The Guardian

Hundreds of videos on TikTok and elsewhere impersonate experts to sell supplements with unproven effects TikTok and other social media platforms are hosting AI-generated deepfake videos of doctors whose words have been manipulated to help sell supplements and spread health misinformation. The factchecking organisation Full Fact has uncovered hundreds of such videos featuring impersonated versions…

Gordon McKee, whose explainer has racked up 3m views, leads way as party tries to harness power of social media UK politics live – latest updates A perennial head-scratcher for progressives is how to craft a simple, compelling message on the economy. One Labour MP found the answer in a few packets of M&S biscuits. Gordon McKee, who represents Glasgow South, has racked up more than 3.3m views on X…

Many users of the app were shocked, this week, by this addition to the Spotify Wrapped roundup – especially twentysomethings who were judged to be 100 “Age is just a number. So don’t take this personally.” Those words were the first inkling I had that I was about to receive some very bad news. I woke up on Wednesday with a mild hangover after celebrating my 44th birthday. Unfortunately for me, th…

Pulled by Steam and Epic Games Store, indie horror Horses shook up the industry before it was even released. Now it’s out, all the drama surrounding it seems superfluous On 25 November, award-winning Italian developer Santa Ragione, responsible for acclaimed titles such as MirrorMoon EP and Saturnalia, revealed that its latest project, Horses , had been banned from Steam - the largest digital sto…

Web infrastructure provider says it has implemented a fix after users had seen ‘a large number of empty pages’ A host of websites including LinkedIn, Zoom and Downdetector went offline on Friday morning after fresh problems at Cloudflare. Cloudflare said shortly after 9am UK time that it was “investigating issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs”, referring to application programming in…

Calls for review after technology found to return more false positives for ‘some demographic groups’ on certain settings UK politics live – latest updates Ministers are facing calls for stronger safeguards on the use of facial recognition technology after the Home Office admitted it is more likely to incorrectly identify black and Asian people than their white counterparts on some settings. Follo…

Ruling likely to put European Commission on collision course with billionaire, and possibly Donald Trump Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, has been fined €120m (£105m) after it was found in breach of new EU digital laws, in a high-stakes ruling likely to put the European Commission on a collision course with the US billionaire and potentially Donald Trump. The breaches, under consideration fo…

The hobbyists who helped build this site created technology that has been used to humiliate countless women. Why didn’t governments step in and stop them? For Patrizia Schlosser, it started with an apologetic call from a colleague. “I’m sorry but I found this. Are you aware of it?” He sent over a link, which took her to a site called Mr DeepFakes. There, she found fake images of herself, naked, s…

‘Information-dense’ AI responses are most persuasive but these tend to be less accurate, says security report Chatbots can sway people’s political opinions but the most persuasive artificial intelligence models deliver “substantial” amounts of inaccurate information in the process, according to the UK government’s AI security body. Researchers said the study was the largest and most systematic in…

The demand for use in cooling in Sydney alone is expected to exceed the volume of Canberra’s total drinking water within the next decade Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here As Australia rides the AI boom with dozens of new investments in datacentres in Sydney and Melbourne, experts are warning about the impact these massive projects will have on…

Once home to gold and prospectors, the Nevada desert is now the site of a new kind of expansion: tech data centers Driving down the interstate through the dry Nevada desert, there are few signs that a vast expanse of new construction is hiding behind the sagebrush-covered hills. But, just beyond a massive power plant and transmission towers that march up into the dusty brown mountains, lies one o…

The new Data (Use and Access) Act, which criminalises intimate image abuse, is a huge victory won fast in a space where progress is often glacially slow For Jodie*, watching the conviction of her best friend, and knowing she helped secure it, felt at first like a kind of victory. It was certainly more than most survivors of deepfake image-based abuse could expect. They had met as students and bon…

As the Grand Theft Auto co-writer launches a new project, he reflects on his hugely successful open-world adventures and where game design might go next • Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here It is hard to think of a more modern entertainment format than the open-world video game. These sprawling technological endeavours, which mix narrative, social connectivity and the…

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox; Eyes Out/Blumhouse Games Psychedelic visuals and a promising premise are let down by tired game design in this first-person horror with an appearance from the synthpop pioneer Video games have delivered a feast of singular and wondrous sights in 2025: ecological fantasias teeming with magical beasts; stunning, historically obsessive recreations of feudal Japan . But here …

Independent senator David Pocock asked the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, in Senate estimates last night about Guardian Australia’s investigation into Roblox and what children may experience on the platform. With Roblox not subject to the under-16s social media ban, Pocock asked whether Roblox was deemed as a gaming platform or a platform that is 'actually enabling social interactions'.…