An alleged scammer has been arrested under suspicion that he used AI to create a wild number of fake bands — and fake music to go with them — and faking untold streams with more bots to earn millions in ill-gotten revenue.

In a press release, the Department of Justice announced that investigators have arrested 52-year-old North Carolina man Michael Smith, who has been charged with a purportedly seven-year scheme that involved using his real-life music skills to make more than $10 million in royalties.

Indicted on three counts involving money laundering and wire fraud, the Charlotte-area man faces a maximum of 20 years per charge.

A woman in Attleboro takes an at-home test and finds out she’s pregnant. She looks up nearby reproductive health clinics and finds one: Four Women Health Services, which has also been providing abortions for decades. She sends a request through an online chat on Four Women’s website to set up an ultrasound appointment. 

Less than half an hour later, she receives a call to schedule an appointment and books one.

But the person who just called her doesn’t work for Four Women. They called to book her an appointment at the center across the street: Attleboro Women’s Health Center, or Abundant Hope.

That’s what allegedly happened last October. Four Women is now suing in federal court, alleging that at least four potential patients apparently had their messages intercepted by Attleboro Women’s Health Center — an entity that is not a licensed health care facility and does not provide abortions.

PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — A suburban Detroit judge is no longer handling cases after a court official turned over recordings of her making anti-gay insults and referring to Black people as lazy.

Oakland County Probate Judge Kathleen Ryan was removed from her docket on Aug. 27 for unspecified misconduct. Now the court’s administrator has stepped forward to say he blew the whistle on her, secretly recording their phone calls.

“I just want to make it right. ... I want to keep my job and do it in peace,” Edward Hutton told WXYZ-TV. “And I want the people in Oakland County that come to court to get a fair shake, to have their day in court, to have an unbiased trier of fact.”

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — A judge in the Brazilian state of Rondonia has found two beef slaughterhouses guilty of buying cattle from a protected area of former rainforest in the Amazon and ordered them, along with three cattle ranchers, to pay a total of $764,000 for causing environmental damage, according to the decision issued Wednesday. Cattle raising drives Amazon deforestation. The companies Distriboi and Frigon and the ranchers may appeal.

It is the first decision in several dozen lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in environmental damages from the slaughterhouses for allegedly trading in cattle raised illegally in a protected area known as Jaci-Parana, which was rainforest but is now mostly converted to pasture. 

Four slaughterhouses are among the many parties charged, including JBS SA, which bills itself as the world’s largest protein producer. The court has not decided on the cases involving JBS.

Brazilian law forbids commercial cattle inside a protected area, yet some 210,000 head are being grazed inside Jaci-Parana, according to the state animal division. With almost 80% of its forest destroyed, it ranks as the most ravaged conservation unit in the Brazilian Amazon. A court filing pegs damages in the reserve at some $1 billion.

Asked Thursday by the judge if she knew any of the accused, Gisèle said she recognised only one.

“He was our neighbour. He came over to check our bikes. I used to see him at the bakery. He was always polite. I had no idea he was coming to rape me.”

Gisèle was then reminded by the judge that in order to respect the presumption of innocence, it had been agreed in court not to use the word rape but “sex scene”.

She replied: “I just think they should recognise the facts. When I think of what they have done I am overcome with disgust. They should at least have the responsibility to recognise what they did.”

After the truth emerged, Gisèle found that she was carrying four sexually-transmitted diseases.

“I have had no sympathy from any of the accused. One who was HIV-positive came six times. Not once did my husband express any concern about my health,” she said.

The father of the mass shooting suspect accused of killing four people at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, told investigators this week he had purchased the gun used in the killings as a holiday present for his son in December 2023, according to two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.

Colt Gray, a 14-year-old student, is accused of killing two students and two teachers with an AR-style rifle in the Wednesday shooting. Nine more people were hospitalized.

One source told CNN the AR-15-style rifle was purchased at a local gun store as a Christmas present.

The Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei has died at a Kenyan hospital after sustaining 80% burns to her body following an attack by her partner on Sunday.

The 33-year-old Cheptegei had been receiving treatment at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret city. A spokesperson, Owen Menach, confirmed her death on Thursday.

Donald Rukare, president of Uganda Olympics Committee, said in a post on X: “We have learnt of the sad passing on of our Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei … following a vicious attack by her boyfriend. May her gentle soul rest in peace and we strongly condemn violence against women. This was a cowardly and senseless act that has led to the loss of a great athlete. Her legacy will continue to endure.”

