What are ‘nudification’ apps and how would a ban in the UK work?

The children’s commissioner for England is calling for “nudification” apps to be banned to prevent them generating sexual imagery of children. But what are they and would a ban work?Advances in artificial intelligence software have paved the way for the emergence of “nudification” tools, which are becoming easier to find on social media or search engines.These are apps and websites that produce deepfake nude images of real people using generative AI. This can involve removing clothes, getting an image to move suggestively, or pasting a head on to a naked body. The results often look highly realistic

‘It’s nearly impossible’: learner drivers on the difficulty of booking a test

“Every time I was looking for a test day, it just kept kicking me off the site,” said Menelik Calvin, 22, detailing the difficulties he experienced when trying to secure a driving test in Wolverhampton.It’s the day before Calvin’s driving test and he’s feeling “nervous” but “ready” as he practises for this sought-after test with driving instructor Donna Michelle Evans.Here, in Wolverhampton, notoriously long wait times are common, and as such it is one of the worst places in the UK to take a driving test. Based on analysis from Nationwide Vehicle Contracts, using figures from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) 2023-24, the average wait time for a test is 19.92 weeks, with a pass rate of 33

Goodbye, Skype. I’ll never forget you

I doubt many people are mourning the demise of Skype. The sky-blue platform that revolutionized the video call, the medium for long-distance relationships in the early 2010s, had not been relevant for almost a decade when Microsoft announced its impending death. My own relationship with Skype’s clunky tangle of video, voice and chat peaked in 2011 – the same year Microsoft purchased it for a headline-making $8.5bn, only to let it wither in the shadow of professionalized, less-pixelated options. By 2014, it was basically obsolete, as video calls shifted to more integrated apps like FaceTime, and my college schedule did not allow for glitchy, hours-long catchups

‘I didn’t eat or sleep’: a Meta moderator on his breakdown after seeing beheadings and child abuse

When Solomon* strode into the gleaming Octagon tower in Accra, Ghana, for his first day as a Meta content moderator, he was bracing himself for difficult but fulfilling work, purging social media of harmful content.But after just two weeks of training, the scale and depravity of what he was exposed to was far darker than he ever imagined.“The first day I didn’t come across any graphic content, but gradually I started coming across very graphic content like beheadings, child abuse, bestiality. When I first came across that ticket I was very shocked. I didn’t even look at my computer because it was very disturbing for me

Meta faces Ghana lawsuits over impact of extreme content on moderators

Meta is facing a second set of lawsuits in Africa over the psychological distress experienced by content moderators employed to take down disturbing social media content including depictions of murders, extreme violence and child sexual abuse.Lawyers are gearing up for court action against a company contracted by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, after meeting moderators at a facility in Ghana that is understood to employ about 150 people.Moderators working for Majorel in Accra claim they have suffered from depression, anxiety, insomnia and substance abuse as a direct consequence of the work they do checking extreme content.The allegedly gruelling conditions endured by workers in Ghana are revealed in a joint investigation by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.It comes after more than 140 Facebook content moderators in Kenya were diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content

Microsoft says everyone will be a boss in the future – of AI employees

Microsoft has good news for anyone with corner office ambitions. In the future we’re all going to be bosses – of AI employees.The tech company is predicting the rise of a new kind of business, called a “frontier firm”, where ultimately a human worker directs autonomous artificial intelligence agents to carry out tasks.Everyone, according to Microsoft, will become an agent boss.“As agents increasingly join the workforce, we’ll see the rise of the agent boss: someone who builds, delegates to and manages agents to amplify their impact and take control of their career in the age of AI,” wrote Jared Spataro, a Microsoft executive, in a blogpost this week