Facebook was inundated with deepfaked ads impersonating UK’s Prime Minister

Facebook was flooded with fake advertisements featuring a deepfaked Rishi Sunak ahead of the UK’s general election that’s expected to take place this year, according to research conducted by communications company Fenimore Harper. The firm found 143 different ads impersonating the UK’s Prime Minister on the social network last month, and it believes the ad may have reached more than 400,000 people. It also said that funding for the ads originated from 23 countries, including Turkey, Malaysia, the Philippines and the United States, and that the collective amount of money spent to promote them from December 8, 2023 to January 8, 2024 was $16,500. 

As The Guardian notes, one of the fake ads showed a BBC newscast wherein Sunak said that the UK government has decided to invest in a stock market app launched by Elon Musk. That clip then reportedly linked to a fake BBC news page promoting an investment scam. The video, embedded in Fenimore Harper’s website, seems pretty realistic if the viewer doesn’t look too closely at people’s mouths when they speak. Someone who has no idea what deepfakes are could easily be fooled into thinking that the video is legit.

The company says this is the “first widespread paid promotion of a deepfaked video of a UK political figure.” That said, Meta has long been contending with election misinformation on its websites and apps. A spokesperson told The Guardian that the “vast majority” of the adverts were disabled before Fenimore Harper’s report was published and that “less than 0.5 percent of UK users saw any individual ad that did go live.”

Meta announced late last year that it was going to require advertisers to disclose whether the ads they submit have been digitally altered in the event that they’re political or social in nature. It’s going to start enforcing the rule this year, likely in hopes that it can help mitigate the expected spread of fake news connected to the upcoming presidential elections in the US. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/facebook-was-inundated-with-deepfaked-ads-impersonating-uks-prime-minister-143009584.html?src=rss 

OpenAI’s policy no longer explicitly bans the use of its technology for ‘military and warfare’

Just a few days ago, OpenAI’s usage policies page explicitly states that the company prohibits the use of its technology for “military and warfare” purposes. That line has since been deleted. As first noticed by The Intercept, the company updated the page on January 10 “to be clearer and provide more service-specific guidance,” as the changelog states. It still prohibits the use of its large language models (LLMs) for anything that can cause harm, and it warns people against using its services to “develop or use weapons.” However, the company has removed language pertaining to “military and warfare.”

While we’ve yet to see its real-life implications, this change in wording comes just as military agencies around the world are showing an interest in using AI. “Given the use of AI systems in the targeting of civilians in Gaza, it’s a notable moment to make the decision to remove the words ‘military and warfare’ from OpenAI’s permissible use policy,” Sarah Myers West, a managing director of the AI Now Institute, told the publication. 

The explicit mention of “military and warfare” in the list of prohibited uses indicated that OpenAI couldn’t work with government agencies like the Department of Defense, which typically offers lucrative deals to contractors. At the moment, the company doesn’t have a product that could directly kill or cause physical harm to anybody. But as The Intercept said, its technology could be used for tasks like writing code and processing procurement orders for things that could be used to kill people. 

When asked about the change in its policy wording, OpenAI spokesperson Niko Felix told the publication that the company “aimed to create a set of universal principles that are both easy to remember and apply, especially as our tools are now globally used by everyday users who can now also build GPTs.” Felix explained that “a principle like ‘Don’t harm others’ is broad yet easily grasped and relevant in numerous contexts,” adding that OpenAI “specifically cited weapons and injury to others as clear examples.” However, the spokesperson reportedly declined to clarify whether prohibiting the use of its technology to “harm” others included all types of military use outside of weapons development. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openais-policy-no-longer-explicitly-bans-the-use-of-its-technology-for-military-and-warfare-123018659.html?src=rss 

Ellen Pompeo’s Husband: Facts About Chris Ivery & the Pair’s 14 Year Marriage

Ellen Pompeo is best known for her role on ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ but she has a successful marriage to Chris Ivery. Find out more about him here!

Ellen Pompeo is best known for her role on ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ but she has a successful marriage to Chris Ivery. Find out more about him here! 

Katherine Heigl’s Husband Josh Kelley: All About Their Romance & Family Together

Katherine Heigl and Josh Kelley have been married since 2007 and share a close bond. Find out more about him and their life together here.

Katherine Heigl and Josh Kelley have been married since 2007 and share a close bond. Find out more about him and their life together here. 

