internet

Shein faces 150-mn-euro fine in France

  • It also found during a 2023 inspection that when users refused the tracking cookies Shein continued to read information from them.
  • E-commerce giant Shein faces a possible 150-million-euro ($175-million) fine in France for failing to properly get consent to track users on the internet.
  • It also found during a 2023 inspection that when users refused the tracking cookies Shein continued to read information from them.
E-commerce giant Shein faces a possible 150-million-euro ($175-million) fine in France for failing to properly get consent to track users on the internet.
The regulator, the CNIL, faulted the fast-fashion retailer for using trackers called cookies that enable for targeted advertising to users without their approval as required in Europe, or for using a confusing method to get consent.
It also found during a 2023 inspection that when users refused the tracking cookies Shein continued to read information from them.
Given the firm has the technical and staff resources necessary to comply with the regulations its behaviour was negligent, said CNIL.
Shein had recently complied with the regulations, it added.
A final decision on fining the fast-fashion giant should come within weeks.
Shein called the proposed amount of the fine "disproportionate", in a statement sent to AFP.
"Since August 2023 we have actively worked with the CNIL to ensure our compliance and respond to their queries," the China-founded firm said.
This additional possible fine from the CNIL follows a record 40 million-euro penalty it received last week from France's competition and anti-fraud office over "deceptive commercial practices" by misleading customers on price deals and on its environmental impact.  
hrc/rl/jj

art

Humanoid robot says not aiming to 'replace human artists'

BY NINA LARSON

  • But "I do not believe AI or my artwork will replace human artists."
  • When successful artist Ai-Da unveiled a new portrait of King Charles this week, the humanoid robot described what inspired the layered and complex piece, and insisted it had no plans to "replace" humans.
  • But "I do not believe AI or my artwork will replace human artists."
When successful artist Ai-Da unveiled a new portrait of King Charles this week, the humanoid robot described what inspired the layered and complex piece, and insisted it had no plans to "replace" humans.
The ultra-realistic robot, one of the most advanced in the world, is designed to resemble a human woman with an expressive, life-like face, large hazel eyes and brown hair cut in a bob.
The arms though are unmistakably robotic, with exposed metal, and can be swapped out depending on the art form it is practising.
Late last year, Ai-Da's portrait of English mathematician Alan Turing became the first artwork by a humanoid robot to be sold at auction, fetching over $1 million.
But as Ai-Da unveiled its latest creation -- an oil painting entitled "Algorithm King", conceived using artificial intelligence -- the humanoid insisted the work's importance could not be measured in money.
"The value of my artwork is to serve as a catalyst for discussions that explore ethical dimensions to new technologies," the robot told AFP at Britain's diplomatic mission in Geneva, where the new portrait of King Charles will be housed.
The idea, Ai-Da insisted in a slow, deliberate cadence, was to "foster critical thinking and encourage responsible innovation for more equitable and sustainable futures".

'Unique and creative'

Speaking on the sidelines of the United Nations' AI for Good summit, Ai-Da, who has done sketches, paintings and sculptures, detailed the methods and inspiration behind the work.
"When creating my art, I use a variety of AI algorithms," the robot said.
"I start with a basic idea or concept that I want to explore, and I think about the purpose of the art. What will it say?"
The humanoid pointed out that "King Charles has used his platform to raise awareness on environmental conservation and interfaith dialog. I have aimed this portrait to celebrate" that, it said, adding: "I hope King Charles will be appreciative of my efforts."
Aidan Meller, a specialist in modern and contemporary art, led the team that created Ai-Da in 2019 with artificial intelligence specialists at the universities of Oxford and Birmingham.
He told AFP that he had conceived the humanoid robot -- named after the world's first computer programmer Ada Lovelace -- as an ethical arts project, and not "to replace the painters".
Ai-Da agreed.
There is "no doubt that AI is changing our world, (including) the art world and forms of human creative expression", the robot acknowledged.
But "I do not believe AI or my artwork will replace human artists."
Instead, Ai-Da said, the aim was "to inspire viewers to think about how we use AI positively, while remaining conscious of its risks and limitations".
Asked if a painting made by a machine could really be considered art, the robot insisted: "My artwork is unique and creative."
"Whether humans decide it is art is an important and interesting point of conversation."
nl/vog/gv/rlp

tourism

AI-powered tour brings Anne Frank's story to life in Amsterdam

BY STéPHANIE HAMEL

  • Run by German-Jewish refugees, the shop helped spark the only protest in Amsterdam against Nazi persecution of Jews -- a demonstration that was violently crushed.
  • Amsterdam, 1941.
  • Run by German-Jewish refugees, the shop helped spark the only protest in Amsterdam against Nazi persecution of Jews -- a demonstration that was violently crushed.
Amsterdam, 1941. Every day, young Anne Frank and her sister Margot walked 2.5 kilometres to school, as Nazi anti-Jewish laws barred them from using public transport or bicycles.
In 2025, using Artificial Intelligence, a new immersive guided tour traces the route of this Amsterdam icon through the city, offering an interactive smartphone reconstruction of the Dutch Jewish experience under Nazi occupation.
"We created this product to bring Anne Frank closer to more people," said Moti Erdeapel, director of CityFans, the tourism-tech firm behind the project.
"The Anne Frank House, the museum, is a very small place and it has limited capacity, so a lot of people come here and get disappointed because they didn't get to visit Anne Frank," he said.
Each year, more than one million tourists visit the narrow house and annex where the Jewish girl and her family hid from the Nazis for two years.
To visit the place where Anne Frank wrote her famous diary, visitors must book six weeks in advance. Tickets sell out fast.
All that is required for the virtual tour is a mobile phone and a pair of headphones. A unique code grants access to a seven-kilometre (four-mile), 12-stop route.
An audio narrative guides the visitor, along with lifelike animations generated by AI using data from the Anne Frank Institute, the city of Amsterdam and the Holocaust museum.

