News in pictures, Wednesday March 20, 2024

I’d assumed it would take a couple of hours to learn how to make a convincing audio deepfake. That turned out to be a large overestimate: on my first go, it took me less than ten minutes to clone somebody’s voice. And while it wasn’t perfect, the quality was good enough to fool their fiancée….

Every author hopes to publish their book at a moment when the world will pay attention. Very few are better timed than Jonathan Haidt’s. In the weeks before I meet the New York University professor, new UK figures reveal a 53 per cent rise in emergency referrals to youth mental healthcare services in the past…

Elon Musk said Tesla would move “immediately” to hold a shareholder vote to switch the electric carmaker’s state of incorporation to Texas after a court in Delaware voided his $56 billion pay package. The billionaire said the public vote in a poll he posted on X was “unequivocally in favour of Texas!”. In the poll…

The policing chief for retail crime has called on Meta to force users of its Facebook Marketplace platform to verify their identity and location to thwart an epidemic of shoplifting. Chief Superintendent Alex Goss, head of retail crime at the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), said that Meta and other online platforms needed to do…

I was in my third year at university when I clicked on the link a classmate had sent me and plunged my entire life into freefall. “I’m really sorry, but you need to see this,” his message said. It was a link to the Pornhub website. My first thought was that his account had been…

Hitler and Osama bin Laden chatbots created by a far-right platform have prompted concern that they could encourage radicalisation and violence. The US-based Gab network has developed AI chabot characters that enable users to interact with prominent political and historical figures. As well as the Nazi and al-Qaeda leaders, people can chat with Stalin, Queen…