AI

Elon Musk says xAI startup buying X platform

BY GLENN CHAPMAN

  • The companies are being combined in an all-stock deal that values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion, factoring in the social network's $12 billion debt.
  • Elon Musk on Friday said his artificial intelligence startup xAI is buying his social networking platform X in a deal valuing the company once known as Twitter at $33 billion.
  • The companies are being combined in an all-stock deal that values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion, factoring in the social network's $12 billion debt.
Elon Musk on Friday said his artificial intelligence startup xAI is buying his social networking platform X in a deal valuing the company once known as Twitter at $33 billion.
"This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI's advanced AI capability and expertise with X's massive reach," Musk said in a post on his social network.
X has more than 600 million users, and its future is "intertwined" with that of xAI, launched two years ago, according to Musk.
"Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent," Musk said of combining the two companies. 
"This will allow us to build a platform that doesn't just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress."
The companies are being combined in an all-stock deal that values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion, factoring in the social network's $12 billion debt.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 in a transaction that included debt and launched xAI the following year, spending billions of dollars on high-end Nvidia chips for the venture.
xAI in February released the latest version of its chatbot, Grok 3, which the billionaire hopes will find traction in a highly competitive sector contested by the likes of ChatGPT and China's DeepSeek.
Musk has promoted Grok 3 as "scary smart," with 10 times the computational resources of its predecessor that was released in August last year.
Grok 3 is also going up against OpenAI's chatbot, ChatGPT – pitting Musk against collaborator-turned-arch rival Sam Altman.
Musk and Altman were among the 11-person team that founded OpenAI in 2015. 
Created as a counterweight to Google's dominance in artificial intelligence, the project got initial funding from Musk.
Musk left three years later, and then in 2022 OpenAI's release of ChatGPT created a global technology sensation -- which made Altman a tech world star.
Their relationship has become increasingly toxic and litigious ever since.
X's billionaire owner, the world's richest person, is a major financial backer of US President Donald Trump and heads a Department of Government Efficiency that has been slashing the ranks of government employees.
Industry analysts at Emarketer this week forecast that ad revenue at X will grow this year as brands fear retaliation by politically connected Musk if they don't spend on the platform.
"Many advertisers may view spending on X as a cost of doing business in order to mitigate potential legal or financial repercussions," said Emarketer principal analyst Jasmine Enberg.
gc/arp

gaming

South Korea's life game 'InZOI' challenges 'The Sims'

BY HIEUN SHIN

  • So, despite Krafton having "limited understanding" of the life simulation genre, the company backed the idea, he said, adding that thankfully early release responses were "more enthusiastic " than they had expected.
  • South Korean game publisher Krafton released early access to its life simulation game "InZOI" Friday, hoping its powerful lifelike graphics will unseat the decades-long dominance of "The Sims" hit franchise.
  • So, despite Krafton having "limited understanding" of the life simulation genre, the company backed the idea, he said, adding that thankfully early release responses were "more enthusiastic " than they had expected.
South Korean game publisher Krafton released early access to its life simulation game "InZOI" Friday, hoping its powerful lifelike graphics will unseat the decades-long dominance of "The Sims" hit franchise.
Krafton, the developer of battle royale "PUBG: Battlegrounds", says it offers a fresh take on the concept using striking visuals -- with "InZOI" shooting to the top of wishlists on the online Steam platform.
"What stood out the most when I played "InZOI" was just how visually stunning it is," said Kim Rail, a YouTuber known for playing "The Sims", a game whose last instalment debuted nearly a decade ago.
"The game's character is rendered with such precision that she looks almost like a real person," Kim said. "After decorating interiors, taking a screenshot makes it look like a magazine photo due to the high visual quality".
"The Sims", a spin-off from the popular "SimCity" franchise, takes players inside individual homes, allowing them to customize everything from furniture to relationships.
Over 25 years, "The Sims" and its three sequels have sold more than 200 million copies, and Electronic Arts is now planning a multi-player version.
But "InZOI" producer and director Kim Hyung-jun said they offered something new.
"I believe "InZOI" offers something that "The Sims" does not, and that users will find a different kind of enjoyment in that," he said.
"Inzoi" topped the best-selling games chart by revenue on Steam just 40 minutes after the launch Friday morning, while Krafton stocks in Seoul rose six percent.

K-pop career

"InZOI" producer Kim, an avid player of "The Sims", said it was an "honour" to be compared to the game.
"'The Sims' is a philosophical work that offers diverse interpretations of life," he said. "At times, it felt like a miniature version of real life, and I was often amazed by how thoughtfully the developers portrayed various aspects".
But Kim told AFP he wanted to focus more on how the "relationships" are portrayed in his game. 
"For instance, if a player gets into a fight somewhere, the news spreads, and they may receive criticism or support through social media. We've built a system where one event leads to another," he said.
It also has a unique twist from its home nation, drawing on maps including one from South Korea -- and a possible career path that allows players to become a K-pop idol.
"Tapping into the global interest in K-culture, the game features detailed recreations of Korean streetscapes, convenience stores, karaoke rooms, and traditional restaurants, allowing players to explore and engage with uniquely Korean settings," said Kim Jung-tae, a gaming professor at Dongyang University.
It "lets players experience a wide range of everyday Korean life", he added.
"InZOI" uses "Unreal Engine 5" developed by Epic Games, the first for a life simulation title, which supports detailed customization options for characters, including features such as eye bags and iris size.
The impressive graphics come at a cost.
The recommended systems for "InZOI" include an Intel i7 processor and an Nvidia RTX 3070 -- a significant leap from "The Sims 4", which runs on the more modest requirements of an Intel i5 and a GTX 650.
Content creators suggest the challenge will be to woo the huge numbers of players of "The Sims", who are used to more moderate graphics but also lower computer specs.
"The game's success is expected to hinge on the stability of its live service and the developers' ability to consistently deliver new content," said Kim, the professor.

'Separate lives'

Krafton said the ambition to challenge a leader like "The Sims" came from the global success of "PUBG", a combat survival game whose mobile version surpassed one billion downloads and recorded 50 million daily active users.
"Even within the company, no one truly expected that success," "InZOI" producer Kim Hyung-jun said. "Back then, the idea of creating something like that in Korea was an unusual challenge".
So, despite Krafton having "limited understanding" of the life simulation genre, the company backed the idea, he said, adding that thankfully early release responses were "more enthusiastic " than they had expected.
But, compared to "The Sims", Kim accepts his game still has "a long way to go".
"'The Sims' 4 has been in service for 10 years, while "InZOI" has only been in development for two. I'd say it's about 20 percent complete in comparison," said Kim.
"I don't view the comparison negatively. Just as everyone lives a unique life, "The Sims" and "InZOI" are separate 'lives', each with their value and appeal". 
hs/pjm/fox