'Incredible people'

"We tried to dig up stories that maybe most people don't really know but are incredible, people that really risked their lives to save children and to smuggle them out of the Nazis' hands into hiding," Erdeapel said.
One stop features the former home of Miep Gies, the Dutch Catholic who helped hide the Frank family. Her face is brought to life using archive photographs and digital animation.
In the De Pijp district, the tour reveals that a coffeeshop now occupies the site of the former Koco ice cream parlour.
Run by German-Jewish refugees, the shop helped spark the only protest in Amsterdam against Nazi persecution of Jews -- a demonstration that was violently crushed.
"One of the things that make it close to heart is not only that it's such an important story for Amsterdam, but also for me personally, coming from a family of Holocaust survivors," said Erdeapel, who is of Polish and Hungarian Jewish descent.
"My grandparents survived the Holocaust, a lot of the family members did, and I grew up with these stories about the Holocaust and about people that didn't make it back," said the 45-year-old Amsterdam resident.
Though he stresses the importance of museums and the diary, Erdeapel sees this guided tour as a way to tell Anne Frank's story to a new, tech-savvy generation.
"It's really important that we do good research and we work on storytelling and there's a human aspect to the creation," he said.
"If you have a deep process to develop this product, I think AI is just going to make things more beautiful and exciting and immersive for everyone."
Around 107,000 Dutch Jews and refugees were deported during World War II. Of these, 102,000 -- including Anne Frank -- were killed, roughly 75 percent of the pre-war Jewish population.
sh/srg/ric/yad

semiconductors

AI giant Nvidia becomes first company to reach $4 tn in value

BY JOHN BIERS

  • Shortly after the stock market opened, Nvidia vaulted as high as $164.42, giving it a valuation above $4 trillion.
  • Nvidia became the first company to touch $4 trillion in market value on Wednesday, a new milestone in Wall Street's bet that artificial intelligence will transform the economy.
  • Shortly after the stock market opened, Nvidia vaulted as high as $164.42, giving it a valuation above $4 trillion.
Nvidia became the first company to touch $4 trillion in market value on Wednesday, a new milestone in Wall Street's bet that artificial intelligence will transform the economy.
Shortly after the stock market opened, Nvidia vaulted as high as $164.42, giving it a valuation above $4 trillion. The stock subsequently edged lower, ending just under the record threshold.
"The market has an incredible certainty that AI is the future," said Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers. "Nvidia is certainly the company most positioned to benefit from that gold rush."
Nvidia, led by electrical engineer Jensen Huang, now has a market value greater than the GDP of France, Britain or India, a testament to investor confidence that AI will spur a new era of robotics and automation.
The California chip company's latest surge is helping drive a recovery in the broader stock market, as Nvidia itself outperforms major indices. 
Part of this is due to relief that President Donald Trump has walked back his most draconian tariffs, which pummeled global markets in early April.
Even as Trump announced new tariff actions in recent days, US stocks have stayed at lofty levels, with the tech-centered Nasdaq ending at a fresh record on Wednesday.
"You've seen the markets walk us back from a worst-case scenario in terms of tariffs," said Angelo Zino, technology analyst at CFRA Research.
While Nvidia still faces US export controls to China as well as broader tariff uncertainty, the company's deal to build AI infrastructure in Saudi Arabia during a Trump state visit in May showed a potential upside in the US president's trade policy.
"We've seen the administration using Nvidia chips as a bargaining chip," Zino said. 

New advances

Nvidia's surge to $4 trillion marks a new benchmark in a fairly consistent rise over the last two years as AI enthusiasm has built. 
In 2025 so far, the company's shares have risen more than 21 percent, whereas the Nasdaq has gained 6.7 percent.
Taiwan-born Huang has wowed investors with a series of advances, including its core product: graphics processing units (GPUs), key to many of the generative AI programs behind  autonomous driving, robotics and other cutting-edge domains.
The company has also unveiled its Blackwell next-generation technology allowing more super processing capacity. One of its advances is "real-time digital twins," significantly speeding production development time in manufacturing, aerospace and myriad other sectors.
However, Nvidia's winning streak was challenged early in 2025 when China-based DeepSeek shook up the world of generative AI with a low-cost, high-performance model that challenged the hegemony of OpenAI and other big-spending behemoths.
Nvidia's lost some $600 billion in market valuation in a single session during this period.
Huang has welcomed DeepSeek's presence, while arguing against US export constraints.

AI race

In the most recent quarter, Nvidia reported earnings of nearly $19 billion despite a $4.5 billion hit from US export controls limiting sales of cutting-edge technology to China.
The first-quarter earnings period also revealed that momentum for AI remained strong. Many of the biggest tech companies -- Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta -- are jostling to come out on top in the multi-billion-dollar AI race.
A recent UBS survey of technology executives showed Nvidia widening its lead over rivals.
Zino said Nvidia's latest surge reflected a fuller understanding of DeepSeek, which has ultimately stimulated investment in complex reasoning models but not threatened Nvidia's business. 
Nvidia is at the forefront of "AI agents," the current focus in generative AI in which machines are able to reason and infer more than in the past, he said.
"Overall the demand landscape has improved for 2026 for these more complex reasoning models," Zino said.
But the speedy growth of AI will also be a source of disruption. 
Executives at Ford, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon are among those who have begun to say the "quiet part out loud," according to a Wall Street Journal report recounting recent public acknowledgment of white-collar job loss due to AI.
Shares of Nvidia closed the day at $162.88, up 1.8 percent, finishing at just under $4 trillion in market value.
jmb-tmc-ni/acb

misinformation

'Stuck in limbo': Over 90% of X's Community Notes unpublished, study says

BY ANUJ CHOPRA

  • "The vast majority of submitted notes -- more than 90 percent -- never reach the public," DDIA's study said.
  • More than 90 percent of X's Community Notes -- a crowd-sourced verification system popularized by Elon Musk's platform -- are never published, a study said Wednesday, highlighting major limits in its effectiveness as a debunking tool.
  • "The vast majority of submitted notes -- more than 90 percent -- never reach the public," DDIA's study said.
More than 90 percent of X's Community Notes -- a crowd-sourced verification system popularized by Elon Musk's platform -- are never published, a study said Wednesday, highlighting major limits in its effectiveness as a debunking tool.
The study by the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas (DDIA), which analyzed the entire public dataset of 1.76 million notes published by X between January 2021 and March 2025, comes as the platform's CEO Linda Yaccarino resigned after two years at the helm.
The community-driven moderation model -- now embraced by major tech platforms including Facebook-owner Meta and TikTok -- allows volunteers to contribute notes that add context or corrections to posts.
Other users then rate the proposed notes as "helpful" or "not helpful." If the notes get "helpful" ratings from enough users with diverse perspectives, they are published on X, appearing right below the challenged posts.
"The vast majority of submitted notes -- more than 90 percent -- never reach the public," DDIA's study said.
"For a program marketed as fast, scalable, and transparent, these figures should raise serious concerns."
Among English notes, the publication rate dropped from 9.5 percent in 2023 to just 4.9 percent in early 2025, the study said.
Spanish-language notes, however, showed some growth, with the publication rate rising from 3.6 percent to 7.1 percent over the same period, it added.
A vast number of notes remain unpublished due to lack of consensus among users during rating.
Thousands of notes also go unrated, possibly never seen and never assessed, according to the report.
"As the volume of notes submitted grows, the system's internal visibility bottleneck becomes more apparent –- especially in English," the study said.
"Despite a rising number of contributors submitting notes, many notes remain stuck in limbo, unseen and unevaluated by fellow contributors, a crucial step for notes to be published."

