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"Jailed former prime minister Imran Khan on Saturday claimed victory in the Pakistan general elections 2024 through a pre-recorded audio-visual message created using artificial intelligence, hours after his political rival and ex-PM Nawaz Sharif claimed to have won the election."

"Ultimately, he suggests, each user would have their own "large language model" (LLM), the underlying technology of services such as ChatGPT, which would be trained on their own speech and behaviour patterns, to let them generate extremely personalised responses to queries and requests. Such systems could be a natural progression from AI tools that already exist today. Services such as Gmail can summarise and suggest replies to emails based on previous messages, while Microsoft Teams will transcribe and summarise video conferences, automatically generating a to-do list from the contents."

"Yes of course. We are basically the last generation, or maybe there will be one more after us, who grew up without strong AI writing assistants. But these AI assistants are here now, especially in English. In German the systems are following suit, even though they're still much stronger in English. You get to a stage where someone who cannot write very well, can be pulled to a decent level of writing through machine assistance. And this raises important questions: Are we no longer learning the basics? In order to step up and really improve your writing, you will probably always need to be deeply proficient in the cultural practice of writing. But we need to ask, what proportion of low and medium level writers will be raised with the help from machines to a very decent level? And what repercussions does this have on teaching and learning, and the proficient use of language and writing? We shouldn't neglect our writing skills, because we believe machines will get us there. Anyone who has children can clearly see the dangers autocorrect and autocomplete will have for the future of writing."

"While Trump shared AI-generated images in the past week, he also falsely claimed that a genuine image of one of Harris's campaign rallies was the result of artificial intelligence and that the well-documented event never took place. His claim reflected a concept which disinformation researchers call the "liar's dividend", in which an increase in manipulated content leads to general skepticism of all media and makes it easier for people such as politicians to dismiss authentic images, audio or video as fake."

"In addition to their usual job of grubbing out bad human edits, they're having to spend an increasing amount of their time trying to weed out AI filler. 404 Media has talked to Ilyas Lebleu, an editor at the crowdsourced encyclopedia who was involved in founding the "WikiProject AI Cleanup" project. The group is trying to come up with best practices to detect machine-generated contributions. (And no, before you ask, AI is useless for this.)"

"With the release of artificial intelligence (AI) video generation products like Sora and Luma, we're on the verge of a flood of AI-generated video content, and policymakers, public figures and software engineers are already warning about a deluge of deepfakes. Now it seems that AI itself might be our best defense against AI fakery after an algorithm has identified telltale markers of AI videos with over 98% accuracy."

"Users who once came to Facebook to connect with friends and family are increasingly complaining of random, spammy, junk content - much of it apparently generated by artificial intelligence - showing up in their feeds. Sometimes it's obviously fake, AI-generated images, like the now-infamous "Shrimp Jesus." Other times, it's old posts from real creators that look like they're being reshared by bot accounts for engagement. In some cases, it's pages sharing streams of seemingly benign but random content - memes or movie clips, shared every few hours."

"Duolingo, on the other hand, is going full speed ahead with generative AI. The company announced this week that it would stop relying on human contractors for "work that AI can handle," while also committing to using AI in hiring and performance reviews. On top of that, Duolingo announced on Wednesday that it used generative AI to come up with 148 new language learning courses, doubling its total course offerings."

"A rise in online racism driven by fake images is "just the start of a coming problem" after the latest release of X's AI software, online abuse experts have warned. Concerns were raised after computer-generated images created using Grok, X's generative artificial intelligence chatbot, flooded the social media site in December last year. Signify, an organisation that works with prominent groups and clubs in sports to track and report online hate, said it has seen an increase in reports of abuse since Grok's latest update, and believes the introduction of photorealistic AI will make it far more prevalent."

"Put more simply? We're in the midst of a digital slopaggedon, with the felt everyday impacts ranging from mild irritants like graphs about "uncoked kermelss" to more serious information erosions - the replacing of images of famous artworks and historical events with AI-generated fakes, for example, or the flooding of social media with fake AI-generated imagery during environmental disasters."

"As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. It's hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company."

"These appliances are gradually taking over the world's landfills, leading to a global environmental problem that has so far gone largely unnoticed. The United States is the the greatest perpetrator, generating 9.4 million metric tons of waste per year in 2012 - around 29.8 kilograms per person."

"For the first time, BBC News published a news story for every constituency that declared election results overnight - all written by a computer. It was the BBC's biggest test of machine-generated journalism so far. Each of nearly 700 articles - most in English but 40 of them in Welsh - was checked by a human editor before publication."

"A New Zealand supermarket experimenting with using AI to generate meal plans has seen its app produce some unusual dishes - recommending customers recipes for deadly chlorine gas, "poison bread sandwiches" and mosquito-repellent roast potatoes."

"Prisma Labs has already gotten into trouble for accidentally generating nude and cartoonishly sexualised images - including those of children - despite a "no nudes" and "adults only" policy. Prisma Lab's CEO and co-founder Andrey Usoltsev told TechCrunch this behaviour only happened if the AI was intentionally provoked to create this type of content - which represents a breach of terms against its use. "If an individual is determined to engage in harmful behavior, any tool would have the potential to become a weapon," he said."

"AI-generated art illustrates another problem with technology"

"Racists on the notorious troll site 4chan are using a powerful new and free AI-powered image generator service offered by Microsoft to create antisemitic propaganda, according to posts reviewed by Bellingcat. Users of 4chan, which has frequently hosted hate speech and played home to posts by mass shooters, tasked Bing Image Creator to create photo-realistic antisemitic caricatures of Jews and, in recent days, shared images created by the platform depicting Orthodox men preparing to eat a baby, carrying migrants across the US border (the latter a nod to the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory), and committing the 9/11 attacks."

"They said that a number of schools were reporting for the first time that pupils were using AI-generating technology to create images of children that legally constituted child sexual abuse material. Emma Hardy, UK Safer Internet Centre (UKSIC) director, said the pictures were "terrifyingly" realistic. "The quality of the images that we're seeing is comparable to professional photos taken annually of children in schools up and down the country," said Hardy, who is also the Internet Watch Foundation communications director."

"As if robocalling wasn't already enough of a problem, the advent of easily accessible, realistic AI-powered writing and synthetic voice could supercharge the practice. The FCC aims to preempt this by looking into how generated robocalls might fit under existing consumer protections. A Notice of Inquiry has been proposed by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel to be voted on at the agency's next meeting. If the vote succeeds (as it is almost certain to), the FCC would formally look into how the Telephone Consumer Protection Act empowers them to act against scammers and spammers using AI technology. But Rosenworcel was also careful to acknowledge that AI represents a potentially powerful tool for accessibility and responsiveness in phone-based interactions. "While we are aware of the challenges AI can present, there is also significant potential to use this technology to benefit communications networks and their customers-including in the fight against junk robocalls and robotexts. We need to address these opportunities and risks thoughtfully, and the effort we are launching today will help us gain more insight on both fronts," she said in a statement."

"New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been using artificial intelligence to make robocalls that contort his own voice into several languages he doesn't actually speak, posing new ethical questions about the government's use of the rapidly evolving technology. The mayor told reporters about the robocalls on Monday and said they've gone out in languages such as Mandarin and Yiddish to promote city hiring events. They haven't included any disclosure that he only speaks English or that the calls were generated using AI."