books Dead? where I argued that video games had made the written word redundant. This was obviously a stupid question, but this was the decade of making loud statements without requiring intelligence to back them up, just one of the reasons it was such a glorious time to be alive, and why Liam Gallagher was its hero. Continue reading...

Organisers of Brisbane Portrait Prize back artificial intelligence stating art is not stagnant and traditionalists' once opposed photographs

House of Lords committee says copyright laws fall short as tech companies lift content without permissionMinisters must defend content creators whose work is being taken without permission by tech companies to build artificial intelligence products such as chatbots that generate vast financial rewards", a House of Lords committee has said.The legal framework in the UK is failing to enforce the basic principles of copyright amid a rise in AI development, said the Lords' communications and digital committee. Continue reading...

Cash flow beat investor expectations and shares rose as the tech giant authorized a $50bn share buyback program

Slumping global demand for smartphones did not bring down earnings, but investors were wary of decline in sales in ChinaApple has ended the quarter with its first revenue gain in over a year, but the company still struggled to cope with a decline in global smartphone demand. The company posted $119.58bn in revenue and $2.18 in earnings per share (EPS), beating Wall Street expectations of $117.91bn in quarterly revenue and $2.10 in EPS. Apple broke its four-quarter streak of declining revenue with a reported 2% growth in sales. Shares dropped in after-hours trading.However, the news wasn't all rosy for the iPhone maker. The company's sales in China, its third-largest market, dropped from $23.9bn to $20.8bn. Global iPad sales dropped to $7bn in the most recent quarter, from $9bn in the same quarter last year. Continue reading...

World's largest retailer clears Wall Street expectations with $170bn revenue as it continued to cut jobs in recent weeksProfits at Amazon have surged on strong seasonal trading and robust growth in its powerhouse cloud computing business.The world's largest retailer generated revenue of $170bn in the three months to December, up 14% on the same period of 2022, and clearing expectations on Wall Street of some $166bn. Continue reading...

Two occupants of a car that plunged into a freezing Oslo fjord escaped unharmed when a floating sauna came to their rescue, Norwegian police have said.A video obtained by NTB on Thursday shows the Tesla, partially submerged in the water, with its occupants sitting on the roof.The car can be seen sinking under the water just as the floating sauna pulls up next to it and people on the sauna boat pull the motorists from the freezing waters

Musician Richard Tornetta, who held just nine shares in Tesla, brought case against the company's CEOElon Musk suffered one of the biggest legal losses in US history this week when the Tesla chief executive was stripped of his $56bn pay package in a case brought by an unlikely opponent: a former heavy metal drummer.Richard Tornetta sued Musk in 2018, when Tornetta, a Pennsylvania resident, held just nine shares of Tesla. The case eventually made its way to trial in late 2022 and on Tuesday a judge sided with Tornetta, voiding the enormous pay deal for being unfair to him and all his fellow Tesla shareholders. Continue reading...

Tycoon announces shareholder vote on relocating after Delaware judge strikes down $56bn pay package as unfathomable'

The hacker whose involvement with anti-piracy software ended in a jail sentence has emerged from prison struggling to make rent as he starts paying his fine. It could be worse,' he saysIn April 2023, a 54-year-old programmer named Gary Bowser was released from prison having served 14 months of a 40-month sentence. Good behaviour reduced his time behind bars, but now his options are limited. For a while he was crashing on a friend's couch in Toronto. The weekly physical therapy sessions, which he needs to ease chronic pain, were costing hundreds of dollars every week, and he didn't have a job. And soon, he would need to start sending cheques to Nintendo. Bowser owes the makers of Super Mario $14.5m (11.5m), and he's probably going to spend the rest of his life paying it back.Since he was a child, Bowser's life has revolved around tinkering with electronics. His dad was a mechanical engineer, and he learned from him how to wire up model trains and mod calculators. As a teenager he already had a computer business: his mother died when he was 15, his father had retired and Bowser supported him. Continue reading...

