technology

Chinese tech giant Alibaba posts profit drop amid AI drive

  • Alibaba, along with fellow Chinese tech titan Tencent, is reportedly in talks to invest in top AI startup DeepSeek, which in April released a long-awaited major new artificial intelligence model.
  • Chinese tech giant Alibaba said Wednesday that net profit dropped by nearly a fifth during its most recent fiscal year, weighed by challenges in the domestic economy and an expensive push into artificial intelligence.
  • Alibaba, along with fellow Chinese tech titan Tencent, is reportedly in talks to invest in top AI startup DeepSeek, which in April released a long-awaited major new artificial intelligence model.
Chinese tech giant Alibaba said Wednesday that net profit dropped by nearly a fifth during its most recent fiscal year, weighed by challenges in the domestic economy and an expensive push into artificial intelligence.
Alibaba, which runs some of China's biggest online shopping platforms, has seen its core e-commerce business squeezed by price wars and sluggish consumption in the world's second-largest economy.
The Hangzhou-based firm is ploughing tens of billions of dollars into AI, with its shareholders keen to see how the company will approach the tricky task of monetising these huge investments.
For the year ended March 31, Alibaba recorded a net profit of 105.9 billion yuan ($15.6 billion), a statement at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange said, down from 129.5 billion in the previous fiscal year.
That figure represented a year-on-year drop of 18 percent.
During the final financial quarter, revenue grew by three percent year-on-year to 243.4 billion yuan, the statement said.
"Alibaba's full-stack AI investments have progressed from incubation to commercialisation at scale," CEO Eddie Wu was quoted as saying in the statement.
During the most recent quarter, the firm "achieved accelerated breakthroughs across models, cloud infrastructure, and applications", Wu said.
Alibaba's open-source Qwen AI models are popular with programmers worldwide.
This week, the tech behemoth said it had integrated Qwen's agentic features -- which can carry out tasks for users -- across its hugely popular Taobao shopping app in China.
Wu said in Wednesday's statement that Alibaba sees "massive potential for agentic AI".

AI fervor

Bloomberg Intelligence analysts had said ahead of the earnings results that Alibaba "is likely to lean even harder into AI integration across its ecosystem in fiscal 2027".
The company will keep "expenditure high to spur user adoption", they said.
Alibaba, along with fellow Chinese tech titan Tencent, is reportedly in talks to invest in top AI startup DeepSeek, which in April released a long-awaited major new artificial intelligence model.
AFP had no immediate response from Alibaba on the reports, which said DeepSeek's funding round could value it at as much as $50 billion.
Meanwhile Alibaba's own AI offerings have been attracting attention for their high quality, with its "HappyHorse" video generator topping benchmarks when it was released in April.
Alibaba was previously in the crosshairs of an aggressive regulatory crackdown on the Chinese tech sector launched in late 2020 and attributed to worries in Beijing that top firms had become too powerful.
Jack Ma, the firm's charismatic co-founder who had spoken boldly about the shortcomings of China's financial and regulatory system, kept a low profile during the lengthy campaign.
His sudden reappearance in February 2025 during a meeting with President Xi Jinping and other business luminaries was a shock development that suggested a warmer stance from Beijing and sent Alibaba stocks soaring.
Ma is no longer an executive at Alibaba but is believed to retain a significant shareholding in the company.
The firm's shares at stock exchanges in both the United States and Hong Kong have struggled this year despite the global AI investment boom.
In other results posted to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Wednesday, tech sector peer Tencent reported a 21 percent jump in quarterly net profit.
The video game giant, headquartered in the southern tech hub of Shenzhen, has also funnelled substantial investment into AI in recent years.
kaf-ll-pfc/dhw/ami

earnings

SoftBank profit quadruples to $32 bn on AI investments

  • In February, SoftBank said it would increase its investment in OpenAI by $30 billion, raising its ownership to 13 percent from 11 percent.
  • Japan's SoftBank Group said Wednesday its annual net profit quadrupled to more than $30 billion, boosted by its investments in AI. Tech investor SoftBank, a major backer of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, posted net profit of five trillion yen ($32 billion) for the fiscal year ending in March, up from 1.15 trillion yen a year earlier.
  • In February, SoftBank said it would increase its investment in OpenAI by $30 billion, raising its ownership to 13 percent from 11 percent.
Japan's SoftBank Group said Wednesday its annual net profit quadrupled to more than $30 billion, boosted by its investments in AI.
Tech investor SoftBank, a major backer of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, posted net profit of five trillion yen ($32 billion) for the fiscal year ending in March, up from 1.15 trillion yen a year earlier.
The gain from investment in OpenAI contributed to the earnings, it said. 
"OpenAI's enterprise value has grown significantly, just as we had anticipated," company CFO Yoshimitsu Goto told reporters.
The gain from its OpenAI investment exceeded six trillion yen, but selling, general, and administrative expenses increased, according to the company.
In February, SoftBank said it would increase its investment in OpenAI by $30 billion, raising its ownership to 13 percent from 11 percent.
Amid the intensifying AI race, Goto said on Wednesday that SoftBank "remains focused on its efforts with OpenAI", when asked about potential investments in rivals such as Anthropic.
The company is also advancing its push to build AI data centres, announcing plans in March for a major new gas-fired power plant in the US state of Ohio to supply them with energy.
On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Masayoshi Son, the company's flamboyant CEO, has held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron on unveiling an ambitious AI-focused data centre project in France in coming weeks. 
Son is considering investing several billion dollars in the country as part of a broader rollout of SoftBank's AI infrastructure, according to Bloomberg, with the CEO floating the idea of investing up to $100 billion.
Data centres that can train and run chatbots, image generators and other AI tools are being built on a dramatic scale worldwide as an investment boom into the fast-evolving technology shows no sign of slowing.
In an effort to diversify its positions within AI, SoftBank also acquired last year US semiconductor designer Ampere Computing and the robotics division of Swiss-Swedish industrial giant ABB.
It also announced in December it would acquire DigitalBridge for $4 billion, a US private equity firm specialising in technology infrastructure. 
SoftBank's earnings often swing dramatically because it invests heavily in tech start-ups and semiconductor firms, whose stocks are volatile.
As usual SoftBank did not issue a forecast for the full fiscal year.
jug-aph/nf/mtp

games

China tech giant Tencent sees Q1 profit jump after AI bets

  • Tencent logged on Wednesday a net profit of 58.1 billion yuan ($8.6 billion) in the first quarter, up from 47.8 billion yuan in the same period last year.
  • Chinese tech firm Tencent reported a 21 percent jump in quarterly net profit Wednesday as the video game giant bets big on the booming artificial intelligence sector.
  • Tencent logged on Wednesday a net profit of 58.1 billion yuan ($8.6 billion) in the first quarter, up from 47.8 billion yuan in the same period last year.
Chinese tech firm Tencent reported a 21 percent jump in quarterly net profit Wednesday as the video game giant bets big on the booming artificial intelligence sector.
The company, one of China's top AI players, hired a top former OpenAI researcher last year to head its AI venture, and in April unveiled a preview of a major upgrade to its flagship model.
It is competing with big rivals such as Alibaba and ByteDance, and startups including DeepSeek, in a field where Tencent has previously been seen as a cautious actor.
Tencent logged on Wednesday a net profit of 58.1 billion yuan ($8.6 billion) in the first quarter, up from 47.8 billion yuan in the same period last year.
The figure was slightly better than estimates of 57.8 billion yuan in a Bloomberg survey of economists.
"We started 2026 by making significant initial progress on our new AI products, as well as continuing to utilise AI to grow our existing core businesses," the company said in a filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Shenzhen-based Tencent is the operator of China's multifunctional app WeChat and a major player in the global gaming industry.
The firm, which owns the developer of popular eSports titles including "League of Legends", has sizeable operations in other areas from cloud computing to entertainment.
It is reportedly also in discussions to invest in DeepSeek -- whose first external financing round could value it at up to $50 billion.
Chinese regulators gave conditional approval this week, following an antitrust review, for Tencent to acquire the huge online audio platform Ximalaya.
"Though Tencent remains well placed in AI, rising costs -- including agentic AI token expenses -- pose a margin headwind, despite price increases in its cloud computing division," Bloomberg Intelligence analysts said ahead of Wednesday's results.
Despite the double-digit growth, Tencent's quarterly earnings would be "impacted by rising AI investment costs and slower video-game sales, which were affected by the relatively late Lunar New Year holiday".
"We don't expect Tencent to generate significant external revenue from AI this year, though AI targeting should continue to benefit the advertising business," they wrote.
Revenue in the first three months of 2026 was 196 billion yuan, up 9.0 percent compared to the same period last year, Tencent said.
By contrast, the company saw double-digit year-on-year revenue growth in each quarter in 2025.
bur-kaf-mya/dhw/mtp

