Joshua Nevett / BBC: UK minister instructs the Turing AI institute, which has lately focused on responsible AI and ethics, to prioritize national security and defense instead — Science and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle has written to the UK's national institute for artificial intelligence (AI) to tell its bosses to refocus on defence and security.
BBC: Aylo, which owns Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube, will add “government approved age assurance methods” in the UK by July 25 to comply with the Online Safety Act — Aylo, the owner of adult sites Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube, says it will introduce “government approved age assurance methods” in the UK.
Zoe Kleinman / BBC: The UK passes the Data (Use and Access) Bill, criticized by creatives, without an amendment to force companies to declare using copyrighted material to train AI — A bill which sparked an extraordinary stand-off between some of the UK's most high-profile artists - and their backers in the House of Lords - has finally been passed.
Zoe Kleinman / BBC: Will Cathcart says WhatsApp plans to support Apple's legal case against the UK Home Office over an encryption backdoor, which “could set a dangerous precedent” — WhatsApp is planning to support Apple in its legal action against the UK Home Office over user data privacy, BBC News has learnt.
BBC: Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki tells parents that “if you're not comfortable, don't let your kids be on Roblox” and says “tens of millions” have positive experiences — Parents who are worried about their children being on Roblox should not let them use it …
Thomas Germain / BBC: A look at YouTube's hidden world: most of the videos on the platform capture everyday life and have rarely been seen, with the median video having just 41 views — There's a secret side of YouTube, just beyond the guiding hand of the algorithm - and it's nothing like what you know.
Liv McMahon / BBC: The US and the UK did not join France, China, India, and other countries in signing an international AI agreement in Paris, without explaining their reasons — The UK and US have not signed an international agreement on artificial intelligence (AI) at a global summit in Paris.
Thomas Germain / BBC: An Adalytics report shows how ad systems run by Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others inadvertently placed ads on a website that hosts CSAM — Some of the biggest tech companies in the world served ads on a website featuring images of child abuse, helping to fund its operations.
Sima Kotecha / BBC: The UK announces four new laws that make it illegal to possess, create, or distribute AI tools designed to produce CSAM, becoming the first country to do so — Four new laws will tackle the threat of child sexual abuse images generated by artificial intelligence (AI), the government has announced.
BBC: At least four UK teenagers have been arrested in connection with 764, a “Satanist” terror network targeting children online for sexual blackmail and violence — A teenager involved in what police have described as a Satanist terror network targeting children online for sexual blackmail …
Scott Nover / BBC: Q&A with scientists Charley Kline and Bill Duvall, who sent the first Arpanet message in 1969, on what the internet has become, lessons from Arpanet, and more — On 29 October 1969, two scientists established a connection between computers some 350 miles away and started typing a message.
João da Silva / BBC: ByteDance says it fired an intern in its ad tech team for “maliciously interfering” with AI training, and says operations were unaffected by their actions — TikTok owner, ByteDance, says it has sacked an intern for “maliciously interfering” with the training of one of its artificial intelligence (AI) models.
Gabriel Gatehouse / BBC: A look at Balaji Srinivasan's Network State concept, which envisions online communities acquiring land via crowdfunding, with the goal of becoming new countries — Do you look at the possibility of political turbulence ahead of November's US presidential election and think: democracy could be in trouble?
Georgina Rannard / BBC: Study: unintended electromagnetic radiation from second-gen Starlink satellites is stronger than first-gen, causing 32x more interference with radio telescopes — Radio waves from Elon Musk's growing network of satellites are blocking scientists' ability to peer into the universe, according to researchers in the Netherlands.
Imran Rahman-Jones / BBC: TikTok confirms it offered the US a “kill switch” in 2022 to shut down the app in the US at the government's discretion if TikTok did not follow certain rules — TikTok says it offered the US government the power to shut the platform down in an attempt to address lawmakers' data protection and national security concerns.
Joe Tidy / BBC: London hospitals hackers Qilin publish almost 400GB of data, including sensitive patient info, on their darknet site and on Telegram; the NHS is investigating — A gang of cyber criminals causing huge disruption to multiple London hospitals has published sensitive data stolen from an NHS blood testing company.
Thomas Germain / BBC: Copywriters detail how AI is affecting their jobs, with some noticing a new line of work to make AI-generated text sound more human, a job that pays a lot less — If you're worried about how AI will affect your job, the world of copywriters may offer a glimpse of the future.
Marianna Spring / BBC: A look at the uptick of AI-generated videos on TikTok featuring politicians in the UK; Ofcom says TikTok was the fastest growing news source in 2022 and 2023 — Young voters in key election battlegrounds are being recommended fake AI-generated videos featuring party leaders, misinformation …
BBC: A Finnish court sentences hacker Julius Kivimäki to six years and three months, after he breached a healthcare database and attempted to blackmail 33,000 people — One of Europe's most wanted cyber criminals has been jailed for attempting to blackmail 33,000 people whose confidential therapy notes he stole.
Kalkidan Yibeltal / BBC: Ethiopia's central bank says “a glitch” let Commercial Bank customers withdraw more cash than was in the account for hours; local media says $40M+ was withdrawn — Ethiopia's biggest commercial bank is scrambling to recoup large sums of money withdrawn by customers after a “systems glitch”.
Tom Gerken / BBC: Meta outlines its strategy to combat the misuse of generative AI ahead of the European elections in June, including setting up an EU-specific operations center — Facebook and Instagram owner Meta says it will form a team to tackle deceptive artificial intelligence (AI) content in the upcoming EU elections in June.
BBC: Investigation: instant loan app scams push people in India and other countries into a spiral of debt, driving many to suicide after shame and blackmail — A blackmail scam is using instant loan apps to entrap and humiliate people across India and other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Imran Rahman-Jones / BBC: The FCC fines Dish Network $150,000 for failing to move its old EchoStar-7 satellite far enough away from others in use, the FCC's first space junk fine — The US government has issued its first ever fine to a company for leaving space junk orbiting the Earth.
BBC: After Meta criticizes potential UK encryption rules, the UK says Meta “failed to provide assurances” over keeping its platforms “safe from sickening abusers” — Facebook's owner Meta has hit back at a new government campaign strongly critical of its plans to encrypt messages.
James Clayton / BBC: EU study: social media companies have failed to stop pro-Russian disinformation and the “reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts” grew further in 2023 — Social media companies have failed to stop “large-scale” Russian disinformation campaigns since the invasion of Ukraine, the EU has said.
Joe Tidy / BBC: A UK court finds 18-year-old Arion Kurtaj and a 17-year-old were part of Lapsus$, the group that hacked Uber, Nvidia, and Rockstar Games in 2021 and 2022 — A court has found an 18-year-old from Oxford was a part of an international cyber-crime gang responsible for a hacking spree against major tech firms
Chris Vallance / BBC: Sama CEO Wendy Gonzalez says the company will no longer take on harmful content moderation work from Meta and she regrets the work, after staff sue the company — A firm which was contracted to moderate Facebook posts in East Africa has said with hindsight it should not have taken on the job.
BBC: An investigation citing hundreds of Turkish people claims Android's earthquake warning system failed to send alerts for the 7.8-magnitude quake on February 6 — Google's earthquake warning system failed to get to many Turkish residents before February's deadly tremor, a BBC Newsnight investigation has found.
Zoe Kleinman / BBC: Apple threatens to remove FaceTime and iMessage from the UK rather than weaken security under a proposed security bill amendment, dubbed a “snooper's charter” — Apple says it will remove services such as FaceTime and iMessage from the UK rather than weaken security if new proposals are made law and acted upon.
BBC: An interview with Foxconn chairman Young Liu on shifting some supply chains away from China as China-US tensions rise, hoping to capture 5% of EVs, and more — iPhone maker Foxconn is betting big on electric cars and redrawing some of its supply chains as it navigates a new era of icy Washington-Beijing relations.
BBC: Margrethe Vestager says discrimination, not extinction, is a more pressing concern for AI due to training models and “guardrails” are needed to counter bias — Discrimination is a more pressing concern from advancing artificial intelligence than human extinction, says the EU's competition chief.
Mark Savage / BBC: Paul McCartney says AI helped “extricate” John Lennon's voice from an old demo to complete what he calls “the final Beatles record”, set for release in 2023 — Sir Paul McCartney says he has employed artificial intelligence to help create what he calls “the final Beatles record”.
Joe Tidy / BBC: The Clop ransomware group tells the BBC, British Airways, Boots, and others to email them or data stolen via the MOVEit hack will be released on June 14 — A prolific cyber crime gang thought to be based in Russia has issued an ultimatum to victims of a hack that has hit organisations around the world.