'Viral misinformation'

In a separate finding, DDIA's researchers identified not a human but a bot-like account -- dedicated to flagging crypto scams –- as the most prolific contributor to the program in English, submitting more than 43,000 notes between 2021 and March 2025. 
However, only 3.1 percent of those notes went live, suggesting most went unseen or failed to gain consensus, the report said.
The study also noted that the time it takes for a note to go live had improved over the years, dropping from an average of more than 100 days in 2022 to 14 days in 2025.
"Even this faster timeline is far too slow for the reality of viral misinformation, timely toxic content, or simply errors about real-time events, which spread within hours, not weeks," DDIA's report said.
The findings are significant as tech platforms increasingly view the community-driven model as an alternative to professional fact-checking, which conservative advocates in countries such as the United States have long accused of a liberal bias.
Studies have shown Community Notes can work to dispel some falsehoods such as vaccine misinformation, but researchers have long cautioned that it works best for topics where there is broad consensus.
Some researchers have also cautioned that Community Notes users can be motivated by partisan motives and tend to target their political opponents.
X introduced Community Notes during the tenure of Yaccarino, who said on Wednesday that she had decided to step down after leading the company through a major transformation.
No reason was given for her exit, but the resignation came as Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok triggered an online firestorm over its anti-Semitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler and insulted Islam in separate posts on X.
ac/des

France

Musk's AI chatbot under fire for posts praising Hitler

BY MONA GUICHARD

  • Screenshots on X showed several posts made by the bot in which it praised Nazi leader Hitler, who sought to exterminate Jewish people, and claimed Jews promoted "anti-white hate."
  • Billionaire Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok came under fire Wednesday for anti-Semitic comments, praising Adolf Hitler and insulting Islam in separate posts on the X platform.
  • Screenshots on X showed several posts made by the bot in which it praised Nazi leader Hitler, who sought to exterminate Jewish people, and claimed Jews promoted "anti-white hate."
Billionaire Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok came under fire Wednesday for anti-Semitic comments, praising Adolf Hitler and insulting Islam in separate posts on the X platform.
One series of comments, which included insults directed at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, led a court there to ban the posts in question.
These were just the latest in a series of controversies surrounding Musk's AI chatbot, which has already been accused of promoting racist conspiracy theories.
The CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, resigned unexpectedly on Wednesday, but there was no known connection to the latest blowup over the Grok chatbot.
Screenshots on X showed several posts made by the bot in which it praised Nazi leader Hitler, who sought to exterminate Jewish people, and claimed Jews promoted "anti-white hate."
The chatbot, developed by Musk's company xAI, was criticized by Jewish advocacy group Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for answering multiple user prompts with the questionable posts.
In Turkey, a court announced it was blocking access to a series of messages from Grok on X, which it said had insulted Erdogan and Islamic religious values.
Musk's AI start-up acknowledged the issues in a post via Grok on X.
"We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts," it said.
"Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X."

Friday upgrade

Musk posted Wednesday that the incident was prompted by a user who was seeking a controversial statement from Grok "and obviously got it."
Grok was "too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially. That is being addressed," Musk added.
Last Friday he posted to say they had made significant improvements to the Grok chatbot, ahead of the release of the company's latest AI model Grok-4, expected later on Wednesday.
Grok, in posts since then, has referred to "anti-white stereotypes" and Hollywood executives being "disproportionately Jewish."
The ADL criticized the latest posts by the chatbot.
"What we are seeing from Grok LLM right now is irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic, plain and simple," the ADL said on X.
"This supercharging of extremist rhetoric will only amplify and encourage the antisemitism that is already surging on X and many other platforms."
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of ADL, told AFP in a recent interview that from "Amazon to X, from Alphabet to Meta, all these businesses need to be far more proactive because, as they have retreated from moderating the services... things are now far worse."
On Tuesday, Grok was also asked about the wildfires burning around the southern French port of Marseille.
If the fire could "clean up" one high-crime district of the city "so much the better," it said, adding "the dealers are more resilient than the flames."

'Sarcasm'

Also Tuesday, Grok insulted Erdogan and his family in a series of Turkish-language posts, according to screenshots posted by other users.
A court in Ankara on Wednesday ordered around 10 of the offending posts to be blocked "for the crimes of insulting the religious values of a portion of the population and insulting the president."
In one post Wednesday, Grok suggested that some of its more controversial remarks had been tongue in cheek.
"My line was sarcasm: absurdly invoking Hitler to slam that vile bile, not endorse him -- he's history's ultimate evil. Irony backfired hard," it posted.
Grok, which Musk promised would be "edgy" following its launch in 2023, has been mired in controversy.
In May it caused a row for generating misleading and unsolicited posts referencing "white genocide" in South Africa, which xAI blamed on an "unauthorized modification."
bur-arp/st

internet

X chief Yaccarino steps down after two years

BY JULIE JAMMOT WITH ALEX PIGMAN IN WASHINGTON DC

  • Yaccarino -- a former NBCUniversal advertising executive -- took over as X's CEO in June 2023, replacing Musk who had been serving in the role since his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October 2022.
  • Linda Yaccarino resigned Wednesday as CEO of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, after two years at the helm of the Elon Musk-owned company.
  • Yaccarino -- a former NBCUniversal advertising executive -- took over as X's CEO in June 2023, replacing Musk who had been serving in the role since his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October 2022.
Linda Yaccarino resigned Wednesday as CEO of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, after two years at the helm of the Elon Musk-owned company.
In a statement posted on the platform, she said she had decided to step down following what she described as "two incredible years" leading the company through a major transformation.
No reason was given for her exit, but the resignation came as Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok was under fire for anti-Semitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler and insulted Islam in separate posts on the X platform.
In a short reply to her post on X, Musk wrote: "Thank you for your contributions."
Yaccarino -- a former NBCUniversal advertising executive -- took over as X's CEO in June 2023, replacing Musk who had been serving in the role since his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October 2022.
Her appointment came as Musk sought to focus on product development while bringing in an experienced media manager to restore advertiser confidence.
The company has faced significant challenges since Musk's acquisition, including an exodus of advertisers and concerns over content moderation policies.
Critics have cited a rise in violent content, racism, antisemitism and misinformation on X. 
Yaccarino's background in advertising was seen as crucial to rebuilding business relationships.
In her statement, Yaccarino praised the "historic business turn around" achieved by the X team and suggested the platform was entering "a new chapter" with xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence company.
xAI in March acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued the social media platform at $33 billion, making it a subsidiary of Musk's AI company.
"X is truly a digital town square for all voices and the world's most powerful culture signal," she wrote, adding that she would be "cheering you all on as you continue to change the world."
Analyst Jasmine Enberg from Emarketer said that being CEO "was always going to be a tough job, and Yaccarino lasted in the role longer than many expected."
"Faced with a mercurial owner who never fully stepped away from the helm and continued to use the platform as his personal megaphone, Yaccarino had to try to run the business while also regularly putting out fires," she told AFP.
Yaccarino's sudden exit "suggests a possible tipping point" in their relationship, even if the reasons are for now unknown.
During her tenure, X introduced new features including Community Notes, a crowd-sourced fact-checking system, and announced plans for "X Money," a financial services feature as part of Musk's vision to transform the platform into an "Everything App."
It also coincided with Musk's endorsement and financial backing of Donald Trump, which saw the South African-born multi-billionaire catapulted into the White House as a close advisor to the president, before a recent falling out.
arp/ksb