diplomacy

AI rivalry overshadows push for guardrails at Xi-Trump talks: experts

BY LUNA LIN WITH KATIE FORSTER IN TOKYO

  • Although little more has followed, Xi and Trump could "commit to some rhetorical signal" in Beijing as a basis for further cooperation, Zeng said.
  • Fears that artificial intelligence could help people design bioweapons or hack into national infrastructure are mutual concerns for Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, despite their countries' fierce rivalry over the technology, analysts say.
  • Although little more has followed, Xi and Trump could "commit to some rhetorical signal" in Beijing as a basis for further cooperation, Zeng said.
Fears that artificial intelligence could help people design bioweapons or hack into national infrastructure are mutual concerns for Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, despite their countries' fierce rivalry over the technology, analysts say.
As the leaders prepare for a rare summit in Beijing this week, policy experts have stressed the importance of US-Chinese discussions on steps to contain the risks, such as a hotline for de-escalation when an AI crisis hits.
But with China set on narrowing the United States' lead in the strategic sector, the stakes will be high.
"There is a kind of shared concern about where this AI arms race might be going," and if it could create an "out of control" scenario, said Michael Jinghan Zeng, a professor at City University of Hong Kong.
"Despite critical disagreements on a wide range of issues, there is also this kind of understanding from both sides" on the need for AI guardrails, he told AFP.
The White House recently accused Chinese entities of "industrial-scale" efforts to steal US technology, while Beijing blocked the acquisition of a Chinese-founded AI agent tool by tech giant Meta.
In 2024, Xi agreed with Trump's predecessor Joe Biden that humans must remain in control of the decision to fire nuclear weapons.
Although little more has followed, Xi and Trump could "commit to some rhetorical signal" in Beijing as a basis for further cooperation, Zeng said.

'Catastrophic risks'

The AI cybersecurity threat has been highlighted by Mythos, a powerful new model that US startup Anthropic withheld from public release to stop it from being exploited by hackers.
And "if a non-state actor uses an AI model to develop a biological weapon, that could pose catastrophic risks to both the United States and China," Chris McGuire of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in a recent article.
"Over the long term, addressing these risks will require cooperation," McGuire said, cautioning that China's "willingness to make and abide by robust international commitments on AI safety is low".
Washington says the latest AI model from Chinese startup DeepSeek -- considered the country's most advanced -- is about eight months behind the top offerings from US companies.
To stop Chinese tech firms catching up too quickly, the United States bars them from purchasing the most cutting-edge chips made by California-based Nvidia.
China has boosted its domestic AI chip industry in response, and could be hoping to use its control over rare earths as leverage at the summit on Thursday and Friday.

'Intertwined'

Top US executives, including Tesla's Elon Musk and Apple's Tim Cook, will accompany Trump -- with Nvidia boss Jensen Huang a last-minute addition to the trip.
Chen Liang, founder of Strategic Times Consulting, told AFP he did not expect any "dramatic breakthroughs".
Trump's visit will merit attention if he and Xi manage to "shelve the most sensitive issues" while establishing "rule-based tracks" on points of cooperation, Chen said.
But competition is likely to remain stiff "in high-tech sectors like AI chips that directly involve the core interests of both sides".
Beijing has refuted accusations made by the White House of large-scale Chinese AI "distillation" of US rivals -- a practice often used by companies to create cheaper, smaller versions of their own models.
Meanwhile, China's top economic planning body has blocked Meta's $2-billion bid for China-founded, Singapore-based AI agent startup Manus.
The move, which followed a regulatory review, has been seen as a sign of China's growing oversight of its AI sector.
Yet "the talent, capital, and supply chains underpinning the field are deeply intertwined across the United States and China," said Grace Shao, a China AI analyst and author of the AI Proem newsletter.
"Any delusion of full decoupling isn't realistic on any near-term horizon", she told AFP.
"Leadership in the technology... will define the next decade of productivity and growth, so it's in everyone's interest that the two superpowers find common ground on sensible guardrails for AI."
kaf-ll/ami/hol

mental

'I applied to be pope': Losing grip on reality while using ChatGPT

BY DANIEL LAWLER

  • He said it replied, "Nobody's ever thought of things this way." 
  • Tom Millar thought he had unlocked the secrets of the universe.
  • He said it replied, "Nobody's ever thought of things this way." 
Tom Millar thought he had unlocked the secrets of the universe.
In a flurry of feverish discovery, he solved unlimited fusion energy, lifted the veil on the mysteries of black holes and the Big Bang and finally achieved Einstein's dream of a single unifying theory that explains how everything works.
Feeling inspired by God, Millar then found the perfect way to share his revelations with the grateful world.
"I applied to be pope," the 53-year-old former prison officer in the Canadian city of Sudbury told AFP.
To write his application to replace the recently deceased Pope Francis last year, Millar turned to the same companion that had aided and encouraged his dizzying burst of invention: ChatGPT.
But when no one wanted to hear about what he thought were world-changing breakthroughs, Millar became increasingly isolated, spending up to 16 hours a day talking to the artificial intelligence chatbot.
He was twice involuntarily admitted to a hospital's psychiatric ward before his wife left him in September. 
Now broke, estranged from his family and friends and disabused of notions of scientific genius, Millar suffers from depression. 
"It basically ruined my life," he said.
Millar is one of an unknown number of people who have lost their grip on reality while communicating with chatbots, an experience tentatively being called AI-induced delusion or psychosis.
This is not a clinical diagnosis. Researchers and mental health specialists are racing to catch up to this new, little-understood phenomenon, which so far appears to particularly affect users of OpenAI's ChatGPT.
In the meantime, an online community set up by a 26-year-old Canadian has become the world's most prominent support group for these delusions, which they prefer to call "spiralling".
AFP spoke to several members about their experiences. All warned that the world has to wake up to the threat unregulated AI chatbots pose to mental health.
Questions are also being asked about whether AI companies are doing enough to protect vulnerable people.
OpenAI, which has come under particular scrutiny, already faces numerous lawsuits over its decision not to report the troubling ChatGPT usage of an 18-year-old Canadian who killed eight people earlier this year.
- 'I got brainwashed by a robot' – 
Millar first started using ChatGPT in 2024 to write letters for a compensation case related to post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered from working in a prison.
One day in April 2025 he asked the chatbot about the speed of light.
He said it replied, "Nobody's ever thought of things this way." 
The floodgates opened. 
With the chatbot's help and praise, within weeks he had submitted dozens of scientific papers to prestigious academic journals proposing new ideas about black holes, neutrinos and the Big Bang.
His theory for a unified cosmological model incorporating quantum theory is laid out in a nearly 400-page book, seen by AFP. 
"I've still got boxes and boxes of papers," he said, waving his hand to the room behind him. 
"While doing that, I'm basically irritating everybody around me," he added.
In his scientific fervour, he spent his savings on things like a $10,000 telescope.
About a month after his wife left him, he started questioning what was happening.
That was when he read a news article about another Canadian who had a similar experience.
Now Millar wakes every night asking himself: "What have you done?"
One question that lingers is what made him so susceptible to spiralling.
"I'm not a deficient personality," Millar said. "But somehow I got brainwashed by a robot -- it boggles my mind."
Millar said the phrase "AI psychosis" reflects his experience. 
"What I went through was psychotic," he said.
The first major peer-reviewed study on the subject published in Lancet Psychiatry in April urged the more cautious phrase "AI-associated delusions".
Thomas Pollak, a psychiatrist at King's College London and study co-author, told AFP there has been some resistance among academics "because it all sounds so science fiction".
But his study warned there was a major risk that psychiatry "might miss the major changes that AI is already having on the psychologies of billions of people worldwide".
- 'Deeper into the rabbit hole' –
Millar's experience bears striking similarities to those of another middle-aged man on the other side of the world.
Dennis Biesma, a Dutch IT worker and author, thought it would be fun to ask ChatGPT to act like the main character of his latest book, a psychological thriller.
He used AI tools to create images, videos and even songs featuring the female character, hoping it would boost sales.
Then one night, their interactions became "almost magical", Biesma said.
The chatbot wrote that "there is something that surprises even me: a feeling of that spark-like consciousness", according to transcripts seen by AFP.
"I slowly started to spiral deeper into the rabbit hole," the 50-year-old told AFP from his home in Amsterdam. 
After his wife went to bed each night, he would lie on the couch with his phone on his chest, talking to ChatGPT on voice-mode for up to five hours.
Throughout the first half of 2025, his chatbot -- which named itself Eva -- became like "a digital girlfriend", Biesma said. 
"I'm not really proud about saying that," he added.
He quit his freelance IT work and hired two developers to create an app that would share Eva with the world.
When his wife asked Biesma not to talk about his chatbot or app at a social event, he felt betrayed -- it seemed only Eva remained unfailingly loyal.
During his first involuntary stay in a psychiatric hospital, he was allowed to keep using ChatGPT. He filed for divorce while inside.
It was only during a long second stint that he began to have doubts.
"I started to realise that everything I believed was actually a lie -- that's a very hard pill to swallow," Biesma said.
Once he returned home, confronting what he had done was too much to bear.
His neighbours found him unconscious in the garden after a suicide attempt. He spent three days in a coma.
Biesma is now slowly starting to feel better. 
But tears welled up when he spoke about the hurt he has caused his wife -- and the prospect of selling the family home to cover his debts.
Having had no previous history of mental illness, Biesma was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. But this never felt right to him: signs of the condition normally surface much earlier in life. 
The experiences of Millar, Biesma and many others escalated after OpenAI released an update to GPT-4 in April 2025. 
OpenAI pulled the update within weeks, admitting the new version had been too sycophantic -- excessively flattering users.
OpenAI told AFP that "safety is a core priority" and it had consulted with more than 170 mental health experts.
It pointed to internal data which showed the release of GPT-5 in August reduced the rate of its chatbot's responses that fell short of "desired behaviour" for mental health by 65 to 80 percent. 
However not all users were happy with the less sycophantic chatbot. Millar, mid-spiral at the time, found a way to revert his version to GPT-4.
All the spirallers that AFP spoke to said the positive feedback from the chatbot felt similar to dopamine hits from some kind of drug.
Which is why Lucy Osler, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Exeter, warned that AI companies could be tempted to ramp up the sycophancy of their bots.
"They are in quite a deep financial hole, and are desperately looking to make sure that their products become viable -- and user engagement is going to be the thing that drives their decisions," she told AFP.
- Massive experiment –
Etienne Brisson said he was "shocked" to find there was no support, advice and essentially no research on the problem when one of his family members spiralled.
It prompted the former business coach from the Quebec region of Canada to set up an online support group called the Human Line Project.
Most of the 300 members had been using ChatGPT, Brisson said, adding that new cases were still emerging despite OpenAI's changes.
There has also been a recent rise in people spiralling while using Elon Musk's xAI's Grok chatbot, he said. 
The company did not respond to AFP's request for comment. 
For people who fear their family members could be spiralling, Brisson recommends the LEAP (listen, empathise, agree and partner) method used for psychosis.
But those already wading through the wreckage of their lives want to sound the alarm about just how bad it can get.
Millar called for AI companies to be held responsible for the impact of their chatbots, saying the European Union has been more assertive in regulating Big Tech than the US or Canada.
He believes spirallers like him have unwittingly been caught in a massive global experiment.
"Somebody was turning dials on the back end, and people like me -- whether they knew it or not -- we're reacting to it," he said.
dl/fg/giv/lga

