Mallal says he wants to see a "broadly accessible and easy-to-use programme where artists are compensated for their work". Beeban Kidron, a cross-bench peer and leading campaigner against the government proposals, says AI film-making tools are "fantastic" but "at what point are they going to realise that these tools are literally built on the work of creators?" She adds: "Creators need equity in the new system or we lose something precious." YouTube says its terms and conditions allow Google to use creators' work for making AI models – and denies that all of YouTube's inventory has been used to train its models. Mallal calls his use of AI to make films "prompt craft", a phrase that uses the term for giving instructions to AI systems. When making the Ukraine film, he says he was amazed at how quickly a camera angle or lighting tone could be adjusted with a few taps on a keyboard.

Public swimming pools facing closure because of soaring energy bills have been offered a lifeline via new technology to heat the water. Mark Bjornsgaard, the chief executive of the tech startup Deep Green, has trialled the idea in Exmouth, Devon. He has put a small computer data processing centre underneath the pool and the energy from it heats the water. The idea has taken off and up to 20 public pools could be upgraded to the heat system this year. "We built a small data centre in Exmouth leisure centre. Most normal data centres waste the heat that the computers generate. We capture ours and we give it for free to the swimming pool to heat the pool," Bjornsgaard told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

In 2023, the financial sector is predicted to experience massive changes as traditional financial institutions (FIs) compete with Fintechs and digital services for supremacy. The launch of new digital banks like Maribank, Boost Holdings, and Sea Ltd has utilized technology and data to deliver innovative and personalized financial services to draw new customers in Singapore and Malaysia. In Singapore, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Lawrence Wong emphasized the potential for digital technologies to create streamlined and efficient financial operations. Amplifying this point, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Ministry of Finance (MOF) collaborated with FIs to provide digital solutions that reduce processing time for government guarantees and insurance bonds. Digital transformation will be key to altering the way financial institutions deliver positive customer engagement in 2023.

As industries across the world focus on innovation in all facets of their operations today, we inhabit an era of two progressive technologies leading a revolution. These, undoubtedly, are AI & Blockchain. The onset of artificial intelligence, which mimics human intelligence to complete complex tasks, has now seeped into how we function in our daily lives. With the ever so increased rush towards digitization – more and more applications are relying on the use of AI. In 2009, when Bitcoins were launched, Blockchain moved from being a theoretical concept to a real-world use case.

Scottish and European health researchers have announced that they are part of a €6m international project to use AI to improve the diagnosis of bowel cancer, the UK's second-most deadly type of cancer. Bowel cancer is the second most-common cause of cancer death in Scotland, with around 1,600 people dying of the disease each year. The current detection method involves inserting an endoscope, a thin flexible tube with a camera on the end, into a patient's colon which then travels around the large bowel allowing doctors to check for cancer. The new procedure being developed by the research team - known as a Clinical Capsule Endoscopy (CCE) – utilises an artificial intelligence-assisted'smart pill' containing cameras (pictured below) which, once swallowed by a patient, records images of the intestines as it passes through. At present, images captured by the capsules are reviewed by trained doctors, but AI offers the potential to safely and ethically speed up the process, make it more cost-effective and increase its use.

The biggest energy transition in history is well and truly underway, and nowhere is the shift more readily apparent than in the transport industry. Wall Street is almost unanimous that electric vehicles are the future of the industry, with EV sales already outpacing ICE sales in markets such as Norway. That kind of exponential growth can only mean one thing: Explosive demand for the metals that go into those batteries. Demand for battery metals is projected to soar as the transport industry continues to electrify at a record pace. In fact, there's a real danger that current mining technologies might struggle to keep up with the demand for battery metals in the near future. Thankfully, Artificial intelligence (AI) can not only be deployed to help improve the way these crucial elements are mined but can replace them altogether.

While some of the applications for artificial intelligence involve say, winning games of Texas hold'em or recreating pretty paintings, there are areas where the technology could have truly profound consequences. Among those is medical care, and a major breakthrough from Alphabet's DeepMind AI could be a gamechanger in this regard, with the system demonstrating an ability to predict the 3D structures of unique proteins, overcoming a problem that has plagued biologists for half a century. By understanding the 3D shapes of different proteins, scientists can better understand what they do and how the cause diseases, which in turn paves the way for better drug discovery. Beyond that, as a central component to the chemical processes for all living things, more expedient mapping of 3D protein structures would benefit many fields of biological research, but this process has proven painstaking. This is because while modern scientific tools such as X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy allow researchers to study these structures in amazing new detail, they all still hinge on a process of trial and error.

The world of work is witnessing tidal changes in business transformation made possible by the revolution in technology. Most notable is Artificial Intelligence (AI) which can be used to create new paradigms of collaboration and creativity. Here's how it can be a positive impact on an important and often overlooked segment of your employee population- your managers. Manager engagement begins by ensuring that they feel empowered to lead, make independent decisions and shoulder responsibilities. And if employee engagement is considered an art, then AI can bring the brushstrokes to your canvas.

Sellafield are seeking to innovate in the way they analyse Health, Safety and Environmental data to improve insight, trend analysis and early prediction of safety issues. The data which needs to be analysed includes safety observations, assurance activities, assurance action tracking information, accident reports and unsafe condition reports. Applications are invited for technological solutions to meet this challenge. The deadline for applications is Friday 24th January at 12 noon. Sellafield are exploring the use of Machine Learning (ML) to help analyse health, safety and environmental data to improve prediction of risk.

Neotas – a leading provider of online due diligence for the financial services sector – is joining forces with artificial intelligence (AI) experts at the University of Essex to develop a next-generation screening system. The London-based company has been awarded a £200,000 grant from Innovate UK towards the first stage of the project, which it believes could revolutionise due diligence by providing new solutions to tackle financial crime and mitigate risk. Neotas uses powerful search techniques to analyse a company's or an individual's'digital footprint', providing advanced insights without invading their privacy. Clients range from private equity firms carrying out pre-investment checks to banks and institutions which need to comply with anti-money laundering (AML) rules or the Senior Managers & Certification Regime (SMCR). The project aims to make the screening process less labour intensive and automatically identify warning signs without creating false alarms.