OpenAI

Copyright questions loom as ChatGPT's Ghibli-style images go viral

BY THOMAS URBAIN

  • Since the release on Wednesday, AI-generated images depicting Studio Ghibli versions of Elon Musk with US President Donald Trump, "The Lord of the Rings," and even a recreation of the September 11 attacks have gone viral across online platforms.
  • The release of the latest image generator on OpenAI's ChatGPT has triggered a flood of online memes featuring images done in the style of Studio Ghibli, the Japanese studio behind classic animated films like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Princess Mononoke."
  • Since the release on Wednesday, AI-generated images depicting Studio Ghibli versions of Elon Musk with US President Donald Trump, "The Lord of the Rings," and even a recreation of the September 11 attacks have gone viral across online platforms.
The release of the latest image generator on OpenAI's ChatGPT has triggered a flood of online memes featuring images done in the style of Studio Ghibli, the Japanese studio behind classic animated films like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Princess Mononoke."
The virality of these images, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even changing his profile picture on X to match the style, immediately raised questions about copyright infringement by the ChatGPT maker, which already faces lawsuits regarding the use of source material without permission.
Since the release on Wednesday, AI-generated images depicting Studio Ghibli versions of Elon Musk with US President Donald Trump, "The Lord of the Rings," and even a recreation of the September 11 attacks have gone viral across online platforms.
On Thursday, the White House took part by posting on X a Ghibli-style image of a weeping alleged felon being handcuffed by a US immigration officer before her deportation.
Originally intended to be available on the platform for free, Altman said the huge success of the new generator was unexpected and meant the tool would remain limited to paid users for now.
It was already possible to generate images with ChatGPT, but the latest version is powered by GPT-4o, the company's highest-performing model, and allows sophisticated results to be obtained through very succinct requests, which was not the case before.
After the viral trend, a video from 2016 resurfaced in which Studio Ghibli's legendary director Hayao Miyazaki is seen lashing out during an AI demonstration by staff.
"I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself," an English translation of his remarks said in the video.
The trend "is especially insidious and malicious because of how outspokenly scathing Miyazaki has been toward the tech," wrote artist and illustrator Jayd "Chira" Ait-Kaci on Bluesky.
"It's always about contempt for artists, every time," Ait-Kaci added.
OpenAI is facing a barrage of lawsuits over copyright infringements, including one major case with the New York Times and others from artists, musicians and publishers.
Asked by AFP about the latest viral trend, and whether it threatened Studio Ghibli's intellectual property, OpenAI said the company is still fine-tuning its model.
"Our goal is to give users as much creative freedom as possible," a company spokesperson told AFP. 
"We continue to prevent generations in the style of individual living artists, but we do permit broader studio styles, which people have used to generate and share some truly delightful and inspired original fan creations," she added. 
"We're always learning from real-world use and feedback, and we'll keep refining our policies as we go."
The company is aggressively lobbying the White House and Congress to make the use of copyrighted content by AI companies part of the fair use doctrine.
Fair use allowances already apply to search engines or in the case of satire and memes online, and allow companies to freely use copyrighted material without permission.
Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that OpenAI is close to finalizing a $40 billion funding round led by Japan's SoftBank Group that would be the biggest funding round ever for a startup.
OpenAI has projected its annual revenue could exceed $12.7 billion in 2025, up from $3.7 billion generated in 2024.
tu-arp/aha/dc/jgc

OpenAI

Copyright questions loom as ChatGPT's Ghibli-style images go viral

  • Since the release on Wednesday, AI-generated images depicting Studio Ghibli versions of Elon Musk with US President Donald Trump, "The Lord of the Rings," and even a recreation of the September 11 attacks have gone viral across online platforms.
  • The release of the latest image generator on OpenAI's ChatGPT has triggered an online flood of memes featuring images done in the style of Studio Ghibli, the Japanese studio behind classic animated films like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Princess Mononoke."
  • Since the release on Wednesday, AI-generated images depicting Studio Ghibli versions of Elon Musk with US President Donald Trump, "The Lord of the Rings," and even a recreation of the September 11 attacks have gone viral across online platforms.
The release of the latest image generator on OpenAI's ChatGPT has triggered an online flood of memes featuring images done in the style of Studio Ghibli, the Japanese studio behind classic animated films like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Princess Mononoke."
The virality of these images, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even changing his profile picture on X to match the style, immediately raised questions about copyright infringement by the ChatGPT maker, which already faces lawsuits regarding the use of source material without permission.
Since the release on Wednesday, AI-generated images depicting Studio Ghibli versions of Elon Musk with US President Donald Trump, "The Lord of the Rings," and even a recreation of the September 11 attacks have gone viral across online platforms.
On Thursday, the White House took part by posting on X a Ghibli-style image of a weeping alleged felon being handcuffed by a US immigration officer before her deportation.
Originally intended to be available on the platform for free, Altman said the huge success of the new generator was unexpected and meant the tool would remain limited to paid users for now.
It was already possible to generate images with ChatGPT, but the latest version is powered by GPT-4o, the company's highest-performing model, and allows sophisticated results to be obtained through very succinct requests, which was not the case before.
After the viral trend, a video from 2016 resurfaced in which Studio Ghibli's legendary director Hayao Miyazaki is seen lashing out during an AI demonstration by staff.
"I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself," an English translation of his remarks said in the video.
The trend "is especially insidious and malicious because of how outspokenly scathing Miyazaki has been toward the tech," wrote artist and illustrator Jayd "Chira" Ait-Kaci on Bluesky.
"It's always about contempt for artists, every time," Ait-Kaci added.
OpenAI is facing a barrage of lawsuits over copyright infringements, including one major case with the New York Times and others from artists, musicians and publishers.
The company is aggressively lobbying the White House and Congress to make the use of copyrighted content by AI companies part of the fair use doctrine.
Fair use allowances already apply to search engines or in the case of satire and memes online, and allow companies to freely use copyrighted material without permission.
Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that OpenAI is close to finalizing a $40 billion funding round led by Japan's SoftBank Group that would be the biggest funding round ever for a startup.
OpenAI has projected its annual revenue could exceed $12.7 billion in 2025, up from $3.7 billion expected this year.
arp/aha

media

Judge hears Associated Press suit over White House denial of access

BY CHRIS LEFKOW

  • Two weeks after barring the AP, the White House stripped journalists of the nearly century-old power to decide which of the profession's own number will be members of a pool of reporters and photographers covering presidential events.
  • Lawyers for the Associated Press (AP) urged a federal judge on Thursday to restore the news agency's reporters access to the White House press pool that covers US President Donald Trump's events.
  • Two weeks after barring the AP, the White House stripped journalists of the nearly century-old power to decide which of the profession's own number will be members of a pool of reporters and photographers covering presidential events.
Lawyers for the Associated Press (AP) urged a federal judge on Thursday to restore the news agency's reporters access to the White House press pool that covers US President Donald Trump's events.
AP journalists and photographers have been barred from the Oval Office and traveling on Air Force One since February 11, because of the outlet's decision to continue referring to the "Gulf of Mexico" -- and not the "Gulf of America" as decreed by Trump.
District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, did not issue a ruling at the conclusion of a hearing in the case on Thursday but said he would do so in a "timely fashion." 
The AP, in a suit filed against three White House officials, said the denial of access to the wire service violates the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and of the press.
AP lawyer Charles Tobin said at the hearing that the exclusion of the AP from certain official White House events was "abject retaliation" that has had "an adverse impact and chilling effect on the entire journalism industry."
Evan Vucci, chief White House photographer for the AP, testified that the access ban has left the agency "struggling to keep up."
"It's hurting us big time. We are basically dead in the water on major news stories," said Vucci, who took the iconic photograph of Trump pumping his fist in the air after an assassination attempt last year.
Two weeks after barring the AP, the White House stripped journalists of the nearly century-old power to decide which of the profession's own number will be members of a pool of reporters and photographers covering presidential events.
On Air Force One, the press pool consists of 13 newspaper and wire service reporters, photographers and TV and radio reporters, while for events in the White House itself it is slightly larger.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the independent White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) would no longer have a "monopoly" on choosing members of the press pool.

'No First Amendment right of access'

Brian Hudak, a Justice Department attorney, said at Thursday's hearing that pool membership is at the discretion of the White House and the president.
"There is no First Amendment right of access to the press beyond what is afforded to the general public," Hudak said.
Tobin said the AP has not been admitted to the press pool for 44 days. "The White House changed its policy to a rotation system that happens to exclude the AP," he said.
"The only thing that seems to be consistent is that the AP is not allowed," added Vucci.
The WHCA -- of which AFP is a member -- condemned the decision by the White House to choose pool members, saying it "tears at the independence of the free press." 
In its style guide, the AP notes that the Gulf of Mexico has "carried that name for more than 400 years" and the agency "will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen."
"As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences," the AP said.
The 180-year-old organization has long been a pillar of US journalism and provides news to print, TV and radio outlets across the United States and around the world.
cl/dc

