Category Archives: Technology

Canada lawyer under fire for submitting fake cases created by AI chatbot

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Chong Ke, from Vancouver, under investigation after allegedly using ChatGPT to cite case law – but those cases did not exist

A lawyer in Canada is under fire after the artificial intelligence chatbot use she used for legal research created “fictitious” cases, in the latest episode to expose the perils of using untested technologies in the courtroom.

The Vancouver lawyer Chong Ke, who now faces an investigation into her conduct, allegedly used ChatGPT to develop legal submissions during a child custody case at the British Columbia supreme court.

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Revealed: the names linked to ClothOff, the deepfake pornography app

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Exclusive: Guardian investigation for podcast series Black Box reveals names connected to app that generated nonconsensual images of underage girls around the world

The first Miriam al-Adib learned of the pictures was when she returned home from a business trip. “Mum,” said her daughter. “I want to show you something.”

The girl, 14, opened her phone to show an explicit image of herself. “It’s a shock when you see it,” said Adib, a gynaecologist in the southern Spanish town of Almendralejo and a mother of four daughters. “The image is completely realistic … If I didn’t know my daughter’s body, I would have thought that image was real.”

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Elon Musk makes ‘things good’ with California bakery after $2,000 pie fiasco

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Tesla had ditched an order for 4,000 mini pies, but the X owner paid the debt after the incident received attention

A California bakery that claimed Tesla did not pay an order worth thousands of dollars said the outstanding bill has been settled, after billionaire Elon Musk promised to “make things good” following press coverage of the incident.

Musk’s company Tesla had ditched an order for 4,000 mini pies from Giving Pies, a Black-owned bakery in San Jose, in central California, bakery owner Voahangy Rasetarinera said on the cafe’s Instagram account five days ago.

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India confronts Google over Gemini AI tool’s ‘fascist Modi’ responses

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Junior minister accuses tech firm of violating country’s IT laws with ‘downright malicious’ answers

A response from Google’s AI platform suggesting that some experts believe the policies of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, polices to be “fascist” has provoked a confrontation between the company and the government.

The journalist Arnab Ray last week put the question as to whether Modi was a fascist to Google’s generative AI platform, Gemini. He received the answer that Modi was “accused of implementing policies some experts have characterized as fascist”.

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How a TikTok clip led demand for 177-year-old sourdough starter to rise

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US enthusiasts who follow the tradition of sharing dough are now receiving about 1,000 requests a week, up from 30 to 60

“There’s an old pioneer tradition” dating from the earliest days of the colonisation of the US west, says Mary Buckingham, “that you shared your bread starter with anyone who asked.”

Which was all very well until TikTok came along.

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Canadian university vending machine error reveals use of facial recognition

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University of Waterloo dispenser displays facial recognition message despite no prior indication it was monitoring students

A malfunctioning vending machine at a Canadian university has inadvertently revealed that a number of them have been using facial recognition technology in secret.

Earlier this month, a snack dispenser at the University of Waterloo showed an error message – Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognition.App.exe – on the screen.

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‘Doesn’t my TV already do this?’: Is Hubbl a Foxtel thought-bubble or worth the trouble?

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Surprisingly, Foxtel’s Hubbl makes a pretty good case for itself even if it doesn’t completely pass the sniff test

Foxtel is set to kickstart a massive marketing blitz to promote its new streaming TV hardware Hubbl. As viewers watch the TV ads featuring Hamish Blake dancing across their screens dressed up as a Hubbl set-top box, many will be asking a not-unreasonable question: “Doesn’t my TV already do this?”

Most Australians now have a smart TV. Australia got serious about streaming TV back in 2015 with the launch of Stan and Netflix. With the general lifespan of a TV being somewhere between 7 and 15 years, it means most of Australia by now have smart TVs or have equipped their TV with a plug-in device to make their TV “smart”.

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Huge cybersecurity leak lifts lid on world of China’s hackers for hire

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Leaked files shows range of services offered and bought, with data harvested from targets worldwide

A big leak of data from a Chinese cybersecurity firm has revealed state security agents paying tens of thousands of pounds to harvest data on targets, including foreign governments, while hackers hoover up huge amounts of information on any person or institution who might be of interest to their prospective clients.

The cache of more than 500 leaked files from the Chinese firm I-Soon was posted on the developer website Github and is thought by cybersecurity experts to be genuine. Some of the targets discussed include Nato and the UK Foreign Office.

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Large-scale cellular phone outage hits AT&T customers across the US

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More than 70,000 affected as users of AT&T report disruptions including to emergency service calls

A cellular phone outage hit cities across the US early on Thursday. Thousands of AT&T customers reported service disruptions that rendered them unable to send texts, access the internet or make calls, even to emergency services via 911.

More than 50,000 incidents were reported at about 7am ET, according to data from the outage tracking website Downdetector.com. Outage reports spiked above 70,000 around 9am ET.

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Second accidental data leak in four months ‘regrettable’, Australian finance department says

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Incident comes as data shows government sector breaches mostly caused by human error, not criminal acts

The finance department has accidentally shared confidential commercial information for the second time as new data reveals the number of human errors behind government data breaches.

The department has confirmed that last week it emailed 236 suppliers, and that the email included “embedded information with some third-party confidential information”.

