When the Beatles broke up more than 50 years ago, devastated fans were left yearning for more. Now, artificial intelligence is offering just that.

From “re-uniting” the Fab Four on songs from their solo careers, to re-imagining surviving superstar Paul McCartney’s later works with his voice restored to its youthful peak, the new creations show off how far this technology has come—and raise a host of ethical and legal questions.

“I’m sobbing! This is so beautiful!!!” wrote a listener in a typical YouTube comment for a fan-created AI cover of McCartney’s 2013 single, “New,” which features de-aged vocals and a bridge part “sung” by his great songwriting partner and friend, the late John Lennon.

Equally impressive is a version of “Grow Old With Me,” one of the last songs penned by Lennon, which was posthumously released after his 1980 murder and recently remade by an AI creator who goes by “Dae Lims.”

With enhanced audio quality, an orchestral arrangement and harmonized backing vocals that evoke the Liverpudlian rockers’ heyday, the song’s most stirring moment comes when McCartney croons over a soaring melody with poignant lyrics about aging.

“When I hear this, I lose it. I start crying,” said music YouTuber Steve Onotera, who goes by “SamuraiGuitarist” and has a million followers, in a recent video discussing the new works’ unforeseen sentimental resonance.

After the most influential band in history parted ways acrimoniously, fans were deprived of a final “happy ending,” he said. “So when we do get that reunion artificially yet convincingly created by AI, well, it’s surprisingly emotional.”

AI here, there and everywhere

Like an earlier track called “Heart on a Sleeve” which featured AI-generated vocals of Drake and The Weeknd and racked up millions of hits on TikTok and other platforms, these covers use scraping technology that analyzes and captures the nuances of a particular voice.

The creators would have probably then sung the parts themselves and then applied the cloned voice, in a manner similar to placing a filter on a photograph.

While the results can be astonishing, getting there isn’t simple and requires skilled human operators combining new AI tools with extensive knowledge of traditional music processing software, Zohaib Ahmed, the CEO of Resemble AI, a Toronto-based voice cloning company, told AFP.

“I think we’re still seeing a very small percentage of the population that can even access these tools,” he said. They need to “jump through hoops, read documentation, have the right computer, and then put it all together.”

Ahmed’s company is one of several offering a platform that can make the technology more accessible to clients in the entertainment sector—and counts a recent Netflix documentary series “narrated” by late art icon Andy Warhol using its technology as an early success.

For Patricia Alessandrini, a composer and assistant professor at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, the recent spate of AI tracks represent a coming-of-age for a technology that has been advancing exponentially—yet largely out of public view over the past decade.

“This is a great example of what AI does very well, which is anything that’s resemblance: to train it on something existing,” she told AFP.

But, she added, it flounders when it comes to new ideas. “There’s really no expectation that it’s going to replace the rich history of humans originating art and culture.”

Litigation coming

For the music industry, the ramifications are enormous. As the technology progresses, software that will easily allow people to transform their vocals into one of their favorite singers is likely not far away.

“If they’re getting paid for their vocal license, hey, everyone’s happy,” said Onotera. “But what if they’re long since passed away? Is it up to their estate?”

AI is already proving a helter-skelter impact on the copyright world.

In the case of “Heart on a Sleeve,” Universal Music Group was quick to assert copyright claims and have the track pulled down from streaming services, but that hasn’t stopped it popping back up on small accounts.

Marc Ostrow, a New York-based music copyright lawyer, told AFP AI-generated music is a “gray area.”

Copyright can be asserted both by songwriters whose material is used, as well as the holders of the master recordings.

On the other hand AI creators can argue it falls under “fair use” citing a 2015 court ruling that said Google was permitted to archive the world’s books, because it wasn’t competing with sellers and was displaying only snippets.

Last month, however, the US Supreme Court tipped the balance back the other way in ruling a Warhol print of the late pop star Prince violated the copyright of the photographer who took the original image.

Add to the mix that celebrities can protect their likeness under the “right to publicity,” established when Bette Midler successfully sued Ford Motor Company in the late 1980s for using a singer that sounded like her in an ad.

