UK MPs warn of repeat of 2024 riots unless online misinformation is tackled

Failures to properly tackle online misinformation mean it is “only a matter of time” before viral content triggers a repeat of the 2024 summer riots, MPs have warned.Chi Onwurah, the chair of the Commons science and technology select committee, said ministers seemed complacent about the threat and this was putting the public at risk.The committee said it was disappointed in the government’s response to its recent report warning social media companies’ business models contributed to disturbances after the Southport murders.Replying to the committee’s findings, the government rejected a call for legislation tackling generative artificial intelligence platforms and said it would not intervene directly in the online advertising market, which MPs claimed helped incentivise the creation of harmful material after the attack.Onwurah said the government agreed with most of its conclusions but had stopped short of backing its recommendations for action

The teamwork behind Bletchley Park’s Colossus computer | Letter

Andrew Smith is right to applaud the work of Tommy Flowers for building Colossus, the world’s first digital programmable computer, delivered to Bletchley Park in 1944 (Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn’t see in the movies, 12 October). The piece concludes with Flowers stressing: “It’s never just one person in one place” – teamwork and collaboration are key. This is even truer than the article might imply, when it says “subsequent models” of Colossus “included many new features and innovations”, as if these had been the result of Flowers working alone, just upgrading his design. Quite the contrary.It is well documented (for example, in the 2006 book Colossus by B Jack Copeland and others) that the Bletchley Park codebreakers Jack Good and Donald Michie not only utilised Colossus to help break the codes, they enhanced the computer; it was these developments that were so successfully incorporated by Flowers in subsequent machines

Olivia Williams says actors need ‘nudity rider’-type controls for AI body scans

Actors should have as much control over the data harvested from scans of their body as they do over nudity scenes, the actor Olivia Williams has said, amid heightened concern over artificial intelligence’s impact on performers.The star of Dune: Prophecy and The Crown said she and other actors were regularly pressed to have their bodies scanned by banks of cameras while on set, with few guarantees about how the data would be used or where it would end up.“A reasonable request would be to follow the precedent of the ‘nudity rider’,” she said. “This footage can only be used in the action of that scene. It cannot be used in any other context at all, and when the scene has been edited it must be deleted on all formats

‘Legacies condensed to AI slop’: OpenAI Sora videos of the dead raise alarm with legal experts

Last night I was flicking through a dating app. One guy stood out: “Henry VIII, 34, King of England, nonmonogamy”. Next thing I know, I am at a candlelit bar sharing a martini with the biggest serial dater of the 16th century.But the night is not over. Next, I am DJing back-to-back with Diana, Princess of Wales

Dan and Phil’s relationship revelation is a reminder of how toxic fandoms can be | Eilish Gilligan

This week, longtime British YouTubers Dan Howell and Phil Lester uploaded a new video confirming they have been in a secret romantic relationship for the past 16 years.If you weren’t a deeply online child during the 2010s, you probably have no idea who Dan and Phil are, or why this matters. But to those who formed a robust parasocial bond with the duo – who have more than 13 million collective subscribers on YouTube – this was a revelatory moment. It was also a sobering reminder of the emotional damage that toxic fandoms can wreak on their subjects.Over the course of 45 minutes, Howell and Lester, now in their thirties, share the “apocalyptic constant stress of the Dan and Phil dating conspiracy”, where “fans” subjected them to frenzied speculation for 16 years straight

Banks need stricter controls to prevent romance fraud, says City regulator

The City regulator has called on banks and payment firms to bring in stricter controls protecting customers from romance fraud after a study showed a number of missed “red flags” that led to people losing huge sums of money.The review by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) highlighted one case where someone lost £428,000, another where a customer made 403 payments totalling £72,000 to a fraudster and a case where someone wanted money to transfer cryptocurrency to their “partner” in Iraq.Romance scams, where criminals try to build emotional connections with victims before defrauding them, have been growing in scale and complexity in recent years.Figures from the City of London police put the loss from romance fraud at £106m last year, although the FCA says the real figure is much higher as many people do not report the crime owing to feelings of shame and stigma.The FCA review of six banks and payment firms looked at how they detect and prevent romance fraud and found large disparities in how victims of fraud were treated