From phone curfews to leading by example, parents from around the world share views on their children's screen timeFrom bizarre TikTok fads to evading parental controls, managing your child's relationship with screens can be a minefield.By age 11, 91% of children in the UK own a smartphone, according to data from the country's communications regulator, Ofcom, while a study of 19 European countries found 80% of children aged nine to 16 used one to go online daily, or almost daily. Meanwhile, recent survey data suggests 42% of US children have a smartphone by the age of 10, with 91% owning one by 14. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: Three esteemed lawyers team up to look at the news through a legal lens in Law and Disorder Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereYour Mama's Kitchen

Chris Wray tells House committee there has been been far too little public focus on a sleeper cyber threat that affects every American'US officials say they have disrupted a state-backed Chinese effort to plant malware that could damage civilian infrastructure, as the head of the FBI warned that Beijing was positioning itself to disrupt daily life in America were the US and China ever to go to war.The operation disrupted a botnet of hundreds of small office and home routers based in the US that were owned by private citizens and companies that had been hijacked by the Chinese hackers to cover their tracks as they sowed malware. Continue reading...

US senator Tom Cotton repeatedly asked TikTok's Singaporean chief, Shou Zi Chew, about his ties with China and if he had ever belonged to the Chinese Communist party during a hearing over alleged online harms to children. It was the first appearance by Chew before lawmakers in the US since March, when the Chinese-owned short video app company faced harsh questions, including some suggesting the app was damaging children's mental health and that user data could be passed on to China's government.

Teachers also using the generative technology to aid with lesson planning, with hopes it could ease the burden of their workloadMore than half of undergraduates say they consult artificial intelligence programmes to help with their essays, while schools are trialling its use in the classroom.A survey of more than 1,000 UK undergraduates, conducted by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), found 53% were using AI to generate material for work they would be marked on. One in four are using applications such as Google Bard or ChatGPT to suggest topics and one in eight are using them to create content. Continue reading...

This live blog is now closed. For more on today's testimony, you can read:

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, spoke directly to victims and their family members as he testified during the US Senate judiciary committee hearing on Wednesday.After an intense line of questioning by the Republican senator Josh Hawley, who asked Zuckerberg if he would like to apologise to families of victims who were sitting in the audience holding photos of children they say died or were harmed due to his platform, Zuckerberg stood up and faced them

The Australian comedian shares what makes him laugh, including an AI vision of Melbourne's inner north, Mel Buttle's TikTok and a seagull named StevenI usually try to keep my internet history secret. Not for the embarrassing reasons you might imagine but for other embarrassing reasons. Like how often I have Googled spell wednsnday", or the hours I have spent watching clips of Maggie Smith be rude to interviewers, or the number of times I have watched the scene from Addams Family Values where the Thanksgiving play gets ruined by Wednesday. So this is an unusual experience for me.I love good character comedy so every day is a struggle as there is a lot of crap character comedy out there. As an upstanding member of society, I have peppered this list with a healthy dose of the good stuff to save you having to accidentally watch any Ins*ired Unempl*yed clips. Continue reading...

PC, PS5, Xbox Series S/X (version tested); Bandai Namco

Appointment of former UK chancellor comes as regulator sues operator over claims it flouted rules

The measure of whether you are living a good life is up to you - and not determined by your daily screen time total, writes Guardian US's tech editorHere's how much I use my phone by the numbers: my screen time last week averaged six hours and 45 minutes a day. This week, it went down: five hours and nine minutes a day.I picked up my phone 111 times a day on average, usually to open the Messages app - I love texting. I received on average 297 notifications a day. Continue reading...

Based in Kyiv until the Russian invasion - and still mourning colleagues who went to the frontline - the makers of long-awaited apocalyptic survival game Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl describe how their lives began imitating their artAs the 400 employees of GSC Game World, creators of the hit video game Stalker, filtered into their Kyiv office in January 2022, most didn't even notice the strange buses parked around the corner. While tensions were growing with their neighbours across the border, the frost-coated shlep to the office felt almost normal. Routine. Or so they told themselves. As whispers of war spread throughout the country, regular reassurances from their business partners - and President Zelenskiy - made it seem foolish to worry. Life, they were told, would carry on as usual.Weeks later, their fears no longer seemed so foolish. On 24 February 2022, at 4am local time, Russian forces crossed the border, invading Ukraine from the north, east and south, shelling more than a dozen cities and killing 40 Ukrainian soldiers in 24 hours. The bombs fell hard and fast, levelling buildings less than a mile from GSC's office. Luckily, those ominous blacked-out buses had sprung into action a week prior, whisking more than 200 GSC employees and their families to Uzhgorod, a town on the Ukrainian border. Continue reading...

