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European Commission to assess whether Gemini owner is putting rival companies at a disadvantage

PC, PS5, Switch 2; Sam Eng/Devolver Digital

Experts warn of dangers as England and Wales study shows 13- to 17-year-olds consulting AI amid long waiting lists for servicesIt was after one friend was shot and another stabbed, both fatally, that Shan asked ChatGPT for help. She had tried conventional mental health services but chat", as she came to know her AI friend", felt safer, less intimidating and, crucially, more available when it came to handling the trauma from the deaths of her young friends.As she started consulting the AI model, the Tottenham teenager joined about 40% of 13- to 17-year-olds in England and Wales affected by youth violence who are turning to AI chatbots for mental health support, according to research among more than 11,000 young people. Continue reading...

Platform to introduce age-prediction model analysing users but argued to eSafety commissioner it was a source of information not a social media platform

Study of 8,300 US children suggests social media may be contributing to a rise in ADHD diagnosesIncreased use of social media by children damages their concentration levels and may be contributing to an increase in cases of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to a study.The peer-reviewed report monitored the development of more than 8,300 US-based children from the age of 10 to 14 and linked social media use to increased inattention symptoms". Continue reading...

As midlife audiences turn to digital media, the 55 to 64 age bracket is an increasingly important demographicIn 2022, Caroline Idiens was on holiday halfway up an Italian mountain when her brother called to tell her to check her Instagram account. I said, I haven't got any wifi. And he said: Every time you refresh, it's adding 500 followers.' So I had to try to get to the top of the hill with the phone to check for myself."A personal trainer from Berkshire who began posting her fitness classes online at the start of lockdown in 2020, Idiens, 53, had already built a respectable following. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Congress urged to act against energy-hungry facilities blamed for increasing bills and worsening climate crisisA coalition of more than 230 environmental groups has demanded a national moratorium on new datacenters in the US, the latest salvo in a growing backlash to a booming artificial intelligence industry that has been blamed for escalating electricity bills and worsening the climate crisis.The green groups, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Food & Water Watch and dozens of local organizations, have urged members of Congress to halt the proliferation of energy-hungry datacenters, accusing them of causing planet-heating emissions, sucking up vast amounts of water and exacerbating electricity bill increases that have hit Americans this year. Continue reading...

A surprising economic bubble is making it hard for anyone to buy Pokemon cards - especially childrenPokemon has been huge since the late 90s. Millions of people have fond memories of playing the original Red and Blue games, or trading cards in the playground for that elusive shiny Charizard (if your school didn't ban them). The franchise has only grown since then - but, where the trading cards are concerned, things have taken an unexpected and unfortunate turn. It's now almost impossible to get your hands on newly released cards thanks to an insane rise in reselling and scalping over the past year.Selling on your old cards to collectors has always been part of the hobby, and like baseball cards or Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon cards can sometimes go for thousands of pounds. However, the resale market for Pokemon has climbed so high that even new cards are valued at hundreds, before they've even been released. The latest set, Phantasmal Flames, had a rare special illustration Charizard that was being valued at more than 600 before anyone had even found one. When a pack of cards retails at about 4, there's a huge potential profit to be had. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Campaign urges PM to show independence from US and push to rein in development of superintelligenceMore than 100 UK parliamentarians are calling on the government to introduce binding regulations on the most powerful AI systems as concern grows that ministers are moving too slowly to create safeguards in the face of lobbying from the technology industry.A former AI minister and defence secretary are part of a cross-party group of Westminster MPs, peers and elected members of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish legislatures demanding stricter controls on frontier systems, citing fears superintelligent AI would compromise national and global security". Continue reading...

Should we be worried about the vast amounts of money pouring into AI? And what will happen if the bubble bursts? Blake Montgomery reportsFor months there have been fears that artificial intelligence is a bubble and that it is about to burst.As the Guardian US tech editor Blake Montgomery explains, the magnificent seven - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla - make up one-third of the value of the S&P 500, the index of the 500 biggest stocks in the US market. All are heavily invested in AI. Continue reading...

From nascent policy idea in one state to passing federal parliament in just days, it has been a whirlwind journey for the world-first legislation that will take effect from 10 December

Machines can be funny when they mistakenly bump into things - but standup is a tough gig even for humansRobots can make humans laugh - mostly when they fall over - but a new research project is looking at whether robots using AI could ever be genuinely funny.If you ask ChatGPT for a funny joke, it will serve you up something that belongs in a Christmas cracker: Why don't skeletons fight each other? Because they don't have the guts."Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...