Ultimately, “I think there may be voluntary industry standards… or it’s going to be done by litigation,” said Ostrow.

Rights holders will also need to think about the negative PR that could come with suing over works that are clearly fan-created tributes and not intended to be monetized.

© 2023 AFP

Human skin is amazing. It senses temperature, pressure, and texture. It’s able to stretch and spring back, time and again. And it provides a barrier between the body and external threats—bacteria, viruses, toxins, ultraviolet radiation and more. Engineers are, accordingly, keen to create synthetic skin. They imagine robots and prosthetic limbs that have skin-like qualities—not the least of which is skin’s remarkable ability to heal.

“We’ve achieved what we believe to be the first demonstration of a multi-layer, thin film sensor that automatically realigns during healing. This is a critical step toward mimicking human skin, which has multiple layers that all re-assemble correctly during the healing process,” said Chris Cooper, a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University who, along with postdoctoral researcher Sam Root, is co-author of a new study published in Science.

Layering is critical to mimicking skin’s many qualities. “It is soft and stretchable. But if you puncture it, slice it, or cut it—each layer will selectively heal with itself to restore the overall function,” Root says. “Just like real skin.”

Skin, too, is formed of layers. It has just evolved immune mechanisms that rebuild the tissue with the original layered structure through a complex process involving molecular recognition and signaling.

“With true ‘skin’ the layers should realign naturally and autonomously,” Cooper says.

Root says the team, led by Professor Zhenan Bao at Stanford University, might be able to create multi-tiered synthetic skin with individually functional layers as thin as a micron each, perhaps less. Thin enough that a stack of 10 or more layers would be no thicker than a sheet of paper. “One layer might sense pressure, another temperature, and yet another tension,” says Root. The material of different layers can be engineered to sense thermal, mechanical, or electrical changes.

A novel approach

“We reported the first multi-layer self-healing synthetic electronic skin in 2012 in Nature Nanotechnology,” says Bao. “There has been a lot of interest around the world in pursuing multi-layer synthetic skin since then.” What sets their current work apart is that the layers self-recognize and align with like layers during the healing process, restoring functionality layer by layer as they heal. Existing self-healing synthetic skins must be realigned manually—by humans. Even a slight misalignment in layers might compromise functional recovery.

The secret is in the materials. The backbone of each layer is formed of long molecular chains connected periodically by dynamic hydrogen bonds, similar to those holding the double-helix of DNA strands together, that allow the material to stretch repeatedly without tearing. Rubber and latex are two well-known natural polymers, but there are countless synthetic polymers, too. The key is to design polymer molecular structures and choose the right combination for each layer—first layer of one polymer, the second of another and so forth.

The researchers used PPG (polypropylene glycol) and PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane, better known as silicone). Both have rubber-like electrical and mechanical properties and biocompatibility and can be mixed with nano- or microparticles to enable electric conductivity. Critically, the chosen polymers and their respective composites are immiscible—they do not mix with one another yet, due to the hydrogen bonding, they adhere to one another well to create a durable, multilayer material.

Both polymers have the advantage that when warmed they soften and flow, but solidify as they cool. Thus, by warming the synthetic skin, the researchers were able to speed the healing process. At room temperature, healing can take as long as a week, but when heated to just 70°C (158°F), the self-alignment and healing happen in about 24 hours. The two materials were carefully designed to have similar viscous and elastic responses to external stress over an appropriate temperature range.

“Skin is slow to heal, too. I cut my finger the other day and it was still healing four or five days later,” Cooper says. “For us, the most important part is that it heals to recover functions without our input or effort.”

A step further

With a successful prototype, the researchers then took things a step further, working with Professor Renee Zhao at Stanford University, adding magnetic materials to their polymer layers, allowing the synthetic skin to not only heal but also to self-assemble from separate pieces. “Combining with magnetic field-guided navigation and induction heating,” says Zhao, “we may be able to build reconfigurable soft robots that can change shape and sense their deformation on demand.”

