" Boy, 15, clears Snapchat's visual age check ahead of Australia's social media ban taking full effect Sydney teen, who used fake date of birth when creating account, asked to verify age through selfie before Wednesday's ban begins"

"Cheap and powerful AI campaigns target voters in India The Bihar state election was awash with voice clones and synthetic videos that reached voters easily and spread misinformation."

"Artificial intelligence research has a slop problem, academics say: 'It's a mess' AI research in question as author claims to have written over 100 papers on AI that one expert calls a 'disaster'"

"AI chatbots can sway voters better than political advertisements A conversation with a chatbot can shift people's political views-but the most persuasive models also spread the most misinformation."

"I rejoice. I like English as a language, but I rejoice because it's funny that having won the competition to become the language of the world and of the web became its death sentence. As AI models and humans converge on the same vocabulary, sentence structures, and stylistic markers, the immensity and richness of English as a language-which I can barely fathom from my limited, non-native perspective but Kriss's erudition and lexicon reveal to me time and again-will vanish."

"And yet this love is a projection. The phone creates a sensation of intimacy without providing true intimacy. On a rational level, we know this; but our actual experience happens in an ambient scroll state. Now there's a dissonance between feeling like your phone is a home and knowing that it's not. Metaphors and user interfaces shape reality. I don't feel as much tension with my computer, because I implicitly understand it as a workspace. If we learn to regard our phones the same way, we can reclaim power over them. But that starts with how you're framing your thoughts, so be clear with yourself: you are not domesticating your phone-it is trying to domesticate you."

"This transformation will happen. We can guide it toward a safer, more equitable future or let it unfold haphazardly around us. There's a future where manual driving becomes uncommon, perhaps even quaint, like riding horses is today. It's a future where we no longer accept thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of broken spines as the price of mobility. It's time to stop treating this like a tech moonshot and start treating it like a public health intervention."

"And so the AI model will safely frame the "best" solution not as the most efficient one for the user (what you assume), but as the one that generates the highest yield for the advertiser on a cost-per-mille basis (what you get). I hate when Black Mirror nails the future so accurately that it feels like an example of the Torment Nexus. But, unfortunately, I don't think it's hyperbolic to claim that putting ads into ChatGPT is such an insidious move that we can call it a torment to the digital world."

"Chatbots can sway political opinions but are 'substantially' inaccurate, study finds 'Information-dense' AI responses are most persuasive but these tend to be less accurate, says security report"

"Google's AI Nano Banana Pro accused of generating racialised 'white saviour' visuals Research finds tool depicts white women surrounded by black children when prompted about humanitarian aid in Africa"

"Pawloski isn't alone. A dozen AI raters, workers who check an AI's responses for accuracy and groundedness, told the Guardian that, after becoming aware of the way chatbots and image generators function and just how wrong their output can be, they have begun urging their friends and family not to use generative AI at all - or at least trying to educate their loved ones on using it cautiously. These trainers work on a range of AI models - Google's Gemini, Elon Musk's Grok, other popular models, and several smaller or lesser-known bots."

"'I realised I loved him': Japanese woman marries AI character generated via ChatGPT"

" Teletubbies creator warns parents over 'empty' YouTube programmes for children Anne Wood says algorithms bypass 'the responsibility of art' and have failed to support high-quality children's content"

"In seven days my young alter ego is cyberbullied and attacked while exploring clubs, casinos and horror games, all with parental controls in place. Is the platform safe for children - or an 'X-rated paedophile hellscape'?"

"The biggest contradiction for me in writing this essay is that I'm trying to convince readers of the legitimacy and importance of local knowledge systems while I myself remain unconvinced about my dad's herbal concoctions. This uncertainty feels like a betrayal of everything I've argued for. Yet maybe it's exactly the kind of honest complexity we need to navigate. I have my doubts about whether Indigenous knowledge truly works as claimed in every case. Especially when influencers and politicians invoke it superficially for likes, views or to exploit identity politics, generating misinformation without sincere enquiry. However, I'm equally wary of letting it disappear. We might lose something valuable, only to recognise its worth much later - perhaps with the aid of artificial superintelligence. But what's the collateral damage of that process? An ecological collapse we could have prevented?"

"The new research looks closely at adolescent engagement on these platforms and the content they find there. The newsfeeds of boys and young men are full of posts and activity urging them to be more masculine, shun weakness, and embrace gender stereotypes. For many, what they see is taking a toll on their mental health. Nearly three-quarters of adolescent boys regularly encounter digital masculinity content, from the importance of image and appearance to weapons and fighting. Our survey found that the greater the exposure, the more likely boys were to suppress their emotions or avoid displays of vulnerability. Boys with heavy exposure to digital masculinity were nearly three times more likely to report lower self-esteem than those with little exposure."

"Despite AI's popularity, 62% of the students said it has had a negative impact on their skills and development at school, while one in four of the students agreed that AI "makes it too easy for me to find the answers without doing the work myself". Researchers fool university markers with AI-generated exam papers Read more A further 12% said AI "limits my creative thinking" while similar numbers said they were less likely to solve problems or write creatively."

"Google and OpenAI's generative artificial intelligence is supposed to be just that - generative, meaning it develops novel answers to our questions. Ask it for a time-travelling doctor, you get one that their systems have created. But how much of that output is original? The problem is working out how much tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT and its video generator Sora 2, and Google's Gemini and its video tool Veo3, rely on someone else's art to come up with their own inventions, and whether using source material from the BBC, for example, is an infringement of the broadcaster's copyright."

"The National Republican Senatorial Committee crossed into dystopian new territory for political campaigning on Friday after releasing an attack ad that features an artificially generated video of the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer. The deepfake video, posted on Friday to the Senate Republicans' social media account, shows an AI-generated Schumer robotically repeating the phrase "every day gets better for us" in reference to the ongoing government shutdown. A small disclaimer tucked in the corner acknowledges its artificial origins."