restructuring

Games publisher Ubisoft announces restructuring, billion-euro investment

  • Alongside "Assassin's Creed", the subsidiary will bring together "Far Cry" and "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six" -- among the most popular long-running names in Ubisoft's roster of game universes.
  • In a bid to escape financial woes, French games giant Ubisoft said Thursday it was creating a new subsidiary around its most popular franchises such as "Assassin's Creed" in partnership with China's Tencent.
  • Alongside "Assassin's Creed", the subsidiary will bring together "Far Cry" and "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six" -- among the most popular long-running names in Ubisoft's roster of game universes.
In a bid to escape financial woes, French games giant Ubisoft said Thursday it was creating a new subsidiary around its most popular franchises such as "Assassin's Creed" in partnership with China's Tencent.
The new unit, valued at around four billion euros ($4.3 billion), will be 25-percent controlled by Tencent, which will stump up 1.16 billion euros of new investment in exchange.
Alongside "Assassin's Creed", the subsidiary will bring together "Far Cry" and "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six" -- among the most popular long-running names in Ubisoft's roster of game universes.
Ubisoft appears to be making the most of last week's successful launch of the latest "Assassin's Creed" instalment, "Shadows", on which much of its future was riding.
Conditions for the Tencent deal include a bar on the French company losing its majority in the subsidiary for its first two years.
Tencent cannot increase its stake for the next five years -- unless Ubisoft loses its majority in the mean time.
Chief executive Yves Guillemot called the step a "new chapter in (Ubisoft's) history".
Last year brought a string of woes for Ubisoft, with several disappointing releases for would-be blockbuster games and a slump in its stock price.
Spinning up the new subsidiary -- whose name has not yet been announced -- by the end of the year means the company is "crystallising the value of our assets, strengthening our balance sheet, and creating the best conditions for these franchises' long-term growth and success," Guillemot said.
The deal also sees Tencent assert its hold on Ubisoft more strongly after climbing aboard in 2022.
The Chinese firm holds almost 10 percent of the group's stock -- a threshold it is not allowed to cross before 2030 -- while the founding Guillemot family owns around 15 percent.

Breaking the streak

Earlier this year, Ubisoft had said that it was "actively exploring various strategic and capitalistic options".
Finance chief Frederick Duquet said Thursday that "we received many expressions of interest that turned into several non-binding offers for different options".
In the end, directors opted to create the subsidiary as this "allowed Ubisoft to maintain control of its key assets, with a view to creating very large brands worth multiple billions in the coming years," Duquet added.
Ubisoft plans to make further announcements on changes to the group at a later stage.
The company's market capitalisation stood at 1.7 billion euros by close of trading in Paris Thursday -- or less than half the valuation of the new subsidiary.
Teams working on the three major franchises will be brought together in the new France-based unit, especially Ubisoft's Montreal studios -- one of the largest in the company.
In total, the publisher employs around 18,000 people worldwide, 4,000 of them in France.
"Assassin's Creed Shadows" has pulled in three million players since its March 20 release, breaking a streak of disappointing launches for Ubisoft.
The group will nevertheless push ahead with a cost-cutting plan drawn up in early 2023, under which it has already closed studios outside France and shed 2,000 jobs.
Ubisoft's troubles reflect wider doldrums in the video games sector over the past two years.
kf/tgb/rmb

Italy

TikTok Shop ready for business in France, Germany, Italy

  • Several brands in France are supporting the launch, including bag manufacturer Cabaia and eyewear maker Izipizi.
  • Social network TikTok is taking e-commerce by storm and will launch a new feature, dubbed TikTok Shop -- on Monday in France, Germany and Italy -- allowing direct purchases in the app, the company said on Thursday.
  • Several brands in France are supporting the launch, including bag manufacturer Cabaia and eyewear maker Izipizi.
Social network TikTok is taking e-commerce by storm and will launch a new feature, dubbed TikTok Shop -- on Monday in France, Germany and Italy -- allowing direct purchases in the app, the company said on Thursday.
TikTok Shop has been up and running in Spain and Ireland since last December.
Users will now be able to buy products through shopping links in videos and live content as well as an online store, all without leaving the app.
On the shop tab, customers will be able to search for "specific products, discover current promotions and manage their orders, while accessing personalised recommendations in the form of lists and interactive content with integrated shopping functionality", TikTok said. 
Outside the European Union, TikTok Shop is already present in a dozen countries, including the United Kingdom, Thailand, the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Several brands in France are supporting the launch, including bag manufacturer Cabaia and eyewear maker Izipizi.
People under the age of 18 will not have access to "content with links to TikTok Shop products", the platform told AFP, saying that the shop would provide "proactive moderation".
French lawmakers have set up a commission of inquiry looking into the  psychological effects of TikTok on children and teenagers, with the network particularly popular among youngsters.
The arrival of TikTok, whose parent company is Chinese, in e-commerce is also of concern to numerous French retailers.
Leading French trade federations last week asked the government to take "immediate measures" to protect French companies from e-commerce platforms such as Temu, Shein and TikTok Shop amid fears that the latter are a source of "unfair competition" at a time when those fears are exacerbated by a wave of US trade tariffs.
dax-pml/may/cw/bc

safety

Firms and researchers at odds over superhuman AI

BY TOM BARFIELD

  • LeCun's view appears backed by a majority of academics in the field.
  • Hype is growing from leaders of major AI companies that "strong" computer intelligence will imminently outstrip humans, but many researchers in the field see the claims as marketing spin.
  • LeCun's view appears backed by a majority of academics in the field.
Hype is growing from leaders of major AI companies that "strong" computer intelligence will imminently outstrip humans, but many researchers in the field see the claims as marketing spin.
The belief that human-or-better intelligence -- often called "artificial general intelligence" (AGI) -- will emerge from current machine-learning techniques fuels hypotheses for the future ranging from machine-delivered hyperabundance to human extinction.
"Systems that start to point to AGI are coming into view," OpenAI chief Sam Altman wrote in a blog post last month. Anthropic's Dario Amodei has said the milestone "could come as early as 2026".
Such predictions help justify the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into computing hardware and the energy supplies to run it.
Others, though are more sceptical.
Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun told AFP last month that "we are not going to get to human-level AI by just scaling up LLMs" -- the large language models behind current systems like ChatGPT or Claude.
LeCun's view appears backed by a majority of academics in the field.
Over three-quarters of respondents to a recent survey by the US-based Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) agreed that "scaling up current approaches" was unlikely to produce AGI.

'Genie out of the bottle'

Some academics believe that many of the companies' claims, which bosses have at times flanked with warnings about AGI's dangers for mankind, are a strategy to capture attention.
Businesses have "made these big investments, and they have to pay off," said Kristian Kersting, a leading researcher at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany and AAAI fellow singled out for his achievements in the field.
"They just say, 'this is so dangerous that only I can operate it, in fact I myself am afraid but we've already let the genie out of the bottle, so I'm going to sacrifice myself on your behalf -- but then you're dependent on me'."
Scepticism among academic researchers is not total, with prominent figures like Nobel-winning physicist Geoffrey Hinton or 2018 Turing Prize winner Yoshua Bengio warning about dangers from powerful AI.
"It's a bit like Goethe's 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice', you have something you suddenly can't control any more," Kersting said -- referring to a poem in which a would-be sorcerer loses control of a broom he has enchanted to do his chores.
A similar, more recent thought experiment is the "paperclip maximiser".
This imagined AI would pursue its goal of making paperclips so single-mindedly that it would turn Earth and ultimately all matter in the universe into paperclips or paperclip-making machines -- having first got rid of human beings that it judged might hinder its progress by switching it off.
While not "evil" as such, the maximiser would fall fatally short on what thinkers in the field call "alignment" of AI with human objectives and values.
Kersting said he "can understand" such fears -- while suggesting that "human intelligence, its diversity and quality is so outstanding that it will take a long time, if ever" for computers to match it.
He is far more concerned with near-term harms from already-existing AI, such as discrimination in cases where it interacts with humans.

