Lifestyle and shopping apps are the latest weapons in Beijing’s information war against its neighbourAriel Lo spends a couple of hours most weeks sharing anime art and memes on Chinese apps, often chatting with friends in China in a Mandarin slightly different from the one she uses at home in Taiwan.“People use English on Instagram, and for Chinese apps they use Chinese phrases. If I am talking to friends in China, I would use them,” Lo said as she picked up a bubble tea at a street market in central Taichung city. Continue reading...

AI’s potential is huge and terrifying. But a new generation of artists is starting to find new uses for the technology, as well showing its many limitationsWhen I visited the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in early June, a fabulous drag cabaret was in full swing. Across seven small screens and a large wall projection, a rotating cast of performers in an array of bold looks danced and lip-synced their hearts out to banger after banger. Highlights included Freedom! 90 by George Michael, Five Years by David Bowie and Beyoncé’s Sweet Dreams.Then the whole thing started again. And again...

Engineers’ work on cycling and public transit have transformed the app – but rural directions remain a sticking pointIn October 2022, New York City officials unveiled a new bike lane on Schermerhorn street, one of the most dangerous and heavily trafficked streets in downtown Brooklyn and somewhere I had always avoided on my bike. Unless I was a religious reader of transportation department press releases (I’m not), I would have no way of knowing the lane existed – except that very same morning, my Apple Maps app sent me on the new Schermerhorn bike lane, instead of hurtling down Dean...

Indian tribal hunting endangers wildlife but now a startup making 3D replicas is giving teeth to conservation effortsIn the lowland rainforests of Arunachal Pradesh in north-east India, tigers, clouded leopards, eagles and hornbills dot the landscape. The area is also home to the Nyishi community, the largest Indigenous tribe in the state, where the men traditionally don a byopa, an elaborate handwoven cane cap with the upper beak and casque of a great hornbill attached to the top edge, and an eagle’s claw at the back. They also wield a machete fitted either with the short, squat jaw of the...

In 2009, two bookshops a week were closing in the UK and the days of physical books seemed numbered. Now, indie stores are booming. What explains the turnaround – and can it be sustained?When Sarah Mullen was asked to set up a children’s book festival in a leafy suburb of Birmingham in 2012, she couldn’t find an independent bookseller to run the bookstall. “So we all rolled up our sleeves and did it ourselves,” she says. Pregnant with her third child, she had recently given up her job as a solicitor to work for the Bournville Village Trust. Mullen’s task was to set up the Bournville...

A new Cambridge University institute will try to harness the good and anticipate the bad effects of artificial intelligenceStephen Cave has considerable experience of well-intentioned actions that have unhappy consequences. A former senior diplomat in the foreign office during the New Labour era, he was involved in treaty negotiations which later – and unexpectedly – unravelled to trigger several international events that included Brexit. “I know the impact of well-meant global events that have gone wrong,” he admits.His experience could prove valuable, however. The former diplomat, now...

Android maker’s first foldable has sleeker design, simpler software and top camera, but wallet-busting priceGoogle’s first folding phone-tablet hybrid is finally here to give Samsung’s leading Z Fold a run for its money, with different ideas of how such a cutting-edge device should work and a serious camera upgrade.The Pixel Fold costs a colossal £1,749 ($1,799), which is £100 more than the already eye-wateringly expensive rival from Samsung, and more than twice the price of Google’s top regular phone, the £849 Pixel 7 Pro. That puts the Pixel Fold in the rarefied company of ultra-...

Digital Storytelling, its new exhibition, shows how interactive technology has changed – and expanded – the way we tell storiesWhen you walk into the British Library, the first thing you’ll see – apart from people sitting in every available free space, writing on laptops or in notebooks – is a glass tower encasing rows upon rows of books, stretching up to the ceiling. It’s fair to say that this place has a lot of experience when it comes to displaying stories. For digital, interactive stories, though, the classic glass case doesn’t really work. These tales often invite the reader...

Test your skills at detecting AI-generated images with Bitesize's monthly AI or real quiz.

Ofcom says popular platforms' terms of service are very long and difficult to understand.

A social media monitoring group says legal threats sent by X Corp are an attempt to "silence criticism".

Greg Rutkowski is among the artists calling for more protection from artificial intelligence tools.

Extra oversight for powers to scan encrypted messages for child abuse images passed by peers.

Concerns over the impact of AI are partly behind the first Hollywood actors' strike in 43 years.

West Midlands Fire Service says the owner of the footage allowed it to be shared to flag the dangers.

The manufacturers of a popular diabetes app have removed it from the App Store after it broke.

As actors strike in Hollywood, unions say they want more protection from artificial intelligence.

US regulators are asking the maker of ChatGPT about protections for privacy and reputational risk.

Quick to produce and easy to transport modular homes are being developed for homeless Ukrainians.

It is the latest attempt by the parent company of Facebook to make its VR business profitable.

Many people are using AI like ChatGPT to improve their language skills but learning that way has drawbacks.

The warning comes ahead of the European Parliament voting on rules to regulate artificial intelligence.

The deal to buy the Call of Duty publisher would be the largest in the history of the video games industry.

Chief executive Linda Yaccarino says the company aims to "drive civilisation forward".

The regulator says information about firms and employees has been affected by a cyber-attack.