Washington — When the U.S. announced the seizure of 32 internet domains tied to Russian efforts to ply American voters with disinformation ahead of November’s presidential election, prosecutors were quick to note the use of artificial intelligence, or AI.

The Russian operation, known as Doppelganger, drove internet and social media users to the fake news using a variety of methods, the charging documents said, including advertisements that were “in some cases created using artificial intelligence.”

AI tools were also used to “generate content, including images and videos, for use in negative advertisements about U.S. politicians,” the indictment added.

And Russia is far from alone in turning to AI in the hopes of swaying U.S. voters.

“The primary actors we’ve seen for election use of this are Iran and Russia, although as various private companies have noticed, China also has used artificial intelligence for spreading divisive narratives in the United States,” according to a senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive information.

“What we’ve seen is artificial intelligence is used by foreign actors to make their content more quickly and convincingly tailor their synthetic content in both audio and video forms,” the official added. 

But other U.S. officials say the use of AI to spread misinformation and disinformation in the lead-up to the U.S. election has so far failed to live up to some of the more dire warnings about how deepfakes and other AI-generated material could shake-up the American political landscape.

“Generative AI is not going to fundamentally introduce new threats to this election cycle,” according to Cait Conley, senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the U.S. agency charged with overseeing election security.

“What we’re seeing is consistent with what we expected to see,” Conley told VOA.

AI “is exacerbating existing threats, in both the cyber domain and the foreign malign influence operation-disinformation campaigns,” she said. But little of what has been put out to this point has shocked officials at CISA or the myriad state and local governments who run elections across the country.

“This threat vector is not new to them,” Conley said. “And they have taken the measures to ensure they’re prepared to respond effectively.” 

As an example, Conley pointed to the rash of robocalls that targeted New Hampshire citizens ahead of the state’s first in the nation primary in January, using fake audio of U.S. President Joe Biden to tell people to stay home and “save your vote.”

New Hampshire’s attorney general quickly went public, calling the robocalls an apparent attempt to suppress votes and telling voters the incident was under investigation.

This past May, prosecutors indicted a Louisiana political consultant in connection with the scheme.

More recently, the alleged use of AI prompted a celebrity endorsement in the U.S. presidential race by pop star Taylor Swift.

“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site,” Swift wrote in an Instagram social media post late Tuesday. 

“It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter,” she wrote, adding, “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”

But experts and analysts say for all the attention AI is getting, the use of such technology in attacks and other influence operations has been limited.

“There’s not a tremendous amount of it in the wild that’s particularly successful right now, at least to my knowledge,” said Katie Gray, a senior partner at In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s technology-focused, not-for-profit strategic investment firm.

“Most attackers are not using the most sophisticated methods to penetrate systems,” she said on September 4 at a cybersecurity summit in Washington.

Others suggest that at least for the moment, the fears surrounding AI have outpaced its usefulness by malicious actors.

‘We jump to the doomsday science fiction,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI special agent and counterterror consultant who heads up the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC).

“But instead, what we’re seeing is the number one challenge to all of this right now is access, just getting to the [AI] tools and accessing them,” he said, speaking like Gray at the cybersecurity summit.

Over the past 14 months, MTAC has logged hundreds of instances of AI use by China, Russia and Iran, Watts said. And analysts found that Moscow and Tehran, in particular, have struggled to get access to a fully AI toolbox.

The Russians “need to use their own tools from the start, rather than Western tools, because they’re afraid they’ll get knocked off those systems,” Watts said.

Iran is even further behind.

“They’ve tried different tools,” Watts said. “They just can’t get access to most of them for the most part.”

U.S. adversaries also appear to be having difficulties with the underlying requirements to make AI effective.

“To do scaled AI operations is not cheap,” Watts said. “Some of the infrastructure and the resources of it [AI], the models, the data it needs to be trained [on] – very challenging at the moment.”

And Watts said until the products generated by AI get better, attempted deepfakes will likely have trouble resonating with the targeted audiences.

