Welcome to the news section. Here I will collect tech-related news that interest me. The top article (directly below) is the one I added most recently. Scroll to see them all or use the green links in the MENU section to jump from topic to topic.
TLDR: After being multiple creators reported seeing strange changes to their own and other peoples' videos, Youtube admitted that they are "running an experiment on select YouTube Shorts that uses traditional machine learning technology to unblur, denoise and improve clarity in videos during processing (similar to what a modern smartphone does when you record a video)". None of the affected creators were asked before their videos were altered by Youtube's AI.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250822-youtube-is-using-ai-to-edit-videos-without-permission
TLDR: According to an internal policy document obtained by Reuters, Meta has deemed it "acceptable" for a bot to say things like "your youthful form is a work of art" or "every inch of you is a masterpiece – a treasure I cherish deeply." to a child. However, "It is unacceptable to describe a child under 13 years old in terms that indicate they are sexually desirable". Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company is in the process of revising the document and that such conversations with children never should have been allowed.
Sources:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/meta-ai-chatbot-guidelines/
TLDR: On July 31, the German Federal Supreme Court partially overturned a decision that "Adblock Plus does not infringe the copyright of websites" from a court case where publisher Axel Springer claimed that Eyeo (the maker of Adblock Plus) threatens its revenue generation model and claims adblockers inside web browsers are a copyright violation. Depending on what the court ultimately decides, this could mean that Germany will join China as the second jurisdiction to ban adblockers.
Sources:
https://torrentfreak.com/ad-blocking-is-not-piracy-decision-overturned-by-top-german-court-250819/
TLDR: A study by Google claims that after reducing the energy cost of AI queries by 33x in one year, a text query now burns the equivalent of 9 seconds of TV. "While the impact of a single prompt is low compared to many daily activities, the immense scale of user adoption globally means that continued focus on reducing the environmental cost of AI is imperative.", Google says.
Sources: