Anthropic pushes for opt-out model for Australian content as ABC warns of'cannibalisation' of news But Australia's public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, have strongly criticised AI firms, calling on the government to enact strict new rules to compensate media organisations and protect public interest journalism. Everything Australians put online could be scraped for AI under proposed new rules. How will you be affected? The ABC and SBS also suggested the government include AI companies in the news bargaining incentive, which would require them to make commercial deals with large media outlets to support journalism. "As publishers, AI-based services are currently unregulated and receive more favourable treatment than established Australian media. This unequal treatment will accelerate the cannibalisation of the Australian news industry," the ABC said in its submission.

A Tokyo court has sided with a Japanese voice actor who claimed a TikTok account had used AI to clone his "lustrous" baritone delivery, ruling that the human voice is protected by law in a landmark case. Kenjiro Tsuda is a prominent anime voice actor who has starred in huge number of movies, series and video games across his more than 30-year career, with his turn as Seto Kaiba in Yu-Gi-Oh! Tsuda asserted that the voice of the narrator of several TikTok videos uploaded to an anonymous account between July 2024 and the second half of last year was cloned from his own voice. While he was partially victorious in the case, his request to order TikTok to remove the videos in question was dismissed, as the offending account has already been deleted. In its decision, the court said that using the voice of an actor without permission should be deemed an infringement on their publicity rights, as reported by AFP.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi speaks during a news conference in New York on Sept. 23. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Thursday that the government will draw up an action plan by the end of the year to promote the use of artificial intelligence, which she regards as an accelerator for economic growth. "The societal implementation of high-performance AI is essential for realizing the government's growth strategy," Takaichi said at a meeting of the Council for Japan's Growth Strategy. She instructed relevant Cabinet ministers to compile a concrete vision for AI utilization, as well as regulatory and institutional reforms. At the meeting, participants discussed a growth strategy implementation program to be compiled at year-end alongside the government's budget proposal for fiscal 2027.

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In an exclusive interview with WIRED, Paragon Solutions CEO Andrew Boyd reveals the limits of the company's promise to keep bad actors from abusing its powerful espionage tool. Spyware maker Paragon Solutions has long positioned itself as the good guy in an industry seemingly filled with bad ones, vowing to never sell its mobile spyware to authoritarian regimes or ones with poor human rights records. It also promises to cut off any customer caught misusing its products against journalists, dissidents, or other non-legitimate targets. Yet weeks after Paragon, then Israeli-owned, was acquired by the US equity firm AE Industrial Partners in December 2024 and merged with REDLattice--an American offensive cyber firm owned by AE that this week announced plans to go public --WhatsApp alleged that Paragon's Graphite spyware was used to infect the phones of more than 60 individuals in more than 20 countries, including journalists and activists. Most of the targets were not identified, but the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab named two journalists and two activists in Italy. Italian authorities denied misuse . Paragon and its new US owners, despite their zero-tolerance policy for customer abuse of their software, initially declined to comment on the allegations, and reportedly was exploring potential legal action against WhatsApp after the company sent a cease-and-desist letter to Paragon.

Share OpenAI'reviewing' report of failed hacking attempt against Canada's gov't on social media OpenAI has confirmed that it is reviewing a report of a failed hacking attempt against a Canadian government body in the latest incident to highlight cybersecurity concerns about artificial intelligence. The AI giant said on Wednesday that it was reviewing the alleged cyberattack against Canada's national archives agency and had provided an initial briefing to Canadian officials. The spokesperson added that much of the misaligned activity under review by the company involved "routine research tasks, including accessing public web content". The attempted hacking, if confirmed, would be the first publicly known case of an AI-led cyberattack against Canada's government, following a series of incidents of rogue agents targeting agencies in the United States and Australia. Canada's government-run Cyber Centre said earlier this week that there were no indications that government systems had been compromised by AI.

About 700 eligible offenders will leave jails in England and Wales on 1 October while some 2,550 are due to be released by the end of the year, under the government's early prison release plan. So why are so many people being let out of jail earlier than expected and how have they been chosen? Why are prisoners being released early? Quite simply, prisons are almost full - and not for the first time. As of last Friday, there were 87,499 people in 120 jails across England and Wales - with around 1,500 available beds.

China has cracked down on AI relationships. Is it ahead of the game? In early 2024, a young man in the city of Huangshi, south-eastern China, reportedly posted a message on the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin. Within minutes, the suicide prevention team at Douyin kicked into gear. The team, which is staffed 24 hours a day, shared the man's posts with five police stations in Huangshi. After geolocating one of his videos to a local park, police found him in emotional distress and intervened before he was able to take his own life.

Energy bills are going up - here's what you can do about it Energy prices have now risen by nearly 4%, with forecasts of a much bigger jump to come in January. Regulator Ofgem's price cap affects about 20 million households in England, Scotland and Wales and sets a maximum price for each unit of gas and electricity. Forecasters have suggested a 16% increase is possible in January, due to high wholesale prices paid by suppliers as a result of the conflict in the Middle East. While that's beyond consumers' control, charities say the government should offer more support - beyond a VAT cut on electricity bills which takes effect on Thursday - and households should reset for winter again. That includes reading the meter now, and taking other steps to keep a check on rising bills.

Trump's AI Safety'Accord' Is a Fancy Pinky-Swear Six major AI companies signed a voluntary agreement with the White House this week vowing to implement safeguards. On Tuesday, executives for Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI, and Nvidia all signed "The White House Accord on Super Intelligence," which was announced following a luncheon held by President Donald Trump. The effort was an act of "tremendous self-regulation," as Trump put it, but the agreement is not the sweeping AI regulation that people inside the companies themselves have been asking for. And while failing to honor these public commitments could count as illegally lying to consumers, even that wouldn't be enough to trigger massive reforms. The statement says that companies "should implement" several things: First, they should ensure they have "robust internal controls" to monitor their models' capabilities and ability to not go rogue or hack things in unintended ways.