DeepMind workers sign letter in protest of Google’s defense contracts

At least 200 workers at DeepMind, Google’s AI R&D division, are displeased with Google’s reported defense contracts — and according to Time, they circulated a letter internally back in May to say as much. The letter, dated May 16, says the undersigned are concerned by “

Telecom that enabled Biden deepfake scam will pay FCC $1M

Early this year, AI-powered fake audio of President Biden reached voters in New Hampshire. The FCC struck back swiftly, identifying the perpetrator as the Texas-based Life Corporation, which has been behind similar scams over the years, and whacked them and an associated individual with a $6 millio

This founder had to train his AI not to Rickroll people

Flo Crivello was monitoring outputs from the AI assistants his company Lindy makes when he noticed something strange. A new client had asked her Lindy AI assistant for a video tutorial that would help her better understand how to use the platform, and the Lindy responded in kind — that's when

D-ID launches an AI video translation tool that includes voice cloning and lip sync

AI video creation platform D-ID is the latest company to ship a tool for translating videos into other languages using AI technologies. However, in this case, D-ID also clones the speaker’s voice and changes their lip movements to match the translated words as part of the AI editing process.

This Week in AI: Gen Z has mixed feelings on AI

Hiya, folks, welcome to technewss's regular AI newsletter. This week, surveys suggest that Gen Z — regularly the subject of mainstream media fascination — has very mixed opinions on AI. Samsung recently polled over 5,000 Gen Zers across France, Germany, Korea, the U.K. an

Story raises $80M at $2.25B valuation to build a blockchain for the business of content IP in the age of AI

AI giants like Anthropic, OpenAI and Stability AI have faced a lot of heat over how they’ve scraped data and rode rough-shod over others’ intellectual property when training and operating their foundational models. Now a startup called Story — which today is announcing $80 million

Procreate takes a stand against generative AI, vows to never incorporate the tech into its products

Popular iPad design app Procreate is coming out against generative AI, and has vowed never to introduce generative AI features into its products. The company said on its website that although machine learning is a “compelling technology with a lot of merit,” the current path that generative AI

South Korea's AI textbook program faces skepticism from parents

Some parents have reservations about the South Korean government's plans to bring tablets with AI-powered textbooks into classrooms, according to a report in Financial Times. The tablets are scheduled to be introduced next year, and by 2028, teachers are supposed to be using these AI textbooks

Nancy Pelosi criticizes California AI bill as 'ill-informed'

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi issued a statement late yesterday laying out her opposition to SB 1047, a California bill that seeks to regulate AI. “The view of many of us in Congress is that SB 1047 is well-intentioned but ill-informed,” Pelosi said. She noted that other congresspeople from the B

Google is bringing AI overviews to India, Brazil, Japan, UK, Indonesia and Mexico

After bringing AI overviews to the U.S., Google is expanding the AI-powered search summaries to six more countries: India, Brazil, Japan, the U.K., Indonesia and Mexico. These markets will also get local language support for AI overviews. The search giant is rethinking how it displays source mater

Study suggests that even the best AI models hallucinate a bunch

All generative AI models hallucinate, from Google’s Gemini to Anthropic’s Claude to the latest stealth release of OpenAI’s GPT-4o. The models are unreliable narrators in other words — sometimes to hilarious effect, other times problematically so. But not all models make things

MIT researchers release a repository of AI risks

Which specific risks should a person, company or government consider when using an AI system, or crafting rules to govern its use? It’s not an easy question to answer. If it’s an AI with control over critical infrastructure, there’s the obvious risk to human safety. But what about

Made by Google 2024: A few AI features you might’ve missed

Google’s annual Made by Google hardware event was held earlier Tuesday, and because the company announced so much stuff, a lot got lost in the shuffle. We rounded up some of the more intriguing AI-related announcements that didn’t get a ton of play, like the image-generating Pixel Studi

Gemini Live first look: Better than talking to Siri, but worse than I’d like

Google launched Gemini Live during its Made by Google event Tuesday. The feature allows you to have a semi-natural spoken conversation, not typed out, with an AI chatbot powered by Google’s latest large language model. technewss was there to test it out firsthand. Gemini Live is Google̵