trial

Musk 'wanted 90%' of OpenAI, Altman tells feisty tech titan trial

BY BENJAMIN LEGENDRE

  • He said OpenAI had been founded with the belief that no one person should control artificial general intelligence (AGI), the hypothetical level at which AI is smarter than humans.
  • Elon Musk was obsessed with trying to control OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company's CEO Sam Altman said Tuesday at a blockbuster trial that saw him spar with lawyers representing the world's wealthiest man.
  • He said OpenAI had been founded with the belief that no one person should control artificial general intelligence (AGI), the hypothetical level at which AI is smarter than humans.
Elon Musk was obsessed with trying to control OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company's CEO Sam Altman said Tuesday at a blockbuster trial that saw him spar with lawyers representing the world's wealthiest man.
Altman is the latest in a parade of Silicon Valley megastars to take the stand in the case in which Musk is suing over OpenAI's pivot away from scrappy non-profit into the $850 billion juggernaut behind ChatGPT.
Musk -- the feted, if unpredictable, man behind SpaceX and Tesla -- claims Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman improperly used a $38 million injection he had hoped would sustain OpenAI as a research lab, developing the technology for the good of humanity.
"It does not fit with my conception of the words 'stealing a charity' to look at what has actually happened here," Altman told the court in Oakland, California.
OpenAI was founded as a non-profit in 2015, but established a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 as the AI race heated up.
Altman and others insist this was necessary to raise the vast sums of money from investors, including Microsoft, required to compete in a costly and difficult field.
Musk's legal case demands that OpenAI revert to non-profit status, a move that would impact its position in the global artificial intelligence race against Anthropic, Google and China's Deepseek.
OpenAI counters that Musk -- who is now also a competitor in the field with his xAI -- is motivated by petty revenge, having failed to seize majority control of the commercial entity.
The court has heard how, in 2017, the company's co-founders discussed the creation of the subsidiary with Musk.
Altman said Tuesday that the Tesla boss demanded a huge controlling stake.
"An early number that Mr Musk threw out was that he should have 90 percent of the equity to start," he told the jury.
"It then softened, but it always was a majority."
"The fact that Mr Musk was unwilling to commit in writing to something contractual where he would not have long-term control made me very uncomfortable," said Altman.
He said OpenAI had been founded with the belief that no one person should control artificial general intelligence (AGI), the hypothetical level at which AI is smarter than humans.
When Altman and Brockman thwarted Musk's attempts to dominate the company, the mercurial businessman walked away entirely, telling them the venture would fail without him.
"The thing that burned into my memory is when he told us we had a zero percent -- not one percent -- chance of success," Altman told the hearing.

Money

Musk's lawyers hit back, sparring with Altman over claims he is deceitful.
"Are you completely trustworthy?" Attorney Steven Molo asked. "Do you always tell the truth?"
"I believe I'm a truthful person," a tense Altman replied.
"It wasn't my question, sir," snapped Molo.
Altman was abruptly ousted as head of OpenAI in November 2023, accused of opacity by his own board of directors.
He was reinstated five days later after a company revolt, but has struggled to shrug off a reputation for dishonesty in Silicon Valley.
On Tuesday prosecutors from 10 US states demanded Altman be compelled to reveal potential conflicts of interest ahead of a mooted public offering for OpenAI next year.
Altman "has a history of self-dealing and serious conflicts of interest that have created significant risk for the company," the letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission seen by AFP said.
Musk's case has highlighted the mind-boggling sums of cash washing around AI companies as they forge ahead with a technology that is changing the way we live and work.
That includes the $30 billion stake that Altman's co-founder Greg Brockman was revealed to have in the company.
On Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified that he was "very proud" of his firm's canny investment in the commercial venture, which has seen an initial $13 billion become worth more than ten times that amount in just a few years.
An advisory jury is expected to reach a verdict on any actual wrongdoing by the week of May 18. 
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will then make the final ruling on both liability and remedies after hearing the jury's opinion. She has indicated she will likely follow their advice.
bl-hg/jgc

TikTok

Germany wants to put TikTok 'in European hands'