“Audiences have been remarkably brilliant about detecting deepfakes in crowds. The more you watch somebody, the more you realize a fake isn’t quite right,” according to Watts. “The Russian actors that we’ve seen, all of them have tried deepfakes and they’ve moved back to bread and butter, small video manipulations.”
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SINGAPORE — An Australian think tank that tracks tech competitiveness says China is now the world leader in research on almost 90% of critical technologies. In a newly released report, the research group adds there is also a high risk of Beijing securing a monopoly on defense-related tech, including drones, satellites and collaborative robots — those that can work safely alongside humans.

Analysts say the huge leap forward for China is the result of heavy state investment over the past two decades. They add that despite the progress, Beijing is still dependent on other countries for key tech components and lacks self-sufficiency.

The report from the government-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI, released last Thursday, says China led the way in research into 57 out of 64 advanced technologies in the five years from 2019-2023.

ASPI’s Critical Technology Tracker ranks countries’ innovation capabilities based on the number of appearances in the top 10% of research papers. It focuses on crucial technologies from a range of fields including artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cyber and defense.

The report found that “China and the United States have effectively switched places as the overwhelming leader in research in just two decades.”

China led in only three of the 64 technologies between 2003 and 2007 but has shot up in the rankings, replacing the U.S., which is now a frontrunner in just seven critical technologies.

Josh Kennedy-White is a technology strategist based in Singapore. He says China’s huge leap is a “direct result of its aggressive, state-driven research and development investments over the past two decades.”

He adds that the shift toward China is “particularly stark in fields like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and advanced aircraft engines, where China has transitioned from a laggard to a leader in a relatively short period.”

ASPI also determines the risk of countries holding a monopoly on the research of critical technologies. They currently classify 24 technologies as “high risk” of being monopolized — all by Beijing.

Ten technologies are newly classified as “high risk” this year, with many of them linked to the defense industry.

“The potential monopoly risk in 24 technology areas, especially those in defense-related fields like radars and drones, is concerning in the current and future geopolitical context,” Tobias Feakin, founder of consultancy firm Protostar Strategy, told VOA.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has sought to boost his country’s advanced manufacturing capabilities with the ambitious “Made in China 2025” initiative.

The policy, launched in 2015, aims to strengthen Beijing’s self-reliance in critical sectors and make China a global tech powerhouse.

Xi, according to Feakin, views advanced technologies as “strategic priorities for China’s development, national security and global competitiveness.”

He adds that technologies are seen as a “central component of China’s long-term economic and geopolitical goals.”

Beijing’s ambitions are being closely watched in Washington, with the Biden administration working to limit China’s access to advanced technology.

Last week, the U.S. introduced new export controls on critical technology to China, including chip-making equipment and quantum computers and components.

That announcement came shortly after U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan made his first ever visit to Beijing. He met with Xi and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Sullivan told reporters that Washington “will continue to take necessary action to prevent advanced U.S. technologies from being used to undermine national security.”

The continued efforts to curb China’s chip industry mean that Beijing must look further afield for advanced technology.

“Even though it leads in areas like artificial intelligence and 5G, China still depends on Taiwan, the U.S. and South Korea to produce high-end semiconductors”, Kennedy-White told VOA.

Describing this as China’s Achilles’ heel, Kennedy-White says the lack of self-sufficiency in the semiconductor industry could “stunt Beijing’s progress in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and military applications.”

As China continues its dominance in critical technology research, questions have been raised over exactly how the country is making these breakthroughs.

Last October, officials from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) issued a joint statement accusing China of stealing intellectual property. U.S. FBI director Christopher Wray described it as an “unprecedented threat.”

Kennedy-White, managing director of Singapore-based venture catalyst firm DivisionX Global, agrees with this assessment. He says China’s jump up the ASPI rankings is “not entirely organic.”

“There is a correlation between China’s rise in certain technologies and allegations of intellectual property theft,” he added.