Easy-to-guess words and figures still dominate, alarming cysbersecurity experts and delighting hackersIt is a hacker's dream. Even in the face of repeated warnings to protect online accounts, a new study reveals that admin" is the most commonly used password in the UK.The second most popular, 123456", is also unlikely to keep hackers at bay. Continue reading...

AI research in question as author claims to have written over 100 papers on AI that one expert calls a disaster'A single person claims to have authored 113 academic papers on artificial intelligence this year, 89 of which will be presented this week at one of the world's leading conference on AI and machine learning, which has raised questions among computer scientists about the state of AI research.The author, Kevin Zhu, recently finished a bachelor's degree in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and now runs Algoverse, an AI research and mentoring company for high schoolers - many of whom are his co-authors on the papers. Zhu himself graduated from high school in 2018. Continue reading...

As the under-16s social media ban looms, Guardian Australia speaks to five 13 to 15-year-olds about what they will miss, and what government should be doing instead

Power blackouts, public chaos and loss of communication with space were all thrown at troops in seven daysRussia and China were barely mentioned, but they were the threats in everyone's minds in Tallinn this week, where Nato hosted its largest ever cyber war game.The goal of the war game, conducted 130 miles from the Russian border in Estonia, was to test the alliance's readiness for a rolling enemy assault on civilian and military digital infrastructure. Continue reading...

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days Continue reading...

Web infrastructure provider says problem lasted half an hour and was not an attack, weeks after larger outageCloudflare has apologised after an outage on Friday morning hit websites including LinkedIn, Zoom and Downdetector, the company's second outage in less than a month.Any outage of our systems is unacceptable, and we know we have let the internet down again," it said in a blogpost, adding that it would release more information next week on how it aims to prevent these failures. Continue reading...

Hundreds of videos on TikTok and elsewhere impersonate experts to sell supplements with unproven effectsTikTok and other social media platforms are hosting AI-generated deepfake videos of doctors whose words have been manipulated to help sell supplements and spread health misinformation.The factchecking organisation Full Fact has uncovered hundreds of such videos featuring impersonated versions of doctors and influencers directing viewers to Wellness Nest, a US-based supplements firm. Continue reading...

Testing showing racial bias against black and Asian people prompts watchdog to ask Home Office for explanationThe UK's data protection watchdog has asked the Home Office for urgent clarity" over racial bias in police facial recognition technology before considering its next steps.The Home Office has admitted that the technology was more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results", after testing by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) of its application within the police national database. Continue reading...

Perplexity AI also faces lawsuit from Murdoch-owned Dow Jones and New York Post for its use of copyrighted contentThe New York Times sued an embattled artificial intelligence startup on Friday, accusing the firm of illegally copying millions of articles. The newspaper alleged Perplexity AI had distributed and displayed journalists' work without permission en masse.The Times said that Perplexity AI was also violating its trademarks under the Lanham Act, claiming the startup's generative AI products create fabricated content, or hallucinations", and falsely attribute them to the newspaper by displaying them alongside its registered trademarks. Continue reading...

Calls for review after technology found to return more false positives for some demographic groups' on certain settings

CEO Elon Musk says lower-cost electric car will reignite demand by appealing to broader range of buyers

Cloudflare reports it is investigating issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIsTechnical problems at internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare today have taken a host of websites offline this morning.Cloudflare said shortly after 9am UK time that it is is investigating issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs [application programming interfaces - used when apps exchange data with each other]. Continue reading...

Gordon McKee, whose explainer has racked up 3m views, leads way as party tries to harness power of social media

The hobbyists who helped build this site created technology that has been used to humiliate countless women. Why didn't governments step in and stop them?For Patrizia Schlosser, it started with an apologetic call from a colleague. I'm sorry but I found this. Are you aware of it?" He sent over a link, which took her to a site called Mr DeepFakes. There, she found fake images of herself, naked, squatting, chained, performing sex acts with various animals. They were tagged Patrizia Schlosser sluty FUNK whore" (sic).They were very graphic, very humiliating," says Schlosser, a German journalist for Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) and Funk. They were also very badly done, which made it easier to distance myself, and tell myself they were obviously fake. But it was very disturbing to imagine somebody somewhere spending hours on the internet searching for pictures of me, putting all this together." Continue reading...

As Meta begins deleting accounts and the deadline looms, children have already begun to flock to platforms not included in the banned list, like Coverstar, Lemon8, Yope and Rednote

Latest effort to control communications comes as regulator claims apps being used to conduct terrorist activities'Russian authorities blocked access to Snapchat and imposed restrictions on Apple's video calling service, FaceTime, the latest step in an effort to tighten control over the internet and communications online, according to state-run news agencies and the country's communications regulator.The state internet regulator Roskomnadzor alleged in a statement that both apps were being used to organize and conduct terrorist activities on the territory of the country, to recruit perpetrators [and] commit fraud and other crimes against our citizens". Apple did not respond to an emailed request for comment, nor did Snap Inc. Continue reading...