“Our long-term vision is to create devices that can recover from extreme damage. For example, imagine a device that when torn into pieces and ripped apart, could reconstruct itself autonomously,” Cooper says, showing a short video of several pieces of stratified synthetic skin immersed in water. Drawn together magnetically, the pieces inch toward one another, eventually reassembling. As they heal, their electrical conductivity returns, and an LED attached atop the material glows to prove it.

Among their next steps, the researchers will work to make the layers as thin as possible and toward creating layers of varying function. The current prototype was engineered to sense pressure, and additional layers engineered to sense changes in temperature or strain could be included.

In terms of future vision, the team imagines, potentially, robots that could be swallowed in pieces and then self-assemble inside the body to perform non-invasive medical treatments. Other applications include multi-sensory, self-healing electronic skins that form-fit to robots and provide them with a sense of touch.

Meta on Thursday ramped up its Quest virtual reality headgear line, just days before Apple is expected to put its spin on the headset market.

The new-generation Quest 3 with improved performance and slimmed design will be available later this year at a starting price of $500, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said in an Instagram post.

Zuckerberg described the coming model as Meta’s “most powerful headset yet” and promised it would provide the best wireless way to experience mixed and virtual reality.

He added that more details would be shared at an annual Meta Connect developers conference on September 27.

Meanwhile, the starting price of Quest 2 headsets currently available will drop to $300, according to Meta.

Zuckerberg said during a Meta shareholders meeting this week that the tech titan remains devoted to building for a future in which internet life plays out in virtual worlds referred to as the metaverse.

Apple is expected to provide a look at its long-rumored VR or augmented reality (AR) headgear Monday at an annual Worldwide Developers Conference, enticing programmers and software companies to get a jump start on providing content.

“From all reports, Apple hoped to release a product that felt more like designer glasses than a gaming headset, but it’s releasing something much bulkier,” said Insider Intelligence principal analyst Yory Wurmser.

The idea is to get the device into the hands of early adopters and developers and lay the groundwork for more innovative mixed reality headsets to be released over the next couple of years, said Wurmser.

© 2023 AFP

The release of “Diablo IV” is right around the corner. Early access for the highly anticipated action role-playing video game begins Thursday night—ahead of next week’s official launch.

“Diablo IV” marks the latest installment of Blizzard Entertainment’s “Diablo” series, which began in 1996, and arrives more than a decade after “Diablo III” was released in May 2012.

Rod Fergusson, general manager of Diablo, has described “Diablo IV” as “our most brutal vision of Sanctuary,” the fictional world where Diablo is set. It brings “the darkness of the original game” and builds on key aspects of previous installments of the series, he added.

In April, Blizzard Entertainment parent company Activision Blizzard reported a net revenue of $2.38 billion for the first quarter of 2023—up from $1.77 billion for the first three months of 2022. At the time, Activision noted that presales for “Diablo IV” were strong, pointing to successful public testing of the game.

“All the excitement and feedback from players has been so energizing for all of us,” Mike Ybarra, president of Blizzard Entertainment, said in a statement.

Here’s what you need to know about the coming release of “Diablo IV.”

WHAT TIME DOES DIABLO IV RELEASE?

“Diablo IV” will be officially released on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, depending on the time zone of where you live. In the U.S., the game will launch at 7 p.m. ET (4 p.m. PT) on Tuesday.

While the official release of “Diablo IV” is slated for next week, early access will begin a few days earlier—kicking off on Thursday or Friday, also depending on your time zone. For U.S. players, early access will launch at 7 p.m. ET (4 p.m. PT) Thursday.

HOW DO I GET EARLY ACCESS?

Early access will be available for players who pre-purchased the digital deluxe or ultimate edition of the game.

Players who have already purchased “Diablo IV” can also pre-load the game on some devices ahead of the launch. Pre-loading any edition is currently available for Windows PC, Xbox and PlayStation, according to Blizzard.

WHAT ARE THE DIABLO IV CHARACTER CLASSES?

