Now, Apple's software that looks at phones for evidence of child pornography has created a new need for security research, according to Apple. Other large tech companies, such as Facebook and Microsoft, scan their servers for child porn using a software product called PhotoDNA, developed by Microsoft and Dartmouth professor Hani Farid. The software relies on a database of known child pornography maintained by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. If a photo on a company server matches the database, it is flagged and authorities are notified. Companies have employed that system on their servers, and not on devices owned by their customers.

If your phone takes amazing photos, chances are its camera has been augmented by artificial intelligence embedded in the operating system. Now videos are getting the same treatment. In recent years, smartphone makers have been gradually transforming their cameras into devices that capture data for AI processing beyond what the lens and sensor pick up in a single shot. That effectively turns a smartphone into a professional camera on auto mode and lowers the bar of capturing compelling images and videos. In an era of TikTok and vlogging, there's a huge demand to easily produce professional-looking videos on the go.

Now that it's here, all anyone can talk about are foldable phones. The next-generation network technology promises blazing speeds, smooth and stable connections and new possibilities for VR, self-driving cars and robotics. This being the big new thing for the mobile industry, all the players -- from phone makers and infrastructure vendors to chipmakers and wireless carriers -- have been desperate to demonstrate how ready they are. But at Mobile World Congress, there was far more buzz about the Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X than about the early 5G devices being shown off. The lack of attention paid to all the 5G phones makes you wonder whether all the racing and chest-beating was truly necessary, and serves as a reminder that the next-generation wireless technology is still in its early days. Part of the problem is that 5G being "here" doesn't necessarily mean it's here for you.

It should have been a great week for Huawei. Following the news that it had overtaken Apple as the No. 2 phone maker in the world, the company set the stage for the next generation of must-have phones with the unveiling of its Kirin 980 processor and the launch date for the highly anticipated Mate 20 Pro. But instead of a series of positive headlines about what's to come, Huawei's old phones were in the news for all the wrong reasons. It started with an AnandTech report that uncovered some major inconsistencies with benchmark results. Inside the latest version of software on the P20, P20 Pro, and Honor Play, Huawei was discovered gaming its scores by optimizing the system for certain benchmarking apps, most notably the popular 3DMark and GFXBench suites.

Google's annual developer conference is normally a relentlessly positive cheerleading session to excite developers to create products for the company and its Android operating system. But this year, there was a hint of a more serious tone as the company discussed creating technology that is not simply innovative, but responsible. The theme of the company's annual conference was "Make Good Things Together." Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said in a keynote address to about 7,000 developers and journalists that Google wants to push ahead to innovate, but he acknowledged that the tech giant can't be "wide-eyed" about it. "There are important questions being raised about the impact of these advances and the role they'll play in our lives," he said. "We know the path ahead needs to be navigated carefully and deliberately."

The first Android phone to feature 3D facial recognition technology will reportedly be released in the third quarter of 2018. It's currently being speculated that the Xiaomi Mi 7 will be the first Android phone to arrive with the feature, which Apple's iPhone X popularized. The reason why it's taking so long for Android phones to adopt 3D-sensing technology is due to the difficulty in integrating devices' hardware and software, according to Digitimes. Apple doesn't suffer from the same issue since the iPhone X's hardware and software are closely tied to each other making it possible for Face ID to work. Three-dimensional-sensing modules developed by Qualcomm, Himax Technologies and Truly Optoelectronics are believed to be the likely candidates that are coming to Android phones.

Google will announce a number of new products on October 4, reportedly including two new phones, a smaller version of the Google Home, and a high-end laptop. And on Wednesday, the company announced an agreement with struggling manufacturer HTC that will import a team of engineers over to Google, to help close the gap between Mountain View's hardware ambitions and its present reality. The tie-up's not quite the acquisition that had been rumored, but rather a "cooperation agreement." Google is hiring a team of HTC employees--about 2,000 people in all, members of HTC's "Powered by HTC" division--most of whom have already been working on Google's Pixel phones. Those employees will stay in Taipei, Taiwan, where HTC is headquartered, but they'll become full-on Googlers. Both sides hope to close the deal by early 2018.

Google just debuted a digital assistant, which it hopes to place inside smartphones, watches, cars and every other imaginable internet-connected device. It's already hit a snag. The Alphabet Inc. division launched new smartphones last week with the artificially intelligent assistant deeply embedded. It also rolled out a speaker with the feature at its core and announced plans to let other companies tie their apps and services to the assistant. A day later, Samsung Electronics Co., one of the largest manufacturers of smartphones and other consumer devices, said it was acquiring Viv Labs, a startup building its own AI voice-based assistant.

Google just debuted a digital assistant, which it hopes to place inside smartphones, watches, cars and every other imaginable internet-connected device. It's already hit a snag. The Alphabet division launched new smartphones last week with the artificially intelligent assistant deeply embedded. It also rolled out a speaker with the feature at its core and announced plans to let other companies tie their apps and services to the assistant. A day later, Samsung, which just announced it was ending production of its problematic Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, said it was acquiring Viv Labs, a startup building its own AI voice-based assistant.

LONDON: Understanding the hierarchical structure of biological networks like human brain -- a network of neurons -- could be useful in creating more complex, intelligent computational brains in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics, says a study. Like large businesses, many biological networks are hierarchically organised, such as gene, protein, neural, and metabolic networks. This means they have separate units that can each be repeatedly divided into smaller and smaller subunits. Apple to sell solar energy now Apple is now planning to sell excess solar energy produced at its solar farms in Cupertino and Nevada. To understand as to why biological networks evolve to be hierarchical, researchers from the University of Wyoming and the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA) simulated the evolution of computational brain models, known as artificial neural networks, both with and without a cost for network connections.