 'Biggest thing ever'

The apparently stark gulf in outlook between academics and AI industry leaders may simply reflect people's attitudes as they pick a career path, suggested Sean O hEigeartaigh, director of the AI: Futures and Responsibility programme at Britain's Cambridge University.
"If you are very optimistic about how powerful the present techniques are, you're probably more likely to go and work at one of the companies that's putting a lot of resource into trying to make it happen," he said.
Even if Altman and Amodei may be "quite optimistic" about rapid timescales and AGI emerges much later, "we should be thinking about this and taking it seriously, because it would be the biggest thing that would ever happen," O hEigeartaigh added.
"If it were anything else... a chance that aliens would arrive by 2030 or that there'd be another giant pandemic or something, we'd put some time into planning for it".
The challenge can lie in communicating these ideas to politicians and the public.
Talk of super-AI "does instantly create this sort of immune reaction... it sounds like science fiction," O hEigeartaigh said.
tgb/rmb

China

China rebuffs Trump offer of tariff concessions if Beijing agrees TikTok deal

  • Beijing swiftly rebuffed Trump's suggestion, with its foreign ministry saying that it has "repeatedly stated our position" on TikTok.
  • China rebuffed on Thursday a suggestion from US President Donald Trump that he might offer to reduce tariffs on the country to get Beijing's approval for the sale of popular social media platform TikTok.
  • Beijing swiftly rebuffed Trump's suggestion, with its foreign ministry saying that it has "repeatedly stated our position" on TikTok.
China rebuffed on Thursday a suggestion from US President Donald Trump that he might offer to reduce tariffs on the country to get Beijing's approval for the sale of popular social media platform TikTok.
Trump said this month the United States was in talks with four groups interested in acquiring TikTok, with the app facing an uncertain future in the country.
A US law has ordered TikTok to divest from its Chinese owner ByteDance or be banned in the United States, enacted over concerns that Beijing could exploit the video-sharing platform to spy on Americans or covertly influence US public opinion.
The law took effect on January 19, a day before Trump's inauguration, but he quickly announced a delay that has allowed it to continue to operate.
That delay is set to expire on April 5.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that he could give China "a little reduction in tariffs or something to get it done".
"We're going to have a form of a deal," Trump said, adding that if it wasn't done in time, he would extend the deadline.
"China is going to have to play a role in that, possibly in the form of an approval and I think they'll do that."
Beijing swiftly rebuffed Trump's suggestion, with its foreign ministry saying that it has "repeatedly stated our position" on TikTok.
"The Chinese side's stance against imposing additional tariffs is also consistent and clear," foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said.

'People's Bid for TikTok'

Trump similarly attempted to ban TikTok in the United States on national security concerns during his first stint in the White House.
TikTok temporarily shut down in the United States in January and disappeared from app stores as the deadline for the law approached, to the dismay of millions of users.
Trump suspended its implementation for two-and-a-half months after beginning his second term on January 20, seeking a solution with Beijing.
TikTok subsequently restored service in the United States and returned to the Apple and Google app stores in February.
Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Perplexity recently expressed its interest in buying TikTok.
Perplexity laid out in a blog post a vision for integrating its AI-powered internet search capabilities with the popular video-snippet sharing app.
"Combining Perplexity's answer engine with TikTok's extensive video library would allow us to build the best search experience in the world," the San Francisco-based firm said.
Although TikTok does not appear overly motivated regarding the sale of the app, potential buyers include an initiative called "The People's Bid for TikTok", launched by real estate and sports tycoon Frank McCourt's Project Liberty initiative.
Others in the running are Microsoft, Oracle and a group that includes Internet personality MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson.
"Any acquisition by a consortium of investors could in effect keep ByteDance in control of the algorithm, while any acquisition by a competitor would likely create a monopoly in the short form video and information space," Perplexity said in its post.
"All of society benefits when content feeds are liberated from the manipulations of foreign governments and globalist monopolists."
bur-oho/pbt

AI

AI's impact on jobs, tech's touchy topic

BY THOMAS URBAIN

  • We're sparking the conversation," said Fahad Alam of Artisan, a startup, at the HumanX AI event.
  • "Stop Hiring Humans" read a provocative sign at an AI conference in Las Vegas, where the impact of new artificial intelligence models on the world of work had sparked some unease.
  • We're sparking the conversation," said Fahad Alam of Artisan, a startup, at the HumanX AI event.
"Stop Hiring Humans" read a provocative sign at an AI conference in Las Vegas, where the impact of new artificial intelligence models on the world of work had sparked some unease.
"We're not worried about tiptoeing around. We're sparking the conversation," said Fahad Alam of Artisan, a startup, at the HumanX AI event.
The San Francisco company is promoting AI agents -- virtual sales representatives that identify potential customers, contact them, write emails, and schedule appointments.
AI agents, which are supposed to make decisions that are usually made by humans, have become the latest buzzword of the generative AI story that began with the release of ChatGPT in 2022.
With its offering, Artisan's typical avatar, Ava, costs 96 percent less than a human performing the same tasks, according to the company's website.
The startup's straight-to-the-point approach sharply contrasts with most generative AI companies, who tread cautiously on whether ChatGPT-like technologies will leave human workers unemployed by the wayside.
"I don't fundamentally think it's about displacing employees as much as better leveraging them for the things only humans can do," said Josh Constine of SignalFire, a venture capital firm.
Predictions can vary wildly. Goldman Sachs estimates AI could eliminate 300 million jobs globally through automation.
An 2024 Metrigy report found 89 percent of firms surveyed reduced customer relations staff in the previous year due to generative AI.
On the other hand, 70 percent of major companies surveyed by the World Economic Forum said they planned to hire workers with AI-related skills in the coming years.
"It's natural evolution," said Joe Murphy of D-iD, which offers video avatars and recently struck a partnership with Microsoft. 
"Like the car's invention, AI will create a new sector. Jobs will be created and lost simultaneously."
Supporting this theory, data from the US Department of Labor shows jobs for secretaries and administrative assistants fell from 4.1 million to 3.4 million between 1992 and 2023, coinciding with the rise of office computing.
During the same period, the number of computer scientists more than doubled, from approximately 500,000 to 1.2 million.
Still, given the sensitivities about replacing humans, some advise discretion.
"You're selling software that replaces a significant part of their team," said Tomasz Tunguz, founder of Theory Ventures. "You can't sell that overtly."
"Some clients candidly don't want it known they're using AI," added Alam.

'Inevitable'

There is little doubt that some kind of upheaval of the workplace is underway, but its precise impact remains uncertain.
Analysts predict job losses for programmers, call center operators, translators, and travel agents.
However, others caution against taking bold statements -- or reassurances -- by startups at face value.
"Technology innovators learn communication skills by overstating the positive, underplaying the negative," said Mark Hass, marketing professor at Arizona State University.
But many startups reject the notion they're misleading on job impacts.
"The majority of people we're talking to aren't doing this because of efficiency. They're doing this because of top-line revenue growth," said Paloma Ochi of Decagon, a marketing AI startup. 
"And when the business grows, that's good for everyone. There are going to be more jobs for humans within that business."
"Most customers don't want to let people go," said Joshua Rumsey, a senior sales engineer at Aisera, whose AI agents are used in finance and HR. Though they are "looking to grow without hiring new agents as existing ones leave."
Given the disruptions, Hass advocated for greater transparency, warning that surprising the public with negative impacts on livelihoods could lead to backlash.
"Talking about the implications doesn't weaken the case for AI, because I think it's inevitable. Not talking about it in a wholesome way creates the opportunity for misunderstanding," he said.
tu/arp/dc

advertising

Market tracker expects brands' fear of Musk to boost X ad revenue

  • Emarketer forecast that Meta ad revenue will grow slightly more than 11 percent in the United States this year.
  • Emarketer on Wednesday forecast that ad revenue at X, formerly Twitter, will grow this year as brands fear retaliation by politically connected owner Elon Musk if they stay away.
  • Emarketer forecast that Meta ad revenue will grow slightly more than 11 percent in the United States this year.
Emarketer on Wednesday forecast that ad revenue at X, formerly Twitter, will grow this year as brands fear retaliation by politically connected owner Elon Musk if they stay away.
X's billionaire owner, the world's richest person, is a major financial backer of US President Donald Trump, and heads a Department of Government Efficiency that has been slashing the ranks of government employees.
"Many advertisers may view spending on X as a cost of doing business in order to mitigate potential legal or financial repercussions," said Emarketer principal analyst Jasmine Enberg.
"But fear is not a sustainable motivator and the situation remains volatile, partly as some consumers' discontent toward Musk grows."
Also factored into the expectation that X will have its first year of positive ad growth since 2021 was Meta's decision to drop or amend content moderation protocols, as the tech giant cozies up to Trump.
Industry watchers expect the hateful content that has flourished on X under Musk to also pervade Meta's platforms as the changes go into effect. 
Emarketer expects X ad revenue worldwide to grow 16.5 percent this year, after losing ground annually since Musk bought Twitter for about $44 billion in late 2022.
"X's ad business is recovering, but it's too soon to call it a rebound," Enberg said.
The social media platform's forecasted revenue this year will still be less than it was in 2019, according to Emarketer.
X has managed to attract advertising from small- and medium-sized businesses that Twitter historically struggled to win over, the analyst said.
Meta's recent decision to ease off on moderating content could be benefitting X, Enberg reasoned.
Emarketer forecast that Meta ad revenue will grow slightly more than 11 percent in the United States this year.
"While advertisers still care about brand safety, many are getting a reality check that they may not have as much control over where and how their ads show up as they thought," Enberg said.
"The kind of hateful and controversial content that prompted advertisers to flee X is no more acceptable, but there is a sense that it could become unavoidable."
gc/aha

