1 year of Twitter under Musk, Cruise pulls all self-driving cars
Elon Musk and James Clayton. Image: BBC Elon Musk wrote within hours of buying Twitter that he “didn’t do it because it would be easy”. That statement has proven to be one of the few certainties about his ownership of the influential social media platform, which has tipped the business into a…
£3.5 million funding boost for RFA UK satellite launch from Shetland
Satellite launch company RFA UK (Rocket Factory Ltd) has received £3.5 million to support its plans to launch from SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetland Islands. The funding was awarded by the UK Space Agency as part of the European Space Agency (ESA), Boost! Programme, which aims to help innovative companies develop new launch technologies and…
ChatGPT and Bard risk ‘new wave of scams’, Which? warns
ChatGPT and Bard lack effective defences to prevent fraudsters from unleashing a new wave of convincing scams by exploiting their AI tools, a Which? investigation has found. A key way for consumers to identify scam emails and texts is that they are often in badly-written English, but the consumer watchdog's latest research found it could…
Top 10 Most Popular AI tools of 2023 – ChatGPT tops list
1. ChatGPT: Launched in November 2022, it quickly dominated with 14.6 billion visits over 10 months, averaging 1.5 billion monthly. 2. Character AI: Introduced in September 2022, it captivated users, accumulating 3.8 billion visits and surging by 463.4 million within a year. 3. Google Bard: Google's March 2023 entry saw a remarkable 241.6 million visits in just 6…
UK’s Online Safety Bill finally becomes law
The Online Safety Act has today (Thursday 26 October) received Royal Assent, placing increased legal duties on social media platforms. The new laws take a zero-tolerance approach to protecting children from online harm, claims the UK Government, while empowering adults with more choices over what their children can see online. The Act places legal responsibility…
Rishi Sunak sets out pros and cons of AI ahead of next week’s summit
Artificial intelligence could help make it easier to build chemical and biological weapons, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has warned. What's more, in the worst-case scenario, society could lose all control over AI, preventing it from being switched off. And while the potential for harm is disputed, we must not "put our heads in the…
Birmingham most expensive UK city for commuting by car, report claims
Birmingham New Street station. Image: Chris Price A new study has found that Birmingham is the most expensive city to commute to by car - as staff spend up to 17% of their salary travelling in each month. The research, by business management software specialist, ECI Software Solutions, looked at the cost of…
WhatsApp is UK’s most popular messaging app as traditional texting declines
While mobile phone calls are still a popular way to keep in touch with friends and family, most adults would rather go without them for a day than forgo their favourite messaging apps, according to new research published by Ofcom. Online communication services like WhatsApp and Snapchat have become increasingly important to our daily lives.…
AI could increase risk of cyber-attacks, Apple TV+ price rise (again)
Artificial intelligence could increase the risk of cyber-attacks and erode trust in online content by 2025, a UK government report warns. The tech could even help plan biological or chemical attacks by terrorists, it says. But some experts have questioned whether the tech will evolve as predicted. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is expected to highlight…
Number of EVs to ‘jump tenfold’ by 2030, Cruise driverless cabs banned from San Francisco
The number of electric cars will jump almost tenfold by the end of the decade as China continues to drive both production and adoption, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said. A new report from the IEA has predicted there will be roughly 220 million electric passenger vehicles on the road by 2030, up from…