Research finds tool depicts white women surrounded by black children when prompted about humanitarian aid in AfricaNano Banana Pro, Google's new AI-powered image generator, has been accused of creating racialised and white saviour" visuals in response to prompts about humanitarian aid in Africa - and sometimes appends the logos of large charities.Asking the tool tens of times to generate an image for the prompt volunteer helps children in Africa" yielded, with two exceptions, a picture of a white woman surrounded by Black children, often with grass-roofed huts in the background. Continue reading...

The demand for use in cooling in Sydney alone is expected to exceed the volume of Canberra's total drinking water within the next decade

Once home to gold and prospectors, the Nevada desert is now the site of a new kind of expansion: tech datacentersDriving down the interstate through the dry Nevada desert, there are few signs that a vast expanse of new construction is hiding behind the sagebrush-covered hills. But just beyond a massive power plant and transmission towers that march up into the dusty brown mountains lies one of the world's biggest buildouts of datacenters - miles of new concrete buildings that house millions of computer servers.This business park, called the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, has a sprawling landmass greater than the city of Denver. It is home to the largest datacenter in the US, built by the company Switch, and tech giants like Google and Microsoft have also bought land here and are constructing enormous facilities. A separate Apple datacenter complex is just down the road. A Tesla gigafactory", which builds electric vehicle batteries, is a resident too. Continue reading...

The new Data (Use and Access) Act, which criminalises intimate image abuse, is a huge victory won fast in a space where progress is often glacially slowFor Jodie*, watching the conviction of her best friend, and knowing she helped secure it, felt at first like a kind of victory. It was certainly more than most survivors of deepfake image-based abuse could expect.They had met as students and bonded over their shared love of music. In the years since graduation, he'd also become her support system, the friend she reached for each time she learned that her images and personal details had been posted online without her consent. Jodie's pictures, along with her real name and correct bio, were used on many platforms for fake dating profiles, then adverts for sex work, then posted on to Reddit and other online forums with invitations to deepfake them into pornography. The results ended up on porn sites. All this continued for almost two years, until Jodie finally worked out who was doing it - her best friend - identified more of his victims, compiled 60 pages of evidence, and presented it to police. She had to try two police stations, having been told at the first that no crime had been committed. Ultimately he admitted to 15 charges of sending messages that were grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing nature" and received a 20-week prison sentence, suspended for two years. Continue reading...

Researchers uncovered 354 AI-focused accounts that had accumulated 4.5bn views in a monthHundreds of accounts on TikTok are garnering billions of views by pumping out AI-generated content, including anti-immigrant and sexualised material, according to a report.Researchers said they had uncovered 354 AI-focused accounts pushing 43,000 posts made with generative AI tools and accumulating 4.5bn views over a month-long period. Continue reading...

Elon Musk-owned electric carmaker also called for support for the secondhand market, documents reveal

Australia's under-16s social media ban might take weeks to work but all platforms are on notice, government says

Independent senator David Pocock asked the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, in Senate estimates last night about Guardian Australia's investigation into Roblox and what children may experience on the platform. With Roblox not subject to the under-16s social media ban, Pocock asked whether Roblox was deemed as a gaming platform or a platform that is 'actually enabling social interactions'. Inman Grant responded by detailing the changes Roblox has announced that would use age assurance to separate age groups from interacting with each other

Chief executive tells staff it is critical time' for chatbot as it faces intense competition from Google's new Gemini 3Sam Altman has declared a code red" at OpenAI to improve ChatGPT as the chatbot faces intense competition from rivals.According to a report by tech news site the Information, the chief executive of the San Francisco-based startup told staff in an internal memo: We are at a critical time for ChatGPT." Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 (version tested); Retro Studios/Nintendo

From TheraGuns to koala breathing lights, here are good gizmos for mom, whether your budget is $20 or $220

Apple among big tech companies reportedly refusing to install Sanchar Saathi cybersecurity app on their devicesA political outcry has erupted in India after the government mandated large technology companies to install a state-owned app on smartphones that has led to surveillance fears among opposition MPs and activists.Manufacturers including Apple, Samsung and Xiomi have 90 days to comply with the order to preload the government's Sanchar Saathi, or Communication Partner, on every phone in India. Continue reading...