currency

ECB's digital euro sparks flurry of online misinformation

BY MICHELLE FITZPATRICK WITH AFP BUREAUS

  • - 'Strategic autonomy' - The ECB and dozens of other central banks worldwide are exploring or putting in place central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as cash use declines.
  • European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde's recent remarks on a "digital euro" prompted a fresh wave of misinformation online, highlighting an uphill battle ahead to convince the public of the project's merits.
  • - 'Strategic autonomy' - The ECB and dozens of other central banks worldwide are exploring or putting in place central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as cash use declines.
European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde's recent remarks on a "digital euro" prompted a fresh wave of misinformation online, highlighting an uphill battle ahead to convince the public of the project's merits.
The decision to create a digital euro -- essentially an electronic form of cash backed by the ECB -- has not been made yet and any possible launch would be years away.
But when Lagarde in a press conference this month referenced an October 2025 deadline for moving to the next stage of preparations, social media lit up with alarmed messages that the launch was imminent.
Harald Vilimsky, a member of the European Parliament from Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), was among those posting that the ECB "wants to introduce the digital euro in October", an incorrect claim that spread in several languages.
The claim was echoed on X by Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, the eurosceptic head of the Rise Up France party, who added that the project was "madness for our freedoms".
Other widely shared posts repeated misconceptions that have long dogged the project: that a digital euro would mean the "end of cash" or be used for financial surveillance, allowing the ECB to "block" or "track" payments or "access savings".
"Your money will no longer be yours," alleged a French TikTok video shared more than 15,000 times. 
The falsehoods circulating online reveal a broader "mistrust of centralised institutions", said Vicky Van Eyck, executive director of campaign group Positive Money Europe.
Recent comments by French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen about investment needs were similarly misused in viral posts that falsely claimed people's savings would be taken from them.

'Strategic autonomy'

The ECB and dozens of other central banks worldwide are exploring or putting in place central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as cash use declines.
Conspiracy theories about governments planning cashless societies as way of controlling citizens have proliferated since the Covid-19 pandemic, but ECB officials have been at pains to stress that a digital euro would complement cash -- not replace it.
Issued by the ECB, the money would be risk-free. It would be held in a digital wallet and payments could be made online or offline, allowing for cash-like anonymity. The ECB says it would not be able to directly link transactions to specific individuals.
In making the case for a digital euro, the ECB argues that it would bolster Europe's "strategic autonomy".
A digital euro would allow for direct money transfers between users, offering a pan-European payment service that could reduce reliance on US payment giants such as Mastercard, Visa, Apple Pay or PayPal.
"This dependence exposes Europe to risks of economic pressure and coercion," ECB chief economist Philip Lane warned last week, in a nod to transatlantic tensions under US President Donald Trump. 
Lane said a digital euro could also counter the influence of increasingly popular dollar-backed "stablecoins" -- private digital currencies that are pegged to the US dollar and could undermine the euro if widely adopted in Europe.

Challenges

Some observers remain critical. 
Ignazio Angeloni, a former ECB official and currently a fellow at Milan's Bocconi University, said Europeans already had "a plethora" of easy payment options and weren't necessarily looking for another.
For now, the digital euro discussions were still at a fairly technical stage, Angeloni said, and many members of the public were "not interested". 
Van Eyck said interest could be hindered by plans to cap how many digital euros consumers could hold.
An ECB report published in March found that between 2022 and 2024, awareness about the digital euro jumped from 18 to 40 percent among eurozone survey respondents. The potential willingness to use it remained below 50 percent.
The decision to issue a digital euro will only come once European Union legislation is in place, but progress in Brussels has been slow. 
If adopted, a digital euro would be introduced from mid-2027 or 2028 at the earliest, officials told AFP.
Good communication with the public will be key to its success, said Van Eyck.
"The big issue with not having the public on board is that the digital euro could flop," she said.
mfp/spm/fox

economy

Filipinos see pathway from poverty with virtual assistant jobs

BY PAM CASTRO

  • - Risks and rewards - A recent TikTok video with tens of thousands of likes featured a virtual assistant slowly unveiling a screenshot of her pay for five days' work -- P29,400 ($512), more than double the monthly minimum wage in Manila.
  • Nathalie Mago's work day begins after she's tucked her three daughters into bed and flicked off the lights in their house north of the Philippine capital Manila.
  • - Risks and rewards - A recent TikTok video with tens of thousands of likes featured a virtual assistant slowly unveiling a screenshot of her pay for five days' work -- P29,400 ($512), more than double the monthly minimum wage in Manila.
Nathalie Mago's work day begins after she's tucked her three daughters into bed and flicked off the lights in their house north of the Philippine capital Manila.
As her young family sleeps, she fires up her laptop and begins discussing the day's agenda with her boss -- an American half a world away.
A "virtual assistant", Mago is one of a growing number of Filipinos flocking to the booming but unregulated sector in the face of a tight job market, low wages and frequently hellish commutes.
"It literally saved me," Mago told AFP. "I was able to support myself and my family at the same time."
A former office worker, the 32-year-old said she's now earning five times as much serving as the "right hand" of employers for whom she writes copy, manages social media and even buys family birthday gifts.
Government figures for the sector are unavailable as the role falls into no recognised job category, meaning legal protections are also effectively non-existent.
But Derek Gallimore, of advisory firm Outsource Accelerator, estimates the number of Filipino virtual assistants at around a million -- a number he expects to grow.
"It's the assumption that they can call their own shots, have more freedom and earn more money," Gallimore said of the job's allure, adding the reality may not always meet expectations.
Job-seeking platform Upwork lists the Philippines among the top five countries churning out virtual assistants, alongside India, Nigeria, Pakistan and the United States.
"We expect the growth of virtual assistant work in the Philippines to continue," said Teng Liu, an economist at Upwork Research Institute.
Filipinos' English proficiency made them a "strong fit" for global clients, he added, with Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States among the biggest markets.

Risks and rewards

A recent TikTok video with tens of thousands of likes featured a virtual assistant slowly unveiling a screenshot of her pay for five days' work -- P29,400 ($512), more than double the monthly minimum wage in Manila.
Several Facebook groups for virtual assistants -- whose tasks can include everything from marketing to making travel arrangements -- boast hundreds of thousands of followers who view the job as a path to a better life.
But there are risks associated with the sector.
"I know a lot of people who got scammed. The last one got scammed for 50,000 pesos," said Mago, describing a scheme in which a virtual assistant was tricked into paying for access to jobs that never materialised.
Others complete work for clients who then simply disappear, she said. 
Law lecturer Arnold de Vera, from the University of the Philippines, told AFP the industry lacks protections under Philippine law because it falls into no existing government category.
"They're invisible in the sense that they are generally treated not as Philippine employees," de Vera told AFP, noting most virtual assistants classify themselves as "self-employed".
No law forces employers outside the country to uphold agreements made with Philippines-based workers, he said.
"It's risky because there is no remedy involved but people are willing to take that risk because of the rewards they can reap."

A path home?