The ASUS AirVision M1 glasses give you big virtual screens in a travel-friendly package

At CES 2024, ASUS seems to have taken people by surprise with the announcement of its AirVision M1 glasses, with some viewing it as an alternative to Apple’s Vision Pro headset. But I discovered that ASUS’ glasses are much more of a novel alternative to portable monitors than something meant for spatial computing. 

The big difference between the AirVision M1 glasses and something like the Vision Pro or even Xreal’s Air 2 Ultras is that it doesn’t really support anything in the way of interactive AR. Sure, the glasses are able to project your desktop or multiple windows into space, but it needs to be tethered to a nearby device and doesn’t recognize hand gestures or other virtual objects. 

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Instead, I found that its primary purpose is to give you extra screen space, but without the need to carry around big and bulky portable monitors. Featuring built-in microLED displays with a full HD resolution, the AirVisions can display up to six or seven virtual windows or desktops. You can also choose betwe

en a handful of aspect ratios (16:9, 21:9, 32:9 and more), with the glasses three degrees of freedom allowing you to either pin those screens in virtual space or track your head as you move around. 

Instead, I found that its primary purpose is to give you extra screen space, but without the need to carry around big and bulky portable monitors. Featuring built-in microLED displays with a full HD resolution, the AirVisions can display up to six or seven virtual windows or desktops. You can also choose between a handful of aspect ratios (16:9, 21:9, 32:9 and more), with the glasses three degrees of freedom allowing you to either pin those screens in virtual space or track your head as you move around. 

Instead, I found that its primary purpose is to give you extra screen space, but without the need to carry around big and bulky portable monitors. Featuring built-in microLED displays with a full HD resolution, the AirVisions can display up to six or seven virtual windows or desktops. You can also choose between a handful of aspect ratios (16:9, 21:9, 32:9 and more), with the glasses three degrees of freedom allowing you to either pin those screens in virtual space or track your head as you move around. Instead, I found that its primary purpose is to give you extra screen space, but without the need to carry around big and bulky portable monitors. Featuring built-in microLED displays with a full HD resolution, the AirVisions can display up to six or seven virtual windows or desktops. You can also choose between a handful of aspect ratios (16:9, 21:9, 32:9 and more), with the glasses three degrees of freedom allowing you to either pin those screens in virtual space or track your head as you move around. 

During my first demo, I used the AirVision M1s while tethered to a laptop, in which it behaved almost exactly like having a bit floating desktop that appeared to be hovering six feet in front of me. At first, the virtual displays were a little blurry, but after a short adjustment period and some time dialing in my IPD (interpupillary distance), I was pleasantly surprised by how sharp everything looked. When compared to something like Sightful Spacetop, which is billed as the world’s first AR laptop, not only did it have a much larger vertical field of view (up to 57 degrees), it also didn’t require any additional special equipment, as the glasses are essentially plug and play. While I didn’t need them, it’s important to note that the glasses come with a pair of nose pads to help ensure you can get a good fit, plus a prescription insert for people with glasses.

Once set up, it was pretty easy to create additional virtual workspaces. All I had to do was pull up a small command menu, press a plus sign where I wanted a new window to appear and that’s it. You can also freely adjust the overall size of the virtual display by zooming in or out. And one of the best things about the AirVisions is that using the laptop’s touchpad or typing wasn’t difficult at all. Because you can see through the virtual displays, I simply looked down and focused my eyes where they needed to go. That said, if you become distracted by something in the background, ASUS’ glasses also come with magnetic blinders that clip onto the front and provide a clean black backdrop.

However my favorite use case was when I tried a different pair of the AirVisions that were connected to an ROG Ally, where the glasses provided me with a massive virtual screen for gaming. In this way, it’s a lot like wearing a headset such as the Meta Quest 3, but for non-VR games. This is the kind of device I would love to have on a plane, where space is at a premium, especially for something like a portable monitor. That said, I’m not sure I could handle the embarrassment of being a modern day glasshole, at least not until devices like these become a bit more popular.

But perhaps the biggest difference between the AirVision M1s and Apple’s Vision Pro is price. While ASUS has yet to provide an official figure, a company spokesperson told me that ASUS is targeting around $700, versus $3,000 for Apple’s headset. And when you compare that to the price of a portable monitor, which often goes for between $250 and $400, and offers a lot less screen space, suddenly that price doesn’t seem too ridiculous.

So if you’re on the lookout for an alternative to the travel monitor, keep an eye for ASUS’ AirVision M1 glasses when they become available sometime in Q3 2024. 

We’re reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-asus-airvision-m1-glasses-give-you-big-virtual-screens-in-a-travel-friendly-package-234412478.html?src=rss 

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