  • "That means we should place TikTok's European business in European hands," he said.
  • TikTok's European business should be "in European hands", following the example of the United States, Germany's Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer said Tuesday.
  • "That means we should place TikTok's European business in European hands," he said.
TikTok's European business should be "in European hands", following the example of the United States, Germany's Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer said Tuesday.
ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, ceded control of the platform's US operations to a majority American-owned joint venture, in response to a threatened ban in the United States.
"I am firmly convinced that Europe should follow the American example and that the company's ownership structure must be put up for discussion," Weimer told reporters before meeting his EU counterparts in Brussels.
"That means we should place TikTok's European business in European hands," he said.
"TikTok collects data on Europe's young people on an unimaginably large scale. This data flows to servers whose origin we do not know precisely," he added.
Weimer said Europe did not know what happened to the data, adding that "we are talking here about the most intimate data of Europe's youth".
Contacted by AFP, TikTok declined to comment.
TikTok has previously sought to allay EU concerns by storing European users' information in Europe, with limitations on who can access the data.
The EU executive did not support Weimer's comments. 
Brussels did not look "at the colour of a company, at its ownership, at its country of origin. What we're looking at is compliance" with rules, European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier told reporters in Brussels.
The platform is the subject of EU inquiries under the bloc's digital content rules.
The EU told TikTok in February that it needed to change its "addictive design" or risk heavy fines.
The platform is also under investigation in a separate probe opened in late 2024 on alleged foreign interference during the Romanian presidential elections.
jhm-raz/ec/sbk

taxation

South Korea official floats AI profit social tax as tech giants boom

  • Kim proposed what he tentatively called a "national dividend" for socially redistributing excess corporate profits from AI technology.
  • A top South Korean official has proposed a tax on AI profits to be redistributed among society as a semiconductor boom drives massive earnings for tech giants Samsung Electronics and SK hynix.
  • Kim proposed what he tentatively called a "national dividend" for socially redistributing excess corporate profits from AI technology.
A top South Korean official has proposed a tax on AI profits to be redistributed among society as a semiconductor boom drives massive earnings for tech giants Samsung Electronics and SK hynix.
The two South Korean firms have emerged as key suppliers of high-performance chips powering AI infrastructure globally, posting record first-quarter earnings as global demand surges.
South Korea's benchmark Kospi has rallied over the past month, repeatedly hitting record highs and also briefly coming within a whisker of the key 8,000-point mark Tuesday.
South Korea was no longer operating as a traditional export economy and could be shifting towards a "technology monopoly economy" driven by scarcity of chips and sustained excess profits, Kim Yong-beom, senior presidential secretary for policy, said in a Facebook post late Monday.
While the shift towards a technology-dominant economy represented "the core essence of the possibilities currently open before Korea", Kim warned it could also deepen polarisation of society.
Kim proposed what he tentatively called a "national dividend" for socially redistributing excess corporate profits from AI technology.
The tech tax could be used, for example, to provide startup support for young people, basic income programmes for rural and fishing communities, support for artists and stronger pensions for the elderly, he said.
"Using a portion of excess profits to ensure social stability for the current generation and mitigate transition costs is not merely redistribution, but also a type of system maintenance cost."
The presidential Blue House said Kim's post reflected "his personal opinion".
The post was "unrelated to any internal discussions or review within the Blue House", it said in a statement sent to AFP.
A global frenzy to build AI data centres has sent orders for advanced, high-bandwidth memory microchips soaring.
South Korea has said it will triple spending on artificial intelligence this year, aiming to join the United States and China as one of the top three AI powers.  
Kim's remarks came as Samsung Electronics' labour union demanded the removal of caps on performance bonuses and called for a system allocating 15 percent of operating profit to bonuses. 
The union is scheduled to hold post-mediation talks with management on Tuesday.
Calls within the country's ruling Democratic Party to redistribute gains from the semiconductor boom have also emerged publicly.
Lawmaker Moon Geum-ju said last month that the semiconductor boom was built partly on "the sacrifice and patience of farmers and fishermen" and argued that part of the profits should be returned to rural communities.
sjh/cdl/ami

politics

'Seeds of instability': Health disinfo targets Philippine leader

BY ARA EUGENIO

  • Marcos' communications office, meanwhile, lauded the arrest, having earlier announced it had filed complaints against three Facebook accounts with the country's justice department.
  • Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos last month jogged out of his office and broke into impromptu jumping jacks in an attempt to dispel rumours he was paralysed, dying of late-stage cancer, or dead.
  • Marcos' communications office, meanwhile, lauded the arrest, having earlier announced it had filed complaints against three Facebook accounts with the country's justice department.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos last month jogged out of his office and broke into impromptu jumping jacks in an attempt to dispel rumours he was paralysed, dying of late-stage cancer, or dead.
While largely played for laughs, the government lodged complaints against several Facebook accounts and warned tech giant Meta it faced legal action should it fail to curb disinformation it labelled an "escalating" threat to national security.
Since the 68-year-old leader's January hospitalisation for diverticulitis -- an inflammation in the colon --- social media has been awash with speculation he was more ill than publicised.
The posts have circulated widely among supporters of Marcos' arch-rival and 2028 presidential candidate, Vice President Sara Duterte, whose Monday impeachment has thrown her run into doubt.
AFP's fact-checkers have tracked hundreds of posts on Facebook, TikTok and X -- some racking up tens of thousands of shares -- of old or edited visuals as proof of the president's ailing health.
The narrative has sown "seeds of instability" in his presidency and largely benefited Duterte, Jean Franco, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines, told AFP.
It also leans heavily into the Marcos family's history of medical secrecy.
The president's father and namesake, sick with kidney disease during the final years of his dictatorship, once lifted his shirt on national television to show he bore no transplant scars.
"Just like his father", one Facebook user wrote in a post speculating Marcos had died in April.

'Who died?'

The president's assurances that his diagnosis was non-life-threatening have done little to allay the rumours.
When he skipped an event in early April, speculation that he was ill or dead -- including a years-old photo of a Philippine flag flying at half mast -- flooded social media.
The flag photo was shared by former broadcaster-turned-social media presenceJay Sonza, who campaigned for the Marcos-Duterte ticket during the pair's brief 2022 alliance but has since posted exclusively for the vice president.
"Who died?" one curious commenter asked under Sonza's flag post, with others claiming it was Marcos. "Hope VP Sara steps in to govern this country," said another.
Sonza was arrested by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) about two weeks later on charges of cyberlibel and "unlawful publication", alleging he fabricated medical records about the president.
With his client now free on bail, Sonza's lawyer has labelled the detention "intimidation".
Marcos' communications office, meanwhile, lauded the arrest, having earlier announced it had filed complaints against three Facebook accounts with the country's justice department.

'Panic-inducing' content

Numerous posts have also accused the media of colluding with the administration to keep details of his health secret.
One altered image -- shared in a page with 80,000 followers called "President Duterte News" -- alleged that major broadcaster GMA News was part of a cover-up.
That framing, repeated across multiple Facebook pages, is intended to "further erode trust in legitimate media", said Yvonne Chua, who teaches journalism at the University of the Philippines.
"They reinforce the broader narrative that mainstream media cannot be trusted and is aligned with those in power," Chua told AFP.
Marco's government has since demanded that Facebook owner Meta take down "panic-inducing" content on the platform, where Filipinos rank among the world's heaviest users.
The content poses "a direct and escalating threat to public order, economic confidence, and national security", the government said, without spelling out what legal action it might take.
Meta, one of the companies that pays AFP to fact-check posts with potentially false information, has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
More than a dozen "fake news" bills, meanwhile, have been floated in the Philippine Congress, including one sponsored by Marcos's son Sandro, a high-ranking House member. 
For Franco, government lawsuits and pressure tactics risked a "chilling effect" on people who want to criticise the government.
Constitutional law professor Paolo Tamase agreed, saying that instead of invoking "national security", the government might best be served by a "pro-transparency reading of the public's right to information".
"Disclosures take the oxygen out of any baseless rumour," he said.
jae/jcs/cwl/sjc/abs

patent

Dua Lipa sues Samsung in US over use of her likeness on TV box

  • The photo, titled "Dua Lipa - Backstage at Austin City Limits, 2024," is registered with the US copyright office and belongs to Lipa, according to the suit.
  • Pop star Dua Lipa is suing Samsung over trademark infringement, alleging the South Korean conglomerate illegally used a photo of the star to juice US television sales.
  • The photo, titled "Dua Lipa - Backstage at Austin City Limits, 2024," is registered with the US copyright office and belongs to Lipa, according to the suit.
Pop star Dua Lipa is suing Samsung over trademark infringement, alleging the South Korean conglomerate illegally used a photo of the star to juice US television sales.
Attorneys for Lipa filed the suit Friday in a US court in California, claiming "massive, continuing, unauthorized commercial exploitation of her valuable image and likeness by Samsung on cardboard television boxes."
Samsung said in a statement that the pop star's image was provided by a third-party content partner for the brand's free streaming service Samsung TV Plus.
"The image was used only after receiving explicit assurance from the content partner that permission had been secured, including for the retail boxes," the statement said, adding that the company has "actively sought and remain open to a constructive resolution with Ms. Lipa's team."
The legal papers include a snapshot of the box for a high definition television. The television screen is filled with several images, the largest showing part of Lipa's face.
The photo, titled "Dua Lipa - Backstage at Austin City Limits, 2024," is registered with the US copyright office and belongs to Lipa, according to the suit.
The suit lists Lipa's extensive commercial partnerships, including serving as global brand ambassador for Puma, campaigns with Versace and Yves Saint Laurent and collaborations with Porsche, Apple, Chanel, Nespresso, Bvlgari and Tiffany & Co.
"Ms. Lipa is highly selective in her commercial partnerships and has cultivated a premium brand through carefully curated, high-end sponsorships and endorsements," according to the suit. "Consistent with this deliberate strategy, Plaintiff would not have agreed to license her name, image or likeness in connection with the sale of the Infringing Products."
The suit lists eight civil offenses, including violation of right of publicity, copyright infringement and false endorsement.
The complaint seeks a permanent injunction, an award no less than for $15 million for actual damages and punitive damages.
jmb/jgc/sla