Frances Mao / BBC: NetBlocks: internet and social media disruption in Pakistan after ex-PM Imran Khan's arrest was possibly the country's most severe censorship in recent times — The battle between Imran Khan's supporters and the powerful Pakistani military has this week been raging on two fronts - on the streets and on social media.
BBC: Wikimedia won't comply with the Online Safety Bill's age checks of its UK readers or contributors, citing the foundation's “commitment to collect minimal data” — Wikipedia will not comply with any age checks required under the Online Safety Bill, its foundation says.
BBC: Microsoft's Brad Smith says the CMA blocking the Activision deal was “probably the darkest day in our four decades” in the UK and will be “bad for Britain” — Microsoft's president has attacked the UK after it was blocked from buying US gaming firm Activision …
Zoe Kleinman / BBC: Twitter restores the gold badges of some news organizations, including the BBC, The New York Times, and Bellingcat; the BBC and Bellingcat say they did not pay — Some Twitter accounts with more than one million followers have had their blue tick badges re-instated by Twitter without paying to subscribe.
Mark Savage / BBC: A song that uses AI to clone the voices of Drake and The Weeknd without the artists' permission goes viral on social media — A song that uses Artificial Intelligence to clone the voices of Drake and The Weeknd has gone viral on social media. — Called Heart On My Sleeve …
Meryl Sebastian / BBC: How a startup event in India dubbed the “world's biggest funding festival” plunged into chaos, with participants alleging they were lured with false promises — In March, hundreds of budding entrepreneurs descended on Noida, a suburb of India's capital Delhi …
BBC: The UK cancels plans to launch an NFT, proposed in 2022 by Rishi Sunak in a bid to make the UK a crypto hub, and says it will keep the proposal “under review” — Plans for a government backed non-fungible token (NFT) produced by the Royal Mint have been dropped, the Treasury has announced.
Chris Vallance / BBC: After a hacker demanded $200K to delete data on 400M+ Twitter accounts, Ireland's DPC plans to investigate the “security issue”; Twitter hasn't issued a comment — A watchdog is to investigate Twitter after a hacker claimed to have private details linked to more than 400 million accounts.
Charley Adams / BBC: The UK plans to criminalize self-harm content in the updated Online Safety Bill, in line with suicide content, after the death of teenager Molly Russell in 2017 — The encouragement of self-harm will be criminalised in an update to the Online Safety Bill, the government has said.
Zoya Mateen / BBC: A profile of a16z's Sriram Krishnan, a former Twitter executive who left in 2021 and is helping Elon Musk run Twitter, reportedly as part of his “inner circle” — Twitter's new owner Elon Musk has whipped up a storm after he sacked thousands of employees last week.
Paul Adams / BBC: How Ukraine uses memes, jokes, and funny videos in its social media war with Russia, which helped the defense ministry's Twitter account grow to 1.5M followers — After almost eight months, the war in Ukraine hangs in the balance. Ukrainian counter-offensives continue to make progress …
Chris Vallance / BBC: Study: AI hiring tools don't reduce bias or improve diversity; they can't be trained to only identify job-related characteristics and strip out gender and race — Artificially intelligent hiring tools do not reduce bias or improve diversity, researchers say in a study.
Victoria Gill / BBC: The WEEE Forum research says that about 5.3B out of an estimated 16B mobile phones worldwide will be thrown away and become waste in 2022 — This year, 5.3 billion mobile phones will be thrown away the international waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) forum says.
Joe Tidy / BBC: Hackers claiming to be a couple from Vietnam say they wiped some of IHG's data, accessed using the password Qwerty1234, after their ransomware attack was foiled — Hackers have told the BBC they carried out a destructive cyber-attack against Holiday Inn owner Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) “for fun”.
Justin Rowlatt / BBC: In July, Google changed how its Flights tool calculates emissions to exclude all global warming impacts except CO2, understating flight emissions by nearly half — The way Google calculates the climate impact of your flights has changed, the BBC has discovered.
Chris Vallance / BBC: The UK's ad regulator bans two ads by Arsenal FC promoting its Socios-based Fan Tokens, saying the soccer club “failed to illustrate the risk of the investment” — A web page and a Facebook post by Arsenal football club promoting crypto-based fan tokens broke advertising rules, a watchdog has ruled.
BBC: A look at Russia's efforts to censor Western social media with fines and takedown requests, as most posts Russia wanted removed in 2021 were pro-Navalny content — Google and Meta face the threat of multi-million-dollar fines for failing to delete content that the Russian government considers illegal …