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Category Archives: Ai

Satya Nadella says the explicit Taylor Swift AI fakes are ‘alarming and terrible’ – The Verge

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has responded to a controversy over sexually explicit AI-made fake images of Taylor Swift. In an interview with NBC Nightly News that will air next Tuesday, Nadella calls the proliferation of nonconsensual simulated nudes alarming and terrible, telling interviewer Lester Holt that I think it behooves us to move fast on this.

In a transcript distributed by NBC ahead of the January 30th show, Holt asks Nadella to react to the internet exploding with fake, and I emphasize fake, sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift. Nadellas response manages to crack open several cans of tech policy worms while saying remarkably little about them which isnt surprising when theres no surefire fix in sight.

I would say two things: One, is again I go back to what I thinks our responsibility, which is all of the guardrails that we need to place around the technology so that theres more safe content thats being produced. And theres a lot to be done and a lot being done there. But it is about global, societal you know, Ill say, convergence on certain norms. And we can do especially when you have law and law enforcement and tech platforms that can come together I think we can govern a lot more than we think we give ourselves credit for.

Microsoft might have a connection to the faked Swift pictures. A 404 Media report indicates they came from a Telegram-based nonconsensual porn-making community that recommends using the Microsoft Designer image generator. Designer theoretically refuses to produce images of famous people, but AI generators are easy to bamboozle, and 404 found you could break its rules with small tweaks to prompts. While that doesnt prove Designer was used for the Swift pictures, its the kind of technical shortcoming Microsoft can tackle.

But AI tools have massively simplified the process of creating fake nudes of real people, causing turmoil for women who have far less power and celebrity than Swift. And controlling their production isnt as simple as making huge companies bolster their guardrails. Even if major Big Tech platforms like Microsofts are locked down, people can retrain open tools like Stable Diffusion to produce NSFW pictures despite attempts to make that harder. Far fewer users might access these generators, but the Swift incident demonstrates how widely a small communitys work can spread.

There are other stopgap options like social networks limiting the reach of nonconsensual imagery or, apparently, Swiftie-imposed vigilante justice against people who spread them. (Does that count as convergence on certain norms?) For now, though, Nadellas only clear plan is putting Microsofts own AI house in order.

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Satya Nadella says the explicit Taylor Swift AI fakes are 'alarming and terrible' - The Verge

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Researchers Say the Deepfake Biden Robocall Was Likely Made With Tools From AI Startup ElevenLabs – WIRED

This is not the first time that researchers have suspected ElevenLabs tools were used for political propaganda. Last September, NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation, claimed that TikTok accounts sharing conspiracy theories using AI-generated voices, including a clone of Barack Obamas voice, used ElevenLabs technology. Over 99 percent of users on our platform are creating interesting, innovative, useful content, ElevenLabs said in an emailed statement to The New York Times at the time, but we recognize that there are instances of misuse, and weve been continually developing and releasing safeguards to curb them.

If the Pindrop and Berkeley analyses are correct, the deepfake Biden robocall was made with technology from one of the tech industrys most prominent and well-funded AI voice startups. As Farid notes, ElevenLabs is already seen as providing some of the highest-quality synthetic voice offerings on the market.

According to the companys CEO in a recent Bloomberg article, ElevenLabs is valued by investors at more than $1.1 billion. In addition to Andreessen Horowitz, its investors include prominent individuals like Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub, and Mustafa Suleyman, cofounder of AI lab DeepMind, now part of Alphabet. Investors also include firms like Sequoia Capital and SV Angel.

With its lavish funding, ElevenLabs is arguably better positioned than other AI startups to pour resources into creating effective safeguards against bad actorsa task made all the more urgent by the upcoming presidential elections in the United States. Having the right safeguards is important, because otherwise anyone can create any likeness of any person, Balasubramaniyan says. As we're approaching an election cycle, it's just going to get crazy.

A Discord server for ElevenLabs enthusiasts features people discussing how they intend to clone Bidens voice, and sharing links to videos and social media posts highlighting deepfaked content featuring Biden or AI-generated dupes of Donald Trump and Barack Obamas voices.

Although ElevenLabs is a market leader in AI voice cloning, in just a few years the technology has become widely available for companies and individuals to experiment with. That has created new business opportunities, such as creating audiobooks more cheaply, but also increases the potential for malicious use of the technology. We have a real problem, says Sam Gregory, program director at the nonprofit Witness, which helps people use technology to promote human rights. When you have these very broadly available tools, it's quite hard to police.

While the Pindrop and Berkeley analyses suggest it could be possible to unmask the source of AI-generated robocalls, the incident also underlines how underprepared authorities, the tech industry, and the public are as the 2024 election season ramps up. It is difficult for people without specialist expertise to confirm the provenance of audio clips or check whether they are AI-generated. And more sophisticated analyses might not be completed quickly enough to offset the damage caused by AI-generated propaganda.