ASPI also recommends ways for other countries to close the gap on China. It advises the AUKUS alliance of Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. to join forces with Japan and South Korea to try to catch up.

The report also highlights the emergence of India as a “key center” of global research innovation and excellence.

The South Asian nation now ranks in the top five countries for 45 out of the 64 technologies that are tracked by ASPI. It’s a huge gain compared with 2003-2007, when India sat in the top five for only four technologies.

Feakin says countries across the Asia-Pacific “will benefit from leveraging India’s growing technology expertise and influence.”

It will also provide a counterbalance to “overdependence on China’s technology supply chain,” he added.
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LONDON — Google lost its last bid to overturn a European Union antitrust penalty, after the bloc’s top court ruled against it Tuesday in a case that came with a whopping fine and helped jumpstart an era of intensifying scrutiny for Big Tech companies.

The European Union’s top court rejected Google’s appeal against the $2.7 billion penalty from the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s top antitrust enforcer, for violating antitrust rules with its comparison shopping service.

Also Tuesday, Apple lost its challenge against an order to repay $14.34 billion in back taxes to Ireland, after the European Court of Justice issued a separate decision siding with the commission in a case targeting unlawful state aid for global corporations.

Both companies have now exhausted their appeals in the cases that date to the previous decade. Together, the court decisions are a victory for European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is expected to step down next month after 10 years as the commission’s top official overseeing competition.

Experts said the rulings illustrate how watchdogs have been emboldened in the years since the cases were first opened.

One of the takeaways from the Apple decision “is the sense that, again, the EU authorities and courts are prepared to flex their [collective] muscles to bring Big Tech to heel where necessary,” Alex Haffner, a competition partner at law firm Fladgate, said by email.

The shopping fine was one of three huge antitrust penalties for Google from the commission, which punished the Silicon Valley giant in 2017 for unfairly directing visitors to its own Google Shopping service over competitors.

“We are disappointed with the decision of the Court, which relates to a very specific set of facts,” Google said in a brief statement.

The company said it made changes to comply with the commission’s decision requiring it to treat competitors equally. It started holding auctions for shopping search listings that it would bid for alongside other comparison shopping services.

“Our approach has worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services,” Google said.

European consumer group BEUC hailed the court’s decision, saying it shows how the bloc’s competition law “remains highly relevant” in digital markets.

“It is a good outcome for all European consumers at the end of the day,” Director General Agustín Reyna said in an interview. “It means that many smaller companies or rivals will be able to go to different comparison shopping sites. They don’t need to depend on Google to reach out to customers.”

Google is still appealing its two other EU antitrust cases: a 2018 fine of $4.55 billion involving its Android operating system and a 2019 penalty of $1.64 billion over its AdSense advertising platform.

Despite the amounts of money involved, the adverse rulings will leave a small financial dent in one of the world’s richest and most profitable companies. The combined bill of $17 billion facing Apple and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, represents 0.3% of their combined market value of $5.2 trillion.

Those three cases foreshadowed expanded efforts by regulators worldwide to crack down on the tech industry. The EU has since opened more investigations into Big Tech companies and drew up a new law to prevent them from cornering online markets, known as the Digital Markets Act.

Google is also now facing pressure over its lucrative digital advertising business from the EU and Britain, which are carrying out separate investigations, and the United States, where the Department of Justice is taking the company to federal court over its alleged dominance in ad tech.

Apple failed in its last bid to avoid repaying its Irish taxes Tuesday after the Court of Justice upheld a lower court ruling against the company, in the dispute that dates back to 2016.

The case drew outrage from Apple, with CEO Tim Cook calling it “total political crap.”
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Harare, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s government has introduced hefty fines of up to $5,000 for poor service in the country’s telecommunications industry.

In a statement Tuesday, Zimbabwe’s ICT Minister Tatenda Mavetera said the government will levy fines of between $200 and $5,000 per infringement for telecommunications companies and internet providers who fail to give reliable service.

Willard Shoko, an independent high-speed internet consultant, said the new fines could result in a solid telecom industry that can compete in the entire southern African region.

“The motive behind that is to improve internet for the end user. But I think they should also consider improving the infrastructure sharing and also collaboration to improve internet, not only for the region but also for Zimbabwe, because this is the foundation of the digital economy,” Shoko said. “I think they should also think about how the internet can be improved and the partnership that can help improve the internet.”

Fungai Mandiveyi, media and corporate affairs executive at Econet Wireless, Zimbabwe’s biggest telecommunications company, said the new regulations will be easier to comply with than those that existed before.

“The new provisions introduce a new model of penalties, unlike the blanket penalty that existed in the previous statutory instrument,” Mandiveyi said. “The new penalties are now linked to specific quality of service breaches, that have also been clearly spelled out. There is now more clarity in what constitutes a service breach, and what penalty goes with a specific breach of the quality of service.”

However, Christopher Musodza, an independent digital policy consultant, said the pressure to maintain internet service during Zimbabwe’s frequent power outages may present challenges for telecom companies.

“For the telecoms provider, it’s going to be tough,” he said. “The economy is not performing as anyone would want. We have got issues to do with long hours of load shedding, so service providers have to power their base stations for long hours to ensure that they meet the key performance indicators. So, imagine running generators for most of the day to ensure that you avoid a fine. (I’m) not sure what will cost more; trying to keep up with these economic factors or just paying the fine.”

Zimbabweans have long complained about poor and expensive telecommunication service. Shoko said that is the reason they are welcoming the government’s decision this month to approve Starlink’s license to operate in Zimbabwe.

The U.S.-based satellite company, owned by Elon Musk, has established a presence in several other African countries, including Botswana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Zambia.

“They can now easily get internet anywhere in Zimbabwe at an affordable price, thereby bridging the digital divide. That’s one major thing for the end user,” Shoko said of Starlink’s presence.

“For the local ISPs [internet service providers], there is massive opportunity that Zimbabwe can take advantage of — investment in ground infrastructure,” he added. “Currently in Africa, Nigeria has only two ground stations that are servicing the whole of Africa. If the Zimbabwe government and local ISPs can work together with Starlink to provide ground stations in Zimbabwe, this will allow local ISPs to provide internet to Starlink, and provide better latencies in the region. So this will improve Starlink internet for local Zimbabweans, as well as the region.”
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SYDNEY — Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, the prime minister said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and “onto the footy fields.”

Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this year, Anthony Albanese said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a “scourge.”

The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16 years, Albanese said.

The prime minister said his own preference would be a block on users aged below 16.

Age verification trials are being held over the coming months, the center-left leader said, though analysts said they doubted it was technically possible to enforce an online age limit.

“I want to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts,” Albanese said.

“We want them to have real experiences with real people because we know that social media is causing social harm,” he told national broadcaster ABC.

“This is a scourge. We know that there is mental health consequences for what many of the young people have had to deal with,” he said.

Australia’s conservative opposition leader Peter Dutton said he would support an age limit.

“Every day of delay leaves young kids vulnerable to the harms of social media and the time for relying on tech companies to enforce age limits,” he said.

‘Easy to circumvent’

But it is not clear that the technology exists to reliably enforce such bans, said the University of Melbourne’s associate professor in computing and information technology, Toby Murray.

“We already know that present age verification methods are unreliable, too easy to circumvent, or risk user privacy,” he said. 

Analysts warned that an age limit may not in any case help troubled children.

It “threatens to create serious harm by excluding young people from meaningful, healthy participation in the digital world,” said Daniel Angus, who leads the digital media research centre at Queensland University of Technology.

“There is logic in establishing boundaries that limit young people’s access,” said Samantha Schulz, senior sociologist of education at the University of Adelaide.

“However, young people are not the problem and regulating youth misses the more urgent task of regulating irresponsible social media platforms. Social media is an unavoidable part of young people’s lives.”

The prime minister said parents expected a response to online bullying and harmful material present on social media.