According to Blizzard, “Diablo IV” is set decades after the events of “Diablo III: Reaper of Souls.” The demon Lilith and the angel Inarius have become enemies and launched a war against one another.

Upon the launch of “Diablo IV,” players will be able to enter one of five classes: the Druids, Rogues, Sorceresses, Barbarians or Necromancers.

“Diablo IV” will offer cross-platform play and progression on Windows PC, Xbox Series X’S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4, as well as couch co-op, upon its launch, Blizzard said.

ACTIVISION FINANCIAL RESULTS FOR 2022, MICROSOFT DEAL

Activision—which is also the maker of “Call of Duty,” “Candy Crush” and “World of Warcraft”—reported a net revenue of $7.53 billion for 2022, down from $8.8 billion for 2021.

In January 2022, Microsoft announced plans to acquire Activision—but, more than a year later, the blockbuster deal is still in jeopardy. While the European Union approved the $69 billion purchase last month, British regulators blocked the deal over concerns it would hurt competition in the small but rapidly growing cloud-gaming market. U.S. authorities are also trying to thwart the merger.

The companies are appealing the U.K. decision to a tribunal. If the appeal fails, Microsoft would be forced to either scrap the deal or carve out the U.K. as a separate market, which appeared to be an unfeasible option, Liam Deane, a game industry analyst for tech research and advisory firm Omdia, previously told The Associated Press.

© 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

As the aviation industry seeks to cut its carbon footprint, Boeing has just signed a deal to help its quest for a sustainable jet fuel, and it’s tied to an unlikely source: the ocean.

The aerospace giant has signed a deal with a Los Angeles-based startup to buy hydrogen that will be produced by facilities designed to cleanse seawater of carbon dioxide so the ocean can absorb more of that greenhouse gas contributing to global warming.

By absorbing 30% of carbon dioxide emissions since the Industrial Revolution, the ocean has acted as a giant carbon sink and been a crucial buffer in protecting people from even worse effects of early climate change.

Equatic said Boeing has agreed to pre-purchase the hydrogen, which will be produced when it employs the carbon-removal system—developed by University of California Los Angeles engineering faculty—at facilities at the port of Los Angeles and Singapore. It is slated to be up and running in 2025. Researchers have been testing the system at demonstration sites in both locations.

The green hydrogen could then be used as a component in sustainable aviation fuel. Aviation currently accounts for about 2.5% of worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide.

Equatic’s Chief Operating Officer Edward Sanders acknowledged that Boeing’s backing is a huge boost for an initiative that is just getting off the ground.

“With the deal with Boeing, they recognize that hydrogen will be useful for them,” he said. “And we’ve had some very encouraging conversations with other industries who also need hydrogen who have plans to do it through the carbon-neutral generation of green hydrogen.”

To help keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world’s largest association of airlines, the International Air Transport Association, has set a goal for the air transport industry to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. President Joe Biden’s administration wants all kerosene-based jet fuel to be replaced with sustainable fuel by 2050.

While other forms of transportation are increasingly being electrified, making large, battery-powered planes has presented a costly challenge and many in the aviation industry are instead exploring replacing fossil fuels with sustainable fuels, which would not require major technical modifications to the aircraft. The world’s first synthetic kerosene plant opened in Germany in 2021.

Equatic said it will remove 62,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide for Boeing and supply the aerospace company with 2,100 metric tons of hydrogen under its five-year agreement. The companies declined to provide details about how much revenue would be generated or other details of the deal.

Sheila Remes, Boeing’s vice president of environmental sustainability, said in a statement that “reaching aviation’s sustainability goals will require a multi-faceted approach and Boeing sees significant opportunity in Equatic’s technology.”

Equatic’s process sends an electrical charge through seawater that then sets off a series of chemical reactions that trap the greenhouse gas into a solid mineral, while also producing hydrogen. The seawater is then returned to the ocean and can pull more carbon dioxide out of the air, while the solid mineral, which contains calcium carbonate, can then settle to the sea floor.

Revenue from selling hydrogen, as well as carbon credits companies can claim to balance out their pollution, will be applied toward Equatic’s plans to open facilities.

