An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT News: What if the U.S. placed a tax on robots? The concept has been publicly discussed by policy analysts, scholars, and Bill Gates (who favors the notion). Because robots can replace jobs, the idea goes, a stiff tax on them would give firms incentive to help retain workers, while also compensating for a dropoff in payroll taxes when robots are used. Thus far, South Korea has reduced incentives for firms to deploy robots; European Union policymakers, on the other hand, considered a robot tax but did not enact it. Now a study by MIT economists scrutinizes the existing evidence and suggests the optimal policy in this situation would indeed include a tax on robots, but only a modest one. The same applies to taxes on foreign trade that would also reduce U.S. jobs, the research finds.

"Our finding suggests that taxes on either robots or imported goods should be pretty small," says Arnaud Costinot, an MIT economist, and co-author of a published paper detailing the findings. "Although robots have an effect on income inequality ... they still lead to optimal taxes that are modest." Specifically, the study finds that a tax on robots should range from 1 percent to 3.7 percent of their value, while trade taxes would be from 0.03 percent to 0.11 percent, given current U.S. income taxes. "We came in to this not knowing what would happen," says Ivan Werning, an MIT economist and the other co-author of the study. "We had all the potential ingredients for this to be a big tax, so that by stopping technology or trade you would have less inequality, but ... for now, we find a tax in the one-digit range, and for trade, even smaller taxes."

[...] Apart from its bottom-line tax numbers, the study contains some additional conclusions about technology and income trends. Perhaps counterintuitively, the research concludes that after many more robots are added to the economy, the impact that each additional robot has on wages may actually decline. At a future point, robot taxes could then be reduced even further. "You could have a situation where we deeply care about redistribution, we have more robots, we have more trade, but taxes are actually going down," Costinot says. If the economy is relatively saturated with robots, he adds, "That marginal robot you are getting in the economy matters less and less for inequality." The paper, "Robots, Trade, and Luddism: A Sufficient Statistic Approach to Optimal Technology Regulation," appears in advance online form in The Review of Economic Studies.

b0s0z0ku writes: The European Union is proposing a law requiring easily replaceable batteries in new appliances and portable electronic devices. The law also sets targets for collection and recycling of those batteries, requiring 73% compliance by 2030. "Companies would get plenty of notice, however, as the requirement would only come into force 3.5 years after the legislation takes effect," adds 9to5Mac. "Companies will also be legally required to accept and recycle old batteries."

Additionally, the European Commission is "expected to consider outlawing the use of non-rechargeable portable batteries," though this would likely come with many exceptions and wouldn't happen before the end of the decade.

Further reading: EU Sets December 28, 2024, Deadline For All New Phones To Use USB-C for Wired Charging

LastPass revealed today that attackers stole customer vault data after breaching its cloud storage earlier this year using information stolen during an August 2022 incident. BleepingComputer reports: This follows a previous update issued last month when the company's CEO, Karim Toubba, only said that the threat actor gained access to "certain elements" of customer information. Today, Toubba added that the cloud storage service is used by LastPass to store archived backups of production data. The attacker gained access to Lastpass' cloud storage using "cloud storage access key and dual storage container decryption keys" stolen from its developer environment.

"The threat actor copied information from backup that contained basic customer account information and related metadata including company names, end-user names, billing addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, and the IP addresses from which customers were accessing the LastPass service," Toubba said today. "The threat actor was also able to copy a backup of customer vault data from the encrypted storage container which is stored in a proprietary binary format that contains both unencrypted data, such as website URLs, as well as fully-encrypted sensitive fields such as website usernames and passwords, secure notes, and form-filled data."

Fortunately, the encrypted data is secured with 256-bit AES encryption and can only be decrypted with a unique encryption key derived from each user's master password. According to Toubba, the master password is never known to LastPass, it is not stored on Lastpass' systems, and LastPass does not maintain it. Customers were also warned that the attackers might try to brute force their master passwords to gain access to the stolen encrypted vault data. However, this would be very difficult and time-consuming if you've been following password best practices recommended by LastPass. If you do, "it would take millions of years to guess your master password using generally-available password-cracking technology," Toubba added. "Your sensitive vault data, such as usernames and passwords, secure notes, attachments, and form-fill fields, remain safely encrypted based on LastPass' Zero Knowledge architecture."

