Goto

Collaborating Authors

 navigation close dialogue 1 4


'Adversarial clothing': are garments designed to confuse facial recognition systems about to go mainstream?

The Guardian

Models wearing garments created by Cap_able, which which markets them as making AI recognition more difficult. Models wearing garments created by Cap_able, which which markets them as making AI recognition more difficult. 'Adversarial clothing': are garments designed to confuse facial recognition systems about to go mainstream? As facial recognition technology is rolled out across Britain's public spaces, a new generation of designers say privacy could be the next big fashion trend. Companies have started incorporating "adversarial patterns" in their garments - carefully designed arrangements of shapes, colours and repeated motifs said to exploit weaknesses in some computer vision systems.


Robots, AI and drones: how the Dutch navy is using tech to transform its sea defences

The Guardian

Uncrewed systems are the future for armed forces and the Netherlands is leading the way'to keep people out of danger zones' O n each side of the target ship, a black vessel keeps a watchful distance. Defender 1 and Defender 2 are the eyes and ears of the navy - but they have nobody onboard, and their paths are controlled by a computer system. This is the future of the Royal Netherlands Navy, according to Capt Sjoerd Feenstra, head of the expertise centre for unmanned systems. He is leading a five-week mission, off the coast of Den Helder in the north of the country, to test the limits of systems that operate without the human touch. "For the last year and a half we've been working to change our organisation," he says. "In about 10 years there will be crewed platforms surrounded by a ring of uncrewed systems operating as autonomously as possible."


China wants to solve the hardest problem in robotics – making hands

The Guardian

Race to develop'embodied AI' focuses on creating dextrous hands to transform humanoid robots from gimmicks into useful products Human hands - nimble, nerve-filled appendages that are the most flexible part of the human skeleton - are exceptionally complex. Many tasks that most people can do largely without thinking, from tying a pair of shoelaces to buttoning up a shirt, in fact require a complex set of neurological instructions and precise choreography. In thousands of years of human history, no machine has been able to truly replicate human's greatest tool. But now, as artificial intelligence (AI) races forwards, some companies think they are close to surpassing this final but most difficult hurdle in robotics. Most of them are in China . A new suite of Chinese start-ups are leveraging China's advantages in manufacturing and enthusiasm for what the government calls "embodied AI" to build the fully dextrous robotic hands that are needed to transform humanoid robots from dancing gimmicks into useful products.


Australia news live: shadow arts minister Angie Bell, a former musician, says AI giants must pay for content

The Guardian

Follow the day's latest updates Court approves $23.5m fine and costs order against ASX Shadow arts minister says AI companies need to do what everyone else does: 'ask permission and pay for it' Albanese defends gambling reforms, says he's'not against someone having a punt' Pocock says it's'tragic' gambling reforms don't go nearly far enough Shadow arts minister says AI companies need to do what everyone else does: 'ask permission and pay for it' If AI companies want to use Australian creative work, they should do what everyone else does: ask permission and pay for it. Australian creativity is one of our greatest national assets - not a free resource for multinational tech companies. The Coalition will always back the right of artists to control their work and be fairly compensated when others profit from it. This is about consent, fairness and respect for Australian creativity. Court approves $23.5m fine and costs order against ASX Shadow arts minister says AI companies need to do what everyone else does: 'ask permission and pay for it' Albanese defends gambling reforms, says he's'not against someone having a punt' Pocock says it's'tragic' gambling reforms don't go nearly far enough Court approves $23.5m fine and costs order against ASX A federal court judge has ordered the ASX operator to pay $23.5m in penalties and costs after the company admitted to making a misleading statement about a troubled upgrade for technology required to run the stock exchange.


AI could help win 'race against extinction' of vital plants, say botanists

The Guardian

A botanist at Kew's Madagascar research site scans a plant for digitisation. A botanist at Kew's Madagascar research site scans a plant for digitisation. AI could help win'race against extinction' of vital plants, say botanists Tech is helping to identify and save new specimens and could open'genomic goldmine' of fungi data The rise of AI and digitisation could be a turning point in the "race against extinction" faced by botanists trying to identify and save vital plants before they vanish, according to a major report from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. New technology is enabling scientists to track how flowering times have shifted by weeks around the world, rapidly identify new specimens and even get crucial genetic data from 180-year-old fungus specimens, potentially opening a "genomic goldmine". Digitisation and online access to millions of specimens that were until now only accessible in archives is also producing new insights, especially in the global south.


