Software Development

 Is compression equivalent to general intelligence? DeepMind digs up more potential clues.   Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Effective compression is about finding patterns to make data smaller without losing information. When an algorithm or model can accurately guess the next piece of data in a sequence, it shows it’s good at spotting these patterns. This …

AI language models can exceed PNG and FLAC in lossless compression, says study Read More »

 Despite lack of specifics, rumored smartphone collaboration has everyone guessing.   Enlarge / Ex-Apple designer Jony Ive (left) and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (right). (credit: Getty Images) Ex-Apple design star Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have been discussing the design of an unspecified new AI device, reports The Information, citing two people familiar …

Jony Ive and OpenAI’s Altman reportedly collaborating on mysterious AI device Read More »

 The modified firmware used by BlackTech is hard to detect.   Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Hackers backed by the Chinese government are planting malware into routers that provides long-lasting and undetectable backdoor access to the networks of multinational companies in the US and Japan, governments in both countries said Wednesday. The hacking group, tracked under …

Backdoored firmware lets China state hackers control routers with “magic packets” Read More »

 Feature hopes to remove language barriers, but will speakers know if translations are faulty?   Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) On Monday, Spotify rolled out a limited pilot program that uses AI to automatically translate podcasts into various languages, using voice synthesis technology from OpenAI to preserve the original speaker’s voice. The feature aims to offer …

Spotify uses AI to clone and translate podcaster voices in new pilot program Read More »

 Previous CVE submission failed to mention that thousands of apps were affected.   Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Google has quietly resubmitted a disclosure of a critical code-execution vulnerability affecting thousands of individual apps and software frameworks after its previous submission left readers with the mistaken impression that the threat affected only the Chrome browser. The …

Google quietly corrects previously submitted disclosure for critical webp 0-day Read More »

 A previously unknown compression side channel in GPUs can expose images thought to be private.   Enlarge GPUs from all six of the major suppliers are vulnerable to a newly discovered attack that allows malicious websites to read the usernames, passwords, and other sensitive visual data displayed by other websites, researchers have demonstrated in a …

GPUs from all major suppliers are vulnerable to new pixel-stealing attack Read More »

 Incorrect AI-generated answers are forming a feedback loop of misinformation online.   Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) When you type a question into Google Search, the site sometimes provides a quick answer called a Featured Snippet at the top of the results, pulled from websites it has indexed. On Monday, X user Tyler Glaiel noticed that …

Can you melt eggs? Quora’s AI says “yes,” and Google is sharing the result Read More »

 Image recognition and voice features aim to make the AI bot’s interface more intuitive.   Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) On Monday, OpenAI announced a significant update to ChatGPT that enables its GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 AI models to analyze images and react to them as part of a text conversation. Also, the ChatGPT mobile app will …

ChatGPT update enables its AI to “see, hear, and speak,” according to OpenAI Read More »

 Getty will indemnify customers against lawsuits and pay artists on “recurring basis.”   Enlarge (credit: Arun Nevader) Getty Images will give hundreds of thousands of users access to a new artificial intelligence image-generating tool, as a global intellectual property debate intensifies around the fast-moving technology. The US photo agency, one of the world’s largest with …

Getty Images subscribers to get access to AI image generator Read More »

 Apple patches 3 zero-days after they were used in a sophisticated attack.   Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Apple has patched a potent chain of iOS zero-days that were used to infect the iPhone of an Egyptian presidential candidate with sophisticated spyware developed by a commercial exploit seller, Google and researchers from Citizen Lab said Friday. …

3 iOS 0-days, a cellular network compromise, and HTTP used to infect an iPhone Read More »