Recognizing if LLM output can be grounded in evidence is central to many tasks in NLP: retrieval-augmented generation, summarization, document-grounded dialogue, and more. Current approaches to this kind of "fact-checking" are based on verifying each piece of a model generation against potential evidence using an LLM. However, this process can be very computationally expensive, requiring many calls to LLMs to check a single response. In this work, we show how to build small models that have GPT-4-level performance but for 400x lower cost. We do this by constructing synthetic training data with GPT-4, which involves creating realistic yet challenging instances of factual errors via a structured generation procedure. Training on this data teaches models to check each fact in the claim and recognize synthesis of information across sentences. For evaluation, we unify pre-existing datasets into a benchmark LLM-AggreFact, collected from recent work on fact-checking and grounding LLM generations. Our best system MiniCheck-FT5 (770M parameters) outperforms all systems of comparable size and reaches GPT-4 accuracy. We release LLM-AggreFact, code for data synthesis, and models.

Creating a sexually explicit "deepfake" image is to be made an offence under a new law, the Ministry of Justice has announced. Under the legislation, anyone who creates such an image without consent will face a criminal record and an unlimited fine. They could also face jail if the image is shared more widely. The creation of a deepfake image will be an offence regardless of whether the creator intended to share it, the department said. The Online Safety Act, introduced last year, has already criminalised the sharing of deepfake intimate images, whose creation is being facilitated by advances in artificial intelligence.

For people in eastern Ukraine, where nightly barrages of drones from Russia outpace the military's overwhelmed air defenses, the response by Western allies to Iran's aerial assault against Israel this weekend produced uncomfortable comparisons. The militaries of the United States, Britain, France and others stepped in to help Israel defend against the fusillade of more than 300 Iranian drones and missiles, nearly all of which were intercepted. A similar number of aerial weapons are fired at Ukraine on a weekly basis, its officials say, with many of the drones in those attacks designed by Iran and now produced by Russia. Since the start of this year, Russia has fired 1,000 missiles, 2,800 drones and 7,000 guided aerial bombs at Ukraine, according to Ukraine's permanent representative to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya. While Washington and other allies have provided Kyiv with some powerful air defense weapons, they have not directly confronted Russian forces, and Ukrainian officials have long argued that the supplied weapons are insufficient to counter the threat from Moscow.

An intricate network of Israel's missile defense tech faced a serious test of its mettle Saturday night, downing '99 percent' of an aerial assault launched from Iran. Approximately 170 Iranian drones, 120 ballistic missiles and over 30 cruise missiles had been launched from the Iranian territory in the attack, soaring over 1,100 miles. Iran's airborne phalanx was repelled by ground-based anti-air missiles with names like the'Iron Dome,' 'David's Sling' and'Arrow-3,' the latest hardware in Israel's frequently updated national defense arsenal. Below, an overview of the equipment Israel has developed, sometimes with the help of American military contractors, and how it keeps bombardments in check. First operational in 2011, Israel's Iron Dome faced its first test over a decade ago, when militants in Gaza fired an estimated 1,500 rockets at Israel over eight days in Nov. 2014 - at least 10 Iron Dome missile batteries are known to exist, total (like this one pictured above) First operational in 2011, Israel's Iron Dome faced its first test over a decade ago, when militants in Gaza fired an estimated 1,500 rockets at Israel over eight days in November of 2014.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a swipe at voters "upset" by the forthcoming rematch between President Biden and former President Trump during her appearance on "The Tonight Show." Hillary Clinton reacted to a recent ruling in Arizona, which bans abortion in nearly all circumstances, calling it "cruelty" during an interview with Kelly Clarkson and encouraging Americans to vote in a way that would "make life better" for the largest number of people. "I feared it would happen but I hoped it wouldn't happen. Now here we are in the middle of this very difficult period for women in about half the states in our country, who cannot get the care that they need. And the old law in Arizona is without exceptions and the danger to women's lives as well as to our right to make our own decisions about our bodies and ourselves is so profound," Clinton said during the interview with Clarkson on "The Kelly Clarkson Show."

Video captures the moment and aftermath of what appears to be a drone, allegedly of Ukrainian origin, striking Russian drone production facility. Russian officials claimed that only a worker's dormitory was hit. The success of Israel and its allies in largely thwarting a massive Iranian missile and drone attack shows what Ukraine could achieve against Russian aerial barrages if it had more support from its partners, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Monday. A recent Russian aerial campaign targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure and other targets has wrought extensive damage, and Ukrainian officials have pleaded with the country's Western allies to provide more air defense systems as the war stretches into its third year. Israel's defense system, with assistance from the U.S. and Britain -- countries that are also supporting Ukraine's war effort -- is credited with preventing serious damage or casualties in Sunday's attack by Iran using more than 300 drones and missiles. Kuleba, speaking to reporters in Kyiv, urged Ukraine's allies to "give us what we need and we will do the rest of the job."

Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reports that the U.S. military has shot down'dozens' of ballistic and cruise missiles as well as attack drones. The Philippine president said Monday his administration has no plan to give the U.S. military access to more Philippine army camps and stressed that the American military presence was sparked by China's aggressive actions in the disputed South China Sea. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office in 2022, allowed American forces and weapons access to four additional Philippine military bases, bringing to nine the number of camps where U.S. troops can rotate indefinitely under a 2014 agreement. The Biden administration has been strengthening an arc of security alliances in the region to better counter China, a move that dovetails with Philippine efforts to shore up its external defense, especially in the South China Sea. Marcos' decision last year alarmed China because two of the new sites were located just across from Taiwan and southern China.

Video captures the moment and aftermath of what appears to be a drone, allegedly of Ukrainian origin, striking Russian drone production facility. Russian officials claimed that only a worker's dormitory was hit. More civilians died across Ukraine on Sunday as analysts warned that delays in U.S. military assistance would see Kyiv struggle to fight off Russian offensives. One man was killed Sunday after a Russian drone hit the truck he was driving in the Sumy region, the local prosecutor's office said. Elsewhere, a 67-year-old woman was killed after shelling hit an apartment block in the Donetsk region, said Gov. Vadym Filashkin. Officials in the Kharkiv region also said Sunday that they had retrieved the bodies of a 61-year-old woman and a 68-year-old man killed by a Russian strike the previous day.

After several reports of artificial intelligence-generated child pornography surfaced in California, Ventura County Dist. Erik Nasarenko advocated for a change to state law to protect children who are increasingly vulnerable to this misuse of technology. Last December, Nasarenko received his first tip regarding a person who had artificially created photos depicting an underaged girl performing sex acts with an adult man. "When it came to my attention, I said let's file [charges]," Nasarenko told The Times. But, because of current loopholes in California law, he learned that he couldn't press charges in cases where the photos of children are AI-generated.

"Noise" is a fuzzy word--a noisy one, in the statistical sense. Its meanings run the gamut from the negative to the positive, from the overpowering to the mysterious, from anarchy to sublimity. The negative seems to lie at the root: etymologists trace the word to "nuisance" and "nausea." Noise is what drives us mad; it sends the Grinch over the edge at Christmastime. ("Oh, the Noise! Noise!") Noise is the sound of madness itself, the din within our minds. The demented narrator of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" jabbers about noise while he hallucinates his victim's heartbeat: "I found that the noise was not within my ears. . . . The noise steadily increased. . . . Yet noise can be righteous and majestic. The Psalms are full of joyful noise, noise unto the Lord. In the Book of Ezekiel, the voice of God is said to be "like a noise of many waters." In "Paradise Lost," Heaven makes "infernal noise" as it beats back the armies of Hell. At the same time, the word can summon all manner of ...