“These social media companies think they’re above everyone,” he told a radio interviewer.

“Well, they have a social responsibility and at the moment, they’re not exercising it. And we’re determined to make sure that they do,” he said.

Australia has been at the forefront of global efforts to regulate social media platforms, with its online safety watchdog bumping heads notably with Elon Musk’s X over the content it carries.

 
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CUPERTINO, California — Apple on Monday charged into the artificial intelligence craze with a new iPhone lineup that marks the company’s latest attempt to latch onto a technology trend and transform it into a cultural phenomenon. 

The four different iPhone 16 models will all come equipped with special chips needed to power a suite of AI tools that Apple hopes will make its marquee product even more indispensable and reverse a recent sales slump. 

Apple’s AI features are designed to turn its often-blundering virtual assistant Siri into a smarter and more versatile sidekick, automate a wide range of tedious tasks, and pull off other crowd-pleasing tricks such as creating customized emojis within seconds. 

After receiving a standing ovation for Monday’s event, Apple CEO Tim Cook promised the AI package would unleash “innovations that will make a true difference in people’s lives.” 

But the breakthroughs won’t begin as soon as the new iPhones — ranging in price from $800 to $1,200 — hit the stores on September 20. 

Most of Apple’s AI functions will roll out as part of a free software update to iOS 18, the operating system that will power the iPhone 16 rolling out from October through December. U.S. English will be the featured language at launch, but an update enabling other languages will come out next year, according to Apple. 

It’s all part of a new approach that Apple previewed at a developers conference three months ago to create more anticipation for a next generation of iPhones amid a rare sales slump for the well-known devices. 

Since Apple’s June conference, competitors such as Samsung and Google have made greater strides in AI — a technology widely expected to trigger the most dramatic changes in computing since the first iPhone came out 17 years ago. 

Just as Apple elevated fledgling smartphones into a must-have technology in 21st-century society, the Cupertino, California, company is betting it can do something similar with its tardy arrival to artificial intelligence. 

‘Apple Intelligence’ 

To set itself apart from the early leaders in AI, the technology being baked into the iPhone 16 is being promoted as “Apple Intelligence.” Despite the unique branding, Apple’s new approach mimics many of the features already available in the Samsung Galaxy S24 released in January and the Google Pixel 9 that came out last month. 

“Apple could have waited another year for further development, but initial take up of AI- powered devices from the likes of Samsung has been encouraging, and Apple is keen to capitalize on this market,” said PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore. 

As it treads into new territory, Apple is trying to preserve its longtime commitment to privacy by tailoring its AI so that most of its technological tricks can be processed on the device itself instead of relying on giant banks of computers located in remote data centers. When a task needs to connect to a data center, Apple promises it will be done in a tightly controlled way that ensures that no personal data is stored remotely. 

While corralling the personal information shared through Apple’s AI tools inherently reduces the chances that the data will be exploited or misused against a user’s wishes, it doesn’t guarantee iron-clad security. A device could still be stolen, for instance, or hacked through digital chicanery. 

For users seeking to access even more AI tools than being offered by the iPhone, Apple is teaming up with OpenAI to give users the option of farming out more complicated tasks to the popular ChatGPT chatbot. 

Although Apple is releasing a free version of its operating system to propel its on-device AI features, the chip needed to run the technology is only available on the iPhone 16 lineup and the high-end iPhone 15 models that came out a year ago. 

That means most consumers who are interested in taking advantage of Apple’s approach to AI will have to buy one of the iPhone 16 models – a twist that investors are counting on will fuel a surge in demand heading into the holiday season. 

The anticipated sales boom is the main reason Apple’s stock price has climbed by more than 10%, including a slight uptick Monday after the shares initially slipped following the showcase for the latest iPhones. 

Besides its latest iPhones, Apple also introduced a new version of its smartwatch that will include a feature to help detect sleep apnea as well the next generation of its wireless headphones, the AirPods Pro, that will be able to function as a hearing aid with an upcoming software update.
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