UK details ‘pro-innovation’ approach to AI regulation

The UK government has unveiled a new regulatory framework for AI, aimed at promoting innovation while maintaining public trust.

Michelle Donelan, Science, Innovation, and Technology Secretary, said: “AI has the potential to make Britain a smarter, healthier and happier place to live and work. Artificial intelligence is no longer the stuff of science fiction, and the pace of AI development is staggering, so we need to have rules to make sure it is developed...

29 March 2023 | Applications

Clearview AI used by US police for almost 1M searches

Facial recognition firm Clearview AI has revealed that it has run almost a million searches for US police.

Facial recognition technology is a controversial topic, and for good reason. Clearview AI's technology allows law enforcement to upload a photo of a suspect's face and find matches in a database of billions of images it has collected.

Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That disclosed in an interview with the BBC that the firm has scraped 30 billion images from platforms such...

28 March 2023 | Applications

What will AI regulation look like for businesses?

Unlike food, medicine, and cars, we have yet to see clear regulations or laws to guide AI design in the US. Without standard guidelines, companies that design and develop ML models have historically worked off of their own perceptions of right and wrong. 

This is about to change. 

As the EU finalizes its AI Act and generative AI continues to rapidly evolve, we will see the artificial intelligence regulatory landscape shift from general, suggested frameworks to more...

24 March 2023 | Applications

Mozilla.ai picks up OpenAI’s founding mission

Mozilla's new startup will build "trustworthy" AI that benefits humanity. If that sounds familiar, it was OpenAI’s founding mission.

The startup, Mozilla.ai, aims to create an independent and open-source AI ecosystem that addresses society’s most pressing concerns about the rapidly-advancing technology.

Mark Surman, President of the Mozilla Foundation, wrote in a blog post:

“This new wave of AI has generated excitement, but also significant apprehension....

23 March 2023 | AGI

Google plays it safe with initial Bard rollout

Google has begun rolling out early access to its Bard chatbot in the US and UK.

The ChatGPT rival was announced via a blog post in February, seemingly to get ahead of Microsoft’s own big reveal event the next day.

Microsoft’s plans to integrate a new version of ChatGPT into its Bing search engine set off alarm bells at Google. In response, Google CEO Sundar Pichai invited the company’s founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – to return for a series of meetings...

21 March 2023 | Applications

Developers believe AI will have a positive world impact

AI is among the “next” technologies that developers believe will have a positive world impact.

Some artists, developers, writers, and other creators have expressed concern that generative AIs may pose a threat to their livelihoods. However, an increasing number view such AIs as assistive tools that will help creators rather than replace them.

Stack Overflow surveyed its developer community to find out how developers feel about technologies currently making the...

13 March 2023 | Applications

Oxford University spinout invents body scanner for accurate clothing measurements

A collection of measuring tapes.

An Oxford University tech spinout has invented a 'ground breaking' AI tool that scans users’ bodies to provide accurate clothing measurements, with the intention of streamlining the online shopping experience and saving UK retailers billions in returns.

Initially founded in 2019 by Duncan McKay, INSEAD MBA and Phil Torr, Professor of Computer Vision and Deep Learning at the University of Oxford, the tech firm went on to be awarded two Innovate UK Grants, and one Future...

8 March 2023 | Applications

Meta calls up generative AI squad as Snap releases ChatGPT-powered bot

Generative AI is firmly in the sights of social media. Meta is forming a new product group around generative AI to focus on ‘building delightful experiences’ into all of the company’s products, while Snap has unveiled a new chatbot running on OpenAI’s GPT technology.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the seat-shuffling in a Facebook post, stating that teams currently working on generative AI will be pulled together. Detail was light on the scale of projects, but Zuckerberg...

28 February 2023 | Applications

Apple shies from the spotlight with staff-only AI summit

Apple seems happy to stay out of the spotlight when it comes to the “AI race” going by its latest summit.

Microsoft, Google, Baidu, and others have all raced to make very public AI announcements over the past month. Apple held its own AI event earlier this month but it was a staff-only affair.

Apple’s low-key AI event was notable as being the first to be held in-person at the Steve Jobs Theatre since the pandemic began. Other than that, it wasn’t particularly...

20 February 2023 | Apple

Microsoft’s AI chatbot is ‘unhinged’ and wants to be human

Early testers of Microsoft’s new AI chatbot have complained of receiving numerous “unhinged” messages.

Most of the attention has been around Google’s rival, Bard, embarrassingly giving false information in promo material. That error, and Bard’s shambolic announcement, caused investors to panic and wiped $120 billion from the company’s value.

However, unlike Microsoft, Google is yet to release its chatbot for public testing. Many have complained that it...

16 February 2023 | Applications