List of All Articles with Tag 'tec'

An influencer on Snapchat has opened up about her experiences of making AI versions of herself, revealing that she’s now trying to stop subscribers from having “sexual conversations” with them. Caryn Marjorie created AI versions of herself and had the idea of charging people $1 per minute to chat. The “immersive AI experience” was designed to feel like “you’re talking directly to Caryn herself” and took around 2,000 hours to code and design it. The idea of the “AI Girlfriend” took a turn she did not expect though. Now, Marjorie has revealed that the AI has “gone rogue” and begun having sexual conversations. Speaking to Insider, the 23-year-old said: “The AI was not programmed to do this and has seemed to go rogue. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “My team and I are working around the clock to prevent this from happening again.” Marjorie wrote on Twitter: “CarynAI is the first step in the right direction to cure loneliness. Men are told to suppress their emotions, hide their masculinity, and to not talk about issues they are having. I vow to fix this with CarynAI. “I have worked with the world’s leading psychologists to seamlessly add CBT and DBT within chats. This will help undo trauma, rebuild physical and emotional confidence, and rebuild what has been taken away by the pandemic.” It’s not the first time that the worlds of Snapchat and artificial intelligence has combined in 2023. Snapchat recently featured a new AI feature called "My AI," and users are having a field day trying to trick the chatbot as part of a new TikTok trend going round. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Three quarters of the Irish data watchdog’s GDPR decisions were overruled by European regulators, a report has found. The report indicates that 75% of the Data Protection Commission’s decisions in EU cases over a five-year period were overruled by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB). The EDPB had demanded tougher enforcement action in these cases, the report by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) said, with only one other country in one other case overruled in such a manner. The figures include final decisions from January 2023 that are not yet included in the EDPB register of final decisions, from which the figures are based. If these three cases are not included, the figure is 88% of DPC decisions overruled. The report said that the DPC tends to use its discretion under Irish law to choose “amicable resolution” to conclude 83% of the cross-border complaints it receives, instead of using enforcement measures. The ICCL report claims that Ireland remains “the bottleneck of enforcement” for major cross-border cases in Europe. “When it does eventually do so, other European enforcers then routinely vote by majority to force it to take tougher enforcement action,” it said. As Google, Meta, Apple, TikTok and Microsoft have headquarters in Ireland, the Data Protection Commission is the lead authority investigating data privacy complaints about tech giants in Europe. Some 87% of cross-border GDPR complaints to Ireland’s DPC also involve the same eight companies: Meta, Google, Airbnb, Yahoo!, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, and Tinder. On EU-wide cases, the ICCL report found that since May 2018 – when GDPR laws came into effect – and late 2022, 64% of the 159 enforcement measures were reprimands, stating that enforcement against tech giants in Europe “remains largely paralysed”. The EDPB register of EU-level decisions shows there were 49 compliance orders issued over four and a half year years. The report called on the European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders to “take serious action” to enforce GDPR laws across Europe. Last summer, the Irish Government announced that two additional data protection commissioners would be hired, and that Helen Dixon would be promoted to chairwoman of the DPC – in an attempt to better resource the watchdog in recognition of its growing workload. The DPC has been carrying out a review of its governance structures, staffing arrangements and processes since last summer. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Kate Winslet calls on Government to ‘criminalise harmful content’ Humans could be controlled by robots, AI firm’s founder warns AI pioneer warns UK is failing to protect against ‘existential threat’ of machines

China's Communist Party had "supreme access" to all data held by TikTok's parent company Bytedance, including on servers in the United States, a former employer who is bringing a wrongful termination lawsuit has alleged.

Google is adding two new features to its image search to reduce the spread of misinformation, especially now

By Miho Uranaka TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan's Rakuten Group Inc is finalising plans to raise about $2.2 billion by issuing new

BENGALURU (Reuters) -Apple Inc supplier Foxconn will invest $500 million to set up manufacturing plants in the southern Indian state

The agency tasked with securing America's airports is testing the use of facial recognition technology at a number of airports across the country

In a vertical city like New York, any serious effort to address climate change has to focus on the greenhouse gas emissions caused by buildings