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Greener ‘water batteries’ a step closer thanks to breakthrough by Melbourne researchers

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RMIT team develops method that could replace common lead-acid batteries, offering a safer and more recyclable alternative

An RMIT-led research team has come up with an innovative way to make greener, safer, recyclable “water batteries” that could replace common lead-acid batteries.

There are three key components that make up a battery: a cathode, an anode and an electrolyte. In common lithium-ion or lead-acid batteries, the electrolyte is a liquid chemical solution that, once inserted, cannot be easily recovered.

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Danish man on trial over alleged £500k music streaming fraud

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Aarhus court hears he may have profited from artificially generated playbacks, in case thought to be first of its kind

A Danish man has gone on trial in the city of Aarhus over accusations that he fraudulently made 4.38m kroner (more than £502,000) in royalties on music streaming sites, in what is thought to be the first such trial of its kind.

Prosecutors allege that the 53-year-old profited from streams of 689 pieces of music across services including Spotify, Apple Music and YouSee Musik. They say the huge numbers of streams required to generate that amount of money could not have been generated by genuine users and that unauthorised techniques were likely to have been deployed instead. The alleged fraud is understood to have happened between 2013 and 2019.

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EU opens investigation into TikTok over online content and child safeguarding

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Video platform under scrutiny over potential breach of Digital Services Act in areas such as age verification

The EU has launched a formal investigation into whether TikTok has broken online content rules including the safeguarding of children.

The European Commission said it had opened official proceedings against the Chinese-owned short video platform over potential breaches of the Digital Services Act (DSA).

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Amount of fraud in UK more than doubled to £2.3bn in 2023, report finds

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Accounting firm BDO also warns of future impact of fraudsters using artificial intelligence to rip off customers

The amount of fraud committed in the UK more than doubled to £2.3bn in 2023, marking the second-biggest year for scams in the last two decades, according to a report that also warns of the future impact of fraudsters using artificial intelligence to rip off consumers.

The accounting firm BDO’s latest FraudTrack report found that the number of reported cases rose by 18% to a three-year high, and the number of high-value cases over £50m increased by 60% year-on-year in 2023. Half of the high-value frauds were over £200m.

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Air Canada ordered to pay customer who was misled by airline’s chatbot

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Company claimed its chatbot ‘was responsible for its own actions’ when giving wrong information about bereavement fare

Canada’s largest airline has been ordered to pay compensation after its chatbot gave a customer inaccurate information, misleading him into buying a full-price ticket.

Air Canada came under further criticism for later attempting to distance itself from the error by claiming that the bot was “responsible for its own actions”.

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Google stops notifying publishers of ‘right to be forgotten’ removals from search results

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Move comes after Swedish court rules that informing webmasters about delisted content is breach of privacy

Google has quietly stopped telling publishers when it has removed websites from its search results under European “right to be forgotten” rules after a ruling in a Swedish court which the search engine is applying globally.

Previously, when an individual applied to have records about them expunged under EU data protection laws, Google would notify the publisher of the original articles.

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Lyft CEO says ‘My bad’ after earnings typo sends stock up 60%

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The company had predicted it would grow by 5% in 2024, but later said that the real increase would be a factor of 10 lower

Lyft beat estimates for fourth-quarter profits on Tuesday as the ride-share platform reaps the benefits of growth in rides to stadiums and airports as well as heavy cost-cutting.

Company shares surged more than 60% in extended trading but erased most of those gains after Lyft’s chief financial officer corrected a major mistake in the earnings report. The company had predicted it would grow by 500 basis points (5%) in 2024, but later said that the real increase would be a factor of 10 lower – 50 basis points (0.5%). In 2023, the stock gained about 36%.

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Post-Brexit watchdog ‘ready’ to investigate flood of cheaper Chinese electric cars

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Remarks by head of trade authority come amid fears UK firms could be undercut ‘to extinction’

The head of Britain’s post-Brexit trade watchdog has said it is ready to follow Brussels in launching an investigation into Chinese companies flooding the market for electric cars, but the government has not asked it to do so.

Oliver Griffiths, the chief executive of the UK’s Trade Remedies Authority (TRA), which advises the government on trade defence, said it was keeping lines of communication open with ministers and had been in close contact with the car industry. “We’ll be ready to go if anyone does come to us,” he told the Guardian in an interview.

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French security experts identify Moscow-based disinformation network

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Network operating in western Europe is ‘paving way for new wave of online manipulation’ in crucial election year, French agency says

French military and cybersecurity experts say they have identified a Moscow-based network spreading propaganda and disinformation in western Europe.

France’s Viginum agency, which was set up in 2021 to detect digital interference from foreign entities aimed at influencing public opinion, says Russia is paving the way for a new wave of online manipulation in the run-up to the European elections and other crucial votes this year.

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Brianna Ghey’s mother warns tech bosses more children will die without action

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Exclusive: Esther Ghey says she believes social media use left her daughter vulnerable, while killers were able to access violent content online

The mother of Brianna Ghey has called for her murder to be a “tipping point” in how society views “the mess” of the internet, warning that a generation of anxious young people will grow up lacking resilience.

Esther Ghey said technology companies had a “moral responsibility” to restrict access to harmful online content. She supports a total ban on social media access for under-16s – a move currently under debate in certain legislatures, including Florida in the US.

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