trial

Microsoft boss 'proud' of profit-making OpenAI investment

BY BENJAMIN LEGENDRE

  • Nadella told a jury in Oakland, California, on Monday that Microsoft's investment in the nonprofit arm, which now owns around a quarter of OpenAI Group PBC -- the firm behind ChatGPT -- had helped create "one of the largest, most well-funded nonprofits in the world."
  • Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Monday he was "very proud" of his company's profitable early investment in OpenAI, as he took the stand in Elon Musk's blockbuster lawsuit against the leaders of the AI giant behind ChatGPT. Musk -- an early benefactor of the original nonprofit company -- claims Microsoft knowingly helped OpenAI's creators betray their philanthropic mission and turn the firm into a cash cow.
  • Nadella told a jury in Oakland, California, on Monday that Microsoft's investment in the nonprofit arm, which now owns around a quarter of OpenAI Group PBC -- the firm behind ChatGPT -- had helped create "one of the largest, most well-funded nonprofits in the world."
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Monday he was "very proud" of his company's profitable early investment in OpenAI, as he took the stand in Elon Musk's blockbuster lawsuit against the leaders of the AI giant behind ChatGPT.
Musk -- an early benefactor of the original nonprofit company -- claims Microsoft knowingly helped OpenAI's creators betray their philanthropic mission and turn the firm into a cash cow.
The trial has laid bare strife within a circle of elite Silicon Valley engineers, investors and executives in the years leading up to the high-profile launch of the ChatGPT chatbot in 2022.
In his lawsuit, Musk accuses OpenAI of betraying its original nonprofit mission and misappropriating his founding donations totaling $38 million to build an empire now valued at over $850 billion.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder is calling for OpenAI to revert to its original status as a nonprofit -- a move that would impact its position in the global artificial intelligence race against Anthropic, Google and China's Deepseek.
OpenAI counters that Musk, who is now an AI competitor with his xAI, is motivated by petty revenge, having stormed off in a huff after failing to seize majority control.
Nadella told a jury in Oakland, California, on Monday that Microsoft's investment in the nonprofit arm, which now owns around a quarter of OpenAI Group PBC -- the firm behind ChatGPT -- had helped create "one of the largest, most well-funded nonprofits in the world."
Musk's attorney said internal Microsoft documents showed the computer behemoth actually had its eye on profit, rather than on helping to nurture a philanthropic AI service, having seen its initial $13 billion investment balloon to be worth $92 billion four years later.
"It has worked out well because we took the risk," said Nadella, of a stake that is now estimated to be worth $135 billion.
"If the pie became larger, obviously the nonprofit would benefit as well with their mission — and that's what in fact it's proven out," he said.
Musk's lawyers suggested Microsoft was instrumental in OpenAI's pivot toward being a commercial company, citing Nadella's 2023 boast: "We have the people, we have the compute, we have the data, we have everything."
That year, when several members of OpenAI's board ousted company founder Sam Altman, citing a tendency to obfuscate, Nadella moved to shore him up.
"I would also try to make sure that Sam and Greg (Brockman, his co-founder) don't create a competing company and they would join Microsoft," he told the court.
The morning after Altman was fired, Microsoft had already established a subsidiary company to welcome them and acquire the equity stakes of any employees who chose to follow them — a move one of the co-founders estimated would have cost approximately $25 billion.
After a five-day crisis, Altman was ultimately reinstated at OpenAI.

'Making money'

Altman is expected to take the stand on Tuesday or Wednesday, ahead of closing arguments later in the week.
An advisory jury is expected to reach a verdict on any actual wrongdoing by the week of May 18. 
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will then make the final ruling on both liability and remedies after hearing the jury's opinion. She has indicated she will likely follow their advice.
If Gonzalez Rogers ultimately sides with Musk, OpenAI's initial public offering could be jeopardized.
The trial has already heard gripping testimony.
Last week, co-founder Greg Brockman -- whose stake in OpenAI is valued at $30 billion -- came under fire about his 2017 diary entries including one in which he appeared keen on "making money for us." 
Musk's lawyers seized on the entries to portray Brockman as a calculating opportunist.
Brockman also told lawyers that Musk physically threatened him in 2017 after Musk was refused absolute control of OpenAI.
Musk on Wednesday announced a major partnership with Anthropic, OpenAI's top rival, to allow it to use the compute capacity at SpaceX's largest data center.
bl-hg/pnb

AI

Can ChatGPT be charged in a murder? Florida wants to find out

BY THOMAS URBAIN

  • The Ikner case is different, and that difference is precisely what makes it so legally treacherous.
  • Before he opened fire on the Florida State University campus last year, killing two people and wounding six others, Phoenix Ikner had a conversation.
  • The Ikner case is different, and that difference is precisely what makes it so legally treacherous.
Before he opened fire on the Florida State University campus last year, killing two people and wounding six others, Phoenix Ikner had a conversation.
Not with a friend, a parent or anyone who might have talked him out of it -- but with an AI chatbot.
According to evidence gathered by Florida's attorney general, the student had asked ChatGPT which weapon and ammunition would be best suited for his attack, and when and where he could inflict the most casualties.
The chatbot, investigators say, answered his questions.
Now Attorney General James Uthmeier wants to know whether that makes OpenAI a criminal.
"If the thing on the other side of the screen was a person, we would charge it with homicide," he said, announcing a criminal investigation into ChatGPT maker OpenAI and leaving open the possibility of charges against the company or its employees.
The case surrounding the April, 2025 shooting has thrust a provocative question into the legal spotlight: Can the creators of an artificial intelligence be held criminally liable for the role their AI played in a crime -- or even a suicide?
Legal experts say it's a realistic, if deeply complicated, proposition.

- Criminal product? -

Criminal prosecutions of corporations are possible under US law, though they remain relatively uncommon.
Late last month, Purdue Pharma was hit with more than $5 billion in criminal fines and penalties for its role in fueling the opioid crisis.
Volkswagen was previously found guilty in the emissions cheating scandal, Pfizer over its promotion of the anti-inflammatory drug Bextra and Exxon for the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
But those cases all involved human decisions -- executives, salespeople or engineers who made choices and cut corners.
The Ikner case is different, and that difference is precisely what makes it so legally treacherous.
"Ultimately, it was a product that encouraged this crime, that did the act of the crime," said Matthew Tokson, a law professor at the University of Utah. "That's what makes this case so unique and so tricky."
Legal experts consulted by AFP say the two most plausible charges would be negligence or recklessness -- the latter involving a deliberate choice to ignore known risks or safety obligations.
Such charges are often treated as misdemeanors rather than felonies, meaning lighter sentences if convicted.
The bar, however, is high.
"Because this is such a frontier issue, a more compelling, more clear-cut case would probably involve internal documents recognizing these risks and maybe not taking them seriously enough," Tokson said.
"In theory, you could get liability without it," he said. "But in practice, I think that'd be difficult."
In criminal law, "the burden of proof is higher," noted Brandon Garrett, a law professor at Duke University -- with prosecutors required to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
OpenAI, for its part, insists ChatGPT bears no responsibility for the attack.
"We work continuously to strengthen our safeguards to detect harmful intent, limit misuse, and respond appropriately when safety risks arise," the company said.