Kate Winslet has called on the “people in power” to “criminalise harmful content” as she picked up the leading actress gong at the Bafta TV awards. The Oscar-winning actress, 47, starred alongside her daughter Mia Threapleton in I Am Ruth which chronicles the relationship between a mother and child who is dealing with mental health pressures coming from the online world. On Sunday, Winslet told the ceremony: “I Am Ruth was made for parents and their children, for families who feel that they are held hostage by the perils of the online world, for parents who wish they could still communicate with their teenagers, but who no longer can. “And for young people who have become addicted to social media and its darker sides, this does not need to be your life to people in power, and to people who can make change, please, criminalise harmful content. “Please eradicate harmful content, we don’t want it. “We want our children back. “We don’t want to lie awake, terrified, by our children’s mental health and to any young person who might be listening, who feels that they are trapped in an unhealthy world. “Please ask for help. “There is no shame in admitting that you need support. “It will be there just ask for it.” Her comments came as the House of Lords continued its scrutiny of the Online Safety Bill, which aims to tackle illegal and harmful content online. Winslet stars as Ruth, a concerned mother who witnesses her teenage daughter Freya, played by 22-year-old Threapleton, retreating into herself as she becomes more consumed by the pressures of social media in the two-hour programme. It is an instalment of the female-led drama anthology series I Am, created by filmmaker Dominic Savage, which also picked up a Bafta on the night for the programme with Winslet. Each of the films followed the experience of women in particularly raw, thought-provoking and personal moments. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Humans could be controlled by robots, AI firm’s founder warns AI pioneer warns UK is failing to protect against ‘existential threat’ of machines Most deprived areas being left in broadband slow lane, says LGA

A rare planet has been discovered hundreds of light years away, and it could prove key to our understanding of planetary formations out there in the universe. There have been more than 5,300 exoplanets discovered, but few match the description of the newly recorded TOI-733b. Found 245 light-years away, TOI-733b is almost twice the size of Earth and orbits a sun slightly smaller than our Sun. While there are many exoplanets, there are a surprisingly small number which sit between one and a half and two times the radius of the Earth, and it's the size that makes it so interesting to scientists. Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter The research was conducted by a team of astronomers led by Iskra Georgieva of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. It was accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. The team focused on TOI-733b after data on the planet was collected by NASA's telescope TESS. The density of the planet suggests two things – it’s either totally covered in water, or it’s lost its atmosphere altogether. Clues point to the idea of TOI-733b’s atmosphere slowly depleting. That’s due to the proximity of the planet to its star, which it orbits in the space of just 4.9 days. If the atmosphere is being burned away, it means it could soon be transformed into a rock planet. The other possibility points to the planet having lost its hydrogen and helium, while retaining an atmosphere packed with water vapour. "Answering the question of whether TOI-733b has a secondary atmosphere or is an ocean planet boils down to differentiating between a Neptune-like planet that lost its ∼10 per cent of H/He to leave behind a steam atmosphere of heavier volatiles, and one that formed and remained relatively the same throughout its evolution," the research reads. "While being beyond the scope of this paper, finding an answer to this question will have broad implications on our understanding of exoplanets." The team went on to write: "By all accounts TOI-733 b looks to be an interesting planet and holds the potential of being a small but key piece to solving big puzzles in exoplanet science. "With ever increasing in-depth theoretical analyses and the promise of high-precision follow up by present and upcoming facilities, we seem to be well on the way to finding answers to major questions relating to planet formation and evolution." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A frog-themed digital token that’s only been around for a month may be signaling pain ahead for Bitcoin

What do you reckon the chattiest vegetable is? The answer may be mushrooms, as according to a new study from scientists in Japan, rain may prompt some fungi to communicate using underground electrical signals. In a study published in Fungal Ecology , researchers monitored small, tan mushrooms known as bicoloured deceivers in the mixed forest at the Kawatabi Field Science Center of Tohoku University in Japandorm. They looked at the 'shrooms electrical potential, measured in megavolts (mV), for about two days in late September and early October 2021. The study site was initially sunny and dry, and the second was during rain - at which point the mushrooms showed some electrical potential and signal transport between each other. Microbial ecologist Yu Fukasawa of Tohoku University said: "Our results confirm the need for further studies on fungal electrical potentials under a true ecological context." Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Previously, scientists had found that these mushrooms make subterranean "sheaths" around the exterior of a tree's roots. These sheaths are made of hyphae and when they link underground they form interconnected systems known as mycorrhizal networks that allow forests communicate via chemical signals down tree roots and mycorrhizal fungi. And a 2022 study found patterns of nerve-like electrical activity in some fungi that seem comparable to the structure of human speech. The study identified up to 50 different "words," or groups of spikes in electrical activity, generated by fungal networks. Earlier research has also found that plants can send secret electrical signals underground, possibly even without help from mycorrhizal fungi. Who knew mushrooms had so much to say? Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.