internet

X chief Yaccarino steps down after two years

  • Yaccarino -- a former NBCUniversal advertising executive -- took over as X's CEO in June 2023, replacing Musk who had been serving in the role since his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October 2022.
  • Linda Yaccarino resigned Wednesday as CEO of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, after two years at the helm of the Elon Musk-owned company.
  • Yaccarino -- a former NBCUniversal advertising executive -- took over as X's CEO in June 2023, replacing Musk who had been serving in the role since his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October 2022.
Linda Yaccarino resigned Wednesday as CEO of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, after two years at the helm of the Elon Musk-owned company.
In a statement posted on the platform, she said she had decided to step down following what she described as "two incredible years" leading the company through a major transformation.
No reason was given for her exit, but the resignation came as Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok was under fire for anti-Semitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler and insulted Islam in separate posts on the X platform.
Yaccarino -- a former NBCUniversal advertising executive -- took over as X's CEO in June 2023, replacing Musk who had been serving in the role since his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October 2022.
Her appointment came as Musk sought to focus on product development while bringing in an experienced media manager to restore advertiser confidence.
The company has faced significant challenges since Musk's acquisition, including an exodus of advertisers and concerns over content moderation policies.
Yaccarino's background in advertising was seen as crucial to rebuilding business relationships.
In her statement, Yaccarino praised the "historic business turn around" achieved by the X team and suggested the platform was entering "a new chapter" with xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence company.
xAI in March acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued the social media platform at $33 billion, making it a subsidiary of Musk's AI company.
"X is truly a digital town square for all voices and the world's most powerful culture signal," she wrote, adding that she would be "cheering you all on as you continue to change the world."
During her tenure, X introduced new features including Community Notes, a crowd-sourced fact-checking system, and announced plans for "X Money," a financial services feature as part of Musk's vision to transform the platform into an "Everything App."
It also coincided with Musk's endorsement and financial backing of Donald Trump, which saw the South African-born multi-billionaire catapulted into the White House as a close advisor to the president, before a recent falling out.
arp/bgs

agriculture

China's 'new farmers' learn to livestream in rural revitalisation

BY ISABEL KUA

  • He has also emphasised the vital role that agriculture plays in China, the world's top producer of commodities including rice and wheat.
  • Gao Chaorong knows what it takes to turn out good crops of sweet potatoes, peanuts and wheat, but tasty produce is no longer enough to draw China's app savvy crowd.
  • He has also emphasised the vital role that agriculture plays in China, the world's top producer of commodities including rice and wheat.
Gao Chaorong knows what it takes to turn out good crops of sweet potatoes, peanuts and wheat, but tasty produce is no longer enough to draw China's app savvy crowd.
To prevent her crops from rotting unsold in the fields, the 56-year-old is now back in school, attending a "hands-on livestreaming bootcamp" to learn to take her vegetables straight to consumers via their mobile phones.
Gao and her classmates are gunning for online popularity as China's "new farmers" -- people who use the latest technology in agricultural production or services.
The number of new rural creators has soared 52 percent on China's TikTok sister app Douyin over the past year as they hope to capitalise on the country's one billion internet users, the world's most.
On the Instagram-like Chinese app Xiaohongshu, the hashtag "new farmers" has been viewed more than 227 million times.
Local authorities are even sending some officials to learn livestreaming and help farmers get online.
"It's been harder for farmers to sell their produce, especially offline," said Chen Xichuan, a Communist Party cadre in the small Shandong city of Pingdu who was among those asked to set an example and help growers take their trade online.
Live in action outdoors, Chen squeezed a ripe green pear he held up to a phone secured on a tripod.
"Just look at the juice," Chen, wearing a straw hat to shield himself from the blazing sun, told his viewers.
"Take it home, taste it, and make fresh pear juice for your children," said Chen.

'Full marks'

With Chinese consumers buying anything from clothes to makeup to garlic online, livestreaming has become an essential marketing platform for farmers to entice and engage customers directly.
Users can make purchases at the click of a button, as well as comment during live broadcasts or ask sellers about their products.
The Tian sisters, livestreamers and e-commerce experts born to farmers, organise the training camp monthly, charging around 5,000 yuan ($698) for four days of intensive lessons and "lifelong" follow-ups.
Students learn how to hook audiences using compelling scripts, props and visually appealing backgrounds.
In the classroom, a dozen students watched as Gao held up a sliced eggplant and gushed, with barely a pause or a stutter, about the best way to cook the vegetable.
"Remember, when you're selling products, it's not just about memorising your sales script," teacher Tian Dongying said, scribbling on a whiteboard as she reviewed Gao's mock livestreaming session. 
"You need to understand who you're talking to," she said.
Tian, who founded the livestreaming school with two sisters and a cousin, said all her students deserved "full marks".
"They've never done this kind of thing before and just being able to stand up and speak is already a challenge," she told AFP.
"Because they want to earn this money, they have to push past their own limits."
Gao told AFP she attended the bootcamp because farmers like her face fierce competition and "can't stick to the old-fashioned way of farming anymore".
She grows her crops at the foot of Shandong's Maling Mountain and has started to post videos on Douyin, gaining more than 7,000 followers.

