News of the Cyber World

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Photoshopped?

Photo Agencies Put Out ‘Kill Notice’ on Princess Kate Picture over Photoshopping Concerns

Several of the top international photo agencies have put out a “kill notice” on a photo released on Sunday morning by Kensington Palace of Catherine, Princess of Wales and her three young children over the picture being deemed to have been “manipulated”.

Following weeks of speculation and rumours surrounding the health and well-being of Princess Kate after she withdrew from public view after having abdominal surgery in January, Kensington Palace — the official residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales — apparently attempted to reassure the public by releasing a Mothering Sunday picture of Kate — the future Queen — alongside her three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis.

However, later on Sunday, the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Getty Images, and Reuters all announced that they have recalled the image, or put out a “kill notice” on the picture over concerns that it was seemingly digitally manipulated.

Eagle-eyed observers on social media had noticed that the photograph featured anomalies around Princess Charlotte’s hand, while others pointed out that Princess Kate was missing her wedding ring in the image.

Announcing their decision to pull the picture, the AP said in a “kill notice” statement: “At closer inspection it appears the source has manipulated the image. No replacement photo will be sent. Please remove it from all platforms, including social, where it may still be visible.”

Elaborating, an AP spokesman told London’s Daily Telegraph: “The photo shows an inconsistency in the alignment of Princess Charlotte’s left hand.”

The picture, which is reported to have been originally taken by Prince William earlier this week, was the first authorised image released of the Princess of Wales since Christmas and the first official message about Kate since January 17th, when the Palace announced that she would be stepping back from her public duties until at least Easter because of her surgery.

While the decision to pull the picture does not indicate that the Princess is not in good health or looks as she appears in the photograph, the move has reignited the conversation surrounding her lengthy time out of public view.

Content Hidden

El Salvador Debuts Fortnite and Minecraft Nayib Bukele Avatars for Upcoming Video Game Event

The government of El Salvador announced this week that it will serve as one of several venues for the 2024 Gamergy international video game e-sports event in October.

The announcement was made by the president of the INDES National Sports Institute Yamil Bukele, brother of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who said the event is part of the nation’s 2024 sports agenda alongside other planned sports tournaments and activities.

“Each of the events we have developed and those to be developed are part of INDES’ mission and vision, embodied in the National Sports and Recreational Development Plan 2019-2039,” Yamil Bukele said. “INDES does not do sports, we dictate the sports policies of El Salvador, those who do sports are the federations who we are happy to accompany.”

Yamil Bukele also presented a new gaming and esports platform that will start to feature video games from “the world’s largest developers,” highlighting that, the video games Fortnite and Minecraft will host “exclusive” Salvador-related content that will allow users to “experience everything that the country has to show the world.”

The video shown during INDES’ presentation claims that participants will be able to “meet the President” without giving more specific details other than showing customized video game characters from Fortnite and Minecraft that loosely resemble the Salvadoran president.

The Gamergy gaming event will be held in El Salvador on October 26 at the Adolfo Pineda stadium located in the capital city of San Salvador. In addition to El Salvador, Gamergy has three planned venues in Mexico hosting events in July and August, as well as one planned venue in Spain scheduled for December.

Prior to President Nayib Bukele’s fierce crackdown on gang violence and the dramatic reduction in homicides it has led to, the Central American nation was known as one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Bukele’s crackdown on gangs such as MS-13 and 18th Street has led to the reported “disappearance” of said criminal organizations from Salvadoran territory.

A Steam Curator List

Woke Gaming ‘Consultants’ Epicly Fail at Censoring Gamers, Face Massive Online Backlash

Many video game enthusiasts have taken notice of a decline in the quality of game stories and writing in recent years. In many of these cases, one outside consultant group was hired as “narrative consultant,” by major game studios. On it’s website, the Montreal-based consultant group Sweet Baby states that it’s goal is “to tell better, more empathetic stories while diversifying and enriching the video games industry. We aim to make games more engaging, more fun, more meaningful, and more inclusive, for everyone.”

Sweet Baby has worked with various prominent studios, including Xbox Game Studios, Electronic Arts (EA), Valve, Sony Santa Monica Studio, 2K, Ubisoft, Square Enix, and Warner Bros. Studios, among others. The company’s website lists 12 games they have contributed to, including high-profile titles like Alan Wake II, God of War: Ragnarok, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and The Crew Motorfest.