According to the UCLA team that developed the technology, at least 1,800 industrial-scale facilities would be needed to capture 10 billion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year, but fewer could still make a dent.

The aim is to remove the carbon at a cost well below $100 per metric ton, the company has said. It added that the hydrogen would be produced at less than $1 per kilogram, which would be substantially less than the current cost of cleanly-produced hydrogen.

Equatic said it aims to reach 100,000 metric tons of carbon removal per year by 2026 and millions of metric tons per year by 2028.

© 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Apple appears poised to unveil a long-rumored headset that will place its users between the virtual and real world, while also testing the technology trendsetter’s ability to popularize new-fangled devices after others failed to capture the public’s imagination.

After years of speculation, the stage is set for the widely anticipated announcement to be made Monday at Apple’s annual developers conference in a Cupertino, California, theater named after the company’s late co-founder Steve Jobs. Apple is also likely to use the event to show off its latest Mac computer, preview the next operating system for the iPhone and discuss its strategy for artificial intelligence.

But the star of the show is expected to be a pair of goggles—perhaps called “Reality Pro,” according to media leaks—that could become another milestone in Apple’s lore of releasing game-changing technology, even though the company hasn’t always been the first to try its hand at making a particular device.

Apple’s lineage of breakthroughs date back to a bow-tied Jobs peddling the first Mac in 1984 —a tradition that continued with the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010, the Apple Watch in 2014 and its AirPods in 2016.

But with a hefty price tag that could be in the $3,000 range, Apple’s new headset may also be greeted with a lukewarm reception from all but affluent technophiles.

If the new device turns out to be a niche product, it would leave Apple in the same bind as other major tech companies and startups that have tried selling headsets or glasses equipped with technology that either thrusts people into artificial worlds or projects digital images with scenery and things that are actually in front of them—a format known as “augmented reality.”

Apple’s goggles are expected be sleekly designed and capable of toggling between totally virtual or augmented options, a blend sometimes known as “mixed reality.” That flexibility also is sometimes called external reality, or XR for shorthand.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been describing these alternate three-dimensional realities as the “metaverse.” It’s a geeky concept that he tried to push into the mainstream by changing the name of his social networking company to Meta Platforms in 2021 and then pouring billions of dollars into improving the virtual technology.

But the metaverse largely remains a digital ghost town, although Meta’s virtual reality headset, the Quest, remains the top-selling device in a category that so far has mostly appealed to video game players looking for even more immersive experiences.

Apple executives seem likely to avoid referring to the metaverse, given the skepticism that has quickly developed around that term, when they discuss the potential of the company’s new headset.

In recent years, Apple CEO Tim Cook has periodically touted augmented reality as technology’s next quantum leap, while not setting a specific timeline for when it will gain mass appeal.

“If you look back in a point in time, you know, zoom out to the future and look back, you’ll wonder how you led your life without augmented reality,” Cook, who is 62, said last September while speaking to an audience of students in Italy. “Just like today you wonder how did people like me grow up without the internet. You know, so I think it could be that profound. And it’s not going to be profound overnight.”

The response to virtual, augmented and mixed reality has been decidedly ho-hum so far. Some of the gadgets deploying the technology have even been derisively mocked, with the most notable example being Google’s internet-connected glasses released more than a decade ago.

After Google co-founder Sergey Brin initially drummed up excitement about the device by demonstrating an early model’s potential “wow factor” with a skydiving stunt staged during a San Francisco tech conference, consumers quickly became turned off to a product that allowed its users to surreptitiously take pictures and video. The backlash became so intense that people who wore the gear became known as “Glassholes,” leading Google to withdraw the product a few years after its debut.

Microsoft also has had limited success with HoloLens, a mixed-reality headset released in 2016, although the software maker earlier this year insisted it remains committed to the technology.

Magic Leap, a startup that stirred excitement with previews of a mixed-reality technology that could conjure the spectacle of a whale breaching through a gymnasium floor, had so much trouble marketing its first headset to consumers in 2018 that it has since shifted its focus to industrial, healthcare and emergency uses.