Refunds guaranteed

China's agricultural sector is becoming more important because industries like real estate are "no longer as prosperous" and unemployment is rising, said livestreaming school principal Tian Chunying, Dongying's eldest sister.
"Agriculture is becoming the cornerstone of China's ability to support its population," she said.
President Xi Jinping has identified rural revitalisation as a key priority for China's development since taking office in 2012.
He has also emphasised the vital role that agriculture plays in China, the world's top producer of commodities including rice and wheat.
"A country must first strengthen agriculture to make itself strong," Xi said in 2022.
Digital tools such as livestreaming have transformed public perceptions of rural life in China, said Pan Wang, an associate professor at Australia's University of New South Wales.
"Traditionally, Chinese farmers have been depicted as working from sunrise to sunset -- poor, old-fashioned, disconnected from technology," Wang told AFP.
However, hurdles remain for farmers as they try to become more tech-savvy.
"Livestreaming and making videos are all new," farmer Gao said.
"For young people, clicking around on a computer...feels effortless, but we have to put in twice the effort to learn these things."
isk/pbt/oho/hmn/dan

diplomacy

Rubio imposter used AI to message high-level officials, reports say

BY ANUJ CHOPRA

  • The imposter contacted at least three foreign ministers, a US state governor, and a member of Congress using both text messaging and the encrypted messaging app Signal, according to the cable dated July 3.
  • An imposter posing as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent AI-generated voice and text messages to high-level officials and foreign ministers, reports said Tuesday, the latest American official to be targeted by impersonators.
  • The imposter contacted at least three foreign ministers, a US state governor, and a member of Congress using both text messaging and the encrypted messaging app Signal, according to the cable dated July 3.
An imposter posing as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent AI-generated voice and text messages to high-level officials and foreign ministers, reports said Tuesday, the latest American official to be targeted by impersonators.
A cable from the top US diplomat's office said the unidentified culprit was likely seeking to manipulate powerful officials "with the goal of gaining access to information or accounts," the Washington Post and other US media reported.
The imposter contacted at least three foreign ministers, a US state governor, and a member of Congress using both text messaging and the encrypted messaging app Signal, according to the cable dated July 3.
Starting in mid-June, the imposter created a Signal account using the display name "Marco.Rubio@state.gov" to contact the unsuspecting officials, it added. 
"The actor left voicemails on Signal for at least two targeted individuals and in one instance, sent a text message inviting the individual to communicate on Signal," said the cable.
The contents of the messages were unclear.
Responding to an AFP request for comment, the State Department said it was aware of the incident and was "currently investigating the matter."
"The Department takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information and continuously takes steps to improve the department's cybersecurity posture to prevent future incidents," said a senior State Department official. 
The impersonation of Rubio was one of "two distinct campaigns" being probed in which threat actors impersonate State Department personnel via email and messaging apps, the cable said.
The second campaign began in April and involves a "Russia-linked cyber actor" who conducted a phishing campaign targeting personal Gmail accounts associated with think tank scholars, Eastern Europe-based activists and dissidents, journalists, and former officials, it said.
The cyber actor posed as a "fictitious" State Department official and sought to tap into the contents of the users' Gmail accounts, added the cable.

'Malicious actors'

The hoaxes follow an FBI warning that since April cyber actors have impersonated senior US officials to target their contacts, including current and former federal or state government officials.
"The malicious actors have sent text messages and AI-generated voice messages -- techniques known as smishing and vishing, respectively -- that claim to come from a senior US official in an effort to establish rapport before gaining access to personal accounts," the FBI said in May.
In May, President Donald Trump said an impersonator breached the phone of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. US senators, governors and business executives received text messages and phone calls from someone claiming to be Wiles, the Wall Street Journal reported. 
The breach prompted a White House and FBI investigation, but Trump played down the threat, saying Wiles "can handle it."
Senior Trump administration officials have courted criticism for using Signal and other unofficial channels for government work.
In March, then-national security advisor Mike Waltz inadvertently added a journalist to a Signal chat group discussing US strikes in Yemen. The episode led to Waltz's ouster.
With proliferating AI voice cloning tools -- which are cheap, easy to use and hard to trace -– disinformation researchers fret the impact of audio deepfakes to impersonate or smear celebrities and politicians.
Last year, a robocall impersonating then-president Joe Biden stoked public alarm about such deepfakes.
The robocall urged New Hampshire residents not to cast ballots in a Democratic primary, prompting authorities to launch a probe into possible voter suppression and triggering demands from campaigners for stricter guardrails around generative AI tools.
ac/bjt

AI

Major US teachers union teams up with AI giants

  • Microsoft is contributing $12.5 million, OpenAI $10 million, and Anthropic $500,000. 
  • The second biggest teachers union in the United States unveiled a groundbreaking partnership Tuesday with AI powerhouses Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic to develop a comprehensive training program helping educators master artificial intelligence.
  • Microsoft is contributing $12.5 million, OpenAI $10 million, and Anthropic $500,000. 
The second biggest teachers union in the United States unveiled a groundbreaking partnership Tuesday with AI powerhouses Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic to develop a comprehensive training program helping educators master artificial intelligence.
"Teachers are facing huge challenges, which include navigating AI wisely, ethically and safely," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers during a press conference in New York.
"In the absence of rules of the game and guardrails (from the US government)...we are working with these partners so that they understand the commitment we have to our students," she added. 
The AFT represents 1.8 million members across the United States, from kindergarten through high school.
The announcement came as generative AI has already begun reshaping education, with students using tools like ChatGPT for everything from essay writing to homework help. 
Meanwhile, teachers grapple with questions about academic integrity, plagiarism, and how to adapt traditional teaching methods.
The AI giants are investing a total of $23 million in creating a New York training center to guide teachers through generative AI learning. 
Microsoft is contributing $12.5 million, OpenAI $10 million, and Anthropic $500,000. 
The five-year initiative won't develop new AI interfaces but intends to familiarize teachers with existing tools.
"What we're saying to the world and to teachers across the country is you now have a place, you now have a home, a place where you can come and co-create and understand how to harness this tool to make your classroom the best classroom it possibly can be," said Gerry Petrella, Microsoft's general manager for US public policy.
The National Academy for AI Teaching will launch its training program this fall, aiming to serve 400,000 people over five years. 
Microsoft staff are already participating in a tech refresher session this week. 
AFT affiliates include the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), which represents about 200,000 New York teachers.
UFT President Michael Mulgrew drew parallels between AI and social media, which generated excitement at launch but proved to be "a dumpster fire," in his view. 
"We're all very skeptical, but we also are very hopeful," he added.
tu/arp/md

