Sabalenka may avoid championships in Dubai after ‘ridiculous’ comment
Aryna Sabalenka says she may never return to compete at the Dubai Tennis Championships after she and Iga Swiatek were harshly criticised by the tournament director for their withdrawals from the tournament last month.“It’s ridiculous,” Sabalenka said before the Miami Open.“I don’t think he showed himself in the best way possible.For me it’s actually so sad to see that the tournament directors and the tournaments are not protecting us as a player.They just care about their sellings, about their tournament and that’s it.
His comment was ridiculous.I’m not sure if I ever want to go there after his comment.For me it’s too much.”After the top two players withdrew from the tournament shortly before it began, the tournament director Salah Tahlak argued that top players should receive stronger penalties for last-minute withdrawals from events, including ranking points deductions.“There should be a harsher punishment on the players, not just fines, they should be docked ranking points.
”However, the women’s No 1 said her decision not to compete in February was based on her determination to remain physically and mentally sound in a “crazy” schedule,Sabalenka opted not to compete in February, withdrawing from the Dubai and Doha WTA 1000 events, both of which took place before the US-Israel war on Iran and the subsequent crisis in the region,Sabalenka’s decision paid off last week as she won the Indian Wells title for the first time in her career,“Going into this season, we decided we were going to prioritise my health and make sure that we have these little gaps in the schedule where I can just reset, recharge, work and be better prepared for bigger tournaments,Scheduling is going crazy and that’s why you see so many players are injured, always taped and not delivering the best quality matches because it’s almost impossible,” she said.
Jack Draper is one such player who has been unable to handle the rigours of the gruelling calendar.He continues his comeback this week at the Miami Open after being sidelined for seven months because of bone bruising in his left arm.Draper accepts that it will take a long process to return to the top even after making significant progress at Indian Wells, where he produced one of the most memorable victories by defeating Novak Djokovic in a high-quality three-set night match en route to the quarter-finals.“When you have the injury you had, you start to look ahead, you start to think big picture.It’s easy to play week after week after week, and chase the points and chase the ranking and what you need to do, but at the end of the day I want to have a long career.
I want to be able to achieve all the things I want to, and I won’t be able to do that if ultimately my body’s not where I want it to be,” he said.“It will be a process for a little while and I’ve accepted that.Who knows how I’ll get on with my tennis, I think I’m improving all the time.I’m not putting too much pressure on myself to feel a certain way or to be getting the kind of results that maybe I wanted to early on last year when I was really climbing, but I know that will come soon.”Despite his brilliant performance at Indian Wells, Draper’s failure to defend his title meant he has fallen out of the top 20.
Having been ranked the world No 4 before his injury, the 24-year-old is the 25th seed at the Miami Open this week, where he has received a first-round bye.With Cameron Norrie also performing extremely well at Indian Wells, reaching the quarter-finals after a win over the No 6 Alex de Minaur, Norrie has also leapfrogged Draper as the British No 1 this week.Their rankings battle was the source of some good-natured banter in California.“In the press after I played Novak, they said: ‘You’re still going to be British No 1, and that was the first time I thought about it.’ So I messaged him and said I’m still holding on to it for a little bit longer,” Draper said.
“It’s not like a competition, I’m really happy to see Cam back playing good tennis and playing at a great level.”
Teenage girls sue Musk’s xAI, accusing Grok tool of creating child sexual abuse material
A group of three teenage girls, two of whom are minors, filed a lawsuit on Monday against Elon Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence company alleging that its Grok image generator used photos of them to produce and distribute child sexual abuse material. The class-action lawsuit is the first filed by minors following Grok’s rampant generation of nonconsensual nude images earlier this year.“xAI chose to profit off the sexual predation of real people, including children, despite knowing full well the consequences of creating such a dangerous product,” Vanessa Baehr-Jones, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.The suit, which was brought by three Tennessee teenagers but filed in California, where xAI is headquartered, details how the girls discovered that nude, AI-altered images of them were uploaded to a Discord server and shared online without their knowledge.After they alerted law enforcement to the images, according to the complaint, police arrested a suspect later that month and found child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on his phone that was allegedly produced using xAI’s image and video generation technology
Google scraps AI search feature that crowdsourced amateur medical advice
Google has dropped a new artificial intelligence search feature that gave users crowdsourced health advice from amateurs around the world.The company had said its launch of “What People Suggest”, which provided tips from strangers, showed “the potential of AI to transform health outcomes across the globe”.But Google has since quietly removed the feature, according to three people familiar with the decision.A Google spokesperson confirmed “What People Suggest” had been scrapped. The move came as part of a “broader simplification” of its search page and had nothing to do with the quality or safety of the new feature, the spokesperson said
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra review: its huge screen blocks shoulder surfers from spying on you
Samsung’s latest Ultra superphone promises to keep shoulder surfers out of your business with a first-of-its-kind privacy display built into its huge 6.9in screen.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more
AI has exposed age-old problems with university coursework | Letter
The frustration many academics are expressing about artificial intelligence and critical thinking is understandable (‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI, 10 March). But from my experience working with students on academic writing, blaming AI risks masking a problem that universities have lived with for years.In my work with students, I have long seen the ways in which thinking can be outsourced when assessment allows it: essay mills, shared past papers, model essays passed between cohorts, or heavy reliance on tutors and friends to structure assignments. Artificial intelligence did not invent this behaviour. It has simply industrialised a shortcut that already existed
Trump administration reportedly set to be paid $10bn for brokering TikTok deal
Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly poised to be paid $10bn by investors as part of a deal to create a US-controlled version of TikTok.The $10bn, considered by the US government as a sort of transaction fee, will be paid by the administration-friendly investors who took control of TikTok’s US operations from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, according to reporting that first appeared in the Wall Street Journal.The investors in the popular social media app include software company Oracle; MGX, an investment firm based in the United Arab Emirates; and private equity business Silver Lake. These entities, along with other backers, paid $2.5bn to the US treasury when the deal closed in January and are set to make further payments in the unusual arrangement until the total hits $10bn
Meta and Google trial: are infinite scroll and autoplay creating addicts?
It was as “easy as ABC”, claimed the lawyer prosecuting a landmark social media harm case against Meta and Google which heard closing arguments this week. The defendants were guilty, said Mark Lanier, of “addicting the brains of children”. Not true, replied the tech companies. Meta insisted providing young people with a “safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work”.Features such as autoplay videos, infinite scrolling and constantly chirruping alerts woven into the fabric of online platforms were central to the six-week trial in Los Angeles, which has been compared to the cases against tobacco companies in the 1990s
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Instagram to remove end-to-end encryption for private messages in May
Subnautica 2 publisher’s CEO used ChatGPT in failed bid to avoid paying US$250m bonus to own studio head, court hears
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