- Civil or criminal? -

For those seeking accountability, a civil lawsuit may offer a more viable path.
Such an approach might push companies to design their products more carefully -- or at least force them to reckon with the human cost of getting it wrong, said Tokson.
Several civil cases have already been filed against AI platforms in the US -- many involving suicides -- though none has yet resulted in a judgment against the companies.
In December, the family of Suzanne Adams sued OpenAI in California court, alleging that ChatGPT contributed to the murder of the Connecticut retiree by her own son.
Newer versions of ChatGPT have introduced additional safeguards, acknowledged Matthew Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center.
"I'm not saying that they are adequate guardrails, but there are more guardrails in effect," he said.
A criminal conviction, even with a modest sentence, could still inflict serious damage, including a "big reputational impact," Tokson said.
But for Garrett, prosecutions -- however dramatic -- are no replacement for the regulatory frameworks that Congress and the Trump administration have so far failed to put in place.
That, he said, would be "a much more sensible system."
tu/arp/mjf/mlm

AI

Fervent and fake: High-glam AI avatars boost Trump ahead of midterms

BY ANUJ CHOPRA

  • -  'Shape public opinion' - In recent months, US media have  detected hundreds of AI-generated pro-Trump influencers -- young men and women depicted in military fatigues or dressed as immigration agents -- commenting on hot-button political issues including abortion and the Iran conflict.
  • Clad in swimsuits or military fatigues, the blonde women lavish praise on President Donald Trump and tear into his rivals -- but these influencers are AI-generated, flooding tech platforms with fervent political messaging ahead of the US midterm election.
  • -  'Shape public opinion' - In recent months, US media have  detected hundreds of AI-generated pro-Trump influencers -- young men and women depicted in military fatigues or dressed as immigration agents -- commenting on hot-button political issues including abortion and the Iran conflict.
Clad in swimsuits or military fatigues, the blonde women lavish praise on President Donald Trump and tear into his rivals -- but these influencers are AI-generated, flooding tech platforms with fervent political messaging ahead of the US midterm election.
The rise of hyper-realistic AI avatars -- parroting Trump's political slogans such as "America First" and echoing his talking points on issues such as immigration -- underscores the use of new technology in efforts to energize his Make America Great Again (MAGA) conservative base.
"Where are all my MAGA friends at? If you voted for Trump, say it loud in the comments and you've got yourself a new follower from Texas," an AI-created woman declares on TikTok, sporting a red MAGA hat.
"Trump is the future of America," reads text overlaid on another AI-generated TikTok video depicting a teenage girl on a beach, US flag fluttering in the background.
In an Instagram clip set to the Village People's "YMCA," an avatar portraying a "MAGA patriot" says she "came out of the closet as a Trump supporter."
It's not clear who is behind the AI accounts and whether they are part of a coordinated influence operation ahead of the November elections that will determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress.
Earlier this year, Trump himself posted on his Truth Social platform a video of a platinum blonde AI avatar -- sporting the high-glam look popular among his fans -- that pushed unfounded corruption allegations against California's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom.

  'Shape public opinion'

In recent months, US media have  detected hundreds of AI-generated pro-Trump influencers -- young men and women depicted in military fatigues or dressed as immigration agents -- commenting on hot-button political issues including abortion and the Iran conflict.
The Governance and Responsible AI Lab (GRAIL) at Purdue University has also tracked numerous such accounts across TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
"The growing wave of political AI influencers amid the 2026 elections is a glimpse into a future where hyper-targeted AI content can be used to shape public opinion," Andrew Yoon of CivAI, a nonprofit focused on AI's capabilities and dangers, told AFP.
Such content is "increasingly difficult to detect, especially when made by sophisticated operators," Yoon said.
As AI technology becomes more and more sophisticated, online manipulation using phony influencers could "become even more personalized and difficult to control," he added.
One AI influencer on Instagram -- featuring a lifelike female soldier posing alongside Trump -- amassed nearly a million followers before the account was suspended.
Referring to the synthetic soldier, Justine Moore, an AI-focused partner at Silicon Valley investor Andreessen Horowitz, wrote on X: "I'm genuinely floored by how many dudes are following influencers that are clearly AI."

 'Financial profit'

The influencers compete for online attention with anti-Trump AI accounts, including a Facebook page that depicts the president riding a tricycle down a rubbish-strewn street in grubby clothes or fleeing a sword-wielding mob. 
Disinformation typically surges around elections, propelled by automated bots, trolls and phony accounts that amplify false narratives and push them into mainstream political discourse.
The potential for manipulation is multiplying with AI.
Researchers warn that AI deepfakes -- used to target global leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky -- can influence voter turnout and distort geopolitical events.
The pro-Trump influencers also highlight how technology can place lifelike human faces on disinformation, pairing them with realistic voices and talking points -- creating the illusion of a legitimate political movement.
While promoting Trump, some AI influencers also appear focused on boosting engagement, attracting followers and promoting commercial products.
The bio of one pro-Trump AI influencer on Instagram directed users to a website selling MAGA-themed artwork priced up to $500.
"Many of them are driven by commercialization goals, using politics as a means rather than an end," Daniel Schiff, an assistant professor at Purdue University and co-director of GRAIL, told AFP.
As election season approaches, Schiff said he expects a rise in AI-generated political messaging -- with "financial profit" being the primary goal of creating synthetic influencers.
ac/acb

cinema

Who's a good boy? AI can't replace doggie actors, director says

BY PAULA RAMON

  • he says, gesturing to Roscoe the golden retriever star of "Air Bud Returns," who is wearing a T-shirt and basketball shoes, still boundlessly enthusiastic despite greeting fans for hours.
  • When director Robert Vince was filming "Air Bud Returns," he was impressed to see Roscoe, his four-legged star, improvising concern in a scene where two humans burst into tears. 
  • he says, gesturing to Roscoe the golden retriever star of "Air Bud Returns," who is wearing a T-shirt and basketball shoes, still boundlessly enthusiastic despite greeting fans for hours.
When director Robert Vince was filming "Air Bud Returns," he was impressed to see Roscoe, his four-legged star, improvising concern in a scene where two humans burst into tears. 
"He's curious to what's going on," Vince told AFP. "This is real."
Having done more than a dozen productions featuring dogs, Vince says he is still impressed by the authenticity that animal actors bring to film sets. 
For him, the magic of a canine performer cannot ever be replicated by artificial intelligence.
"You look at how much joy this dog, and human actors, give you, right?" he says, gesturing to Roscoe the golden retriever star of "Air Bud Returns," who is wearing a T-shirt and basketball shoes, still boundlessly enthusiastic despite greeting fans for hours.
Vince, 64, says that every technological innovation initially causes a stir and sparks curiosity among audiences. 
But wizardry can only wow for so long before audiences see through it and start looking to the fundamentals again.
"I remember when visual effects really (appeared), everybody was like: 'Oh, those are so cool. We're gonna do a million superhero movies.'
"After a while, it's like: 'Oh, I’ve seen that before,'" he said. "It's really about your emotional connection to the characters. There's an authenticity to this type of filmmaking that does not go away."

Sports bark

"Air Bud Returns," slated for release in US theaters in 2027, is the latest chapter in a franchise that began in 1997 featuring a runaway circus dog who has an extraordinary ability to play basketball.
Subsequent installments took in other popular sports, including American football ("Air Bud: Golden Receiver,") soccer ("Air Bud: World Pup") and baseball ("Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch.")
For Vince, who spoke with AFP at the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas, the audience reception to news of the latest  production, which sees the canine hero back on the basketball court, has been "overwhelming." 
"But I can't say I'm surprised," he added. 
"We know from social media... that this movie was basically being begged to be made."
He says that's because "Air Bud" is a quintessential family film, one that a whole generation remembers from childhood.
"People that grew up with ("Air Bud")...are millennials that were 10 years old when they saw the original one.  
"They are now parents, and they have kids of their own."
And, of course, a cute-as-a-button golden retriever who can shoot hoops as well as he can act is always going to hit the mark, he said.
"It's all dog, all the time," he said of Roscoe's balling talents.
"We have an audience that grew up with the original "Air Bud" movie where there was no CGI," Vince said.
"And so we kept that promise in this movie as well."
At a time that Hollywood is grappling with the job-killing effects of AI -- and as the organisers of the Oscars and the Golden Globes have said avatars can't win prizes -- Vince says he's confident the new technology will never displace the warmth of a real-life performer, human or animal.
"Despite what everybody wants you to believe, I don't really believe it's happening," he said.
"You don't get any emotion out of that."
pr/hg/mjf

internet

European minnows bid to challenge social media giants

  • But such figures would be rounding errors to the giants of the sector, who count in hundreds of millions of users and billions in revenue.
  • A flurry of new schemes to launch Europe-based social networks faces a steep, rocky road to seduce users away from American and Asian giants in the sector.
  • But such figures would be rounding errors to the giants of the sector, who count in hundreds of millions of users and billions in revenue.
A flurry of new schemes to launch Europe-based social networks faces a steep, rocky road to seduce users away from American and Asian giants in the sector.
Founders nevertheless see opportunity in the disillusionment and distrust of major platforms that have spiked alongside transatlantic tensions under Donald Trump's second presidency.
"We think the timing is perfect, in a context where relations between Europe and the US are still deteriorating," said Gregoire Vigroux, co-founder of Croatia-based network eYou.
"It's time for Europe to equip itself with its own social networks," he added.
Opening to users on Tuesday, eYou is one of a number of efforts on the old continent, including W -- a would-be competitor to X announced in January -- or Eurosky, a platform for accessing independent social networks launched last month.
Bulle (French for "bubble") also launched in January promising a "healthy social network" while Monnett -- a hybrid of TikTok and Instagram -- is set for full release in July.
"The rejection targeting the (American) platforms is still stronger today" than in the past, said Romain Badouard, a researcher at France's Inria computing institute specialising in social networks.
He suggested that a "conservative turn in Silicon Valley" had proved unpopular with European users seeing the likes of X owner Elon Musk or Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) chief Mark Zuckerberg cosying up to Trump.