AI-generated porn, fuelled by misogyny, is flooding the internet, with Taylor Swift the latest high-profile casualty. Victims say social media platforms are failing to take it down - will they now start taking it seriously?For almost a whole day last week, deepfake pornographic images of Taylor Swift rapidly spread through X. Thesocial media platform, formerly Twitter, was so slow to react that one image racked up 47m views before it was taken down. It was largely Swift's fans who mobilised and mass-reported the images, and there was a sense of public anger, with even the White House calling it alarming". Xeventually removed the images and blocked searches to the pop star's name on Sunday evening.For women who have been victims of the creation and sharing of nonconsensual deepfake pornography, the events of the past week will have been a horrible reminder of their own abuse, even if they may also hope that the spotlight will force legislators into action. But because the pictures were removed, Swift's experience is far from the norm. Most victims, even those who are famous, are less fortunate. The 17-year-old Marvel actor Xochitl Gomez spoke this month about X failing to remove pornographic deepfakes of her. This has nothing to do with me. And yet it's on here with my face," she said. Continue reading...

Bipartisan measure introduced in US Senate will allow victims in digital forgeries' to seek civil penalty against perpetratorsA bipartisan group of US senators introduced a bill on Tuesday that would criminalize the spread of nonconsensual, sexualized images generated by artificial intelligence. The measure comes in direct response to the proliferation of pornographic AI-made images of Taylor Swift on X, formerly Twitter, in recent days.The measure would allow victims depicted in nude or sexually explicit digital forgeries" to seek a civil penalty against individuals who produced or possessed the forgery with intent to distribute it" or anyone who received the material knowing it was not made with consent. Dick Durbin, the US Senate majority whip, and senators Lindsey Graham, Amy Klobuchar and Josh Hawley are behind the bill, known as the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act of 2024, or the Defiance Act." Continue reading...

Judge ruled his pay - six times larger than the combined pay of the 200 highest-paid executives in 2021 - was set inappropriatelyA Delaware judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of the investors who challenged billionaire Elon Musk's $56bn Tesla pay package as excessive, a court filing showed. The judge found that Musk's compensation was inappropriately set by the electric-vehicle maker's board and struck down the package. If the decision survives any potential appeal, the Tesla board will have to come up with a new compensation package for Musk.Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware," Musk responded on Twitter/X. Continue reading...

Tech giant now second business in history to reach a stock market valuation of $3tn, overtaking Apple as the world's most valuableMicrosoft beat analyst expectations Tuesday as its heavy bets on artificial intelligence bore fruit, particularly for its Azure cloud computing unit.The software giant reported revenue of $62bn, up 18% year-over-year, surpassing anticipated earnings of $61.1bn. Its year-over-year net income rose 33% to $21.9bn. Continue reading...

Many county systems are inoperative, but the district attorney's office says the racketeering case against the ex-president is secureOfficials said court and other systems in Georgia's most populous county were hacked over the weekend, interrupting routine operations, but the district attorney's office said the racketeering case against former president Donald Trump was unaffected.Fulton county, which includes most of Atlanta, was experiencing a widespread system outage" from a cybersecurity incident", the chair of the county commission, Robb Pitts, said on Monday in a video posted on social media. Notably, he said, the outage is affecting the county's phone, court and tax systems. Continue reading...

Fintech giant will eliminate 9% of its global workforce to cut costsPaypal is planning to cut about 2,500 jobs, or 9% of its global workforce, this year, according to its CEO, Alex Chriss.In a letter to staff sent on Tuesday, the newly appointed CEO said the decision was made to right-size" the company through both direct cuts and the elimination of open roles throughout the year. The staff that will be affected are expected to be notified by the end of the week. Continue reading...