Daniel Diez, Magic Leap’s chief transformation officer, said there are four major questions Apple’s goggles will have to answer: “What can people do with it? What does this thing look and feel like? Is it comfortable to wear? And how much is it going to cost?”

The anticipation that Apple’s goggles are going to sell for several thousand dollars already has dampened expectations for the product. Although he expects Apple’s goggles to boast “jaw dropping” technology, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said he expects the company to sell just 150,000 units during the device’s first year on the market—a mere speck in the company’s portfolio. By comparison, Apple sells more than 200 million iPhones, its marquee product a year. But the iPhone wasn’t an immediate sensation, with sales of fewer than 12 million units in its first full year on the market.

In a move apparently aimed at magnifying the expected price of Apple’s goggles, Zuckerberg made a point of saying last week that the next Quest headset will sell for $500, an announcement made four months before Meta Platform plans to showcase the latest device at its tech conference.

Since 2016, the average annual shipments of virtual- and augmented-reality devices have averaged 8.6 million units, according to the research firm CCS Insight. The firm expects sales to remain sluggish this year, with a sales projection of about 11 million of the devices before gradually climbing to 67 million in 2026.

But those forecasts were obviously made before it’s known whether Apple might be releasing a product that alters the landscape.

“I would never count out Apple, especially with the consumer market and especially when it comes to finding those killer applications and solutions,” Magic Leap’s Diez said. “If someone is going to crack the consumer market early, I wouldn’t be surprised it would be Apple.”

© 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Ever since the poem churning ChatGPT burst on the scene six months ago, expert Gary Marcus has voiced caution against artificial intelligence’s ultra-fast development and adoption.

But against AI’s apocalyptic doomsayers, the New York University emeritus professor told AFP in a recent interview that the technology’s existential threats may currently be “overblown.”

“I’m not personally that concerned about extinction risk, at least for now, because the scenarios are not that concrete,” said Marcus in San Francisco.

“A more general problem that I am worried about… is that we’re building AI systems that we don’t have very good control over and I think that poses a lot of risks, (but) maybe not literally existential.”

Long before the advent of ChatGPT, Marcus designed his first AI program in high school—software to translate Latin into English—and after years of studying child psychology, he founded Geometric Intelligence, a machine learning company later acquired by Uber.

‘Why AI?’

In March, alarmed that ChatGPT creator OpenAI was releasing its latest and more powerful AI model with Microsoft, Marcus signed an open letter with more than 1,000 people including Elon Musk calling for a global pause in AI development.

But last week he did not sign the more succinct statement by business leaders and specialists—including OpenAI boss Sam Altman—that caused a stir.

Global leaders should be working to reduce “the risk of extinction” from artificial intelligence technology, the signatories insisted.

The one-line statement said tackling the risks from AI should be “a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war”.

Signatories included those who are building systems with a view to achieving “general” AI, a technology that would hold the cognitive abilities on par with those of humans.

“If you really think there’s existential risk, why are you working on this at all? That’s a pretty fair question to ask,” Marcus said.

Instead of putting the focus on more far-fetched scenarios where no one survives, society should be putting attention on where real dangers lie, Marcus surmised.

“People might try to manipulate the markets by using AI to cause all kinds of mayhem and then we might, for example, blame the Russians and say, ‘look what they’ve done to our country’ when the Russians actually weren’t involved,” he continued.

“You (could) have this escalation that winds up in nuclear war or something like that. So I think there are scenarios where it was pretty serious. Extinction? I don’t know.”

Threat to democracy

In the short term, the psychology expert is worried about democracy.

Generative AI software produces increasingly convincing fake photographs, and soon videos, at little cost.

As a result, “elections are going to be won by people who are better at spreading disinformation, and those people may change the rules and make it really difficult to have democracy proceed.”

Moreover, “democracy is premised on having reasonable information and making good decisions. If nobody knows what to believe, then how do you even proceed with democracy?”

