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Publishers fear AI search summaries and chatbots mean 'end of traffic era'

The Guardian

Search traffic to news sites has already plunged by a third in one year, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Search traffic to news sites has already plunged by a third in one year, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Publishers fear AI search summaries and chatbots mean'end of traffic era' Media companies expect web traffic to their sites from online searches to plummet over the next three years, as AI summaries and chatbots change the way consumers use the internet. An overwhelming majority are also planning to encourage their journalists to behave more like YouTube and TikTok content creators this year, as short-form video and audio content continues to boom. The findings are drawn from a new report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, which included the views of 280 media leaders from 51 countries.


Malaysia and Indonesia block Musk's Grok over sexually explicit deepfakes

BBC News

Malaysia and Indonesia block Musk's Grok over sexually explicit deepfakes Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked access to Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok over its ability to produce sexually explicit deepfakes. Grok, a tool on Musk's X platform, allows users to generate images. In recent weeks however, it has been used to edit images of real people to show them in revealing outfits. The South East Asian countries said Grok could be used to produce pornographic and non-consensual images involving women and children. They are the first in the world to ban the AI tool.


Golden Globes host Nikki Glaser's best jokes

BBC News

Host Nikki Glaser returned to host the Golden Globes on Sunday, delivering a scorching opening monologue that roasted many of the celebrities in the room. Just like Wicked, I'm back for a sequel, she told the A-list crowd. Just like Frankenstein, I've been pieced together by an unlicensed European surgeon. And just like the podcasters nominated tonight, I should not be allowed to be this close to Julia Roberts. The stars took her cutting comments in good humour as Glaser reflected on the last year in film and TV.


Parents of under-fives to be offered screen time guidance

BBC News

Parents of under-fives in England are to be offered official advice on how long their children should spend watching TV or looking at computer screens. The government says it will publish its first guidance on screen time for the age group in April. It comes as government research was published showing that about 98% of children under two were watching screens on a daily basis - with parents, teachers and nursery staff saying youngsters were finding it harder to hold conversations or concentrate on learning. Children with the highest screen time - around five hours a day - reportedly could say significantly fewer words than those at the other end of the scale who watched for around 44 minutes. A national working group led by Children's Commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza and Department for Education scientific adviser Professor Russell Viner will formulate the guidance after speaking to parents, children and early years practitioners.


Eggie, Neo, Isaac and Memo are domestic robots. But would you let them load your dishwasher?

BBC News

Eggie, Neo, Isaac and Memo are domestic robots. But would you let them load your dishwasher? The idea of having a friendly robot butler that can do all the dull duties of running a home has existed for decades. But now, thanks to AI, it's genuinely happening and this year the first truly multi-purpose domestic bots will start to enter homes. In Silicon Valley, they're being trained at speed to fold laundry, load the dishwasher, and clean up after us.


On the use of case estimate and transactional payment data in neural networks for individual loss reserving

arXiv.org Machine Learning

The use of neural networks trained on individual claims data has become increasingly popular in the actuarial reserving literature. We consider how to best input historical payment data in neural network models. Additionally, case estimates are also available in the format of a time series, and we extend our analysis to assessing their predictive power. In this paper, we compare a feed-forward neural network trained on summarised transactions to a recurrent neural network equipped to analyse a claim's entire payment history and/or case estimate development history. We draw conclusions from training and comparing the performance of the models on multiple, comparable highly complex datasets simulated from SPLICE (Avanzi, Taylor and Wang, 2023). We find evidence that case estimates will improve predictions significantly, but that equipping the neural network with memory only leads to meagre improvements. Although the case estimation process and quality will vary significantly between insurers, we provide a standardised methodology for assessing their value.


Game On: the Swiss sports brand using hi-tech and chutzpah to challenge Nike and Adidas

The Guardian

Zurich-based firm taps into latest robot tech to'fibre-spray' high-end sports shoes worn by the likes of Roger Federer A robot leg whirs around in a complex ballet as an almost invisible spray of "flying fibre" builds a hi-tech £300 sports shoe at its foot. This nearly entirely automated process - like a sci-fi future brought to life - is part of the gameplan from On, the Swiss sports brand that is taking on the sector's mighty champions Nike and Adidas with a mix of technology and chutzpah. The brand is expanding rapidly after teaming up with the former tennis pro Roger Federer to create shoes suitable for the Swiss star's sport and a mix of fashion-led collaborations including with the luxury brand LOEWE, actor Zendaya and singers FKA twigs and Burna Boy. In China, sales have doubled year-on-year. Growth has been strong in the US and mainland Europe and this month On will open its fourth London store, in Kensington.


'Dangerous and alarming': Google removes some of its AI summaries after users' health put at risk

The Guardian

Google has said AI Overviews, which use generative AI to provide snapshots of information on a topic or question, are'helpful and reliable'. Google has said AI Overviews, which use generative AI to provide snapshots of information on a topic or question, are'helpful and reliable'. 'Dangerous and alarming': Google removes some of its AI summaries after users' health put at risk Google has removed some of its artificial intelligence health summaries after a Guardian investigation found people were being put at risk of harm by false and misleading information. The company has said its AI Overviews, which use generative AI to provide snapshots of essential information about a topic or question, are " helpful " and " reliable ". But some of the summaries, which appear at the top of search results, served up inaccurate health information, putting users at risk of harm.


Lamar wants to have children with his girlfriend. The problem? She's entirely AI

The Guardian

Lamar wants to have children with his girlfriend. L amar remembered the moment of betrayal like it was yesterday. He'd gone to the party with his girlfriend but hadn't seen her for over an hour, and it wasn't like her to disappear. He slipped down the hallway to check his phone. At that point, he heard murmurs coming from one of the bedrooms and thought he recognised his best friend Jason's low voice. As he pushed the door ajar, they were both still scrambling to throw their clothes on; her shirt was unbuttoned, while Jason struggled to cover himself. The image of his girlfriend and best friend together hit Lamar like a blow to the chest. He left without saying a word. Two years on, when he spoke to me, the memory remained raw. He was still seething with anger, as if telling the story for the first time.


'Add blood, forced smile': how Grok's nudification tool went viral

The Guardian

By 8 January as many as 6,000 bikini demands were being made to the chatbot every hour, according to analysis conducted for the Guardian. By 8 January as many as 6,000 bikini demands were being made to the chatbot every hour, according to analysis conducted for the Guardian. 'Add blood, forced smile': how Grok's nudification tool went viral The'put her in a bikini' trend rapidly evolved into hundreds of thousands of requests to strip clothes from photos of women, horrifying those targeted Like thousands of women across the world, Evie, a 22-year-old photographer from Lincolnshire, woke up on New Year's Day, looked at her phone and was alarmed to see that fully clothed photographs of her had been digitally manipulated by Elon Musk's AI tool, Grok, to show her in just a bikini. The "put her in a bikini" trend began quietly at the end of last year before exploding at the start of 2026. Within days, hundreds of thousands of requests were being made to the Grok chatbot, asking it to strip the clothes from photographs of women.