AI photo editor FaceApp goes viral again on iOS, raises questions about photo library access

FaceApp. So. The app has gone viral again after first doing so two years ago or so. The effect has gotten better but these apps, like many other one-off viral apps, tend to come and go in waves driven by influencer networks or paid promotion. We first covered this particular AI photo editor from a team of Russian developers about two years ago.
It has gone viral again now due to some features that allow you to edit a person’s face to make it appear older or younger. You may remember at one

Tech investor led £800m funding round into UK self-driving car software company WayveBusiness live – latest updatesThe Japanese tech investor SoftBank made a profit for the second consecutive quarter as it tries to turn its performance around before big planned investments in artificial intelligence.SoftBank reported net income of 231bn yen (£1.18bn) in the first three months of 2024, compared with a 57.6bn yen loss in the same period last year, according to financial results p

Firm has data from ‘when criminals try to attack’ and its Eagle-i technology suggests what action is neededBT has said it is increasingly using artificial intelligence to help it detect and neutralise threats from hackers targeting business customers amid repeated attacks on companies.The £10.5bn group is aiming to build up its business protecting customers from online criminals and has patented technology that uses AI to analyse attack data to allow companies to protect their

PM to speak on what he believes is at stake in next election, focusing on wars, migration and technologyBritain is facing some of the most dangerous few years in its history, Rishi Sunak will say on Monday in a speech intended to frame the general election as a generational tussle for the long-term future of the country.The prime minister will give a speech in central London in which he will lay out what he believes to be at stake at the next election, as he warns the UK faces threats from inter

Effective Ventures Foundation puts 27-bedroom house visited by Queen Elizabeth I on sale after paying nearly $27m to FTX creditorsIt was pitched as the place where the world’s leading technologists, scientists and philosophers would gather to figure out how effective altruism and artificial intelligence could be combined to create a global force to eradicate poverty and improve everyone’s lives.The Effective Ventures Foundation (EVF), which defines effective altruism as “using

The author of Human Rights, Robot Wrongs on why AI isn’t an all-or-nothing equation, separating hype from genuine dangers, and discovering that ChatGPT says she doesn’t existSusie Alegre is an international human rights lawyer and author, originally from the Isle of Man, whose focus in recent years has been on technology and its impact on human rights. As a legal expert she has advised Amnesty International, the UN and other organisations on issues such as counter-terrorism and anti-

Far from making programmers an endangered species, AI will release them from the grunt work that stifles innovationWhen digital computers were invented, the first task was to instruct them to do what we wanted. The problem was that the machines didn’t understand English – they only knew ones and zeros. You could program them with long sequences of these two digits and if you got the sequence right then the machines would do what you wanted. But life’s too short for composing in

The moral panic following Raffaella Spone’s ‘deepfake’ video spread around the world. She talks for the first time about being the centre of a story in which nothing was as it seemed …Madi Hime is taking a deep drag on a blue vape in the video, her eyes shut, her face flushed with pleasure. The 16-year-old exhales with her head thrown back, collapsing into laughter that causes smoke to billow out of her mouth. The clip is grainy and shaky – as if shot in low light

Researchers find instances of systems double-crossing opponents, bluffing, pretending to be human and modifying behaviour in testsThey can outwit humans at board games, decode the structure of proteins and hold a passable conversation, but as AI systems have grown in sophistication so has their capacity for deception, scientists warn.The analysis, by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers, identifies wide-ranging instances of AI systems double-crossing opponents, bluffing and pr

Fraudsters impersonated WPP’s CEO using a fake Whatsapp account, a voice clone and YouTube footage used in a virtual meetThe head of the world’s biggest advertising group was the target of an elaborate deepfake scam that involved an artificial intelligence voice clone. The CEO of WPP, Mark Read, detailed the attempted fraud in a recent email to leadership, warning others at the company to look out for calls claiming to be from top executives.Fraudsters created a WhatsApp account with

Critics say ChatGPT creator’s proposal to allow erotica, slurs and other adult content undermines its mission statementOpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is exploring whether users should be allowed to create artificial intelligence-generated pornography and other explicit content with its products.While the company stressed that its ban on deepfakes would continue to apply to adult material, campaigners suggested the proposal undermined its mission statement to produce “safe and be

Industry’s digital watermarking scheme will add to existing safeguards on TikTok’s own toolsTikTok will flag users who upload AI-generated content (AIGC) to the video-sharing site from other platforms, the company says, becoming the first major video site to automatically label such content for users to see.Content created using TikTok’s own AI tools is already automatically marked as such to viewers, and the company has required creators to manually add the same labels to thei

Fears ‘deadbots’ could cause psychological harm to their creators and users or digitally ‘haunt’ themDigital recreations of dead people are on the cusp of reality and urgently need regulation, AI ethicists have argued, warning “deadbots” could cause psychological harm to, and even “haunt”, their creators and users.Such services, which are already technically possible to create and legally permissible, could let users upload their conversations with

Challenge cited California state law that allows plaintiffs and defendants to remove judge they believe can’t grant impartial trialThe California judge presiding over Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, has removed himself from the case. Judge Ethan Schulman on Monday sustained a challenge from Musk’s lawyers, which cited a California state law that allows plaintiffs and defendants to remove a judge they believe cannot grant an impartial trial.The law, k

AlphaFold breakthrough may bolster work in fields from antibiotics and cancer therapy to resilient cropsResearchers have hailed another “leap forward” for artificial intelligence after Google DeepMind unveiled the latest version of its AlphaFold program, which can predict how proteins behave in the complex symphony of life.The breakthrough promises to shed fresh light on the biological machinery that underpins living organisms and drive breakthroughs in fields from antibiotics and ca

Paintings identified as fake using cutting-edge technology are ‘tip of the iceberg’ specialist Dr Carina Popovici saysA “Monet” and a “Renoir” are among up to 40 fake paintings that are being offered for sale on eBay, according to research by a leading expert.Dr Carina Popovici, a specialist in authenticating artwork, said she applied cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology to pictures advertised on the online platform and was shocked to discover

Netflix’s hit show The Circle recently introduced an AI chatbot contestant, a potentially worrying sign of where we’re headingAccording to his profile, Max, a contestant on season six of the Netflix reality show The Circle, is 26 years old, brunette and into his Australian shepherd, Pippa. He is a veterinary intern from Pismo Beach, California, and a bit cheeky – “single, but my dog is taken”. He enters into the Circle chat, the fake social media service contestants

Program aims to help create better disability support plans to guide carers and support workers’ response to challenging behaviourGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastAustralian researchers hope a new AI-supported educational program will help reduce the use of restraints and seclusion on people with disability.The Promoting Positive Behaviour Support Practice program is designed to help practitioners create safer, respectful, constructive plans to guide

With large language models needing quality data, some publishers are offering theirs at a price while others are blocking accessOpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, knows that high-quality data matters in the artificial intelligence business – and news publishers have vast amounts of it.“It would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials,” the company said this year in a submission to the UK’s House of Lords, adding that limit

Victoria Shi is modelled on Rosalie Nombre, a singer and former contestant on Ukraine’s version of the reality show The BachelorUkraine on Wednesday presented an AI-generated spokesperson called Victoria who will make official statements on behalf of its foreign ministry.The ministry said it would “for the first time in history” use a digital spokesperson to read its statements, which will still be written by humans. Continue reading...