Lyann Lubrico is among those who think the reward is worth the risk. 
The 33-year-old, who became a virtual assistant after losing her job as an office manager in the United Arab Emirates, believes remote work can be a path home for overseas Filipino workers, or OFWs.
Now the owner of her own agency, Lubrico calls it her "mission" to give OFWs, whose remittances account for nearly 10 percent of national GDP, a way to make that money at home instead.
"I know some cleaners who grew old being cleaners abroad... I thought to myself, Filipinos shouldn't settle for this all their lives," she said, noting the abuse and discrimination faced by many.
Through a Facebook group called "Balikbayan (Returning Home) For Good", Lubrico has so far offered informal training to about 200 OFWs hoping to become virtual assistants.
"My mission is to enable overseas Filipinos to come home -- one at a time," said Lubrico.
But while a true believer in the sector, she agrees legal protections remain a crucial step.
Renato Paraiso, spokesman for the Philippines' Department of Information and Communications Technology, told AFP one key challenge is the fact that virtual assistant work "is borderless".
"That is something we should address," he said, adding that forging labour partnerships with other countries could be a path forward in protecting the rights of Filipinos. 
"If we have more protections I think more people will be encouraged to become virtual assistants," said Mago, working remotely for the American.
"I strongly believe if every household in the Philippines has (someone employed as) a virtual assistant, no one will be hungry."
fb-pam/cwl/rsc/pst

media

Trump downplays firestorm over leaked Yemen air strike chat

BY DANNY KEMP

  • Journalist Goldberg said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent information in the Signal chat about targets, weapons and timing ahead of the strikes on March 15.
  • US President Donald Trump downplayed a growing scandal Tuesday after a journalist was accidentally added to a group chat about air strikes on Yemen, denying any classified information was shared and defending a top aide over the breach.
  • Journalist Goldberg said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent information in the Signal chat about targets, weapons and timing ahead of the strikes on March 15.
US President Donald Trump downplayed a growing scandal Tuesday after a journalist was accidentally added to a group chat about air strikes on Yemen, denying any classified information was shared and defending a top aide over the breach.
Trump said he would "look into" the use of the Signal app as he put on a united front at a meeting with US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who inadvertently included The Atlantic magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg in the conversation of top national security officials.
As Democrats scented blood for perhaps the first time since the Republican returned to power in January, Trump doubled down by attacking Goldberg as a "sleazebag" and said "nobody gives a damn" about the story rocking Washington.
Journalist Goldberg said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent information in the Signal chat about targets, weapons and timing ahead of the strikes on March 15. Goldberg also revealed highly critical comments by top US officials about European allies. 
"There was no classified information," Trump told reporters when asked about the chat, saying that the commercial app Signal was used by "a lot of people in government."
Waltz said US technical and legal experts were looking into the breach but insisted he had "never met, don't know, never communicated" with the journalist.
He later told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that he took "full responsibility" for the breach, saying: "I built the group; my job is to make sure everything's coordinated."
Waltz suggested the leak was the result of him mistakenly saving Goldberg's number under another name.
"Have you ever had somebody's contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else's number?" he said.
Trump meanwhile said in an interview with Newsmax later on Tuesday that someone who "worked for Mike Waltz at a lower level" may have had Goldberg's number and somehow been responsible for him ending up in the chat.

'Sloppy, careless, incompetent'

The comments came as part of an aggressive Trump administration pushback against the scandal. 
US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe -- who were both reported to be in the chat -- endured a stormy Senate Intelligence Committee hearing over the leak.
"There was no classified material that was shared," Gabbard, who has previously caused controversy with comments sympathetic to Russia and Syria, told the panel.
Ratcliffe confirmed he was involved in the Signal group but said the communications were "entirely permissible and lawful."
Hegseth, a former Fox News host with no experience running a huge organization like the Pentagon, had said Monday that "nobody was texting war plans."
But Democrats on the committee called on Waltz and Hegseth to resign.
Senator Mark Warner blasted what he called "sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior."
Other White House officials also went on the attack against the Democratic narrative.
"Don't let enemies of America get away with these lies," White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said on X, describing the row as a "witch hunt."
Trump has repeatedly used the same term to dismiss an investigation into whether his 2016 election campaign colluded with Moscow.

 'Freeloading'

The Atlantic's bombshell report has sparked concerns over the use of a commercial app instead of secure government communications -- and about whether US adversaries may have been able to hack in.
Trump's special Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin when he was included in the group, CBS News reported.
The report also revealed potentially embarrassing details of what top White House officials think about key allies.
Trump said he agreed with Pentagon chief Hegseth's reported comments in the chat that European nations were "freeloading" off the United States.
"Yeah I think they've been freeloading," Trump told reporters. "The European Union's been absolutely terrible to us on trade."
In the chat, a user identified as JD Vance, the US vice president, opposed the strikes saying that "I just hate bailing Europe out again" as countries there were more affected by Huthi attacks on shipping than the United States.
A user identified as Hegseth replies: "I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It's PATHETIC."
The Huthi rebels, who have controlled much of Yemen for more than a decade, are part of the "axis of resistance" of pro-Iran groups staunchly opposed to Israel and the US.
They have launched scores of drone and missile attacks at ships passing Yemen in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden during the Gaza war, saying they were carried out in solidarity with Palestinians.
dk/wd/mlm

Yemen

What is Signal and is it secure?

  • - "Signal is a very solid platform because of the way that it goes about doing its business, the way that it frequently updates the app, the way that it uses end-to-end encryption," said Michael Daniel, former White House cybersecurity coordinator under Barack Obama and current head of the Cyber Threat Alliance.
  • Signal is an end-to-end encrypted messaging app that is considered one of the most secure in the world by security professionals, but was never intended to be the go-to choice for White House officials planning a military operation.
  • - "Signal is a very solid platform because of the way that it goes about doing its business, the way that it frequently updates the app, the way that it uses end-to-end encryption," said Michael Daniel, former White House cybersecurity coordinator under Barack Obama and current head of the Cyber Threat Alliance.
Signal is an end-to-end encrypted messaging app that is considered one of the most secure in the world by security professionals, but was never intended to be the go-to choice for White House officials planning a military operation.
What differentiates it from other messaging apps, and why has its use by top Trump officials planning strikes on Yemen raised concerns?

What is end-to-end encryption?

End-to-end encryption means that any sent message travels in a scrambled form and can only be deciphered by the end user. 
Nobody in between -- not the company providing the service, not your internet provider, nor hackers intercepting the message -- can read the content because they don't have the keys to unlock it.
Signal is not the only messaging service to do this, but unlike WhatsApp and Apple's iMessage, the app is controlled by an independent non-profit -- not a big tech behemoth motivated by revenue -- winning it more trust with those concerned about privacy.
Signal crucially goes further than WhatsApp on data privacy by making metadata such as when the message was delivered and who it was sent to invisible even to the company itself.
WhatsApp, meanwhile, shares information with its parent company Meta and third parties, including your phone number, mobile device information, and IP addresses.
For these reasons, Signal has always been a go-to messaging service for users especially concerned about communications secrecy, notably people working in security professions, journalists, and their sources.

Who owns Signal?

Founded in 2012, Signal is owned by the Mountain View, California-based Signal Foundation. 
Its history is linked to WhatsApp: the site was founded by cryptographer and entrepreneur Moxie Marlinspike, with an initial $50 million from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton.
Both Signal and WhatsApp, which was bought by Mark Zuckerberg in 2014, are based on the same protocol built by Marlinspike.
"We're not tied to any major tech companies, and we can never be acquired by one either," Signal's website reads. Development is mainly supported by grants and donations.
Very outspoken compared to other Silicon Valley bosses, Signal's CEO is Meredith Whittaker, who spent years working for Google, is a fierce critic of business models built on the extraction of personal data.

How secure is Signal?

