Google is partnering with The Associated Press to bring real-time information from the news agency to its Gemini app, the search giant announced on Wednesday. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The deal builds on an existing partnership Google had with The Associated Press to source real-time information for its search engine. "This will be particularly helpful to [Gemini app] users looking for up-to-date information," Google says of the deal. "AP and Google's longstanding relationship is based on working together to provide timely, accurate news and information to global audiences," said Kristin Heitmann, The Associated Press senior vice president and chief revenue officer.

The high volume of job applications makes it challenging for recruiters to find the talent they need and for people to get hired. LinkedIn is adding a new feature that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to make the recruitment process more seamless, helping both parties connect efficiently. On Wednesday, LinkedIn announced Job Match, a feature that shows job seekers how their profiles, including their skills and experience, compare to an open position. This approach is meant to give job seekers a better idea of the roles worth applying to and that they could hear back from. To power this experience, LinkedIn said it uses advanced in-house language models that can generate insights within seconds.

Google is being investigated by the UK competition watchdog over the impact of its search and advertising practices on consumers, news publishers, businesses and rival search engines. The CMA estimates that search advertising costs the equivalent of nearly 500 for each UK household a year, which could be kept down with effective competition. The watchdog announced on Tuesday it will investigate if Google is blocking competitors from entering the market, and whether it is engaging in "potential exploitative conduct" by the mass collection of consumers' data without informed consent. It will also investigate whether Google is using its position as the pre-eminent search engine to give an unfair advantage to its own shopping and travel services. The investigation will take up to nine months and could result in Google being forced to share the mountains of data it collects with other businesses, or to give publishers greater control over how their content – books, newspaper articles and music – is used, including by Google's fast-growing artificial intelligence systems.

Citing internal Meta communications, the filing claims that the social network company's chief executive backed the use of the LibGen dataset, a vast online archive of books, despite warnings within the company's AI executive team that it is a dataset "we know to be pirated". The internal message says that using a database containing pirated material could weaken the Facebook and Instagram owner's negotiations with regulators, according to the filing. "Media coverage suggesting we have used a dataset we know to be pirated, such as LibGen, may undermine our negotiating position with regulators." The authors sued Meta in 2023, arguing that the social media company misused their books to train Llama, the large language model that powers its chatbots. The Library Genesis, or LibGen, dataset is a "shadow library" that originated in Russia and claims to contain millions of novels, nonfiction books and science magazine articles.

Some of the world's most popular apps are likely being co-opted by rogue members of the advertising industry to harvest sensitive location data on a massive scale, with that data ending up with a location data company whose subsidiary has previously sold global location data to US law enforcement. The thousands of apps, included in hacked files from location data company Gravy Analytics, include everything from games like Candy Crush and dating apps like Tinder to pregnancy tracking and religious prayer apps across both Android and iOS. Because much of the collection is occurring through the advertising ecosystem--not code developed by the app creators themselves--this data collection is likely happening without users' or even app developers' knowledge. This article was created in partnership with 404 Media, a journalist-owned publication covering how technology impacts humans. "For the first time publicly, we seem to have proof that one of the largest data brokers selling to both commercial and government clients appears to be acquiring their data from the online advertising'bid stream,'" rather than code embedded into the apps themselves, Zach Edwards, senior threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Silent Push and who has followed the location data industry closely, tells 404 Media after reviewing some of the data.

But Google Maps has been causing chaos for some shoppers after pranksters set up a'phantom' Aldi in the middle of the Welsh countryside. The small village of Cyffylliog has been inundated with an'endless stream' of confused shoppers looking for somewhere to buy their groceries. Following Google's directions actually brought them to an empty field on a remote farm tens of miles away from the nearest supermarket. While it might have been added as a joke, the fake Aldi has since led to chaos for this small community as deliveries have begun to arrive in search of the non-existent supermarket. The misguided prank has even led to real Aldi deliveries arriving on one farmer's doorstep and becoming stuck on the narrow lanes.

You've no doubt noticed artificial intelligence finding its way into every app, service, and hardware device. It's now unusual to see a tech product launch where AI isn't the main talking point. Meta is one of the companies pushing AI the hardest, with its own set of AI models, and a selection of AI bots and tools inside its own apps. If you've used Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram recently, then you may have spotted a new Meta AI bot, ready and waiting to be of assistance. Here's how you can make use of it--and what your options are in terms of security and privacy.

Back in the day, couples typically met at bars, with those flirty glances eventually progressing into blossoming romances. Others might have been set-up by friends playing Cupid. Nowadays, however, singletons hit the love jackpot by swiping through a conveyor belt of strangers' faces on dating apps. A mesmerising chart today shows how the likes of Tinder and Hinge have killed off the traditional ways lovers used to meet. In the early 1960s, more than a third of couples originally met through friends.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools could be used to manipulate online audiences into making decisions – ranging from what to buy to who to vote for – according to researchers at the University of Cambridge. The paper highlights an emerging new marketplace for "digital signals of intent" – known as the "intention economy" – where AI assistants understand, forecast and manipulate human intentions and sell that information on to companies who can profit from it. The intention economy is touted by researchers at Cambridge's Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) as a successor to the attention economy, where social networks keep users hooked on their platforms and serve them adverts. The intention economy involves AI-savvy tech companies selling what they know about your motivations, from plans for a stay in a hotel to opinions on a political candidate, to the highest bidder. "For decades, attention has been the currency of the internet," said Dr Jonnie Penn, an historian of technology at LCFI. "Sharing your attention with social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram drove the online economy."

This was the year that gen Z had their "Brat summer", or so we were led to believe. Inspired by the hit album by pop sensation Charli xcx, the trend was seen to embody all the messiness of modern youth: trashy, chaotic and bright green. But on the teenager's social media platform of choice, TikTok, a more sepia music trend has been taking root. Despite having an endless amount of music to pair with their short, scrollable videos, TikTok users have been raiding the back catalogues of artists from yesteryear including Bronski Beat and Sade to soundtrack their posts. This year set a new high for use of old tracks on British TikTok posts, with tunes more than five years old accounting for 19 out of its 50 top tracks this year.