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….

The government’s latest announcement on mobile phones in schools is an “eye-catching initiative” that will have little impact on what happens in classrooms. Gillian Keegan became the latest education secretary to seize on the issue last autumn when she promised a crackdown on mobile phones in English schools during her party conference speech. Ministers have…

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…

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…

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…

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…