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  • ‘A driver of political violence’: how the breakneck AI boom is fueling anti-tech extremism

    Backlash against AI is taking an extremist turn, following in the footsteps of earlier techno-pessimist militants Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email When a 20-year-old man from Texas was arrested earlier this year for allegedly trying to burn down OpenAI’s headquarters and Sam Altman’s house, authorities found an anti-AI manifesto alongside his…

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  • ‘Superhighways for child sexual abuse’: California lawmakers seek tougher rules for big tech

    Online exploitation ‘inflicting profound trauma on a staggering number of children’, Democrats say Frustrated with what they describe as a lack of accountability from social media companies, two California state lawmakers have introduced a bill that would clear a legal pathway for them to face lawsuits in the state for failing to detect or remove…

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  • Deepfake fraud taking place on an industrial scale, study finds

    AI content for scams can be targeted at individuals and ‘produced by pretty much anybody’, researchers say Deepfake fraud has gone “industrial”, an analysis published by AI experts has said. Tools to create tailored, even personalised, scams – leveraging, for example, deepfake videos of Swedish journalists or the president of Cyprus – are no longer…

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  • Uber found liable for sexual assault by driver and ordered to pay victim $8.5m

    Verdict could influence more than 3,000 similar cases against ride-hailing company A federal jury in Phoenix ordered Uber on Thursday to pay $8.5m after finding the company liable in a lawsuit brought by a woman who said she was sexually assaulted by a driver. The verdict could influence thousands of similar cases against the ride-hailing…

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  • FBI and NSPCC alarmed at ‘shocking’ rise in online sextortion of children

    Snapchat logged about 20,000 cases last year of adults grooming children online, more than other social media platforms combined Tech companies including Snapchat and Facebook reported more than 9,600 cases of adults grooming children online in the UK in just six months last year – the equivalent of about 400 a week. Law enforcement agencies,…

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