Journalists and election officials and others don't have access to reliable tools to be doing this quickly and rapidly when potentially election-altering audio gets leaked or shared, Gregory says. If this had been something that was relevant on election day, that would be too late.

Updated 1-27-2024, 3:15 pm EST: This article was updated to clarify the attribution of the statement from ElevenLabs. Updated 1-26-2024, 7:20 pm EST: This article was updated with comment from ElevenLabs.

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Researchers Say the Deepfake Biden Robocall Was Likely Made With Tools From AI Startup ElevenLabs - WIRED

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Samsung’s new phones replace Google AI with Baidu in China – The Verge

The list of AI translation, summarization, and text formatting features on the Chinese version of the Galaxy S24 will be familiar to anyone who kept up with its US-based launch. Theres also real-time call translation like we saw earlier this month, and the phones are even getting a version of Googles Circle to Search feature.

Now featuring Ernies understanding and generation capabilities

Now featuring Ernies understanding and generation capabilities, the upgraded Samsung Note Assistant can translate content and also summarize lengthy content into clear, intelligently organized formats at the click of a button, Samsung Electronics China and Baidu said in a statement published by CNBC.

Samsungs hold on China has waned considerably in the last decade. A report this week from IDC didnt even place it in the top five brands for mobile shipments in 2023. In 2013, the company was the biggest smartphone manufacturer in the country, with a market share of around 20 percent, but its share had fallen to just 1 percent by 2018, where its hovered ever since, Reuters reports, adding that partnerships with local content firms are part of its attempt to rebuild its Chinese business.

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Samsung's new phones replace Google AI with Baidu in China - The Verge

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2024 health tech budgets to be driven by AI tools, automation – STAT

Hospitals and clinics are expecting a slightly better 2024 compared to last year thanks to a return to mostly in-person care, patients resuming preventive visits and the gradual easing of labor costs and shortages. Still, the evaporation of pandemic-related emergency funding will deal a blow to resource-strained health systems, and leaders say theyll ramp up tech investments, including in artificial intelligence-based tools.

Health care providers financial performance isnt uniform and varies widely by setting, like rural or urban, as well as size and range of services offered. But they already showed signs of gradual improvement in 2023, leaving more funds available for technology investments, analysts told STAT.

HCA Healthcare, a for-profit health system spanning more than 180 hospitals and 2,000 sites across the country, brought in nearly $48 billion in the first three quarters of 2023, compared to about $45 billion in that same period in 2022. Highmark Health, which operates both a health insurance business and a 14-hospital network in Pennsylvania and New York, took in about $20 billion in revenue in that same period, up 4% from 2022.

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2024 health tech budgets to be driven by AI tools, automation - STAT

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AI and satellite data helped uncover the ocean’s ‘dark vessels’ – Popular Science

Researchers can now access artificial intelligence analysis of global satellite imagery archives for an unprecedented look at humanitys impact and relationship to our oceans. Led by Global Fishing Watch, a Google-backed nonprofit focused on monitoring maritime industries, the open source project is detailed in a study published January 3 in Nature. It showcases never-before-mapped industrial effects on aquatic ecosystems thanks to recent advancements in machine learning technology.

The new research shines a light on dark fleets, a term often referring to the large segment of maritime vessels that do not broadcast their locations. According to Global Fishing Watchs Wednesday announcement, as much as 75 percent of all industrial fishing vessels are hidden from public view.

As The Verge explains, maritime watchdogs have long relied on the Automatic Identification System (AIS) to track vessels radio activity across the globeall the while knowing the tool was far from perfect. AIS requirements differ between countries and vessels, and its easy to simply turn off a ships transponder when a crew wants to stay off the grid. Hence the (previously murky) realm of dark fleets.

On land, we have detailed maps of almost every road and building on the planet. In contrast, growth in our ocean has been largely hidden from public view, David Kroodsma, the nonprofits director of research and innovation, said in an official statement on January 3. This study helps eliminate the blindspots and shed light on the breadth and intensity of human activity at sea.

[Related: How to build offshore wind farms in harmony with nature.]

To solve this data void, researchers first collected 2 million gigabytes of global imaging data taken by the European Space Agencys Sentinel-1 satellite constellation between 2017 and 2021. Unlike AIS limitations, the ESA satellite arrays sensitive radar technology allows it to detect surface activity or movement, regardless of cloud coverage or time of day.

From there, the team combined this information with GPS data to highlight otherwise undetected or overlooked ships. A machine learning program then analyzed the massive information sets to pinpoint previously undocumented fishing vessels.