"Signal is a very solid platform because of the way that it goes about doing its business, the way that it frequently updates the app, the way that it uses end-to-end encryption," said Michael Daniel, former White House cybersecurity coordinator under Barack Obama and current head of the Cyber Threat Alliance.
But "it was never built or intended to be used for discussing military plans," Daniel told AFP.
The real vulnerability, Daniel said, is not so much the app itself, "but everything that goes on around it. It's more that these (messages) are on personal devices that may or may not be stored in a secure manner or protected in the right way."
He noted that given their responsibilities, the high-level officials involved in the Yemen conversation would have communications teams capable of handling the conversation using the appropriate methods.
Coincidentally, the Pentagon warned staff in a memo last week against using Signal, according to NPR, citing threats from Russian hackers.
The Pentagon said that Russia was taking advantage of the app's linked devices feature -- which allows users to sign into their account from PCs and laptops -- to spy on conversations.
Daniel said that under normal circumstances, "it wouldn't have been that difficult to jump off their phones and do this in the proper protocols," he said, adding that having an outsider involved would have been impossible if the right technology was used.
Matthew Green, who teaches cryptography at Johns Hopkins University and has collaborated with the development of Signal, said on Bluesky that by asking it to step up to "military grade" communications, Signal was "being asked to do a lot!"
He warned that Signal, which shot up on the list of most downloaded apps after the revelation, could become a victim of its own success.
"As the only encrypted messenger people seem to 'really' trust, Signal is going to end up being a target for too many people," he said.
arp/wd

media

'Reasons to be optimistic': UK startups boost local news scene

BY AKSHATA KAPOOR

  • It is funded by some 500 paid subscribers, including readers and local businesses, who get an exclusive newsletter in return for helping keep the publication free for all.
  • On the second floor of a London furniture store, three journalists are busy finalising the latest edition of a newsletter, covering everything from local foodbank funding to a neighbourhood cafe.
  • It is funded by some 500 paid subscribers, including readers and local businesses, who get an exclusive newsletter in return for helping keep the publication free for all.
On the second floor of a London furniture store, three journalists are busy finalising the latest edition of a newsletter, covering everything from local foodbank funding to a neighbourhood cafe.
The Slice is a local magazine and a family of four hyper-local online news websites which serve the east London borough of Tower Hamlets -- one of the UK's most diverse, but deprived, neighbourhoods.
While local newspapers have been closing across the country, The Slice is "all about developing a model of local journalism that is financially sustainable in areas of deprivation", explained founder and editor Tabitha Stapely.
The Slice and its websites are owned by a non-profit organisation started by Stapely, a former fashion journalist. 
It is funded by some 500 paid subscribers, including readers and local businesses, who get an exclusive newsletter in return for helping keep the publication free for all.
Even the office location is a local affair, with the furniture store owner offering the space for free in exchange for occasional advertising.
"The most exciting thing about this job for me is that we're trying something new," said Agatha Scaggiante, deputy editor and only other full-time staff member alongside Stapely. 
The newsroom is a sliver of hope in the UK, blighted by so-called "news deserts" leaving around "4.8 million people... in an area with no dedicated local news coverage", said Jonathan Heawood, executive director of the Public Interest News Foundation (PINF).

Pop-up ads

Hit by a loss of revenues as audiences shift to other mostly online sources, almost 300 local UK newspapers closed their doors between 2005 and 2024, according to the Press Gazette.
Among these were family-owned newspapers in existence for generations, as well as newspapers that had been publishing for over 100 years.
Today's prevailing model of local news, which often comprises a website filled with articles loosely linked to the area and a torrent of pop-up ads, is leaving readers "uninspired and unengaged", Heawood told AFP.
As a result, even the around 1,200 remaining local news outlets are struggling with cuts and bleak resources.
According to Heawood, local news "has huge benefits socially", informing people of their local institutions and democratic processes, reducing polarisation and creating "pride in place". 
A news desert "is not just a grey area on a map. It's people feeling like they're left without someone who can represent them," said Heawood. "And people really, really mourn that."
Launched in 2018, The Slice is the only dedicated newspaper with a locally-based team serving Tower Hamlets' 300,000-plus residents, according to Stapely. Some 8,000 people have signed up for the newsletters.
During last year's general election, the team did video interviews with all the MP candidates in Tower Hamlets: "so people could actually see them".

'People need an example'

From Manchester to Glasgow, Joshi Herrmann's Mill Media is popularising another form of regional news: long-read features and deep-dives into everything from local culture to corruption.
Launching with the Manchester Mill in 2020, Herrmann now runs six local publications with around 20 staff across the UK.
They have investigated the toxic work culture at a Manchester university, and exposed a Labour party MP as the landlord of a children's home failing safety standards.
"We're in a race for people's attention and affection... So you've got to really change how you do things," Herrmann told AFP.
Primarily funded by subscribers set to reach 10,000 in coming months, Mill Media received significant backing during a seed round for investment in 2023. It boasts 500,000 readers and as of June it was breaking even, Herrmann said.
"It does feel like in the same way that people are pushing against fast fashion, people are pushing against fast news," said Victoria Munro, who writes for the Mill's sister publication, the Sheffield Tribune.
When The Mill launched in Manchester, Mancunian Sophie Atkinson thought it "seemed too good to be true". 
"Long-form journalism in Manchester -- that just hadn't existed for years," said Atkinson, now a senior editor.
And before the Tribune launched in 2021, Sheffield's over 500,000 residents were left with just one local daily.
"No one had done this kind of email-based, subscription-based local media thing," said Hermann. "People need an example that it can work."
Similar newsletter and subscription-based local initiatives have since popped up across the UK, said Herrmann.
"There are reasons to be optimistic", said Heawood. But, "I'm not confident that we're going to get through the next few years easily", he warned.
He called for greater government support and changes by big tech companies to make the internet a more profitable space for community and independent media.
On Wednesday, King Charles III will host a reception to showcase royal support for local journalism.
aks/jwp/jkb/cw/fox

AI

Does 'vibe coding' make everyone a programmer?

BY THOMAS URBAIN

  • The developer and entrepreneur was referring to the new generative AI models that produce lines of code on demand in everyday language, through writing or speech.
  • Can a complete tech novice create a website using everyday language on ChatGPT?
  • The developer and entrepreneur was referring to the new generative AI models that produce lines of code on demand in everyday language, through writing or speech.
Can a complete tech novice create a website using everyday language on ChatGPT?
That's the promise, misleading for some, of "vibe coding," the latest Silicon Valley catchphrase for an advance in generative AI that some say makes computer programming as simple as chatting online.
"You fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists," OpenAI co-founder and former Tesla employee Andrej Karpathy described in early February, in a message posted on X (formerly Twitter), using the term for the first time.
"I'm building a project or web app, but it's not really coding -- I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works," he said.
The developer and entrepreneur was referring to the new generative AI models that produce lines of code on demand in everyday language, through writing or speech.
The concept of "vibe coding" remained confined to the AI community until New York Times columnist Kevin Roose claimed to have created websites and apps without any knowledge of programming.
"Just having an idea, and a little patience, is usually enough," he wrote.
The ChatGPT and Claude interfaces can write an entire program line by line on demand, as can Gemini, which launched its dedicated version, Gemini Canvas, on Tuesday.
Other generative AI platforms specifically dedicated to coding have also made their mark in recent months, from Cursor to Loveable, or Bolt, Replit and Windsurf.
"Maybe, just maybe, we're looking at a fundamental shift in how software is created and who creates it," said online marketing specialist Mattheo Cellini on Substack.
"It's unlikely to make coding irrelevant, but it may change the way developers work," suggested Yangfeng Ji, professor of computer science at the University of Virginia.
"This could lead to some job displacement, particularly for those focused solely on basic coding tasks."
Even before "vibe coding," a downturn was being seen by some in IT employment as the first effects of generative AI began to be felt.
The sector shed nearly 10,000 jobs in the US in February, according to the Department of Labor, and its headcount is at a three-year low.

Expertise needed?

