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‘The CGI would have cost millions. I spent $2,000.’ Is Dreams of Violets AI slop – or the future of film-making?
It should have taken years, but Ash Koosha made a drama about Iran’s anti-government protests in weeks – and now it’s the first AI-made movie to screen at a major film festival. It could transform indie film-making, claims the director Next week a breakthrough 75-minute drama about the brutal crackdown in Iran on anti-government protesters…
‘This isn’t freedom’: anger, anxiety and tears as Iran’s internet flickers back
After 88 days of near-total blackout, first reactions to the return of partial connectivity were not celebratory After 88 days of near-total internet blackout in Iran, long-delayed messages, images and poems flooded phones and social media feeds at about 5pm on Tuesday, when still-limited connectivity flickered back to life. The first reactions, however, were not…
‘I don’t worry about a robot takeover’: AI expert Michael Wooldridge on big tech’s real dangers (and occasional blessings)
Almost 50 years after he first got his hands on a computer, the Oxford professor still believes in the power of technology. Can his beloved game theory explain why Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs consistently misuse it? Michael Wooldridge is like the teacher you wish you’d had: approachable, able to explain difficult things in simple terms, neither…
X suspends 800m accounts in one year amid ‘massive’ scale of manipulation attempts
Social media company tells MPs of continual fight against state-backed efforts, with Russia being most prolific Elon Musk’s X said it had suspended 800m accounts over a 12-month period as it fights the “massive” scale of attempts to manipulate the platform. The social media company told MPs it was continually fighting state-backed attempts to hijack…
The Guardian view on AI in war: the Iran conflict shows that the paradigm shift has already begun
The intensified use of artificial intelligence, and rows over its control, demonstrate the need for democratic oversight and multilateral controls “Never in the future will we move as slow as we are moving now,” the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, warned this week, addressing the urgent need to shape the use of artificial intelligence. The speed…
Iran war heralds era of AI-powered bombing quicker than ‘speed of thought’
Speed and scale of US military’s AI war planning raises fears human decision-making may be sidelined The use of AI tools to enable attacks on Iran heralds a new era of bombing quicker than “the speed of thought”, experts have said, amid fears human decision-makers could be sidelined. Anthropic’s AI model, Claude, was reportedly used…
The splinternet: how online shutdowns are getting cheaper and easier to impose
Iran has shown how plausible blackouts now are, with far-reaching consequences for the internet as we know it During the height of Iran’s blackout in January, people could still access a platform that, in some senses, was like the internet. Iranians could message family members on a government-monitored app and watch clips of Manchester United…
An ecosystem of smuggled tech holds Iran’s last link to the outside world
Despite internet blackout, a small number of Iranians are risking their lives to share messages as protests continue For most of Iran, the internet was shut off on Thursday afternoon – the most severe blackout the country has seen in years of internet shutdowns, coming after days of escalating anti-government protests. For a very small…