FTX sought a U.S. bankruptcy court's help amid a battle over ownership of about $450 million worth of stock in Robinhood Markets (HOOD), according to a filing (PDF) Thursday. CoinDesk reports: At issue are about 56 million shares of the brokerage owned by Emergent Fidelity Technologies Ltd., a corporate entity organized in Antigua and Barbuda and 90% controlled by former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, according to the filing. Three parties, the filing says, have tried to get control of those shares: BlockFi (a lender that FTX had helped prop up earlier this year), Yonathan Ben Shimon (an FTX creditor appointed as a receiver in Antigua and granted permission to sell the shares under supervision of a court there) and Bankman-Fried himself (who has legal bills).

FTX's bankruptcy estate told ED&F Man Capital Markets, the brokerage where the shares are parked, to freeze the stock around the time the Chapter 11 case began on Nov. 11. FTX has determined that Emergent only "nominally" owns the shares and that they truly belong to FTX. "Emergent is a special-purpose holding company that appears to have no other business," the crypto exchange said in the filing. The judge overseeing the bankruptcy case should force the shares to remain frozen while FTX tries to figure out how to repay all its creditors, FTX argued in the filing.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Micron Technology Inc., the largest US maker of memory chips, said the worst industry glut in more than a decade will make it difficult to return to profitability in 2023. The company on Wednesday announced a host of cost-cutting measures, including a 10% workforce reduction, aimed at helping it weather a rapid drop in revenue. Micron also projected a steep sales decline and a wider loss than analysts had estimated for the current quarter. The industry is experiencing its worst imbalance between supply and demand in 13 years, according to Micron Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mehrotra. Inventory should peak in the current period, then decline, he said. Customers will move to more healthy inventory levels by about the middle of 2023, and the chipmaker's revenue will improve in the second half of the year, Mehrotra said. "Profitability will be challenged throughout 2023 because of the oversupply that exists in the industry," he said in an interview. "The rate and pace of the recovery in terms of profitability depends on how fast supply is brought into line."

Micron, which had already announced factory output reductions, is cutting its budget for new plants and equipment, and now expects to spend from $7 billion to $7.5 billion for the fiscal year, a decline from an earlier target of as much as $12 billion. The company is slowing the introduction of more advanced manufacturing techniques and predicts that spending on new production will fall throughout the industry. [...] In addition to its planned workforce reductions, the company has suspended share repurchases, is cutting executive salaries and will skip companywide bonus payments, executives said on a conference call after its results were released. Micron said sales will be about $3.8 billion in the fiscal second quarter. That compares with analysts' average estimate of $3.88 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In the three months ended Dec. 1, Micron's revenue declined 47% to $4.09 billion.

Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang pleaded guilty to charges tied to FTX's collapse, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams announced Wednesday night. CoinDesk reports: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also announced (PDF) charges against the two, saying Ellison manipulated the price of FTT, an exchange token issued by FTX, at exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried's direction. The duo are cooperating with investigators, Williams announced. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) did not specify what they were being charged with.

In a statement, SEC Deputy Enforcement Director Sanjay Wadhwa said the three "were active participants in a scheme to conceal material information from FTX investors, including through the efforts of Mr. Bankman-Fried and Ms. Ellison to artificially prop up the value of FTT, which served as collateral for undisclosed loans that Alameda took out from FTX pursuant to its undisclosed, and virtually unlimited, line of credit." Highlighted in the complaint are multiple times when Bankman-Fried made public statements, and provided investors with documentation via audited financial statements, that Alameda received no preferential treatment from FTX.

Ellison was a close confidant of Bankman-Fried's, and has been targeted by prosecutors for her role in manipulating FTX's exchange token FTT, which Alameda had used as collateral for investments. In early December Ellison, who is thought to reside in Hong Kong or Nassau, was spotted in Manhattan at a coffee shop leading many to suspect she was working with authorities. Shortly after, Ellison retained the law firm WilmerHale to represent herself. WilmerHale counts Stephanie Avakian, a former director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, as one of its top attorneys. Further reading: FTX Founder Bankman-Fried To Be Released on a $250 Million Bond Package While He Awaits Trial

The FBI is recommending the use of ad blockers, warning in an alert this week that cybercriminals are using online ads in search results to steal or extort money from victims. TechCrunch reports: In a pre-holiday public service announcement, the FBI said that cybercriminals are buying ads to impersonate legitimate brands, like cryptocurrency exchanges. Ads are often placed at the top of search results but with "minimum distinction" between the ads and the search results, the feds say, which can look identical to the brands that the cybercriminals are impersonating. Malicious ads are also used to trick victims into installing malware disguised as genuine apps, which can steal passwords and deploy file-encrypting ransomware. One of the FBI's recommendations for consumers is to install an ad blocker.

As the name suggests, ad blockers are web browser extensions that broadly block online ads from loading in your browser, including in search results. By blocking ads, would-be victims are not shown any ads at all, making it easier to find and access the websites of legitimate brands. Ad blockers don't just remove the enormous bloat from websites, like auto-playing video and splashy ads that take up half the page, which make your computer fans run like jet engines. Ad blockers are also good for privacy, because they prevent the tracking code within ads from loading. That means the ad companies, like Google and Facebook, cannot track you as you browse the web, or learn which websites you visit, or infer what things you might be interested in based on your web history. "Of course, you can switch your ad blocker off any time you want, and even allow or deny ads for entire websites," adds the report.

"Ads are still an important part of what keeps the internet largely free and accessible, including TechCrunch (and Slashdot!), even as subscriptions and paywalls are increasingly becoming the norm."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: DuckDuckGo, the internet's favorite private search engine, is rolling out a new feature across its service Wednesday called Google Sign-in Pop-up Protection, It's on by default, saving your eyes and your time from Google's nagging. You can still sign in with Google whenever you want, you just don't have to deal with Google's prompts. "They popups are invasive, annoying and they undermine user privacy," said Peter Dolanjski, director of product for DuckDuckGo. "Google is employing a dark pattern by pushing you to sign in when you might not have otherwise. When you do, Google is is tracking what you do on those websites and linking it to your identity."

Google Sign In is nothing new, but the popups are a subtle but pervasive change to the web. You can find them on Booking.com, Pinterest, Reddit, Trulio, Zillo and countless more. "We believe google is pitching the popups to these websites as a win-win," Dolanjski said. "If they can get more users to sign in, it opens up more data collection both for Google and publishers, and it lets Google better target users with ads." That means more money for everyone involved, except you.

slack_justyb writes: A rather exotic feature in Xorg and Xwayland is being proposed to have the default value turned off going forward in Fedora 38 due to its use in attacks (CVE-2014-8095, CVE-2014-8099, CVE-2014-8103. . . to name a few). The feature allows servers running on one endianess to byte-swap to allow clients of a different endianess to connect to it. This was more common in the 1980s when X servers ran on big-endian and clients would connect who were little-endian.

The Xorg and Xwayland implementation of this feature has gone largely untested, the number of Fedora users that use it are virtually zero, and considering the number of attack vectors this has presented historically, setting the default to deny clients that require this seems the better way to do.

This change will be to the xorg-x11-server and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland packages and those needing the feature turned back will need to add "AllowSwappedClients" "on" to their xorg.conf.d file in the "ServerFlags" section. Xwayland users will need to pass the +byteswappedclients flag, however, the compositor will need to be able to handle this flag which at this time GNOME does not.

A small but growing number of universities are now blocking access to TikTok on school-owned devices or WiFi networks, in the latest sign of a widening crackdown on the popular short-form video app. From a report: The University of Oklahoma and Auburn University in Alabama have each said they will restrict student and faculty access to TikTok, in order to comply with recent moves from the governors in their respective states to ban TikTok on government-issued devices. The 26 universities and colleges in the University System of Georgia are also reportedly taking a similar step.

"In compliance with the Governor's Executive Order 2022-33, effective immediately, no university employee or student shall access the TikTok application or website on University-owned or operated devices, including OU wired and wireless networks," the University of Oklahoma said in an email this week. According to the email, the school will also require that university-administered TikTok accounts be deleted and "alternate social media platforms utilized in their place." Further reading: TikTok steps up efforts to clinch U.S. security deal.

A proposal to force cellphone companies to block certain spam texts is gaining momentum. From a report: California Attorney General Rob Bonta has expressed his support for a proposal by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to put an end to illegal and malicious texts. By doing so, he joined attorneys general from the other 49 states and Washington D.C., who had all previously expressed their support of the proposal. In a letter signed by all 51 attorneys general to the FCC, supporting them in their hopes to require cellular providers to block illegal text messages from invalid or unused numbers, as well as blocking any phone numbers found on a "do not originate" list, numbers which have previously been proved to have been used for fraudulent activity.

