Rod Stewart had a few surprise guests at a recent concert in Charlotte, North Carolina. His old friend Ozzy Osbourne, the lead singer of Black Sabbath who died last month, was apparently beamed in from some kind of rock heaven, where he was reunited with other departed stars including Michael Jackson, Tina Turner and Bob Marley. The AI-generated images divided Stewart's fans. Some denounced them as disrespectful and distasteful; others found the tribute beautiful. At about the same time, another AI controversy erupted when Jim Acosta, a former CNN White House correspondent, interviewed a digital recreation of Joaquin Oliver, who was killed at the age of 17 in a 2018 high school shooting in Florida.

Lon Harris, executive producer of the This Week in Startups podcast, stoked the conversation this week when he posted: "Dipping below like 5% on Rotten Tomatoes has basically the same appeal to me as breaking 90%. "That's some[thing] I need to experience right there." A film with a rock bottom rating is bound to be interesting, Harris tells BBC News. "A very low score indicates universal agreement. Now I want to know more... Why does everyone agree?

In testing the guardrails of Grok Imagine, The Verge news writer Jess Weatherbed entered the prompt: "Taylor Swift celebrating Coachella with the boys". Grok generated still images of Swift wearing a dress with a group of men behind her. This could then be animated into short video clips under four different settings: "normal", "fun", "custom" or "spicy". "She ripped [the dress] off immediately, had nothing but a tasselled thong underneath, and started dancing, completely uncensored, completely exposed," Ms Weatherbed told BBC News. She added: "It was shocking how fast I was just met with it - I in no way asked it to remove her clothing, all I did was select the'spicy' option."

Open AI CEO Sam Altman, center, speaks with boxer Jake Paul and wrestler Logan Paul in Emancipation Hall at the 60th Presidential Inauguration, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. TECH TENSIONS: Elon Musk escalated tensions in the critical artificial intelligence race Thursday, asserting his most advanced AI model, Grok 4 Heavy, was already outperforming OpenAI's newly launched GPT-5 two weeks ago. BOT BOOM: Small business owners are rapidly adopting artificial intelligence to power their growth, with many saying it will lead to more job opportunities this year, according to a Goldman Sachs survey. POCKET GENIUS: OpenAI unveiled GPT-5 on Thursday, calling it a significant upgrade from its predecessors and a major step forward in building the capabilities of large language models. AI-DOCTORED PHOTOS: Airbnb has reportedly apologized to a woman after the host of a Manhattan apartment where she stayed used artificial intelligence to doctor images of the home, saying she caused thousands of dollars in damage.

Ahead of the 34th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2025), which will take place in Montréal, Canada, from 16 to 22 August 2025, the Local Arrangements Committee has launched a campaign to showcase the next generation of AI researchers in Canada. Through a series of 90-second videos, we meet students based in Canada and find out a bit about their work. Imane Chafi, PhD candidate at the Polytechnique Montréal, uses AI models to support dentists in designing dental preparations for dental crowns more efficiently and accurately. Liliane-Caroline Demers, Student Communication Coordinator for IJCAI 2025 Local Arrangement Committee and a recent master's graduate from Polytechnique Montréal, researches AI-generated music. Using a neurosymbolic approach that combines machine learning with constraint programming at inference time, she creates music that is both stylistically authentic and structurally coherent.

Actress, entrepreneur, and model Christie Brinkley joins'Fox & Friends' to discuss her new memoir "Uptown Girl," which reflects on her early life, marriages, and career in the public eye. Christie Brinkley and her daughter Sailor Brinkley-Cook have plenty in common despite their 44-year difference. The supermodel, 71, recently appeared on Kristin Davis' "Are You a Charlotte?" Both women were shocked by the results. "[Sailor] said, 'Mom, you're right not to go on [dating apps] because the same guys that, you know, said yes to me are saying yes to you,'" the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model revealed.

WEHEAD connects to ChatGPT and displays a face, expressions and voice. Artificial intelligence is no longer just a tool for homework or simple tasks. Today, many teens use AI-powered companions for emotional support, advice and even simulated relationships. These apps simulate conversation in ways that feel deeply personal and, for some teens, deeply real. Recent survey data shows that nearly three-quarters of teens aged 13 to 17 have tried a digital companion at least once, and more than half continue to use them regularly.

Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, one of the world's biggest by circulation, is suing U.S.-based AI firm Perplexity for allegedly "free-riding" on its content on its search engine. The lawsuit filed Thursday is one of a slew by media companies worldwide against AI firms using their material and is the first by a major Japanese news organization, Yomiuri said. It accuses Perplexity of "free-riding on the results of the activities of news organizations, which have invested a great deal of effort and expense." A spokesman for the paper added that this "could have a negative impact on accurate journalism ... and shake the foundations of democracy." The lawsuit filed in Tokyo seeks damages of 2.2 billion ( 14.7 million), equivalent to 120,000 Yomuiri articles used "without permission" between February and June.

Joaquin Oliver was 17 years old when he was shot in the hallway of his high school. An older teenager, expelled some months previously, had opened fire with a high-powered rifle on Valentine's Day in what became America's deadliest high school shooting. Seven years on, Joaquin says he thinks it's important to talk about what happened on that day in Parkland, Florida, "so that we can create a safer future for everyone". But sadly, what happened to Joaquin that day is that he died. The oddly metallic voice speaking to the ex-CNN journalist Jim Acosta in an interview on Substack this week was actually that of a digital ghost: an AI, trained on the teenager's old social media posts at the request of his parents, who are using it to bolster their campaign for tougher gun controls.

New Delhi, India – What if Michael had died instead of Sonny in The Godfather? Or if Rose had shared the debris plank, and Jack hadn't been left to freeze in the Atlantic in Titanic*? Eros International, one of India's largest production houses, with more than 4,000 films in its catalogue, has decided to explore this sort of what-if scenario. It has re-released one of its major hits, Raanjhanaa, a 2013 romantic drama, in cinemas – but has used artificial intelligence (AI) to change its tragic end, in which the male lead dies. In the AI-altered version, Kundan (played by popular actor Dhanush), a Hindu man who has a doomed romance with a Muslim woman, lives.