A screen displays an unavailable Dutch government website, as cyber agencies warn that websites may be taken offline while PHP prepares a critical fix on Wednesday. Government websites in Europe and elsewhere went offline on Wednesday after the disclosure of critical vulnerabilities in a widely used programming language sent website operators around the world scrambling to protect their systems. Developers of the PHP programming language on Wednesday released urgent new fixes to vulnerabilities that had quietly been lurking in their software for years until they were uncovered using AI, saying that all users were "encouraged to update immediately." With tech firms warning that some hackers were already exploiting the flaws, government agencies across Europe were among those that took sites offline as a precaution. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

The publisher of best-selling Haitian-Canadian writer Thelyson Orelien says it has severed its professional relationship with the author after confirming he used artificial intelligence to help write his novel, "It Was Either That or Die". Boreal said on Wednesday that it conducted a further investigation after allegations surfaced in September to determine whether AI was used to write the novel. Orelien had previously denied allegations surrounding his breakthrough novel, and last week, the Canadian publisher said it was standing by the 38-year-old writer. Boreal said it did not know the extent of AI's use in the writing process "and we will likely never have a definitive answer". It said it gathered all the working versions of the novel and hired an outside party to analyse the various drafts.

Just Eat has apologised after it was ridiculed online over a series of mistakes with AI-generated pictures for some of its restaurants' food items. The online food delivery platform had been testing out the tech to showcase food which didn't have images yet - but not all turned out as planned. Instead the AI invented several bizarre concoctions, from bacon and eggs floating in a glass of cola - a confusion between soda and soda bread - to chips poking out of muffins. A Just Eat spokesperson said the firm was in the process of removing the incorrect images, and would stop making more until the AI was further developed. We work with tens of thousands of small restaurants on their food imagery, including funding professional local photographers, the spokesperson told the BBC. We've been trialling AI-enhanced images, and as with any new technology, it isn't always quite right the first time.

Image caption, DeepMind is Google's AI company Google is facing a backlash from some staff members over the company's deployment of its AI technology for military use. The BBC has spoken to several tech workers who have either recently resigned from Google's AI company, Google DeepMind, or are in the process of leaving, over concerns with the tech firm's military contracts. Sofia Liguori, a London-based research engineer, is one of them. She resigned from Google DeepMind this week and spoke about her concerns exclusively with the BBC, despite her contract restricting her from doing so. Realising my company is pushing more and more for AI systems in military operations makes me feel ashamed to work at Google, Liguori said, speaking in a personal capacity. Image caption, Sofia Liguori resigned from Google, saying the company's push for more AI technology in the military made her feel ashamed to work there In response, a Google spokesperson told the BBC: We work with public sector organisations worldwide and follow a consistent process for reviewing and entering these contracts, including compliance with our acceptable use policies and AI principles.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 combines large-scale battles with a story centred on the people caught up in the conflict. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 combines large-scale battles with a story centred on the people caught up in the conflict. 'The audience gets to be in on it': How narrative-led gameplay is Call of Duty's greatest weapon Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? I n these strange, subdued weeks before the much-anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto VI, there have still been some welcome surprises. Onimusha: Way of the Sword revived a half-forgotten samurai action series with much aplomb, while Silent Hill: Townfall transported all of the franchise's bloody, dread-filled psychological horror to the picturesque Scottish coast.

Hackers around the world are all-in on using agentic AI to wage attacks--and manipulating tools like Anthropic's Claude to help them carry out their crimes. As AI adoption spreads among both malicious hackers and defenders, even relatively unsophisticated cybercriminals are incorporating agentic AI into their campaigns and getting around model safeguards, according to new details published on Wednesday about recent successful attacks by four different threat groups. Researchers from the threat intelligence firm CrowdStrike looked at the AI infrastructure powering attacks perpetrated between May and August by four previously unreported groups--one that operates in Chinese, one in Spanish and English, one in Indonesian, and one in Russian. The former two exhibited sophisticated AI "harnesses," the software that supports and guides a model to carry out tasks. The latter two showed less technical prowess, researchers found, but were still able to compromise multiple targets.

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Donald Trump says the MOAB, or "mother of all bombs," could figure prominently in any new airstrike plans targeting Iran and the IRGC sites.

Decoding how animals communicate could reveal the inner lives of other species--and give humans a window onto how they see the world. Humans are far from the only species with a gift for gab, and our furry, feathered, and finned friends could have a lot to tell us. Decoding how animals communicate with one another could offer a window into the inner lives of other species and help humans realize that "animals are sentient creatures who think, who have hopes and dreams of their own," says Con Slobodchikoff, the founder of Zoolingua, a company working on dog-to-human speech. Teasing all this out is complex. To decipher howls, squeaks, and clicks, researchers must match the creatures making sounds with what's happening around them. Prairie dogs, for example, utter a different series of yips when a coyote approaches than when a hawk is nearby.