A new wave of chat bots like ChatGPT use artificial intelligence that could reinvent or even replace the traditional internet search engine. From a report: Over the past three decades, a handful of products like Netscape's web browser, Google's search engine and Apple's iPhone have truly upended the tech industry and made what came before them look like lumbering dinosaurs. Three weeks ago, an experimental chat bot called ChatGPT made its case to be the industry's next big disrupter. [...] Although ChatGPT still has plenty of room for improvement, its release led Google's management to declare a "code red." For Google, this was akin to pulling the fire alarm. Some fear the company may be approaching a moment that the biggest Silicon Valley outfits dread -- the arrival of an enormous technological change that could upend the business.

For more than 20 years, the Google search engine has served as the world's primary gateway to the internet. But with a new kind of chat bot technology poised to reinvent or even replace traditional search engines, Google could face the first serious threat to its main search business. One Google executive described the efforts as make or break for Google's future. ChatGPT was released by an aggressive research lab called OpenAI, and Google is among the many other companies, labs and researchers that have helped build this technology. But experts believe the tech giant could struggle to compete with the newer, smaller companies developing these chat bots, because of the many ways the technology could damage its business.

Sam Bankman-Fried will be released on a $250 million bond package while he awaits trial on fraud charges related to the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange, a federal magistrate judge said on Thursday. From a report: Prosecutors have accused him of stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer funds to plug losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research. Nicolas Roos, a prosecutor, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein that the bail package included home detention and location monitoring. Bankman-Fried will also have to surrender his passport. Bankman-Fried's defense counsel said he agreed with these conditions.

Japan adopted a plan on Thursday to extend the lifespan of nuclear reactors, replace the old and even build new ones, a major shift in a country scarred by the Fukushima disaster that once planned to phase out atomic power. From a report: In the face of global fuel shortages, rising prices and pressure to reduce carbon emissions, Japan's leaders have begun to turn back toward nuclear energy, but the announcement was their clearest commitment yet after keeping mum on delicate topics like the possibility of building new reactors.

Under the new policy, Japan will maximize the use of existing reactors by restarting as many of them as possible and prolonging the operating life of aging ones beyond a 60-year limit. The government also pledged to develop next-generation reactors. In 2011, a powerful earthquake and the ensuing tsunami caused multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant -- a disaster that supercharged anti-nuclear sentiment in Japan and at one point led the government to promise to phase out the energy by around 2030. But since then, the government has recommitted to the technology, including setting a target for nuclear to make up 20-22% of the country's energy mix by the end of the decade.

Google has announced that two of its latest privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), including one that blurs objects in a video, will be provided to anyone for free via open source. From a report: The new tools are part of Google's Protected Computing initiative designed to transform "how, when and where data is processed to technically ensure its privacy and safety," the company said. The first is an internal project called Magritte, now out on Github, which uses machine learning to detect objects and apply a blur as soon as they appear on screen. It can disguise arbitrary objects like license plates, tattoos and more.

The other with the unwieldy name "Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) Transpiler, allows developers to perform computations on encrypted data without being able to access personally identifiable information. Google says it can help industries like financial services, healthcare and government, "where a robust security guarantee around the processing of sensitive data is of highest importance." Google notes that PETs are starting to enter the mainstream after being mostly an academic exercise. The White House recently touted the technology, saying "it will allow researchers, physicians, and others permitted access to gain insights from sensitive data without ever having access to the data itself."

The United States Copyright Office (USCO) reversed an earlier decision to grant a copyright to a comic book that was created using "A.I. art," and announced that the copyright protection on the comic book will be revoked, stating that copyrighted works must be created by humans to gain official copyright protection. From a report: In September, Kris Kashtanova announced that they had received a U.S. copyright on his comic book, Zarya of the Dawn, a comic book inspired by their late grandmother that she created with the text-to-image engine Midjourney. Kashtanova referred to herself as a "prompt engineer" and explained at the time that she went to get the copyright so that she could "make a case that we do own copyright when we make something using AI."

National Cyber Director Chris Inglis is leaving the government in the next few months, Politico reports, citing a former U.S. official and a second person familiar with the matter. From the report: For 17 months, Inglis has served as the inaugural holder of a new position as President Joe Biden's top adviser on a range of cybersecurity issues, including the protection of vital U.S. infrastructure from hackers and efforts to improve the government's own digital defenses. "He's done what he came to do -- build an office that's going to stand the test of time," said the former U.S. official, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal personnel matter.