Among code novices, many find it hard to catch the vibe.
"People who do not have programming expertise often struggle to use these kinds of models because they don't have the right kinds of tools or knowledge to actually evaluate the output," said Nikola Banovic, professor of computer science at the University of Michigan.
On social media, the few newbies who report on their "vibe coding" quickly complain that it's not as easy as some want to believe.
Without mastering computing complexities like digital directories, runtime environments or application programming interfaces (APIs), it's hard to create an app that works.
Despite his coding knowhow, Claude Rubinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Houston-Downtown, wanted to create an application for his students two years ago without tinkering with the code generated by ChatGPT.
After a lot of trial and error, the app finally worked, but "I'm convinced it wouldn't have worked if I hadn't understood the code," which allowed him to guide the interface using the appropriate language.
This brought home the importance of the "prompt": mastering the request submitted to obtain the desired result.
"Programmers have certain levels of AI literacy that allows them to get what they want out of the models," said Banovic.
Everyday users "will not know how to prompt," he warned.
tu/arp/dw/aha

Russia

Hijacking news: Fake media sites sow Ukraine disinformation

BY ANUJ CHOPRA WITH JOHANNA LEHN IN BERLIN AND BOZHIDAR ANGUELOFF IN SOFIA

  • Earlier this month, Clear Story News falsely reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was using US taxpayer dollars to pay Western media journalists to target Trump.
  • A fake news website falsely claimed that Ukraine's president is paying Western reporters to tarnish US President Donald Trump -- part of a series of deceptive reports spread by Russian-linked portals mimicking media outlets.
  • Earlier this month, Clear Story News falsely reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was using US taxpayer dollars to pay Western media journalists to target Trump.
A fake news website falsely claimed that Ukraine's president is paying Western reporters to tarnish US President Donald Trump -- part of a series of deceptive reports spread by Russian-linked portals mimicking media outlets.
The disinformation tactic, amid heightened international efforts to halt the three-year war with Russia, seeks to undermine both Ukraine and public trust in mainstream media, researchers say.
This adds to the increasingly troubling trend of attributing false information to established media brands, illustrating how the news medium is being actively hijacked to advance Ukraine-related disinformation.
Earlier this month, Clear Story News falsely reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was using US taxpayer dollars to pay Western media journalists to target Trump.
The article was accompanied with an image of a letter purportedly sent by Zelensky's office to the leader of Ukraine's parliament, demanding that a "plan" be developed to "create a negative image" of Trump.
The letter appeared fabricated, with the seal and signature digitally altered and the formatting inconsistent with official letters from Zelensky's office, disinformation watchdog NewsGuard said, citing analysis from the media verification platform InVID.
NewsGuard called Clear Story News a Russian influence site linked to John Mark Dougan, a US fugitive turned Kremlin propagandist.
The article and purported letter were published a week later on USATimes.news, which researchers said was another apparently Russian-backed site.

 'Piggybacking on credibility'

The fake sites seek to make false information appear more credible and believable by exploiting public trust in legitimate media.
"These sites are often designed to mimic the tone, layout, and branding of traditional local news in order to launder false narratives through seemingly trustworthy, independent sources," NewsGuard researcher McKenzie Sadeghi told AFP.
"It's less about directly attacking the media and more about piggybacking on its credibility to reach audiences who might otherwise be skeptical of state-backed propaganda sources."
NewsGuard has identified 1,265 sites that present themselves as neutral news outlets but are backed by or tied to partisan groups or hostile governments, including Russia and Iran.
Last month, AFP's fact-checkers debunked a false claim that Zelensky had bought Adolf Hitler's former retreat, the Eagle's Nest, in the German state of Bavaria.
The claim was shared by aktuell-nachricht.de, a German-language site that purports to be a media outlet, without a publication date or the author's name. The site listed a company name and an address on its about page, but AFP was unable to locate either.
The site is linked to a Russian influence network dubbed Storm-1516, according to the German nonprofit Correctiv.
Western intelligence officials and disinformation researchers have associated the network with Dougan, a former Florida deputy sheriff, who fled to Russia while facing a slew of charges including extortion.

 'Irony'

"The irony is that the bad actors behind these operations are often dismissive and even downright hostile to mainstream news outlets yet go to great lengths to imitate it," Sadeghi said.
The blizzard of falsehoods promoted by such sites reflects a new normal in the age of information chaos, which researchers say is stoking distrust in the mainstream press.
Propaganda-spewing websites have typically relied on armies of writers, but generative artificial intelligence tools now offer a significantly cheaper and faster way to fabricate content that is often hard to decipher from authentic information.
Adding to the trend is the growing tactic of attributing false information to legitimate media organizations.
These include a video styled as a Wall Street Journal report promoting the false claim that US Vice President JD Vance rebuffed a top Ukrainian official.
Another was a fake Economist magazine cover that warned of an "apocalypse" and World War III over US military support for Ukraine.
"Disinformation actors are deliberately mimicking the names, logos, and formatting of trusted news organizations, including by using AI, to make their false claims appear legitimate," a separate NewsGuard report warned.
"They exploit the credibility of these organizations and aim to increase the chances that the false narrative will spread widely and be believed despite being baseless."
burs-ac/des

podcast

Too chummy with Trumpies? California governor's podcast rattles both sides

BY ANDREW MARSZAL

  • Right-wing podcasts rarely reach across the aisle to feature Democratic guests, and are often "talking to themselves," she noted.
  • A jovial new podcast in which California Governor Gavin Newsom pals around with provocative right-wing guests has infuriated the Democratic Party, as its leaders clash over the best way to fight back against Donald Trump.
  • Right-wing podcasts rarely reach across the aisle to feature Democratic guests, and are often "talking to themselves," she noted.
A jovial new podcast in which California Governor Gavin Newsom pals around with provocative right-wing guests has infuriated the Democratic Party, as its leaders clash over the best way to fight back against Donald Trump.
In an apparent bid to court centrist US voters, Newsom -- a presumed frontrunner for the Democratic leadership -- this month launched "This is Gavin Newsom," pledging to talk to "those I fundamentally disagree with." 
Across the first few episodes, Newsom banters with Republicans like activist Charlie Kirk and firebrand Steve Bannon, agreeing with many of their views, like barring trans women from female sports.
Many Democrats on the party's left flank have blasted Newsom for providing a platform to views and figures they consider to be taboo, and failing to push back on his guests' inflammatory statements and lies.
But some Republicans like Anne Dunsmore, a veteran fundraiser who has spearheaded efforts to recall Newsom in California, say the strategy is smarter than it appears.
"He's doing what everybody else ought to be doing," she said. "The guy is not stupid."
This week, conservative host Megyn Kelly cautioned against Republicans going on the podcast, warning it may help a potential future Democratic nominee build "an audience that's large and can appeal to both sides."
Right-wing voices dominate the United States' most popular podcasts, which were widely credited with aiding Trump's victory last November. Democrats have struggled to gain a foothold in the booming medium.
"I don't like to see it, because my own feeling is this guy's in training for 2028... we should not be helping him," said Kelly, on her podcast.
According to Dunsmore, Newsom could even be out-flanking the Republicans' own strategy.
Right-wing podcasts rarely reach across the aisle to feature Democratic guests, and are often "talking to themselves," she noted.
By speaking to the other side rather than fellow Democrats, Newsom is distancing himself from his party's unpopular positions on issues like trans athletes, said Dunsmore.
"This podcast is Gavin Newsom mitigating the extremism he's been required to cater to for the last 10 years," she said.
"And he's killing two birds with one stone -- he doesn't have to deal with his own party crazies."

'Extremists'

For some Democrats, this strategy is dangerous and counter-productive.
Newsom notably twice failed to correct Bannon's claims that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. 
Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, also widely expected to seek the Democratic nomination, this week hit out at Newsom.
"Steve Bannon espouses hatred and anger, and even at some points violence, and I don't think we should give him oxygen on any platform, ever, anywhere," he said.
Newsom's most recent episode featured Democrat Tim Walz. But he has hinted that Tucker Carlson, another Trump favorite, could be a future guest.
Sacramento-based strategist Steven Maviglio said Newsom's strategy of speaking with "right-wing extremists" is "not helpful to the Democratic cause."
But he also questioned whether it even benefits Newsom, who would first need to win the Democratic nomination in order to run for the White House.
"To be president in 2028 you're going to have to appeal to Democratic primary voters first," said Maviglio.
"Frankly he has a day job -- he's governor of a state with lots of challenges that he's been not fulfilling... I think he'd be better served doing his job."

'Breaking bread'

Newsom has a history of making bold overtures beyond his own liberal state.
In recent years, he has run pro-choice abortion ads in Alabama, debated Florida governor Ron DeSantis on Fox News, and campaigned for then-president Joe Biden in red states like Idaho.
Capturing national media attention may be the main goal, said Steve Caplan, who teaches communications and marketing at University of Southern California.
"Is it what Democrats want in this moment, to be breaking bread with the Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon to the world? The answer is no," Caplan said.
"Apparently he's comfortable with going in a different direction. Will it pay off? It's a long time between now and the election."
Until then, even Newsom's right-wing guests seem perplexed by their host's all-out courtship.
"It was like almost nauseatingly positive, right?" Kirk later reflected. "In that way it was very difficult to navigate."
amz/bgs