The newest findings upend previous industry assumptions, and showcase the troublingly larger impact of dark fleets around the world.

Publicly available data wrongly suggests that Asia and Europe have similar amounts of fishing within their borders, but our mapping reveals that Asia dominatesfor every 10 fishing vessels we found on the water, seven were in Asia while only one was in Europe, Jennifer Raynor, a study co-author and University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor of natural resource economics, said in the announcement. By revealing dark vessels, we have created the most comprehensive public picture of global industrial fishing available.

Its not all troubling revisions, however. According to the teams findings, the number of green offshore energy projects more than doubled over the five-year timespan analyzed. As of 2021, wind turbines officially outnumbered the worlds oil platforms, with China taking the lead by increasing its number of wind farms by 900 percent.

Previously, this type of satellite monitoring was only available to those who could pay for it. Now it is freely available to all nations, Kroodsma said in Wednesdays announcement, declaring the study as marking the beginning of a new era in ocean management and transparency.

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AI and satellite data helped uncover the ocean's 'dark vessels' - Popular Science

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What software developers using ChatGPT can tell us about how it’s changing work – Quartz

In her first job since graduating from college, Eknoor Kaur works at a company where using AI chatbots is not unusual. At first the software engineer at Pathlight, which makes automation tools, was skeptical. But after a colleague mentioned that ChatGPT helped him work better and faster, she eased into the ideaand today, she doesnt spend a workday without it.

Kaur keeps ChatGPT open on her desktop, typically posing the bot four or five questions a day. She doesnt use the tool to write code because shes worried about the hallucinatory, or made-up, answers that AI chatbots can provide. Instead, Kaur uses the system like a search engine, asking it programming-related questions she doesnt want to burden coworkers with.

Not surprisingly, some of the earliest adopters of generative AI at work are software developers. Alongside ChatGPT maker OpenAI, companies like Microsoft and Salesforce have rolled out AI copilots, or digital assistants, for writing code. And while a slew of employers, including Apple, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs, have blocked or limited ChatGPT on the job, things are different at plenty of tech companiesand startups in particular. Tech workers use a range of AI chatbots. Amazon developers, for instance, have their own version of ChatGPT called CodeWhisperer.

ChatGPT is currently in the giant room-size machine phase, said David Baggett, founder of cybersecurity firm Inky. He likens our current chatbots to the computers of the 1950s: early-stage and used for a narrow range of tasks.

But engineers are leading the charge in using those chatbots at work, even in their limited capacity.Developers Quartz spoke with use ChatGPT to generate code for softwaresaving themselves anywhere from minutes to hours a day on writingor to find information faster than using traditional online search methods.

Instead of starting on Google or Stack Overflow, a popular Q&A site for developers, which could take several pages or clicks to land on the right piece of code, developers can ask ChatGPT or another chatbot and get what they need with one prompt. I do a lot less Googling, said Amin Ahmad, CEO of search software company Vectara and a former researcher at Google.

Developers can also prompt chatbots to write code for themand adjust from there. Everything hasnt worked on the first try, said Cody De Arkland, head of technical marketing at tech management platform LaunchDarkly. De Arkland said he uses ChatGPT as one of his final steps to see if theres a better way to optimize his code, like writing it more efficiently. He uses a few AI chatbots, including GitHub Copilot, which is paid for by his employer.

Generative AI doesnt always work for Baggett, either. In his experience, ChatGPT sometimes spits out an answer that doesnt work at all.

At LaunchDarkly, De Arkland recalls a teammate who estimated that coding a complex pricing calculator would take roughly two monthsbut after using ChatGPT, wrote the code in just a week and a half. The obvious case for coding with chatbots is speed: projects are finished faster, and engineers say theyre shifting freed-up time into building better features.

Were not going to end in a place where theres not enough work to go around, De Arkland said. Theres always going to be projects and new things that have to be built to fill up that space.

But theres a limit to what software engineers will share with AI chatbots. For example, none of the developers Quartz spoke with said they would paste entire blocks of code into ChatGPT or other chatbots, wary that the AI tool could compromise data privacy, or have trouble understanding large volumes of text. For some, it wasnt clear if their employer had guardrails to prevent people from entering personal data into a chatbot.

In general, developers say that ChatGPT takes away boring baseline work. Catherine Yeo, an engineer at coding software maker Warp, has used her companys AI chatbot for nine months. Even today, she always marvels when it does return an answer and solves her problems.

Vectaras Ahmad notes that a chatbot allows him to find new solutions to a problem he wouldnt have initially considered when writing code. But as a developer working on AI technology, helike many non-technical workersworries his job could be automated away.

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What software developers using ChatGPT can tell us about how it's changing work - Quartz

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