Police say case highlights online dangers to children after Carlo Tritta pleads guilty to making indecent images
A man who obsessively groomed a 14-year-old girl he met through the online gaming platform Roblox has been jailed for 28 months.
Carlo Tritta, now 19, kept indecent images of the girl and travelled hundreds of miles from his home in Eastleigh, Hampshire in order to turn up, uninvited, at her home in Manchester.
Continue reading...Mayor says disinformation, including about London crime rates, is ‘eating away at basic bonds of trust’
Sadiq Khan has called on ministers to take significantly stronger action against social media companies that spread disinformation after a study showed a surge in hostile accounts posting falsehoods about London’s crime rates and integration.
In an intervention on what he called “the outrage economy”, the London mayor, who has also written to social media firms demanding change, said a lack of action could prompt more domestic terrorism by people who believe conspiracy theories they find online.
Continue reading...AI company says purpose of its Claude Mythos model is to bolster defenses against hacking in common applications
Anthropic on Tuesday said its yet-to-be-released artificial intelligence model called Claude Mythos has proven keenly adept at exposing software weaknesses.
Mythos has laid bare thousands of vulnerabilities in commonly used applications for which no patch or fix exists, prompting the San Francisco-based AI startup to form an alliance with cybersecurity specialists to bolster defenses against hacking and withhold wide distribution.
Continue reading...Rosedale residents considering car licence plate-scanning Flock system in bid to tackle property crime
A row has broken out in one of Canada’s wealthiest neighbourhoods over plans to use an AI-powered surveillance system to create the country’s first “virtual gated community” to combat surging property crime.
Crime rates in Toronto as a whole are dropping but residents of Rosedale have been left on edge by a sustained rise in home invasions, with robbers targeting the tree-lined neighbourhood at a rate more than double the city average. Break-ins and thefts remain the third highest per capita in Toronto.
Continue reading...Conservationists say move could push species closer to extinction and clearer environmental rules are needed instead
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Conservationists and scientists have warned a mining lobby proposal to use artificial intelligence to speed up national environmental approvals could generate “robodebt-style” failures, putting threatened species at further risk.
The Minerals Council of Australia has asked the government to spend $13m to trial the use of AI to help companies prepare applications and help the federal government make decisions.
Continue reading...Datacentres ‘directly competing’ with possible residential builds near public transport, one council tells NSW inquiry, amid growing concerns
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Datacentre developments are crowding out opportunities for housing and job-rich industries across Sydney, a New South Wales inquiry has heard, with one local council reporting a rise in blackouts linked to the industry’s expansion.
Several Sydney councils, all facing an influx of datacentre developments, have raised concerns about the health, environmental and amenity impacts on their local communities in submissions to the state’s datacentre inquiry.
Continue reading...Alan Turing Institute told by funder to offer better strategy and more value for money after board was reminded of legal duties by watchdog
The UK’s leading AI research institute has been told to make “significant” changes by its main source of taxpayer funding.
The Guardian revealed last week that the board of the Alan Turing Institute was reminded of its legal duties by the charity watchdog after a whistleblower complaint.
Continue reading...More than 100 of the Baidu driverless vehicles stopped running because of a system malfunction
Some robotaxi passengers were left stranded in the middle of fast-moving traffic in a major Chinese city after their driverless vehicles stopped running, according to police and media reports on Wednesday.
A preliminary investigation indicates more than 100 robotaxis came to a halt because of a “system malfunction”, police in the city of Wuhan said in a statement, without elaborating. No injuries were reported.
Continue reading...Publisher alleges AI research company’s chatbot violated its copyright over Coconut the Little Dragon series
Penguin Random House has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging its chatbot ChatGPT violated copyright by mimicking and reproducing the content of a popular series of German children’s books.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Friday with a Munich court against OpenAI’s Ireland-based European subsidiary, states Penguin Random House’s legal team had prompted ChatGPT to write a story in the vein of Penguin author and illustrator Ingo Siegner’s Coconut the Little Dragon series.