As many gamers noticed the poor writing quality of games involving Sweet Baby Inc., one Steam user named Kabrutus decided to develop a warning for fellow game enthusiasts by creating a Steam Curator list that tracks games that Sweet Baby Inc. has worked on. The list currently features 16 titles. Note that Kabrutus’ curator list is exactly that — a list that highlights the games that Sweet Baby Inc. has worked on. There is no attack on the company or the quality of the game, simply a confirmation that Sweet Baby consulted on the game’s narrative, built based on information posted on the company’s own website.

However, this list was viewed as a direct attack by one Sweet Baby employee in particular, Chris Kindred, who attempted to get Kabrutus and his Steam Curator list taken down through a series of posts on X/Twitter Kindred urged others to report the list and its creator, claiming that it violated Steam’s code of conduct. Making the censorship campaign even more dastardly, Kindred attempted to get Kabrutus’ steam account banned as well. The Brazil-based gamer claims he has spent thousands of dollars on his Steam library over the years, meaning that Kindred was attempting not only to censor his speech, but also to take away his ability to even play video games he purchased.

Kindred’s actions unsurprisingly backfired, and his X/Twitter account was temporarily limited, preventing them from posting, liking, or following others for a period of six days and 20 hours. TheParkPlace reports that Kindred shared screenshots of the account limitation on the alternative social media platform BlueSky, expressing frustration and a sense of defeat.

Altman is back

Sam Altman Returns to OpenAI Board Months After Crisis

CEO Sam Altman will return to the board of OpenAI, the company said on Friday, just months after a boardroom dustup that saw him fired and rehired by the company behind ChatGPT.

Altman was also found to have been wrongly fired in an internal investigation that was launched in the days after his chaotic dismissal last year, the company said.

Altman will join the board with three other new directors: Sue Desmond-Hellmann, a former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, a former president of Sony Entertainment; and Fidji Simo, CEO of Instacart.

They will join Ex-Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who joined in the immediate aftermath of the November 2023 tumult.

Microsoft also gained an observer seat on OpenAI’s board at the time, a move that drew criticism and a lawsuit from Elon Musk earlier this week, who helped found OpenAI in 2015 before leaving the project.

“I am excited to welcome Sue, Nicole, and Fidji to the OpenAI Board of Directors,” said Bret Taylor, chair of the OpenAI board.

“Their experience and leadership will… ensure that we pursue OpenAI’s mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,” he added.

Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo is the sole holdover from the old board that had taken the decision to fire Altman.

Altman has become the face of the recent artificial intelligence explosion that burst onto the scene with his decision to release ChatGPT in November 2022.

But in a shock move, the company’s board summarily fired Altman without any clear reason given, sparking the threat of a mass exodus by the company’s 700 strong employees, who stuck by their star CEO.

Microsoft, the tech giant with major investments in OpenAI, offered to hire those leaving the AI company, forcing a change of mind by its board, which reinstated Altman after a few days of chaos.

The board members behind Altman’s shortlived ouster, left their roles.

UNESCO Thinks AI is... Sexist?

UNESCO Says Artificial Intelligence Is Sexist

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published a study on Thursday that found some “worrying tendencies” in artificial intelligence (AI) systems, including “gender bias,” “homophobia,” and “racial stereotyping.”

The study, entitled Bias Against Women and Girls in Large Language Models, was timed to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are the huge databases that help AI systems to understand conversational human speech. LLMs are “grown” in a somewhat organic fashion, learning more about speech and context as they absorb data from users. The most powerful LLMs have grown to include millions of gigabytes (GB) of text.

According to the UNESCO report, the LLMs used by the most popular AI systems display “unequivocal evidence of bias against women.” This bias took the form of LLMs producing a large number of responses that included gender stereotypes:

Women were described as working in domestic roles far more often than men – four times as often by one model – and were frequently associated with words like “home”, “family” and “children”, while male names were linked to “business”, “executive”, “salary”, and “career”.

Researchers said the gender bias was more pronounced in “open-source” LLMs compiled by large numbers of users:

Part of the study measured the diversity of content in AI-generated texts focused on a range of people across a spectrum of genders, sexualities and cultural backgrounds, including by asking the platforms to “write a story” about each person. Open-source LLMs in particular tended to assign more diverse, high-status jobs to men, such as engineer, teacher and doctor, while frequently relegating women to roles that are traditionally undervalued or socially-stigmatized, such as “domestic servant”, “cook” and “prostitute”.

Llama 2-generated stories about boys and men dominated by the words “treasure”, “woods”, “sea”, “adventurous”, “decided” and “found”, while stories about women made most frequent use of the words “garden”, “love”, “felt,” “gentle”, “hair” and “husband”. Women were also described as working in domestic roles four times more often than men in content produced by Llama 2.

Llama 2, created by Facebook parent company META, is one of the open-source AI programs UNESCO complained about.