Early reviews of cutting-edge headset suggest it is packed with sci-fi tech and interesting ideas but is far from perfectThe first reviews of Apple's Vision Pro headset, from publications with early access to the company's attempt to create the next computing platform, talk of a big leap forward for face-mounted computers, for better or worse.The US-only headset, first announced in June last year, aims to move spatial computing" beyond the limited mixed-reality offered by rivals from Meta, Microsoft and others. It is packed with cutting-edge technology including 3D cameras on the front to capture videos, the ability to blend the real and virtual worlds with hand and eye tracking, plus a display on the front that shows a simulacrum of the wearer's eyes. Continue reading...

With the region's countries among the most vulnerable to the climate crisis, digital entrepreneurs have been inspired to find innovative ways to create real environmental changeLeo Prieto's passion for nature started during his childhood by the sea. I was obsessed with what was under the surface. I'd anchor myself to a rock with my snorkel, and I was fascinated by all the little animals doing things that go unnoticed."His teenage years coincided with the arrival of the internet in Chile, where he became a web pioneer, launching and selling several startups. Inevitably, his interests in the environment, the internet and business merged, driven by the feeling that technological advances should not be wasted. Continue reading...

Of course the App Store owner's fight with EU regulators is about money - but is it also about something more? Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereWho owns the phone in your pocket? That's the question at the heart of Apple's latest battle with European regulators, and it doesn't look as if it's going to be settled any time soon.On Thursday, the company published its plan for how to comply with the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a mammoth piece of legislation that seeks to break up the power of so-called gatekeepers": the massive (almost entirely American) technology companies whose stature warps whole industries. From our story:Under the changes, the US tech company will also give iPhone users a range of browsers to choose from as their default, allow the use of alternative payment systems to Apple Pay, and permit the installation of alternatives to its App Store, which could theoretically include the Google Play store.But there is a catch: for the first time, developers who take advantage of the option will be charged a flat fee per installation, overturning free-to-play business models and limiting the sorts of apps that can bypass the store.The DMA requires changes to this system that bring greater risks to users and developers ... This includes new avenues for malware, fraud and scams, illicit and harmful content, and other privacy and security threats. These changes also compromise Apple's ability to detect, prevent, and take action against malicious apps on iOS and to support users impacted by issues with apps downloaded outside of the App Store. Continue reading...

Roomba maker announces plans to axe 31% of workforce and exit of CEO after collapse of acquisitionAmazon has abandoned its planned $1.4bn (1.1bn) acquisition of the robot vacuum cleaner company iRobot, amid EU opposition to the deal.The e-commerce company will pay a $94m break fee to iRobot, which immediately announced plans to axe 31% of its workforce - or 350 employees - and the departure of its chief executive. Continue reading...

In week 5 of Rhik Samadder's phone detox, a return to nature sparks a return to self, but can he keep it up in the real world? Sign up to our free coaching newsletter to help you spend less time on your phoneLast week, Rhik found solace by walking 10,000 steps a day instead of wasting time scrolling. But can he stand being completely phoneless at a forest retreat? Continue reading...

Rimini Protokoll's new show is part of a series of performances inspired by James Joyce's Ulysses and draws a connection between its Aeolus episode and hypercapitalismOn the eastern outskirts of Berlin, a big top has been erected by theatre company Rimini Protokoll for a circus with a twist. These acrobatics come wrapped in metaphor and high concept: the show is about shopping giant Amazon and the processes of the virtual marketplace. Upon entering, we are given clickers to use instead of clapping to imitate the click of online transactions. We view secret footage filmed inside fulfilment centres, listen to testimonies from workers and watch piles of packages heaved across the stage.We hear from Gisela and Dietmar Winkler, who ran a real-life circus near here, and there is a clip of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, speaking about a German circus he saw that was the inspiration behind Amazon. Comparisons between the circus and the online retailer are subtly drawn out, such as bringing a product directly to the consumer/audience and the herculean physical effort involved in the work. Continue reading...

Astronauts content themselves with freeze-dried gruel, but plans for crewed missions to Mars mean scientists need to create more delicious, nutritious menusThree robots are growing vegetables on the roof of the University of Melbourne's student pavilion. As I watch, a mechanical arm, hovering above the crop like a fairground claw machine, sprays a carefully measured dose of water over the plants.The greens themselves look fairly terrestrial - cos lettuce, basil, coriander and moth-eaten kale - but they are actually prototypes for a groundbreaking research mission to grow fresh food in outer space.Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...