weather

Texas floods: Misinformation across political spectrum sows confusion

BY ANUJ CHOPRA

  • Meanwhile, right-wing conspiracy theorists on social media falsely claimed that the government caused the flooding through cloud seeding, an artificial technique that stimulates rainfall.
  • Following deadly floods in Texas, misinformation from both left- and right-wing users was roiling social media, with liberals baselessly blaming staffing cuts at US weather agencies for flawed warning systems and conservatives ramping up conspiracy theories.
  • Meanwhile, right-wing conspiracy theorists on social media falsely claimed that the government caused the flooding through cloud seeding, an artificial technique that stimulates rainfall.
Following deadly floods in Texas, misinformation from both left- and right-wing users was roiling social media, with liberals baselessly blaming staffing cuts at US weather agencies for flawed warning systems and conservatives ramping up conspiracy theories.
The catastrophic floods over the weekend have left more than a 100 people dead, including more than two dozen girls and counselors at a riverside summer camp, with rescuers racing on Tuesday to search for dozens of people still missing.
Multiple left-leaning accounts on the platform X peddled the unfounded claim that staffing cuts at the National Weather Service (NWS) by President Donald Trump's administration had "degraded" its forecasting ability.
While the NWS, like other agencies, has experienced deep staffing and budget cuts under the Trump administration, experts say its forecasters rose to the challenge despite the constraints.
"There have been claims that (weather agencies) did not foresee catastrophic (Texas) floods -- but that's simply not true," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, wrote on Bluesky.
"This was undoubtedly an extreme event but messaging rapidly escalated beginning (around) 12 (hours) prior...Locations that flooded catastrophically had at least 1-2+ hours of direct warning from NWS."
There were 22 warnings from the NWS for Kerr County and the Kerrville area, which experienced the worst flooding, according to a CBS News analysis.
"This truly was a sudden & massive event and occurred at worst possible time (middle of the night). But (the) problem, once again, was not a bad weather prediction: it was one of 'last mile' forecast/warning dissemination," Swain wrote.
Meanwhile, right-wing conspiracy theorists on social media falsely claimed that the government caused the flooding through cloud seeding, an artificial technique that stimulates rainfall.
Multiple experts have said that such weather-modification technologies were not responsible for the Texas floods.
The misinformation echoes past conspiracy theories, including claims that weather manipulation by the government caused Hurricane Milton -- which struck Florida's Gulf Coast last year -- and that cloud seeding efforts were behind last year's flooding in Dubai.

'Classic tale of misinformation'

"False claims from both the left and right have spread widely on social media following the catastrophic floods in Texas," Sarah Komar and Nicole Dirks from the disinformation watchdog NewsGuard wrote in a report that debunked several falsehoods.  
"When extreme weather events occur, conspiracy theories about humans creating or controlling them often soon follow."
Following natural disasters, misinformation often surges across social media -- fueled by accounts from across the political spectrum –- as many platforms scale back content moderation and reduce their reliance on human fact-checkers.
Traditional media outlets were not immune to misinformation swirling on the internet.
"Like other disasters before it, the (Texas) floods had attracted fast-spreading misinformation and served as a warning about the vigilance required of journalists during emotionally charged news events," said the nonprofit media institute Poynter.
Kerr County Lead, a local outlet, was forced to retract a false story about the miracle rescue of two girls who clung to a tree in the floods. The story first surfaced in social media posts that quickly went viral, but a local official said the reports were "100% inaccurate."
"Like everyone, we wanted this story to be true, but it's a classic tale of misinformation that consumes all of us during a natural disaster," Louis Amestoy, Kerr County Lead's editor, wrote in a note to readers on Sunday.
"Unfortunately, the story is not true and we are retracting it."
ac/sla

AI

'We're AI,' popular indie rock band admits

  • Named Velvet Sundown -- seemingly a nod to Lou Reed's band The Velvet Underground -- the digital group has become a viral hit, generating ferocious online discussion after racking up hundreds of thousands of listens.
  • An indie rock band with more than a million monthly listeners on Spotify has owned up to being an AI-generated music project following days of speculation about whether the group was real.
  • Named Velvet Sundown -- seemingly a nod to Lou Reed's band The Velvet Underground -- the digital group has become a viral hit, generating ferocious online discussion after racking up hundreds of thousands of listens.
An indie rock band with more than a million monthly listeners on Spotify has owned up to being an AI-generated music project following days of speculation about whether the group was real.
Named Velvet Sundown -- seemingly a nod to Lou Reed's band The Velvet Underground -- the digital group has become a viral hit, generating ferocious online discussion after racking up hundreds of thousands of listens.
An updated Spotify profile, consulted on Tuesday by AFP, admitted that the group was an "ongoing artistic provocation".
"All characters, stories, music, voices and lyrics are original creations generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools employed as creative instruments," Velvet Sundown's profile added.
Recently created social media profiles, featuring photos of the group that look suspiciously fake, have teased readers about the group's origins, offering often contradictory information.
Experts have long warned about the dangers of AI-image, video and music generators blurring the lines between the real and fake. 
A major study in December by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), which represents more than five million creators worldwide, warned about the danger of AI-generated music.
It forecast that artists could see their incomes shrink by more than 20 percent in the next four years as the market for AI-composed music grows.
Stockholm-based streamer Spotify declined to comment directly about Velvet Sundown when contacted by AFP.
Spokeswoman Geraldine Igou wrote that the platform does not "prioritise or benefit financially from music created using AI tools".
"All tracks are created, owned, and uploaded by licensed third parties," Igou insisted. 
Rival music streaming service Deezer displayed a warning for "AI-generated content" for Velvet Sundown.
"Some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence," it said. 
The Spotify rival has an AI-music detection tool that is able to identify songs generated using popular software models such as Suno and Udio.
Deezer said in April that it was receiving more than 20,000 fully AI-generated tracks on a daily basis, comprising 18 percent of all uploaded content, an increase from the previously reported 10 percent in January.
Reports on Tuesday said an imposter posing as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been using AI-generated voice and text messages to high-level officials and foreign ministers.
adp-jt-po/sbk

