Month: November 2023

When four gay men with an average age of 74 started appearing on TikTok, they became an instant hit. They talk about how, as their audience has grown, their outfits have shrunk No written description quite captures the joy-inducing positivity of their online videos: bopping along to Taylor Swift in slinky striped swimwear; countless dance …

‘We don’t hold anything back’: meet the Old Gays, TikTok’s most influential pensioners Read More »

Could a computer ever rival their astonishing feats? The idea seemed preposterous ‘Your memory could fill the Albert Hall,’ proclaimed the Observer on 21 March 1971, explaining that ‘a computer to perform even the simpler functions of the human brain would need to be at least as big as the Albert Hall.’ Now we outsource …

Among the ‘memory athletes’, 1971 Read More »

OpenAI said to be in turmoil following the exodus The crisis at artificial intelligence firm OpenAI deepened this weekend amid a reported exodus of senior staff in the wake of boss Sam Altman’s mystery firing. OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT bot, abruptly ousted Altman on Friday for allegedly misleading the board. In a statement, …

‘Earthquake’ at ChatGPT developer as senior staff quit after sacking of boss Sam Altman Read More »

Six Group, which operates the Swiss and Spanish bourses, is a target for cyberwarfare and must be on guard, its boss says Six Group counts its profit in millions, but the financial pipework it controls moves billions. Its operations, which include the Spanish and Swiss stock exchanges, count as critical national infrastructure and this gives …

‘I employ a lot of hackers’: how a stock exchange chief deters cyber-attacks Read More »

The Japanese photographer finds beauty in an Osaka traffic jam “One evening after finishing work, I looked out of my hotel room window and saw a long traffic jam on the expressway below,” says Koichi Miyase, a Japanese freelance photographer. “I was struck by how the cars’ lights flowed like a river through the city’s …

‘The cars’ lights flowed like a river’: Koichi Miyase’s best phone picture Read More »

Social media firm boss says he will sue media watchdog that said ads were being placed alongside antisemitic content Elon Musk has said he will be filing a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters and others, after major US companies paused their adverts on his social media site over concerns about antisemitism. Media watchdog Media Matters …

Elon Musk to file ‘thermonuclear lawsuit’ as advertisers desert X Read More »

The iPhone maker had been one of the social network’s biggest advertisers, spending as much as $100m a year Apple will pause all its advertising on X, formerly Twitter, two days after owner Elon Musk tweeted his enthusiastic agreement with an antisemitic post, according to a report in Axios. Apple’s ads had run beside tweets …

Apple, Disney and IBM to pause ads on X after antisemitic Elon Musk tweet Read More »

AI firm’s board said Altman was ‘not consistently candid in his communications with the board’ and had lost its confidence OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman was fired for lying to the board of his company, according to an announcement issued Friday. A statement from the company reads, “Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review …

OpenAI fires co-founder and CEO Sam Altman for lying to company board Read More »

The X owner tweeted that a post about Jewish people hating white people was ‘the actual truth,’ prompting backlash Two days after X owner Elon Musk tweeted his full-throated agreement with an antisemitic post, Joe Biden excoriated the billionaire’s “abhorrent” post. A statement from the White House issued Friday reads: “We condemn this abhorrent promotion …

White House condemns Elon Musk’s ‘abhorrent’ antisemitic tweets Read More »

In response to criticism that Azure AI Speech was simply a ‘deepfakes creator’, Microsoft said it had implemented safeguards Microsoft announced its latest contribution to the artificial intelligence race at its developer conference this week: software that can generate new avatars and voices or replicate the existing appearance and speech of a user – raising …

Microsoft releases AI tool for photorealistic copying of faces and voices Read More »