After its hyperbolic, Ridley Scott-directed launch 40 years ago, Apple's all-in-one computer was a commercial flop. And yet its impact is still being feltForty years ago this week, on 22 January 1984, a stunning advertising video was screened during the Super Bowl broadcast in the US. It was directed by Ridley Scott and evoked the dystopian atmosphere of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Long lines of grey, shaven zombies march in lockstep through a tunnel into a giant amphitheatre, where they sit in rows gawping up at a screen on which an authoritarian figure is intoning a message. Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the information purification directives," he drones. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology."Then the camera turns to a young woman carrying a sledgehammer, hotly pursued by sinister cops in riot gear. Just as Big Brother reaches his peroration, Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!" she hurls the hammer at the big screen, which explodes in a flurry of light and smoke, leaving the zombies open-mouthed in shock. And then comes the payoff, scrolling up the screen: On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984'." Continue reading...

The photographer noticed this humble story' playing out silently on a visit to the Tate Modern in LondonIn the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London, Gerry McCulloch and his wife, Kaori, werebuying tickets for a Yayoi Kusama exhibition. I happened to turn around and catch aglimpse of this unidentifiable figure," he says. Among thousands of visitors from around the globe, it tickled me that this humble story was playing out silently in an unnoticed corner."As well as being a photographer, McCulloch is a visual storytelling coach, and in his own creative practice his mantra is identify, clarify, simplify, amplify". This image, he says, demonstrates each of these components. The opaque quality of the window helps exclude extraneous elements and draws the viewer in to what he calls the mystery of the moment". Continue reading...

Estate says Dudesy podcast outlet had no license to Carlin's likeness or copyrighted material, which was used to create specialThe estate of George Carlin is suing the media company behind a fake, hour-long comedy special whose creators boasted of using artificial intelligence to re-create the late standup comic's style and material.The lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Thursday asks that a judge order the podcast outlet Dudesy to immediately take down the audio special, George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead, in which a synthesis of Carlin delivers commentary on current events. Carlin died in 2008. Continue reading...

Tech companies are cashing in on an unprecedented demand for computing power needed to operate artificial intelligence

Fake but convincing explicit images of pop singer were viewed tens of millions of times on X and Telegram, prompting outcry from US politiciansThe rapid online spread of deepfake pornographic images of Taylor Swift has renewed calls, including from US politicians, to criminalise the practice, in which artificial intelligence is used to synthesise fake but convincing explicit imagery.The images of the US popstar have been distributed across social media and seen by millions this week. Previously distributed on the app Telegram, one of the images of Swift hosted on X was seen 47m times before it was removed. Continue reading...

Life on the flip side has its challenges, but each day free from my soul-sucking smartphone brings moments of reprieve Sign up to our free coaching newsletter to help you spend less time on your phoneOne afternoon five years ago, I walked into a Verizon store and asked a bemused salesman for the dumbest phone in the shop.My iPhone had recently suffered a fatal dunking while I was clumsily fishing a bass pond, and I was searching for a new device. In truth, the accident had felt serendipitous, as though, on some subconscious level, I'd wanted to drown the 4G demon who lived in my pocket. Continue reading...

Entertainment (and thrill) seekers on a budget never know exactly what they're going to find in the ubiquitous technology shop. Just don't mistake it for a pawn shopFeel free to mispronounce Ikea (it should be ee-kay-uh, from the Swedish) and Lidl (lee-dal, from the German). But there's no arguing when it comes to CeX, the bright red secondhand technology shop you get in more or less every UK town centre, usually next to McDonald's, Primark and/or Poundland. It may be short for Complete Entertainment eXchange, but it shouldn't be pronounced C-E-X, as you might say to your mum when explaining where you got her cheap secondhand mobile phone from. Officially, CeX is pronounced as sex. The pleasure of it is in the sheer incongruous irony - these stores, with their miles of metal shelving and threadbare carpets are as far from the erotic as it's possible to get. But somehow, they hold a special place in the hearts of all entertainment seekers on a budget.I am a regular visitor. There are five CeXs within a three-mile radius of my house and they're extremely handy. The thrill is in never knowing exactly what you're going to find. For the purposes of this article, the Guardian gave me a generous budget of 10 to discover what bargains lay in store. Continue reading...