Continue reading...Model posted pictures of herself naked and ‘in her full power’ to celebrate Mother’s Day, before Meta took them down for breaching nudity guidelines
The model Erin O’Connor has spoken out about the need for social media platforms to apply “clearer, more context-sensitive guidelines” after Instagram repeatedly removed two nude photographs she had posted on Mother’s Day, celebrating her heavily pregnant body.
The photos – which were removed, reinstated and then removed again by the platform – were taken in 2014 when O’Connor, who is 48, was eight and half months’ pregnant with her son Albert.
Continue reading...Keir Starmer promises to help parents limit children’s online activity as government issues guidance to families
Children under five should spend no more than an hour a day on screens, new government advice says.
Screen time for children under two should be avoided except for shared activities encouraging interaction, families are advised.
Continue reading...European Commission says social messaging app is exposing children to grooming and sexual exploitation
Brussels has opened an investigation into Snapchat over concerns the social messaging app is exposing children to grooming, sexual exploitation and other criminality.
In a separate decision on Thursday, the European Commission also said four pornographic websites were failing to prevent minors seeing adult content, harming young people’s mental health and fuelling negative gender attitudes.
Continue reading...Lawmakers say moratorium on construction would buy time to create strong, federal guardrails for AI
Amid an unprecedented energy crisis and the rapid buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure, progressive lawmakers have unveiled a new policy to place a moratorium on the construction of AI datacenters.
The policy, announced by Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democratic representative, on Wednesday morning, aims to ensure the AI boom protects the environment and communities, and benefits workers instead of harming them. A temporary ban, the lawmakers say, would give the US government time to create strong federal safeguards for AI, which is “affecting everything from our economy and wellbeing to our democracy, warfare and our kids’ education”.
Continue reading...New Mexico hails ‘historic’ win after jury finds firm misled consumers over safety and enabled harm against users
A New Mexico jury on Tuesday ordered Meta to pay $375m in civil penalties after it found the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and enabled harm, including child sexual exploitation, against its users.
This is the first bench trial to find Meta liable for acts committed on its platform.
Continue reading...Refusing to comply could lead to year in jail and hefty fine, while providing false information carries up to three years in prison
Hong Kong police can now demand that people suspected of breaching the city’s national security law provide mobile phone or computer passwords in a further crackdown on dissent.
The amendments to the law also empower customs officers to seize items that are deemed to have “seditious intention”, regardless of whether any person has been arrested for an offence endangering national security because of the items.
Continue reading...Mediahuis suspends Peter Vandermeersch, who says he ‘fell into trap of hallucinations’, after investigation by newspaper where he was once editor-in-chief
The publisher of the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf and the Irish Independent has suspended one of its senior journalists after he admitted using AI to “wrongly put words into people’s mouths”.
Peter Vandermeersch, the former head of the Irish operations at Mediahuis, said he “fell into the trap of hallucinations” – the term for AI-generated errors – when using the technology.
Continue reading...Cryptocurrency’s biggest Pac spent more than $10m for their candidates, only to be defeated by those who are anti-crypto
The cryptocurrency industry spent big and lost often in this week’s Illinois primaries.
As the industry prepares to make massive donations in the 2026 midterm elections to replicate its success in 2024, the Illinois losses mark an early setback for firms that are trying to establish themselves as power players in American politics.
Continue reading...Researchers say their prototype is a big step towards fully functioning batteries with rapid charging times
Australian scientists have developed what they say is the world’s first proof-of-concept quantum battery.
Quantum batteries, first proposed as a theoretical concept in 2013, use the principles of quantum mechanics to store energy, and have the potential to be more efficient than conventional batteries.
Continue reading...Advisers say to ‘assume the cameras are always rolling’ as exchanges can be decoded in seconds and posted online
Royals and celebrities are being warned by their representatives and advisers to watch what they say when they are out of the house – or palace – as a lip-reading phenomenon means videos can be posted online and translated in seconds.
Prince William was recently embroiled after a video of him speaking to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was translated by an expert lip-reader who was working as part of a forthcoming Channel 5 documentary, Lip-Reading the Royals.
Continue reading...Sources tell Reuters layoffs could affect 20% or more of company as plans reflect broader tensions within big tech
Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.
No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has not been finalized, the people said.
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