TikTok parent company ByteDance has built technology to let you insert your face into videos starring someone else. TechCrunch has learned that ByteDance has developed an unreleased feature using life-like Deepfakes technology that the app's code refers to as Face Swap. Code in both TikTok and its Chinese sister app Douyin asks users to take a multi-angle biometric scan of their face, then choose from a selection of videos they want to add their face to and share. Users scan themselves, pick a video, and have their face overlaid on the body of someone in the clip with ByteDance's new Face Swap feature The Deepfakes feature, if launched in Douyin and TikTok, could create a more controlled environment where face swapping technology plus a limited selection of source videos can be used for fun instead of spreading misinformation. It might also raise awareness of the technology so more people are aware that they shouldn't believe everything they see online.

When it comes to AI, Elon Musk has a name in treating it like some aliens' attack or God's wrath upon us, even without an exaggeration. Speaking at MIT in 2014, he called AI humanity's "biggest existential threat" and compared it to "summoning the demon." He is very optimistic about all other technologies like neurotechnology, self-driving cars, Mars colonization, and others, but Artificial Intelligence always seems to scare him. I wonder if it really is something so dreadful as he says it is. Today, we will talk about the things he has said in the past years about AI implications and see if they are convincing enough.

This article was submitted in response to the call for ideas issued by the co-chairs of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, Eric Schmidt and Robert Work. It addresses the first question (part a.), which asks how will artificial intelligence affect the character and/or the nature of war. AI itself is not new -- the first AI neural network was designed in 1943. But AI as a critical factor in competitions is relatively novel and, as a result, there's not much data to draw from. However, the data that does exist is striking. Perhaps the most interesting examples are in the world of chess.

Google's artificial intelligence system can identify breast cancer more accurately than radiologists, according to a study published in Nature on Wednesday. The model, created in collaboration with cancer researchers and Google Health, was trained on X-ray images, known as digital mammography, from women in the U.K. and U.S. to spot signs of breast cancer in the scans. Researchers used mammograms from 76,000 women in the U.K. and more than 15,000 women in the U.S., according to Google Health. Shravya Shetty, technical lead at Google Health who co-authored the study, said the results "exceeded expectations" and revealed possibilities that the AI could assist in workload reduction by being employed as a second reader with breast cancer screenings. Researchers noted that the model received less information than human experts, only processing the most recent of an anonymized mammogram.

After a U.S. airstrike kills Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tells'Fox & amp; Friends' that President Trump's decision was necessary to deter further aggression. The U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial killing on Friday said the President Trump-approved drone strike against Qassem Soleimani, Iran's top general, violated international human rights law. In a lengthy Twitter thread, Agnès Callamard said that "outside the context of active hostilities, the use of drones or other means for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal," adding that the U.S. would need to prove the person targeted constituted an imminent threat to others. She also took issue with the justification for using drones in another country on the basis of self-defense. "Under customary international law States can take military action if the threatened attack is imminent, no other means would deflect it, and the action is proportionate," she wrote.

Hyderabad: The Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IIT-H) is going to collaborate with the Government of Telangana to carry out research in Artificial Intelligence. The Institute is partnering with the Information Technology, Electronics and Communication Department, for building, and identifying quality datasets, along with third parties such as Industry. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by Prof B S Murty, director, IIT Hyderabad, and Jayesh Ranjan, principal secretary to Government of Telangana, during an event held on January 2, 2020 as part of '2020: Declaring Telangana's Year of AI' initiative. They will also work on Education and Training to prepare and deliver content and curriculum on AI courses, which are to be delivered to college students along with industry participants. Prof Murty, director of IIT Hyderabad, said, "IIT Hyderabad is a pioneer in the field of Artificial Intelligence. IIT Hyderabad is the first institute in the country to launch a BTech program in AI. With a strong base of close to 25 faculty in the Department of AI, IIT Hyderabad is looking forward to such opportunities to come up with many more innovations and research achievements in the field."

Face-scanning technology is inspiring a wave of privacy fears as the software creeps into every corner of life in the United States and Europe -- at border crossings, on police vehicles and in stadiums, airports and high schools. But efforts to check its spread are hitting a wall of resistance on both sides of the Atlantic. One big reason: Western governments are embracing this technology for their own use, valuing security and data collection over privacy and civil liberties. And in Washington, U.S. President Donald Trump's impeachment and the death of a key civil rights and privacy champion have snarled expectations for a congressional drive to enact restrictions. The result is an impasse that has left tech companies largely in control of where and how to deploy facial recognition, which they have sold to police agencies and embedded in consumers' apps and smartphones.

The world's first artificially intelligent "inventor" has been rejected by British and European patent authorities, marking an historic moment in an ongoing debate around the role of creative machines. In July last year, an international squad of legal experts challenged patent authorities around the world to recognise the "inventorship" of artificial intelligence, arguing that the current regimes were outdated and do not protect machines' creative output. The nine-strong group, led by University of Surrey professor Ryan Abbott, made headlines after submitting patents designed by an artificially intelligent machine with the US, UK and European authorities. They have since filed more applications in Germany, Israel, Taiwan and China. The team is battling for recognition of a particular AI inventor called Dabus.

The immense capabilities artificial intelligence is bringing to the world would have been inconceivable to past generations. But even as we marvel at the incredible power these new technologies afford, we're faced with complex and urgent questions about the balance of benefit and harm. When most people ponder whether AI is good or evil, what they're essentially trying to grasp is whether AI is a tool or a weapon. Of course, it's both -- it can help reduce human toil, and it can also be used to create autonomous weapons. Either way, the ensuing debates touch on numerous unresolved questions and are critical to paving the way forward.

Health products powered by artificial intelligence, or AI, are streaming into our lives, from virtual doctor apps to wearable sensors and drugstore chatbots. IBM boasted that its AI could "outthink cancer." Others say computer systems that read X-rays will make radiologists obsolete. "There's nothing that I've seen in my 30-plus years studying medicine that could be as impactful and transformative" as AI, said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and executive vice president of Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif. AI can help doctors interpret MRIs of the heart, CT scans of the head and photographs of the back of the eye, and could potentially take over many mundane medical chores, freeing doctors to spend more time talking to patients, Topol said.