Trans Nzoia County police commander Jeremiah ole Kosiom had said on Monday that Cheptegei’s partner, Dickson Ndiema, bought a container of petrol, poured it on her and set her on fire. “The couple were heard quarrelling outside their house. During the altercation, the boyfriend was seen pouring a liquid on the woman before burning her,” Kosiom told the Standard newspaper in Kenya. “The suspect was also caught by the fire and sustained serious burns.” Ndiema was being treated at the same hospital as Cheptegei.

A media firm that has worked with the likes of Google and Meta has admitted that it can target adverts based on what you said out loud near device microphones.

Media conglomerate Cox Media Group (CMG) has been pitching tech companies on a new targeted advertising tool that uses audio recordings collected from smart home devices, according to a 404 Media investigation. The company is partners with Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Bing.

In a pitch deck presented to Google, Facebook, and others in November 2023, CMG referred to the technology used for monitoring and active listening as “Voice Data.” The firm also mentioned using artificial intelligence to collect data about consumers’ online behavior.

DENVER — Douglas County conservative activist Joe Oltmann owes a former Dominion Voting Systems employee $1,000 a day, starting now, for as long as he continues to withhold evidence of his election rigging claims.

Oltmann is named as a non-party in a defamation suit by Eric Coomer, the former director of product security and strategy for Dominion Voting Systems. He is also facing a defamation and conspiracy lawsuit from Coomer for claims Oltmann made back in 2020.

In November 2020, Oltmann claimed to have heard an "Antifa conference call" where an employee of Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems suggested the election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden. 

“I think this is a conspiracy to commit fraud against the American people,” Oltmann told KNUS host Peter Boyles on Nov. 18. “This is a massive, massive, massive putting your finger on the scales of the election.” 

Oltmann hasn't provided evidence to back up the accusation, despite being subpoenaed in Denver District Court.

Artificial intelligence is worse than humans in every way at summarising documents and might actually create additional work for people, a government trial of the technology has found.

Amazon conducted the test earlier this year for Australia’s corporate regulator the Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) using submissions made to an inquiry. The outcome of the trial was revealed in an answer to a questions on notice at the Senate select committee on adopting artificial intelligence.

The test involved testing generative AI models before selecting one to ingest five submissions from a parliamentary inquiry into audit and consultancy firms. The most promising model, Meta’s open source model Llama2-70B, was prompted to summarise the submissions with a focus on ASIC mentions, recommendations, references to more regulation, and to include the page references and context.

Ten ASIC staff, of varying levels of seniority, were also given the same task with similar prompts. Then, a group of reviewers blindly assessed the summaries produced by both humans and AI for coherency, length, ASIC references, regulation references and for identifying recommendations. They were unaware that this exercise involved AI at all.

These reviewers overwhelmingly found that the human summaries beat out their AI competitors on every criteria and on every submission, scoring an 81% on an internal rubric compared with the machine’s 47%.

The price of some Canva subscriptions are set to skyrocket next year following the company’s aggressive rollout of generative AI features. Global customers for Canva Teams — a business-orientated subscription that supports adding multiple users — can expect prices to increase by just over 300 percent in some instances. Canva says the increase is justified due to the “expanded product experience” and value that generative AI tools have added to the platform.

In the US, some Canva Teams users are reporting subscription increases from $120 per year for up to five users, to an eye-watering $500 per year. A 40 percent discount will be applied to bring that down to $300 for the first 12 months. In Australia, the flat $39.99 AUS (about $26 USD) per month fee for five users is switching to $13.50 AUS (about $9 USD) for each user. That means a team of five will pay at least 68 percent more, not withstanding any other discounts.

Does AI actually help students learn? A recent experiment in a high school provides a cautionary tale. 

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that Turkish high school students who had access to ChatGPT while doing practice math problems did worse on a math test compared with students who didn’t have access to ChatGPT. Those with ChatGPT solved 48 percent more of the practice problems correctly, but they ultimately scored 17 percent worse on a test of the topic that the students were learning.

A third group of students had access to a revised version of ChatGPT that functioned more like a tutor. This chatbot was programmed to provide hints without directly divulging the answer. The students who used it did spectacularly better on the practice problems, solving 127 percent more of them correctly compared with students who did their practice work without any high-tech aids. But on a test afterwards, these AI-tutored students did no better. Students who just did their practice problems the old fashioned way — on their own — matched their test scores.