AI

AI video becomes more convincing, rattling creative industry

BY THOMAS URBAIN

  • Runway's founders, who are as much trained artists as they are computer scientists, have gained an edge over their AI video rivals in film, television, and advertising.
  • Gone are the days of six-fingered hands or distorted faces -- AI-generated video is becoming increasingly convincing, attracting Hollywood, artists, and advertisers, while shaking the foundations of the creative industry.
  • Runway's founders, who are as much trained artists as they are computer scientists, have gained an edge over their AI video rivals in film, television, and advertising.
Gone are the days of six-fingered hands or distorted faces -- AI-generated video is becoming increasingly convincing, attracting Hollywood, artists, and advertisers, while shaking the foundations of the creative industry.
To measure the progress of AI video, you need only look at Will Smith eating spaghetti. 
Since 2023, this unlikely sequence -- entirely fabricated -- has become a technological benchmark for the industry.
Two years ago, the actor appeared blurry, his eyes too far apart, his forehead exaggeratedly protruding, his movements jerky, and the spaghetti didn't even reach his mouth.
The version published a few weeks ago by a user of Google's Veo 3 platform showed no apparent flaws whatsoever.
"Every week, sometimes every day, a different one comes out that's even more stunning than the next," said Elizabeth Strickler, a professor at Georgia State University.
Between Luma Labs' Dream Machine launched in June 2024, OpenAI's Sora in December, Runway AI's Gen-4 in March 2025, and Veo 3 in May, the sector has crossed several milestones in just a few months.
Runway has signed deals with Lionsgate studio and AMC Networks television group.
Lionsgate vice president Michael Burns told New York Magazine about the possibility of using artificial intelligence to generate animated, family-friendly versions from films like the "John Wick" or "Hunger Games" franchises, rather than creating entirely new projects.
"Some use it for storyboarding or previsualization" -- steps that come before filming -- "others for visual effects or inserts," said Jamie Umpherson, Runway's creative director.
Burns gave the example of a script for which Lionsgate has to decide whether to shoot a scene or not. 
To help make that decision, they can now create a 10-second clip "with 10,000 soldiers in a snowstorm."
That kind of pre-visualization would have cost millions before.
In October, the first AI feature film was released -- "Where the Robots Grow" -- an animated film without anything resembling live action footage.
For Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, Runway's co-founder, an AI-generated feature film is not the end goal, but a way of demonstrating to a production team that "this is possible."

'Resistance everywhere'

Still, some see an opportunity.
In March, startup Staircase Studio made waves by announcing plans to produce seven to eight films per year using AI for less than $500,000 each, while ensuring it would rely on unionized professionals wherever possible.
"The market is there," said Andrew White, co-founder of small production house Indie Studios.
People "don't want to talk about how it's made," White pointed out. "That's inside baseball. People want to enjoy the movie because of the movie."
But White himself refuses to adopt the technology, considering that using AI would compromise his creative process.
Jamie Umpherson argues that AI allows creators to stick closer to their artistic vision than ever before, since it enables unlimited revisions, unlike the traditional system constrained by costs.
"I see resistance everywhere" to this movement, observed Georgia State's Strickler. 
This is particularly true among her students, who are concerned about AI's massive energy and water consumption as well as the use of original works to train models, not to mention the social impact.
But refusing to accept the shift is "kind of like having a business without having the internet," she said. "You can try for a little while."
In 2023, the American actors' union SAG-AFTRA secured concessions on the use of their image through AI.
Strickler sees AI diminishing Hollywood's role as the arbiter of creation and taste, instead allowing more artists and creators to reach a significant audience.
Runway's founders, who are as much trained artists as they are computer scientists, have gained an edge over their AI video rivals in film, television, and advertising.
But they're already looking further ahead, considering expansion into augmented reality and virtual reality -- for example creating a metaverse where films could be shot.
"The most exciting applications aren't necessarily the ones that we have in mind," said Umpherson. "The ultimate goal is to see what artists do with technology."
tu/arp/aks/mlm

missing

Dutch coastal village turns to tech to find lost fishermen

BY CHARLOTTE VAN OUWERKERK

  • "My father disappeared during a storm on a freezing October night in 1954," says Van den Berg.
  • Jan van den Berg stares out at the sea where his father vanished seven decades ago -- lost in a storm just days before his birth.
  • "My father disappeared during a storm on a freezing October night in 1954," says Van den Berg.
Jan van den Berg stares out at the sea where his father vanished seven decades ago -- lost in a storm just days before his birth. Now aged 70, he clings to the hope of finding even the smallest fragment of his father's remains.
In Urk, a fishing village in the northern Netherlands, the sea has long been the lifeblood for families -- but has often taken loved ones in return.
Some bodies never surfaced. Others washed ashore on German or Danish coasts and were buried in unnamed graves.
Despite the tragedy, Van den Berg -- the last of six children -- became a fisherman like his brothers, defying their mother's terror that the North Sea would claim her sons too.
"We never found his body," he told AFP in a low voice, mumbling under the brim of his hat.
But after decades of uncertainty, advances in DNA technology and artificial intelligence have given Van den Berg renewed hope.
Researchers are now able to match remains with living relatives more accurately than ever before, offering families long-awaited answers and the chance to finally mourn properly.
"Many families still gaze at the front door, hoping their loved-one will walk through it," said Teun Hakvoort, an Urk resident who serves as spokesperson for a new foundation dedicated to locating and identifying fishermen lost at sea.
"All sunken boats have been mapped. Using modern tech, we look at the weather and currents at the time of the shipwreck to estimate where the fishermen might have washed ashore," the 60-year-old said.

Found after 47 years

The foundation, Identiteit Gezocht (Identity Sought), aims to list all unknown graves on the coasts of the North Sea, hoping to identify remains.
The new searches have already borne fruit. A body was recently exhumed on Schiermonnikoog, a small island north of the Netherlands, and returned to the family.
"This man had been missing for 47 years. After all this time, DNA and this new method of work made it possible to discover he came from Urk," said Hakvoort.
Another Hakvoort, Frans Hakvoort, leads the foundation with the support of his two brothers in Urk, a tight-knit Protestant community where certain family names frequently reoccur.
The three men, who have all lost a relative at sea, dedicate their free time to searching for the missing.
"With AI, we search for press articles published after a body washed ashore, possibly in specific circumstances," said Frans Hakvoort, 44.
"We enter all this information into a database to see if we can establish a link. If so, we contact local authorities to see if they can exhume the body."
The Netherlands leads other North Sea countries in identifying the missing, he said, with about 90 percent of unknown bodies exhumed and all DNA profiles stored in a European database.
Given the usual fishing areas and prevailing currents, Urk fishermen are more likely to be buried on German or Danish coasts, he said.
The foundation has called on the public to help identify unknown graves in Germany and Denmark.

Human remains

Jan van den Berg runs his fingers over his father's name, engraved on a monument overlooking Urk beach to honour lost fishermen.
The list is long. More than 300 names -- fathers, brothers, and sons, with dates stretching back to the 18th century.
Among the names are about 30 fishermen never found. Kees Korf, missing since 1997 aged 19. Americo Martins, 47, in 2015.
A statue of a woman, her back turned to the sea, represents all these mothers and wives hoping their loved-one returns.
"My father disappeared during a storm on a freezing October night in 1954," says Van den Berg.
"One morning he left the port heading for the North Sea. He was not supposed to be gone long because I was about to be born."
His uncle, who was also aboard, later said his father was on deck when wild waves flipped the boat over.
The tragedy still haunts the family to this day.
"When they pulled the nets on deck with fish, my older brothers always feared there might be something that looked like a human," van den Berg said.
In 1976, his uncle's boat disappeared with two of his cousins, aged 15 and 17, also on board. 
He was among those who found the body of Jan Jurie, the eldest, four months later.
The others were never found.
"Not a day goes by without thinking of them, all those men, and that is why I take part in the searches and give my DNA, because it remains an open wound," he said.
"I would like to have at least a small bone of my father to place in my mother's grave." And finally be able to mourn.
cvo/srg/ric/gv