Inglis plans to leave sometime in January, the former official said. Inglis declined to comment on the record. Inglis never said how long he expected to say, and it was unclear if he had moved up his departure timeline. Inglis took office in July 2021 following unanimous Senate confirmation, and since then, he has steadily built up his new team by hiring outside experts and recruiting cybersecurity officials from other agencies. Inglis, a former National Security Agency deputy director, repeatedly described his job as a coordinator of the government's often disparate cybersecurity activities, someone who measured his success by whether the government was increasingly speaking with one voice on cyber issues.

Walking like John Cleese's character, Mr. Teabag, in Monty Python's famous "Ministry of Silly Walks" skit requires considerably more energy expenditure than a normal walking gait because the movement is so inefficient, according to a new paper published in the annual Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal. From a report: In fact, just 11 minutes a day of walking like Mr. Teabag was equivalent to 75 minutes of vigorously intense physical activity per week, presenting a novel means of boosting cardiovascular fitness. "Half a century ago, the [Ministry of Silly Walks] skit might have unwittingly touched on a powerful way to enhance cardiovascular fitness in adults," the authors wrote. "Had an initiative to promote inefficient movement been adopted in the early 1970s, we might now be living among a healthier society."

The BMJ's Christmas issue is typically more lighthearted, though the journal maintains that the papers published therein still "adhere to the same high standards of novelty, methodological rigor, reporting transparency, and readability as apply in the regular issue." Past years have included papers on such topics as why 27 is not a dangerous age for musicians, the side effects of sword swallowing, and measuring the toxicity of the concoction brewed in Roald Dahl's 1981 book George's Marvelous Medicine. (It's very toxic indeed.) The most widely read was 1999's infamous "Magnetic resonance imaging of male and female genitals during coitus and female sexual arousal."

The Securities and Exchange Commission is stepping up scrutiny of the work that audit firms are doing for cryptocurrency companies, concerned that investors may be getting a false sense of reassurance from the firms' reports, a senior official at the regulator said. From a report: "We're warning investors to be very wary of some of the claims that are being made by crypto companies," Paul Munter, the SEC's acting chief accountant, said in an interview. Increased scrutiny has led at least one audit firm to drop crypto clients, in some cases soon after producing reports on the companies' assets and liabilities. Crypto companies are eager to get the blessing of an auditor to reassure their skittish clients.

The Wall Street watchdog is looking closely at how crypto companies are portraying their reports from audit firms, according to Mr. Munter. Many of these companies are closely held or based offshore, and so unlikely to fall within the regulator's remit. The SEC is effectively sending a warning to audit firms, which don't want to run afoul of their regulator, as well as putting investors on alert. "We are increasing our understanding of what's going on in the marketplace," Mr. Munter said. "If we find fact patterns that we think are troublesome, we will consider a referral to the division of enforcement." The regulator is worried particularly about so-called proof-of-reserves reports, which aim to show that the crypto company has sufficient assets to cover customers' funds.

An Android banking malware named 'Godfather' has been targeting users in 16 countries, attempting to steal account credentials for over 400 online banking sites and cryptocurrency exchanges. From a report: The malware generates login screens overlaid on top of the banking and crypto exchange apps' login forms when victims attempt to log in to the site, tricking the user into entering their credentials on well-crafted HTML phishing pages.

The Godfather trojan was discovered by Group-IB analysts, who believe it is the successor of Anubis, a once widely-used banking trojan that gradually fell out of use due to its inability to bypass newer Android defenses. ThreatFabric first discovered Godfather in March 2021, but it has undergone massive code upgrades and improvements since then. Also, Cyble published a report yesterday highlighting a rise in the activity of Godfather, pushing an app that mimics a popular music tool in Turkey, downloaded 10 million times via Google Play.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of the Kremlin's most active hacking groups targeting Ukraine recently tried to hack a large petroleum refining company located in a NATO country. The attack is a sign that the group is expanding its intelligence gathering as Russia's invasion of its neighboring country continues. The attempted hacking occurred on August 30 and was unsuccessful, researchers with Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 said on Tuesday. The hacking group -- tracked under various names including Trident Ursa, Gamaredon, UAC-0010, Primitive Bear, and Shuckworm -- has been attributed by Ukraine's Security Service to Russia's Federal Security Service.

