"We have stringent standards for the content of listings on our platform", the spokesperson added. "We are conducting a thorough review and are strengthening our monitoring processes." It is not known for how long the image was used, or who the company was that was selling it on the Chinese company's website. Many online have speculated the image was created using artificial intelligence (AI) - but it remains unclear how the picture was made. In April, Luigi Mangione pleaded not guilty to all federal charges brought over the fatal shooting of Mr Thompson.

There are nearly two million apps on App Store. Now, Apple has revealed the most downloaded ones in the UK this year – and it seems iPhone users are shunning TikTok in favour of bargain shopping apps. Among the year's success stories are fast fashion apps from China including Temu and Shein, along with the trendy'preloved marketplace' Vinted. They come ahead of social media apps including TikTok and Meta's Threads, as well as AI chatbot sensation ChatGPT, which released an app last year. As 2024 comes to a close, Apple is unveiling the most downloaded apps and games of the year in the UK,' the tech giant said in a statement.

Since Shein became the world's most popular online shopping destination--with seemingly unbeatable prices, and influencers posting "haul" videos to show off their purchases on social media--the Chinese fast-fashion giant has raised questions over how it produces its plethora of merchandise at dizzying speeds. The answer: AI-powered algorithms that allow the company to pick up changes in customer demand and interest, allowing it to adjust its supply chain in real time. As a result, Shein reportedly lists as many as 600,000 items on its online platform at any given moment, selling to customers in over 220 countries and regions globally. But the company has also long been under scrutiny for its poor record on environmental sustainability, becoming fashion's biggest polluter in 2023. Investigations into Shein's supply chains have found severe labor rights violations, with factory workers in Southern Chinese manufacturing plants reporting grueling 75-hour work weeks to keep up with demand. Shein claims AI is the answer to solving these problems, too.

This story originally appeared in Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In 2023, the fast-fashion giant Shein was everywhere. Influencers' "#sheinhaul" videos advertised the company's trendy styles on social media, garnering billions of views. At every step, data was created, collected, and analyzed. To manage all this information, the fast fashion industry has begun embracing emerging AI technologies.

While we still don't know all the details, there have been reports that researchers at OpenAI had made a "breakthrough" in AI that alarmed staff members. The claim is that they came up with a new way to make powerful AI systems and had created a new model, called Q* (pronounced Q star), that was able to perform grade-school level math. Some at OpenAI reportedly believe this could be a breakthrough in the company's quest to build artificial general intelligence, a much-hyped concept of an AI system that is smarter than humans. And why is grade-school math such a big deal? Our senior AI reporter Melissa Heikkilä called some experts to find out how big of a deal any such breakthrough would really be.

This is a weekly newsletter exploring the collision of technology and humanity. What's exciting about AI right now is that the platform layer is solidifying, meaning that it's time for the application layer to emerge. Over the past few months, I've written several Digital Native pieces about what's happening in AI. Given that this is the topic in tech as we head into 2023, I wanted to combine those pieces into one cohesive deep-dive on AI, and then expand upon them. The result is that this is a longer piece than usual, but my hope is that it offers a "state of the union" snapshot for where we are and a hint at where we might be going. When I think about what's happening in artificial intelligence, I tend to think of two movies. One came out 33 years ago, and one came out 10 months ago. Hyperland is a mostly-forgotten 1990 film written by Douglas Adams, an author best known for writing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The premise of Hyperland (which you can watch on YouTube here) is that Adams is fed up by passive linear TV--what the film calls "the sort of television that just happens at you, that you just sit in front of like a couch potato." Seeking a more interactive form of media, Adams takes his TV to a dump, where he meets Tom (played by Tom Baker). Tom is a software agent--essentially, a digital butler capable of personalizing your information and entertainment diet to your specific interests. Tom takes our protagonist through a virtual land of hypermedia--linked text, sounds, images, and videos. In other words, Tom takes Adams on a journey through the internet.

Shein's AI engine can quickly pick up a change in demand or interest in some new trend, and its supply chain can react in real-time, giving consumers more value and the brand much cheaper operating costs. China is building on what many are already calling the most advanced digital infrastructure, thanks to mega-platforms like WeChat that combine a multitude of single applications under one roof. If there is one certainty today, it is that the digital sphere will become more critical in our lives, with shares of e-commerce increasing disproportionally and AI becoming an even greater enabler and differentiator. We are living through times of massive disruption, with technology becoming a major force behind it. The last two years marked a significant step-change in artificial intelligence, and for the first time, China is leading global AI research both the quality and quantity of research.

I am astonished that people who know what computers can do, and, especially, how they do it, still think we (humankind) will ever create a rational being, much less that the day is near. A program that can play winning chess or Go is not one. We all knew it would happen sooner or later. We are talking about a large but finite set of paths through a well-defined set. But such things are the work of engineers, not of the computer or its programs.