AI wealth boom sending San Francisco home prices surging: 'It's ridiculous'

The Guardian

The'painted ladies' in San Francisco on 20 August 2024. The'painted ladies' in San Francisco on 20 August 2024. Home prices in the San Francisco Bay Area's already expensive market are skyrocketing as employees at leading artificial intelligence companies come into gargantuan sums of money thanks to a boom in initial public offerings . With San Francisco's OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as SpaceX, which operates a major facility in the Los Angeles area, eyeing debuts on the stock market, the hot housing market may not abate soon. If their initial public offering (IPO) is well-received, the companies' multibillion-dollar valuations are poised to produce massive wealth for employees and executives holding shares, which experts say could trigger an uptick in demand for the Bay Area's limited housing stock.


My year with the robots: how Joanna Stern let AI into her home, work – and heart

The Guardian

In 2025, the tech journalist invited artificial intelligence to do nearly everything for her, including editing the book she was writing about the experiment. F or a year, Joanna Stern decided to turn herself into a "lab rat" - the object of her own experiment. Throughout 2025, she invited artificial intelligence into "every corner" of her life. She let AI answer her texts, decide what she ate and cooked, mow her lawn, fold her washing, drive her places, parse her mammograms and even, in the darkness of a burner phone, be her lover. The resulting book, I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything, asks all the big questions, including: what happens when AI can do everything humans can do? And what comes after that?


'We're expanding the cinematic toolbox': AI fault lines on show at Cannes

The Guardian

From beachside summits to yacht parties, leading figures at Cannes debated whether AI was cinema's next creative revolution or an existential threat. From beachside summits to yacht parties, leading figures at Cannes debated whether AI was cinema's next creative revolution or an existential threat. Darren Aronofsky among proponents of using technology, while Guillermo del Toro says he would'rather die' U nder a white marquee on Cannes' Croisette beach, with the Mediterranean glistening behind him and superyachts drifting across the horizon, the director Darren Aronofsky addressed an audience of executives and tech evangelists gathered for an "AI for Talent" summit. "There's so much pushback against AI," said Aronofsky, who has faced criticism over his embrace of generative AI projects though his new studio, Primordial Soup, at a time when artificial intelligence has become one of the film industry's most divisive fault lines. Darren Aronofsky: 'AI is not impersonating a person, it's actually a tool.' "AI is a terrible word, because it's a catchphrase for so many different things," continued the director of Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, and Black Swan.


From Smashing Pumpkins to Ferris Bueller: new Australian indie video game Mixtape is a blast of nostalgia

The Guardian

Across Mixtape's four-hour runtime, you'skateboard, mash tongues together during a kiss, TP a house, ride a dinosaur and learn to fly' Across Mixtape's four-hour runtime, you'skateboard, mash tongues together during a kiss, TP a house, ride a dinosaur and learn to fly' W hen Johnny Galvatron was 14, his cousin gave him a copy of the Smashing Pumpkins' seminal 1995 album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. For Galvatron, a rambunctious teenager in Geelong who defined himself by his musical taste, it was love at first spin. "I don't think there's a track like Tonight, Tonight from any other band," he reminisces. A song from the album plays at a critical moment in Mixtape, the second game from Galvatron's Melbourne-based studio, Beethoven and Dinosaur. Mixtape is set over a single day; tomorrow, Stacy will be leaving her best friends, Slater and Cassandra, and flying to New York as part of a reckless plan to shove a mixtape into the hands of a superstar music supervisor who will, she believes, be so convinced of Stacy's genius that she'll offer her a job.


AI facial recognition oversight lagging far behind technology, watchdogs warn

The Guardian

How does live facial recognition work and how many police forces use it? Britain's biometrics watchdogs have warned that national oversight of AI-powered face scanning to catch criminals is lagging far behind the technology's rapid growth. With the Metropolitan police almost doubling the number of faces they scan in London over the past 12 months and a rising use of the technology by retailers in the UK, Prof William Webster, the biometrics commissioner for England and Wales, said the "slow pace of legislation was trying to catch up with the real world" and "the horse had gone before the cart". Dr Brian Plastow, who holds the same role in Scotland, warned the technology was "nowhere near as effective as the police claim it is" and said there was a "patchwork legal framework" throughout the UK. He said in England and Wales, police were "really just marking their own homework".