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"Microsoft will also launch Content Credentials for digital watermarking, create teams to work with political campaigns on cybersecurity and AI, and endorse a bill banning AI in political ads."

"Microsoft researchers said VALL-E 2 was capable of generating "accurate, natural speech in the exact voice of the original speaker, comparable to human performance," in a paper that appeared June 17 on the pre-print server arXiv. In other words, the new AI voice generator is convincing enough to be mistaken for a real person - at least, according to its creators."

"Najjar told the Huffington Post that the error was most likely due to Bing's use of crowdsourced translations. The service can promote alternative translations to the top spot if they receive suggestions from about 1,000 people, which means that without manual correction it is possible to manipulate the system and substitute the correct translation for an alternative."

""The code reasonably attempts to address the bargaining power imbalance between digital platforms and Australian news businesses," he said. Google's search engine not as good as its competitors for news, research finds Read more "It also recognises the important role search plays, not only to consumers but to the thousands of Australian small businesses that rely on search and advertising technology to fund and support their organisations." The code, which is currently before the parliament, would facilitate negotiations between media companies and digital platforms - currently just Facebook and Google - for payment for content. If an agreement cannot be reached, then it goes to an arbiter for resolution."

"A Microsoft programme to transcribe and vet audio from Skype and Cortana, its voice assistant, ran for years with "no security measures", according to a former contractor who says he reviewed thousands of potentially sensitive recordings on his personal laptop from his home in Beijing over the two years he worked for the company."

"One of the key features introduced is a "Correction" capability in Azure AI Content Safety. This tool aims to address the problem of AI hallucinations - instances where AI models generate false or misleading information. "When we detect there's a mismatch between the grounding context and the response… we give that information back to the AI system," Bird explained. "With that additional information, it's usually able to do better the second try.""

"huge public corporations launch products that are known to "hallucinate" "

"The mind-reading robot - a PR2 personal robot designed by Willow Garage, equipped with a Microsoft Kinect 3D camera - does that by analyzing your body movements. It then searches through its database of various household activities and decides which action will likely follow. "

"Researchers have shown that given access to only an API, a way to remotely use software without having it on your computer, it's possible to reverse-engineer machine learning algorithms with up to 99% accuracy. In the real world, this would mean being able to steal AI products from companies like Microsoft and IBM, and use them for free. Small companies built around a single machine learning API could lose any competitive advantage."

"Some £200m has been spent by the public sector on the computer giant's Office suite alone since 2010. But the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude believes a significant proportion of that outlay could be cut by switching to software which can produce open-source files in the "open document format" (ODF), such as OpenOffice and Google Docs."

"In amongst the numerous reports of privacy infringements, there have been a handful of genuine issues. Reports of Microsoft utilizing your computer as a P2P node for update sharing were completely founded, and the 13 pages of privacy settings are also no joke."

Recently at CES, Mr.Ballmer over-excitingly shows the Slate-PC which is a tablet with a screen on it which has the power to actually run their latest operating system, Windows 7. 

Apple is slowly becoming a dangerous competitor again Microsoft, but the Windows operating systems still dominate the business world. What does this mean for Apple?

Be careful of articles like these as they are really dealing with business but not in terms of the technology or a social and ethical issue. Equality of access for these businesses is only a by product - unlike for something like the OLPC where it was the main issue...

""Parties who wish to process device fingerprints which are generated through the gaining of access to, or the storing of, information on the user's terminal device must first obtain the valid consent of the user (unless an exemption applies)," the Article 29 Working Party wrote. It means that some websites, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, that have used alternative technical processes to try to bypass the need for a "cookie policy notice" will have to show a notification after all."

"Firm urges regulation, raises concerns about possible misuse of fast improving technology"

"The app, using Solid's decentralized technology, allows Berners-Lee to access all of his data seamlessly-his calendar, his music library, videos, chat, research. It's like a mashup of Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, Slack, Spotify, and WhatsApp."