In the past 10 months, Unit 42 has mapped more than 500 new domains and 200 samples and other bread crumbs Trident Ursa has left behind in spear phishing campaigns attempting to infect targets with information-stealing malware. The group mostly uses emails with Ukrainian-language lures. More recently, however, some samples show that the group has also begun using English-language lures. "We assess that these samples indicate that Trident Ursa is attempting to boost their intelligence collection and network access against Ukrainian and NATO allies," company researchers wrote. Among the filenames used in the unsuccessful attack were: MilitaryassistanceofUkraine.htm, Necessary_military_assistance.rar, and List of necessary things for the provision of military humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.lnk. Tuesday's report didn't name the targeted petroleum company or the country where the facility was located. In recent months, Western-aligned officials have issued warnings that the Kremlin has set its sights on energy companies in countries opposing Russia's war on Ukraine.

Trident Ursa's hacking techniques are simple but effective. The group uses multiple ways to conceal the IP addresses and other signatures of its infrastructure, phishing documents with low detection rates among anti-phishing services, and malicious HTML and Word documents. Unit 42 researchers wrote: "Trident Ursa remains an agile and adaptive APT that does not use overly sophisticated or complex techniques in its operations. In most cases, they rely on publicly available tools and scripts -- along with a significant amount of obfuscation -- as well as routine phishing attempts to successfully execute their operations..." Tuesday's report provides a list of cryptographic hashes and other indicators organizations can use to determine if Trident Ursa has targeted them. It also provides suggestions for ways to protect organizations against the group.

Signaling its interest in text-generating AI systems like ChatGPT, Quora this week launched a platform called Poe that lets people ask questions, get instant answers and have a back-and-forth dialogue with AI chatbots. TechCrunch reports: Short for "Platform for Open Exploration," Poe -- which is invite-only and currently only available on iOS -- is "designed to be a place where people can easily interact with a number of different AI agents," a Quora spokesperson told TechCrunch via text message. "We have learned a lot about building consumer internet products over the last 12 years building and operating Quora. And we are specifically experienced in serving people who are looking for knowledge," the spokesperson said. "We believe much of what we've learned can be applied to this new domain where people are interfacing with large language models."

At launch, Poe provides access to several text-generating AI models, including ChatGPT. (OpenAI doesn't presently offer a public API for ChatGPT; the Quora spokesperson refused to say whether Quora has a partnership with OpenAI for Poe or another form of early access.) Poe's like a text messaging app, but for AI models -- users can chat with the models separately. Within the chat interface, Poe provides a range of different suggestions for conversation topics and use cases, like "writing help," "cooking," "problem solving" and "nature." Poe ships with only a handful of models at launch, but Quora plans to provide a way for model providers -- e.g. companies -- to submit their models for inclusion in the near future. "We think this will be a fun way for people to interact with and explore different language models. Poe is designed to be the best way for someone to get an instant answer to any question they have, using natural conversation," the spokesperson said. "There is an incredible amount of research and development going into advancing the capabilities of these models, but in order to bring all that value to people around the world, there is a need for good interfaces that are easy to use. We hope we can provide that interface so that as all of this development happens over the years ahead, everyone around the world can share as much as possible in the benefits."

The creators of "South Park" have secured a $20 million investment for their AI entertainment startup Deep Voodoo. Variety reports: The funding was led by Connect Ventures, an investment partnership between CAA and venture-capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA). It's the first outside capital raised by Deep Voodoo, which previously was funded entirely by Parker and Stone's independent entertainment company, Park County. Stone and Parker plan to use the new funding to "accelerate Deep Voodoo's development of its leading deepfake technology, cost-effective visual effects services and original synthetic media projects," according to the announcement.

Stone and Parker's Deep Voodoo began building their proprietary deepfake technology in early 2020, and the duo assembled a team of artists for a feature film about Donald Trump they had developed. In October of that year, they released "Sassy Justice," a 14-minute comedy short featuring a deepfaked Trump (voiced by Peter Serafinowicz), which went viral. But they suspended the movie project due to the COVID pandemic, and pivoted Deep Voodoo to be a provider of deepfake tools to the industry. With Connect Ventures' investment, Deep Voodoo has begun offering its "unrivaled face-swapping visual effects" to artists, producers and creators across the industry, per the announcement.