The author of the book “Rebooting AI” however doesn’t think we should abandon hope, still seeing “a lot of upside.”

There’s definitely a chance AI not yet invented can “help with science, with medicine, with elder care,” Marcus said.

“But in the short term, I feel like we’re just not ready. There’s going to be some harm along the way and we really need to up our game, we have to figure out serious regulation,” he said.

At a US Senate hearing in May, seated beside OpenAI’s Altman, Marcus argued for the creation of a national or international agency responsible for AI governance.

The idea is also backed by Altman, who has just returned from a European tour where he urged political leaders to find the “right balance” between safety and innovation.

But beware of leaving the power to corporations, warned Marcus.

“The last several months have been a real reminder that the big companies calling the shots here are not necessarily interested in the rest of us,” he warned.

© 2023 AFP

A California bill that would force Big Tech companies to pay media outlets for posting and using their news content cleared another critical hurdle Thursday.

The measure is among hundreds of bills that passed in the state Senate and Assembly this week before Friday—the last day a bill can pass out of its original chamber and get a chance to become law later this year.

The bill, which passed the Assembly floor with bipartisan support, would require companies such as Google and Meta to share with California media companies their advertising revenue stemming from the news and other reported content. The amount would be determined through an arbitration process. The bill would also require at least 70% of the shared revenue go toward journalists’ salaries.

Such payments would help local media organizations survive after many have seen their advertising revenues nosedive in the digital era, said the bill’s author, Democratic Assemblymember Buffy Wicks. California has lost more than 100 news organizations in the past decade, she said.

“The California Journalism Preservation Act will not save journalism, but it will provide a support for news outlets and journalists at a moment when the stakes could not be higher,” Wicks said Thursday.

The bill is backed by major journalism unions such as the News Media Alliance and Media Guild of the West, which represents The Los Angeles Times and other newsrooms. The California Labor Federation joined in supporting the bill Thursday, saying the bill would protect journalism jobs by “leveling the playing field between publishers and social media websites.”

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, threatened to pull all news content from its platforms if the bill becomes law. The company has made similar threats to the U.S. Congress in 2022 and the Canadian government this year when those lawmakers attempted similar measures to bolster local journalism.

Meta also said the California bill would create a “slush fund” primarily benefiting out-of-state newspaper chains and hedge funds.

“The bill fails to recognize that publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves and that substantial consolidation in California’s local news industry came over 15 years ago, well before Facebook was widely used,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement a day ahead of the vote. “It is disappointing that California lawmakers appear to be prioritizing the best interests of national and international media companies over their own constituents.”

Wicks called Meta’s statement “an empty threat,” noting that “these are companies that have made billions and billions and billions of dollars while our newsrooms are shutting down across the state of California.”

Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Opponents of the bill, including LION Publishers, a national news group representing more than 450 independent newsrooms, have also raised concerns that the measure would encourage more clickbait news content. An analysis of bill, conducted by the Legislature, says news organizations would more likely invest in high-quality and investigative journalism if they are financially healthy. The analysis also said concerns the bill would potentially violate the First Amendment are “mostly overstated.”

Republican Assemblymember Bill Essayli, who co-authored the bill, said it doesn’t impose a tax on Big Tech.

“I do not support corporate welfare, … but I also do not support unjust enrichment,” Essayli said Thursday. “If you’re taking other people’s work product and you’re financially benefiting from it, you must compensate them for it.”

Democratic Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi urged Wicks to continue working with local news organizations to make sure small and ethnic-owned newsrooms are not left behind. Wicks said she’s committed to resolve that concern.

“I know that this is still a work in progress, but what I also know is that doing nothing is not an option,” Wicks said.

The bill now heads to the state Senate.

© 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Two eastern Idaho hospitals and their clinics are working to resume full operations after a cyberattack on their computer systems.

Officials with Idaho Falls Community Hospital said the attack happened Monday, causing some clinics to close, some ambulances to be diverted to nearby hospitals and their cafes to only accept cash. Mountain View Hospital, also located in Idaho Falls, was similarly affected by the computer virus, officials said.

