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Caryn Marjorie is a social media influencer whose content has more than a billion views per month on Snapchat. She posts regularly, featuring everyday moments, travel memories, and selfies. Many of her followers are men, attracted by her girl-next-door aesthetic. In 2023, Marjorie released a “digital version” of herself. Fans could chat with CarynAI for US$1 per minute – and in the first week alone they spent US$70,000 doing just that. Less than eight months later, Marjorie shut the project down. Marjorie had anticipated that CarynAI would interact with her fans in much the same way she would herself, but things did not go to plan. Users b...... Read Full article on HadNews

Imagine a future where your phone pings with a message that your dead father’s “digital immortal” bot is ready. This promise of chatting with a virtual version of your loved one – perhaps through a virtual reality (VR) headset – is like stepping into a sci-fi movie, both thrilling and a bit eerie. As you interact with this digital dad, you find yourself on an emotional rollercoaster. You uncover secrets and stories you never knew, changing how you remember the real person. This is not a distant, hypothetical scenario. The digital afterlife industry is rapidly evolving. Several companies promise to create virtual reconstructions of deceased ...... Read Full article on HadNews

Earlier this year, Neuralink implanted a chip inside the brain of 29-year-old US man Noland Arbaugh, who is paralysed from the shoulders down. The chip has enabled Arbaugh to move a mouse pointer on a screen just by imagining it moving. In May 2023, US researchers also announced a non-invasive way to “decode” the words someone is thinking from brain scans in combination with generative AI. A similar project sparked headlines about a “mind-reading AI hat”. Can neural implants and generative AI really “read minds”? Is the day coming when computers can spit out accurate real-time transcripts of our thoughts for anyone to read? Such tec...... Read Full article on HadNews

From asking our smart speakers for the weather to receiving personalised advice from smartwatches, devices powered by artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly streamlining our routines and decision making. The technology is seeping into our lives in subtle ways. Manufacturers gather vast amounts of user data to ensure these smart devices are responsive and personalised. But this can put users at risk of exploitation by malicious agents, such as hackers looking to steal your data. As AI becomes more ubiquitous, consumers will also need to become savvier. If you want to enjoy the benefits of a smart everyday device, you should be ...... Read Full article on HadNews

Smaller browser companies are starting to grab market share in Europe following the EU legislation that forced Google, Microsoft, and Apple to make it easier for people to switch to rivals. The new EU Digital Markets Act suggests services should not be designated as gatekeepers, with the giants in the industry now required to allow third-party apps or app store providers to access their platforms. Users should also be able to easily change between them. As mobile devices that run Android come with Chrome browser as a default and iPhones with Safari, these browsers are two that have long dominated. According to Reuters, other companies ...... Read Full article on HadNews

Instagram is taking significant steps to stop the receiving and sending of nude images to teens by announcing plans to automatically detect and blur explicit photos through its DM (direct messaging) service. The function is expected to be tested in the coming weeks to be rolled out across the globe in the next few months, reports the Wall Street Journal. It’s the latest move from parent company Meta to fight harmful content on its platforms directed at minors. In January the social media giant behind Facebook and Instagram, implemented DM restrictions to curtail adults being able to message under 18s. The latest plan aims to discourage ...... Read Full article on HadNews

If you’re in your 20s and 30s, you probably watch pornography. Millennials and gen Z are watching more pornography than any other age group and are also more likely than any other demographic to experiment with AI pornography. As technology advances, AI-generated tools and techniques are becoming increasingly sophisticated and accessible. This can lead to unethical content, including deepfakes – videos in which a person’s face is replaced with someoneelse’s likeness, without their consent. Social media platform X (formerly Twitter) recently faced a scandal when it became awash with deepfakes of Taylor Swift. But what about other kinds of A...... Read Full article on HadNews

Do you ever think about the digital footprint you leave when you are browsing the web, shopping online, commenting on social networks or going by a facial recognition camera? State surveillance of citizens is growing all over the world, but it is a fact of everyday life in China, where it has deep historical roots. In China, almost nothing is paid for in cash anymore. Super apps make life easy: people use Alipay or WeChat Pay to pay for subway or bus tickets, rent a bike, hail a taxi, shop online, book trains and shows, split the bill at restaurants and even pay their taxes and utility bills. The Chinese also use these platforms to...... Read Full article on HadNews

Emotion artificial intelligence uses biological signals such as vocal tone, facial expressions and data from wearable devices as well as text and how people use their computers, promising to detect and predict how someone is feeling. It is used in contexts both mundane, like entertainment, and high stakes, like the workplace, hiring and health care. A wide range of industries already use emotion AI, including call centers, finance, banking, nursing and caregiving. Over 50% of large employers in the U.S. use emotion AI aiming to infer employees’ internal states, a practice that grew during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, call centers mon...... Read Full article on HadNews

Jack Sweeney, a junior at the University of Central Florida, says the First Amendment gives him the right to publish publicly available information about the flight paths of private jets owned by the rich and famous – including Taylor Swift. Swift’s legal team – and many of her fans – say that Sweeney posting the comings and goings of the singer’s private plane on social media is technological stalking. Sweeney also tracks the private planes owned or used by Elon Musk, Ron DeSantis, Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates, several Russian oligarchs and others, using public data from a global flight tracking website, TheAirTraffic.com. I am an ...... Read Full article on HadNews

Leanne Manas is a familiar face on South African televisions. Towards the end of 2023 the morning news presenter’s face showed up somewhere else: in bogus news stories and fake advertisements in which “she” appeared to promote various products or get-rich-quick schemes. It quickly emerged that Manas had fallen victim to “deepfaking”. Deepfakes involve the use of artificial intelligence tools to manipulate images, video and audio. And it doesn’t require cutting-edge technical know-how. Software like FaceSwap and ZaoApp, which can be downloaded for free, mean that anybody can create deepfakes. Deepfakes were initially used in the en...... Read Full article on HadNews

A privacy warning from Google has indicated an element of risk if users disclose personal information when using artificial intelligence (AI) apps. The Alphabet Inc company has confirmed the rebranding of Bard as Gemini, which will become the flagship AI assistant on Android devices. The program will bring advances and greater cohesion between different services on smartphones but it also appears to come at a cost. As reported by ZD Net, tucked away in the small print of information held in the Gemini Apps Privacy Hub, there is a stated warning that Google collects conversations, location, feedback, and usage information when Gemini is...... Read Full article on HadNews

On Dec. 27, 2023, The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging that the company committed willful copyright infringement through its generative AI tool ChatGPT. The Times claimed both that ChatGPT was unlawfully trained on vast amounts of text from its articles and that ChatGPT’s output contained language directly taken from its articles. To remedy this, the Times asked for more than just money: It asked a federal court to order the “destruction” of ChatGPT. If granted, this request would force OpenAI to delete its trained large language models, such as GPT-4, as well as its training data, which would prevent the company...... Read Full article on HadNews