Month: March 2026

Apple Distribution International, based in Ireland, made payments worth £635,000 to a Russian streaming service The UK government has fined a subsidiary of Apple £390,000 for breaching sanctions against Moscow over payments it made to a Russian streaming platform. Apple Distribution International (ADI), based in the Republic of Ireland, instructed an unnamed UK-based bank to …

Apple subsidiary fined by UK government over Moscow sanctions breach Read More »

Slumped on the pavement, she wasn’t breathing – and I wouldn’t have realised if I’d been listening to music as usual. Time to stop blotting out the world … For years I walked the streets of London wearing noise-cancelling headphones, absorbed in playlists, politics podcasts or long voice notes from friends, and a million miles …

I took off my headphones – and noticed a stranger in peril Read More »

Reporter Aisha Down explores the UK’s ‘phantom investments’ in AI, and the risk the government has taken in betting so heavily on the technology if it all goes bust For years now, the UK has bet big on AI. As Keir Starmer put it last year, he wanted to ‘unleash AI’ to boost growth across …

UK’s big, risky AI bet – podcast Read More »

Aggressive strategy and loss in the trial highlight a problem for tech firms: a widespread distrust of social media companies When Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, sought to defend itself in the landmark social media addiction lawsuit alleging its products caused personal injury to a young user, it went on the offensive. …

How Meta’s victim-blaming failed to sway jurors in landmark social media addiction trial Read More »

Some doctors argue it allows them to better connect with patients, but advocates warn the AI technology risks the opposite Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast When a patient walks into a GP’s office in Australia today, the doctor may begin with a question: “Do you give consent to use …

Two in five Australian GPs use AI scribes to record patient notes – but do they trade care for convenience? Read More »

In his strongest intervention yet, PM says some features ‘shouldn’t be permitted’, while education secretary says things ‘are going to change’ Keir Starmer has backed banning addictive social media features in his strongest intervention yet on curbs that could be placed on tech companies, saying the features “shouldn’t be permitted”. The prime minister said the …

Keir Starmer says UK will ‘have to act’ to curb addictive features of social media Read More »

US release of horror novel Shy Girl cancelled and UK book discontinued after suspected AI use, as publishers feel ‘cold shiver’ Recently, the literary agent Kate Nash started noticing that the submission letters she was receiving from authors were becoming more thorough – albeit also more formulaic. “I took it as a rise in diligence,” …

‘Soon publishers won’t stand a chance’: literary world in struggle to detect AI-written books Read More »

Leonid Radvinsky’s widow has been left with a crucial role in deciding what happens to the business that made her husband a billionaire Yekaterina Chudnovsky, online biographies say, is a mother-of-four who “enjoys spending time with her family and teaching them the importance of giving back and helping others”. They add that Ukrainian-born Chudnovsky, known …

The OnlyFans inheritance: how its owner’s death could reshape the porn money-making machine Read More »

Experts say paid participants are using automated tools to generate unreliable survey responses at scale If you had been keeping tabs on the news about church attendance in Britain lately, you would be forgiven for thinking the country was in the midst of a Christian revival. Stories of swelling congregations, filled with young people returning …

‘Our assumptions are broken’: how fraudulent church data revealed AI’s threat to polling Read More »

AI images of people – such as women in military contexts – are making money and serving as propaganda, researchers say Online content creators are not just building fake images and videos of prominent public figures, they are also fabricating people and using them in military contexts, which can make them money and even serve …

‘They feel true’: political deepfakes are growing in influence – even if people know they aren’t real Read More »