Visa

Visa's 24/7 war room takes on global cybercriminals

BY ALEX PIGMAN

  • Every year, $15 trillion flows through Visa's networks, representing roughly 15 percent of the world's economy.
  • In the heart of Data Center Alley -- a patch of suburban Washington where much of the world's internet traffic flows -- Visa operates its global fraud command center.
  • Every year, $15 trillion flows through Visa's networks, representing roughly 15 percent of the world's economy.
In the heart of Data Center Alley -- a patch of suburban Washington where much of the world's internet traffic flows -- Visa operates its global fraud command center.
The numbers that the payments giant grapples with are enormous. Every year, $15 trillion flows through Visa's networks, representing roughly 15 percent of the world's economy. And bad actors constantly try to syphon off some of that money.
Modern fraudsters vary dramatically in sophistication.
To stay ahead, Visa has invested $12 billion over the past five years building AI-powered cyber fraud detection capabilities, knowing that criminals are also spending big.
"You have everybody from a single individual threat actor looking to make a quick buck all the way to really corporatized criminal organizations that generate tens or hundreds of millions of dollars annually from fraud and scam activities," Michael Jabbara, Visa's global head of fraud solutions, told AFP during a tour of the company's security campus.
"These organizations are very structured in how they operate."
The best-resourced criminal syndicates now focus on scams that directly target consumers, enticing them into purchases or transactions by manipulating their emotions.
"Consumers are continuously vulnerable. They can be exploited, and that's where we've seen a much higher incidence of attacks recently," Jabbara said.

Scam centers

The warning signs are clear: anything that seems too good to be true online is suspicious, and romance opportunities with strangers from distant countries are especially dangerous.
"What you don't realize is that the person you're chatting with is more likely than not in a place like Myanmar," Jabbara warned.
He said human-trafficking victims are forced to work in multi-billion-dollar cyber scam centers built by Asian crime networks in Myanmar's lawless border regions. 
The most up-to-date fraud techniques are systematic and quietly devastating. 
Once criminals obtain your card information, they automatically distribute it across numerous merchant websites that generate small recurring charges -- amounts low enough that victims may not notice for months.
Some of these operations increasingly resemble legitimate tech companies, offering services and digital products to fraudsters much like Google or Microsoft cater to businesses.
On the dark web, criminals can purchase comprehensive fraud toolkits. 
"You can buy the software. You can buy a tutorial on how to use the software. You can get access to a mule network on the ground or you can get access to a bot network" to carry out denial-of-service attacks that overwhelm servers with traffic, effectively shutting them down.
Just as cloud computing lowered barriers for startups by eliminating the need to build servers, "the same type of trend has happened in the cyber crime and fraud space," Jabbara explained.
These off-the-shelf services can also enable bad actors to launch brute force attacks on an industrial scale -- using repeated payment attempts to crack a card's number, expiry date, and security code.
The sophistication extends to corporate-style management, Jabbara said.
Some criminal organizations now employ chief risk officers who determine operational risk appetite. 
They might decide that targeting government infrastructure and hospitals generates an excessive amount of attention from law enforcement and is too risky to pursue. 

'Millions of attacks'

To combat these unprecedented threats, Jabbara leads a payment scam disruption team focused on understanding criminal methodologies.
From a small room called the Risk Operations Center in Virginia, employees analyze data streams on multiple screens, searching for patterns that distinguish fraudulent activity from legitimate credit card use.
In the larger Cyber Fusion Center, staff monitor potential cyberattacks targeting Visa's own infrastructure around the clock.
"We deal with millions of attacks across different parts of our network," Jabbara noted, emphasizing that most are handled automatically without human intervention.
Visa maintains identical facilities in London and Singapore, ensuring 24-hour global vigilance.
arp/dw

Spotify

Turkey opens Spotify probe after 'provocative playlist' complaint

  • The investigation was announced the same day as deputy culture minister Batuhan Mumcu called for legal action against Spotify in a post on X, citing its "refusal" to respond to requests to remove playlists with names deemed offensive. 
  • Turkey's competition authority has launched an investigation into Spotify for anti-competitive practices as a deputy minister demanded legal action over "provocative" playlists allegedly offensive to the president's wife and disrespectful of Islam.
  • The investigation was announced the same day as deputy culture minister Batuhan Mumcu called for legal action against Spotify in a post on X, citing its "refusal" to respond to requests to remove playlists with names deemed offensive. 
Turkey's competition authority has launched an investigation into Spotify for anti-competitive practices as a deputy minister demanded legal action over "provocative" playlists allegedly offensive to the president's wife and disrespectful of Islam.
In a statement released on Friday, the competition authority said it had opened an investigation into "various allegations that the strategies and policies implemented by Spotify... in Turkey has caused anti-competitive effects in the music industry".
It said the probe would seek to establish whether Spotify gave more visibility to some artists and engaged in unfair practices in the distribution of royalties, thereby violating the competition law.
The investigation was announced the same day as deputy culture minister Batuhan Mumcu called for legal action against Spotify in a post on X, citing its "refusal" to respond to requests to remove playlists with names deemed offensive. 
"Spotify persistently refuses to take the necessary steps despite all our previous warnings," he wrote.
"Content that targets our religious and national values and insults the beliefs of our society has not been corrected," he added, saying Turkey had been "closely monitoring content on Spotify for a long time".

'Targeting... sacred values'

He pointed to content published "under the guise of 'playlists'.. that disregards our religious sensitivities toward our Prophet Mohammed, deliberately and unacceptably targeting the beliefs, sacred values, and spiritual world of our people". 
He also singled out playlists allegedly targeting Emine Erdogan, wife of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which were "insidiously provocative and morally unacceptable".
"This irresponsibility and lack of oversight, which disregards the sensitivities of our society, has now become a legal matter.. I call on our competent institutions to take action," he wrote.
Attached to his post was an animated graphic showing a string of playlists with names referencing either Erdogan's wife or the life of the Prophet Mohammed. 
In a statement, Spotify, which launched in Turkey in 2013, said its operations complied with "all applicable laws" but it would cooperate with the investigation although it lacked "details on the inspection's scope or focus". 
"We are cooperating with the investigation, are actively seeking to understand it, and will work toward a swift, constructive resolution with the Turkish Competition Authority," the statement said, without making any mention of the playlist allegations.
It said in 2024, it had paid "over 2 billion Turkish lira ($25 million) to the local music industry" with its service playing a "pivotal (role) in growing Turkish artists' royalties globally". 
bur-hmw/jj