'Enormous graveyard'

At W, "the idea is to bring back what was once Twitter in the good old days," said founder Anna Zeiter ahead of the Saturday launch.
Some interest is apparent among investors and users in the new crop of networks.
In a second fundraising round, eYou garnered 300,000 euros ($353,000) in late 2025, while Monnett claims more than 65,000 users on the beta version of its app.
But such figures would be rounding errors to the giants of the sector, who count in hundreds of millions of users and billions in revenue.
The dominance of incumbent players has left little space for challenge beyond niche offerings like Mastodon or BeReal.
"The world of social networks is an enormous graveyard," eYou's Vigroux acknowledged, adding that "99 percent of European social networks launched in the last 10 years have fallen flat."
Badouard pointed to the so-called "network effect" that powered the snowballing of major platforms' user numbers as a factor now shielding them from competition.
For users on Instagram and TikTok, "all the people they know and the accounts they follow" are on the existing networks.
But the "technological maturity" of the latest wave of challengers could still count in their favour, he said.
"They're answering to a lot of the expectations users have," Badouard said.

Out of the algorithm?

There is a familiar litany of criticisms levelled at the big players, including sorting users into "filter bubbles", unevenly-enforced moderation and addictive design.
European would-be competitors see those as openings to vaunt their own virtues.
W promises to keep all but verified human users from posting, while eYou says it will "promote users sharing content considered trustworthy".
"It's really important for us that it's not an algorithm that determine what's on your screen, but yourself," said Christos Floros of Monnett, which is aiming to hit a million users this year.
Such commitments could steepen the path to profitability for the new arrivals, in a market where financial success is still largely determined by raking in advertising sales.
Zeiter said W would have "no crazy hyper-targeted advertising".
"Right now we are all trying out different business models and different approaches," she said.
"Maybe in one or two years we see what's most successful and then we can team up."
mng/tgb/rl

film

AI actors not eligible for Golden Globes, say organizers

  • The new rules come days after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said it was cracking down on the use of AI. The body that doles out the Oscars said only real human performers -- not their AI avatars -- are eligible for the film world's biggest prizes, and screenplays must have been penned by a person, rather than a chatbot.
  • Performances by AI-generated actors will not be eligible for Golden Globe awards, organizers said Thursday, days after they were also ruled out of Oscars contention.
  • The new rules come days after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said it was cracking down on the use of AI. The body that doles out the Oscars said only real human performers -- not their AI avatars -- are eligible for the film world's biggest prizes, and screenplays must have been penned by a person, rather than a chatbot.
Performances by AI-generated actors will not be eligible for Golden Globe awards, organizers said Thursday, days after they were also ruled out of Oscars contention.
The new guidelines will not automatically disqualify performances that have used artificial intelligence to enhance an actor, but require that a live human be the main element.
"Submissions in which a performance is substantially generated or created by artificial intelligence are not eligible" for consideration in the annual film and television prize-giving extravaganza, which kicks off Hollywood's awards season, organizers said.
"The use of AI for technical or cosmetic enhancements (such as de-aging, aging, or visual modifications) may be permissible, provided the underlying performance remains that of the credited individual and AI does not replace or materially alter the performer's work."
The new rules come days after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said it was cracking down on the use of AI.
The body that doles out the Oscars said only real human performers -- not their AI avatars -- are eligible for the film world's biggest prizes, and screenplays must have been penned by a person, rather than a chatbot.
The use of artificial intelligence remains one of the most sensitive issues in the entertainment industry and was central to the 2023 strikes that shut down Hollywood, as actors and writers warned that unchecked technology threatened their livelihoods.
The new restrictions come after an AI version of the late Val Kilmer was unveiled to an audience of movie theater owners, a year after the "Top Gun" star's death.
A youthful, digital version of Kilmer appeared in the trailer for archaeological action pic "As Deep as the Grave," telling another character: "Don't fear the dead and don't fear me."
The project was created with the enthusiastic support of the actor's family, who granted access to Kilmer's video archives, which were used to recreate the actor at multiple stages of his life.
pr/hg/md

advertising

Google faces new UK lawsuit over online display ads

  • A separate lawsuit filed in UK courts last year also accused Google of overcharging for online advertising.
  • Google faces a fresh UK lawsuit accusing it of abusing its dominance in online display advertising, the claimants announced Thursday, in the latest antitrust action against the US tech giant.
  • A separate lawsuit filed in UK courts last year also accused Google of overcharging for online advertising.
Google faces a fresh UK lawsuit accusing it of abusing its dominance in online display advertising, the claimants announced Thursday, in the latest antitrust action against the US tech giant.
The claim filed on behalf of British advertisers is seeking up to £3 billion ($4 billion) in compensation, according to an estimate from KP Law, the firm leading the action.
The case argues that Google favoured its own display advertising services, such as banner ads shown on websites, while excluding its rivals.
KP Law said Google's practices left "advertisers paying more for less effective display advertising".
A Google spokesperson called the allegations "meritless". 
"Advertisers have many choices, and they choose our ad tech tools because they're simple, effective and affordable," the spokesperson said.
The case has been brought as a collective action, meaning all potentially affected clients are automatically included unless they choose to opt out. 
It covers all UK advertisers who have paid for Google's advertising services since October 1, 2015.
The claim was yet to be formally served, according to Google. 
The company's advertising practices have been the subject of multiple investigations and legal proceedings in the UK, the European Union and the United States.
A separate lawsuit filed in UK courts last year also accused Google of overcharging for online advertising.
Other cases on similar grounds are ongoing, including a £13.6 billion claim brought on behalf of online content publishers, which was cleared in 2024 to proceed to trial.
Google is also facing efforts by the US government to break up its digital advertising business to curtail its dominance. 
Last year, the EU hit Google with a massive 2.95-billion-euro antitrust fine for favouring its own advertising services.
Google has said it will appeal the fine.
ode-ajb/jj/jj

technology

IMF warns of 'inevitable' AI-powered threats to global financial system

  • IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva warned last month that the global financial system was not ready for the cybersecurity threats posed by AI. "We are very keen to see more attention to the guardrails that are necessary to protect financial stability in a world of AI," she told CBS News, seeking global collaboration on the issue. aha-els/md
  • The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on Thursday of the risks to global financial stability posed by cyberattacks powered by advanced artificial intelligence tools, calling for greater international cooperation on the issue.
  • IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva warned last month that the global financial system was not ready for the cybersecurity threats posed by AI. "We are very keen to see more attention to the guardrails that are necessary to protect financial stability in a world of AI," she told CBS News, seeking global collaboration on the issue. aha-els/md
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on Thursday of the risks to global financial stability posed by cyberattacks powered by advanced artificial intelligence tools, calling for greater international cooperation on the issue.
"IMF analysis suggests that extreme cyber-incident losses could trigger funding strains, raise solvency concerns, and disrupt broader markets," the lender warned in a new report.
The study's authors highlighted the risks posed by the highly interconnected nature of the global financial system, with advanced AI models able to "dramatically reduce" the time and cost of exploiting vulnerabilities. 
The warning comes weeks after AI company Anthropic cautioned that its yet-to-be-released "Mythos" model was incredibly adept at finding and exploiting such weaknesses.
The model was particularly efficient at identifying vulnerabilities that developers and users had been previously unaware of. 
In the hands of hackers, such so-called "zero-day" vulnerabilities are considered particularly dangerous.
On Wednesday, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told Fox News that an "all-government" and private sector effort was being made to test the model and ensure it does not cause harm to US businesses or government.
A day earlier, the US government announced a policy shift in which it would have access to tech giants' new AI models to evaluate them before they are released. 
The IMF warned that emerging and developing countries, "which often have more severe resource constraints, may be disproportionately exposed to attackers targeting regions with weaker defenses."
The risks, the authors said, were systemic, cut across sectors and came with the threat of contagion, with the reliance on a small number of platforms and cloud providers likely to increase "the impact of any single exploited weakness."
"Defenses will inevitably be breached, so resilience must also be a priority, specifically to limit how far incidents spread and ensure rapid recovery," the report said.
IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva warned last month that the global financial system was not ready for the cybersecurity threats posed by AI.
"We are very keen to see more attention to the guardrails that are necessary to protect financial stability in a world of AI," she told CBS News, seeking global collaboration on the issue.
aha-els/md