Hospital information technology staff identified the attack quickly and immediately acted to limit the impacts and keep all patient information safe and secure, officials said.

Work to fully recover from the attack was ongoing on Wednesday.

“Both hospitals remain open and are safely caring for all their patients and the vast majority of clinics are seeing patients as usual,” officials said in a blog post on the Idaho Falls Community Hospital website.

Healthcare organizations have been an appealing target for cyber attackers—particularly those who use malware to lock a victim organization’s files and leverage the information for a payment. Ransomware has remained a persistent threat for the industry, which is among the sectors the U.S. government classifies as critical infrastructure.

Officials in the Idaho attack have only referred to the problem as a virus that needs to be removed.

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Green hydrogen, which produces hydrogen without the use of fossil fuels or the emission of carbon dioxide, has become increasingly important in recent years as part of efforts to realize a decarbonized economy. However, due to the high production cost of water electrolysis devices that produce green hydrogen, the economic feasibility of green hydrogen has not been very high. However, the development of a technology that drastically reduces the amount of rare metals such as iridium and platinum used in polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolysis devices is opening the way to lower production costs.

A research team led by Dr. Hyun S. Park and Sung Jong Yoo of the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that they have developed a technology that can significantly reduce the amount of platinum and iridium, precious metals used in the electrode protection layer of polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolysis devices, and secure performance and durability on par with existing devices.

In particular, unlike previous studies that focused on reducing the amount of iridium catalyst while maintaining the structure that uses a large amount of platinum and gold as the electrode protection layer, the researchers replaced the precious metal in the electrode protection layer with inexpensive iron nitride having large surface area and uniformly coated a small amount of iridium catalyst on top of it, greatly increasing the economic efficiency of the electrolysis device.

The polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolysis device is a device that produces high-purity hydrogen and oxygen by decomposing water using electricity supplied by renewable energy such as solar power, and it plays a role in supplying hydrogen to various industries such as steel making and chemicals. In addition, it is advantageous for energy conversion to store renewable energy as hydrogen energy, so increasing the economic efficiency of this device is very important for the realization of the green hydrogen economy.

In a typical electrolysis device, there are two electrodes that produce hydrogen and oxygen, and for the oxygen generating electrode, which operates in a highly corrosive environment, gold or platinum is coated on the surface of the electrode at 1 mg/cm² as a protective layer to ensure durability and production efficiency, and 1-2 mg/cm² of iridium catalyst is coated on top. The precious metals used in these electrolysis devices have very low reserves and production, which is a major factor hindering the widespread adoption of green hydrogen production devices.

To improve the economics of water electrolysis, the team replaced the rare metals gold and platinum used as a protective layer for the oxygen electrode in polymer electrolyte membrane hydrogen production devices with inexpensive iron nitride (Fe₂N).

To do so, the team developed a composite process that first uniformly coats the electrode with iron oxide, which has low electrical conductivity, and then converts the iron oxide to iron nitride to increase its conductivity. The team also developed a process that uniformly coats an iridium catalyst about 25 nanometers (nm) thick on top of the iron nitride protective layer, reducing the amount of iridium catalyst to less than 0.1 mg/cm², resulting in an electrode with high hydrogen production efficiency and durability.

The developed electrode replaces the gold or platinum used as a protective layer for the oxygen generating electrode with non-precious metal nitrides while maintaining similar performance to existing commercial electrolysis units, and reduces the amount of iridium catalyst to 10% of the existing level. In addition, the electrolysis unit with the new components was operated for more than 100 hours to verify its initial stability.

“Reducing the amount of iridium catalyst and developing alternative materials for the platinum protective layer are essential for the economical and widespread use of polymer electrolyte membrane green hydrogen production devices, and the use of inexpensive iron nitride instead of platinum is of great significance,” said Dr. Hyun S. Park of KIST. “After further observing the performance and durability of the electrode, we will apply it to commercial devices in the near future.”

The research results were published online in the journal Applied Catalysis B: Environmental.

Provided by
National Research Council of Science & Technology