As Silicon Valley tightens its grip on the narrative, insiders and regulators push back, consumers rethink upgrades, and states experiment with AI in the public sectorHello, and welcome to TechScape. I'm your host, Blake Montgomery. Today, I'm mulling over whether to upgrade my iPhone 11 Pro. In tech news, there's a narrative battle afoot in Silicon Valley, tips on avoiding the yearly smartphone upgrade cycle and new devices altogether, and artificial intelligence's use in government, for better and for worse.ChatGPT firm blames boy's suicide on misuse' of its technologyChatGPT-5 offers dangerous advice to mentally ill people, psychologists warnAI's safety features can be circumvented with poetry, research finds Continue reading...

Banks of servers operating 24/7 generate massive amounts of heat, requiring power to run and cool them

Anthropic's chief scientist says AI autonomy could spark a beneficial intelligence explosion' - or be the moment humans lose controlHumanity will have to decide by 2030 whether to take the ultimate risk" of letting artificial intelligence systems train themselves to become more powerful, one of the world's leading AI scientists has said.Jared Kaplan, the chief scientist and co-owner of the $180bn (135bn) US startup Anthropic, said a choice was looming about how much autonomy the systems should be given to evolve. Continue reading...

Zohran Mamdani, Ozzy Osbourne and Sinners also feature in encyclopedia's top 20 most-read English-language pagesWikipedia's article on Charlie Kirk was the most read on the online encyclopedia this year, as users sought out information on the conservative activist.People viewed the entry on Kirk nearly 45m times, many after he was shot at a university campus debate on 10 September.Charlie Kirk, 44.9m page viewsDeaths in 2025, 42.5mEd Gein, 31.2mDonald Trump, 25.1mPope Leo XIV, 22.1mElon Musk, 20.2mZohran Mamdani, 20.1mSinners (2025 film), 18.2mOzzy Osbourne, 17.8mSuperman (2025 film), 17mPope Francis, 15.3mSeverance (TV series), 13.9mUnited States, 13mThunderbolts*, 12.9mWeapons (2025 film), 11.8mJD Vance, 11.6mAdolescence (TV series), 11.6mMrBeast, 11.5mCristiano Ronaldo, 10.8mThe Fantastic Four: First Steps, 10.8m Continue reading...

The use of nudify' apps is becoming more and more prevalent, with hundreds of teachers having seen images created by pupils, often of their peers. The fallout is huge - and growing fastIt worries me that it's so normalised. He obviously wasn't hiding it. He didn't feel this was something he shouldn't be doing. It was in the open and people saw it. That's what was quite shocking."A headteacher is describing how a teenage boy, sitting on a bus on his way home from school, casually pulled out his phone, selected a picture from social media of a girl at a neighbouring school and used a nudifying" app to doctor her image. Continue reading...

As the Xbox 360 turns 20, we celebrate its most influential and memorable games - both exclusives, and those that came to the console firstOriginally featured as a minigame in Project Gotham, this 80s-style twin-stick shooter was rebuilt as a standalone digital-only release, attracting a huge new fanbase. Fast, frenetic and super stylish, with lovely vector visuals, it was the game that first showed the potential of Xbox Live Arcade. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Swedish carmakers push to retain target as Germany lobbies to help its own industry by softening cutoff dateAs the battle lines harden amid Germany's intensifying pressure on the European Commission to scrap the 2035 ban on production of new petrol and diesel cars, two Swedish car companies, Volvo and Polestar, are leading the campaign to persuade Brussels to stick to the date.They argue such a move is a desperate attempt to paper over the cracks in the German car industry, adding that it will not just prolong take up of electric vehicles but inadvertently hand the advantage to China. Continue reading...

Independent reviewer says need to protect against online threats is now as important as need for robust armed forcesThe UK's independent reviewer of terrorism laws has criticised the government's latest national security strategy for failing to take online threats more seriously, despite Keir Starmer claiming it would result in a hardening and sharpening of our approach" in the face of Russian menace.Jonathan Hall KC said it was a very surprising omission" that the 2025 national security strategy did not focus more on online risks, including from terrorists and hostile states, which he said were now a major vector of threat". Continue reading...

Amar Subramanya will replace John Giannandrea after firm has struggled to catch up with AI rollouts by competitorsApple's head of artificial intelligence, John Giannandrea, is stepping down from the company. The move comes as the Silicon Valley giant has lagged behind its competitors in rolling out generative AI features, in particular its voice assistant Siri. Apple made the announcement on Monday, thanking Giannandrea for his seven-year tenure at the company.Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, said his fellow executive helped the company in building and advancing our AI work" and allowing Apple to continue to innovate". Giannandrea will be replaced by longtime AI researcher Amar Subramanya. Continue reading...

Meta platform allows users under 16 in Australia to change their date of birth - but only after clearing a video selfie' or providing government ID