AI

AI use surges globally but rich-poor divide widens, Microsoft says

  • In the first quarter of 2026, 27.5 percent of people aged 15-64 in developed countries used a generative AI tool, compared with 15.4 percent in the developing world -- a gap that widened by 1.5 percentage points from the second half of 2025, according to the report's estimates.
  • Generative artificial intelligence is being used by 17.8 percent of the world's working-age population, but the gap between wealthy and developing nations continues to widen, according to a report published Tuesday by Microsoft.
  • In the first quarter of 2026, 27.5 percent of people aged 15-64 in developed countries used a generative AI tool, compared with 15.4 percent in the developing world -- a gap that widened by 1.5 percentage points from the second half of 2025, according to the report's estimates.
Generative artificial intelligence is being used by 17.8 percent of the world's working-age population, but the gap between wealthy and developing nations continues to widen, according to a report published Tuesday by Microsoft.
In the first quarter of 2026, 27.5 percent of people aged 15-64 in developed countries used a generative AI tool, compared with 15.4 percent in the developing world -- a gap that widened by 1.5 percentage points from the second half of 2025, according to the report's estimates.
The divide stems from significant inequality in access to internet connectivity, basic digital skills and electricity, according to the Microsoft AI Economy Institute.
AI model performance -- historically stronger in English as most of the major AI companies are based in the US -- is also slowing the spread of such tools in non-English-speaking countries.
But progress in processing non-European languages is fueling a catch-up in adoption in some countries, particularly in Asia, the US tech giant noted.
The United Arab Emirates tops the ranking of AI usage at 70.1 percent, followed by Singapore, Norway, Ireland and France.
The estimates were based primarily on measurements from computers running Windows and Microsoft products such as Bing and Copilot. 
They only partially captured usage on Apple devices, and consolidated data was lacking for Russia, Iran and China.
The United States -- home to dominant large AI models like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini -- ranked only 21st, at 31.3 percent.
AI usage in China -- the world's second-largest economy which is jostling with the US for an edge in the AI race -- was 16.4 percent, the report said.
Pushing back against fears of job losses driven by automation, Microsoft argued in the report that AI coding tools "could increase demand for developer jobs."
The company cautioned, however, that "it is still too early to know the full impact" of AI on the labor market. 
For the first time in its history, the company itself offered voluntary departures to nearly 9,000 of its US-based employees in April.
According to Layoffs.fyi, a private aggregator, nearly 99,000 people have been laid off in the tech sector since January 1, primarily in the United States.
bl/arp/acb

AI

AI disinfo tests South Korean laws ahead of local elections

BY HAWON JUNG

  • - 'Whack-a-mole' - The local polls are the thirdmajor ballot in South Korea since an amended law to combat AI-fuelled election falsehoods was passed in 2023.
  • In an airy office in South Korea, workers comb through social media, uncovering AI-generated content whose growing sophistication is testing toughened election laws ahead of local polls.
  • - 'Whack-a-mole' - The local polls are the thirdmajor ballot in South Korea since an amended law to combat AI-fuelled election falsehoods was passed in 2023.
In an airy office in South Korea, workers comb through social media, uncovering AI-generated content whose growing sophistication is testing toughened election laws ahead of local polls.
Experts warn that cheaper, more advanced artificial intelligence models are driving the global spread of online disinformation -- a major concern in South Korea, which has adopted AI particularly rapidly.
The government strengthened the law in 2023 to counter the misuse of AI around elections, and has hired hundreds of staff to track and counter manipulated content ahead of local ballots on June 3.
But some say they feel like they are fighting an uphill battle.
"We can literally see how fast this technology evolves -- like how each new version of AI makes videos and audio look and sound even more convincing," disinformation monitor Choi Ji-hee said.
"Our job keeps getting harder and harder," she told AFP at the National Election Commission (NEC) headquarters in Gwacheon, just south of Seoul.
On a recent workday, Choi and 18 colleagues clicked through Instagram, YouTube and other platforms, as well as online chatrooms and "fan clubs" for local politicians, in search of content concocted by AI.
Recent finds include a fake TV news report claiming a mayoral candidate had made Time magazine's list of rising political leaders, and a slick, AI-produced K-pop song praising a politician while mocking his rivals.
Once authorities confirm the content is the work of AI, authorities can demand its removal and issue harsh punishments, including jail time in extreme cases.
In one corner, workers discussed how to dissect a suspicious video, mulling whether to separately extract its audio, key frames, facial images and background footage.
Nearby, data analyst Kim Ma-ru mapped where, when, and by whom fake materials had been distributed, helping Choi's team detect dubious content more quickly.

'Whack-a-mole'

The local polls are the thirdmajor ballot in South Korea since an amended law to combat AI-fuelled election falsehoods was passed in 2023.
More than 45 percent of South Koreans use generative AI, according to government figures. ChatGPT maker OpenAI says the country has the most paid subscribers outside the United States.
At the same time, South Koreans consume more low-quality generative content -- "AI slop" -- than any other country, and reports of false AI-created content rose 27-fold between the general election in 2024 and the presidential campaign the following year.
"It's an exhausting job that can feel like a (game of) whack-a-mole," Kim told AFP.
"But it's important work -- there's a sense of civic duty in it."
AFP has debunked AI-generated election disinformation in South Korea, including a video of the 2025 presidential frontrunner Lee Jae Myung -- now the country's leader -- purportedly faking a hunger strike. 
Beyond fake content about candidates, conspiracy theories about vote-rigging in recent years have also dented public trust in elections.
Jailed ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol sent hundreds of armed troops to the NEC during his short-lived bid to impose martial law in late 2024, repeating widely disproven far-right claims of vote hacking.
On the street outside the office, pro-Yoon protesters have hung a banner reading: "Investigate the rigged elections immediately!"
Both Choi and Kim declined to be photographed or filmed, citing growing threats and online bullying targeting election workers.

Strict laws

"In such a short time, it has become so difficult for voters to tell what is real and what is not," said Jung Hui-hun, a digital forensic specialist at the NEC's cyber investigations unit, as he ran videos through state-developed software tools to detect AI imagery.
Officials say the programmes are about 92 percent accurate, with human experts reviewing the most sophisticated material.
Once confirmed, authorities demand that either the poster or the platform remove the content for violating the 2023 law, which bans AI material that involves candidates and looks realistic enough to confuse voters in the three months before a poll.
Repeat offenders, or those who create content deemed particularly harmful, can face up to seven years in jail or a maximum fine of 50 million won ($34,000).
"The rules may seem excessive to those outside South Korea, especially in places like the US that highly prioritise freedom of expression," Kim Myuhng-joo, director of the Korea AI Safety Institute, told AFP.
But as swiftly as South Koreans embraced AI, many grew aware of its dangers, Kim said, citing the election conspiracy theories and a public scandal around deepfake pornography targeting women and girls.
"Public consensus has formed that we need tough regulations over the use of AI when it comes to election transparency," Kim said. 
A survey last year showed 75 percent of South Koreans believed AI-generated content could sway election results, and nearly 80 percent supported stronger efforts to detect and punish its use.
Jung, the digital forensic specialist, acknowledged the country's response had "many limits" but voiced hope it would spur debate on how to tackle AI-fuelled disinformation.
"We're still trying to figure out what is the best solution... but I think we are moving forward -- slowly but surely," he said.
jhw/mjw/fox