Wednesday Newsbytes: Criminals Using AI to Create Illicit Images from Innocent Ones; Security Firm Sues Microsoft for Misusing Users’ Data; One More Beatles’ Song; The Next Big Windows 11 Update; Gmail Will Soon Write Emails for You … and more!
Every day we scan the tech world for interesting news in the world of technology and sometimes from outside the world of technology. Every Wednesday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Wednesday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!
Malicious Actors Manipulating Photos and Videos to Create Explicit Content and Sextortion Schemes
The FBI is warning the public of malicious actors creating synthetic content (commonly referred to as “deepfakes”a) by manipulating benign photographs or videos to target victims. Technology advancements are continuously improving the quality, customizability, and accessibility of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled content creation. The FBI continues to receive reports from victims, including minor children and non-consenting adults, whose photos or videos were altered into explicit content. The photos or videos are then publicly circulated on social media or pornographic websites, for the purpose of harassing victims or sextortion schemes.
Explicit Content Creation
Malicious actors use content manipulation technologies and services to exploit photos and videos—typically captured from an individual’s social media account, open internet, or requested from the victim—into sexually-themed images that appear true-to-life in likeness to a victim, then circulate them on social media, public forums, or pornographic websites. Many victims, which have included minors, are unaware their images were copied, manipulated, and circulated until it was brought to their attention by someone else. The photos are then sent directly to the victims by malicious actors for sextortion or harassment, or until it was self-discovered on the internet. Once circulated, victims can face significant challenges in preventing the continual sharing of the manipulated content or removal from the internet.
Sextortion and Harassment
Sextortion,b which may violate several federal criminal statutes, involves coercing victims into providing sexually explicit photos or videos of themselves,
Security firm sues Microsoft, alleging tech giant misused trove of stolen logins and passwords
A security threat intelligence firm alleges that Microsoft misused the firm’s database of more than 360 million compromised account logins and passwords, culled from the dark web.
The firm, Hold Security LLC, based in the Milwaukee area, says Microsoft didn’t keep its promise to destroy its copies of credentials not associated with Microsoft logins after using them to help secure its own customers.
Microsoft says the allegations mischaracterize its agreement with the firm. The Redmond-based company says it will seek to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Hold Security this week in King County Superior Court in Seattle.
The suit touches on two of Microsoft’s biggest acquisitions; a Twitter exchange between two well-known figures in cybersecurity; and the tech giant’s efforts to disrupt the criminal network behind the Trickbot malware.
Database of stolen credentials: The suit explains, “In early 2014, Hold, through confidential business practices and its own work product, obtained access to over 360 million stolen account credentials on the Dark Web. These account credentials consisted of compromised emails and passwords.”
According to the suit, Microsoft contracted with Hold to use the credentials to help secure its customers, alerting them that their logins and passwords were compromised. The suit says any stolen credentials not matching a Microsoft account…
The next version of Windows 11 is coming this fall.
Microsoft just unveiled a bunch of new features at its annual Build developer conference that are likely to ship as part of the update, plus even more extras that are currently in testing in the Windows preview program.
The version 23H2 release is still in development, so we’re expecting even more features to show up over the summer before Microsoft finalizes the release in a few months. We’ll keep this page updated with all the new features as they appear in Windows 11 preview builds.
Just like previous Windows 11 feature updates, the 23H2 release will be a free update for all existing Windows 11 users, meaning the best Windows 11 laptops on the market will support it. If you don’t yet have a Windows 11 license, you can buy one online.
Windows AI Copilot
The biggest new feature Microsoft is working on for the version 23H2 release is a new AI assistant dubbed “Windows Copilot,” which uses the same tech powering Bing Chat and the Microsoft 365 Copilot to help users be more productive by understanding complex queries, commands, and understanding context.
Windows Copilot will essentially replace Cortana and be able to help users with changing settings on their PC, launching playlists in Spotify, summarizing documents, texts, and webpages, and even initiate snap assist and other Windows functions. The Copilot exists as a button on the Taskbar that will open a sidebar when clicked that features a chat box and conversation history between you and the Copilot…
Hate writing emails? Gmail will soon do it for you on iOS and Android
Beta testers get glimpse of AI tool ahead of wider rollout
Tired of writing emails from your phone? Google’s AI-powered Help Me Write tool for Gmail is coming to Android and iOS to help you draft replies in no time.
Since Google I/O 2023, Google has been releasing a bunch of in-development AI tools such as its updated Google Bard chatbot and Help Me Write, its new writing assistant. Help Me Write was previously only available to enrolled Workspace testers on desktop, but now those users will be able to use it in the Gmail app on their smartphone. This hopefully points towards a wider rollout soon.
Help Me Write works in two main ways. It can edit an email you’ve already written – for example, it can shorten it if it’s too wordy, make it more sound more formal, or insert emojis to create a more casual vibe with the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ option.
Alternatively, if you’re in a rush you can provide the tool with a quick prompt and it’ll draft the whole thing for you. You can then edit it yourself, or use the same refinements (see image below) as before to tweak the length and tone.
In testing we’ve found the AI is generally better as an editor than a writer, but if you’ve got to draft a bunch of replies to tedious emails, then letting the AI take over the bulk of the work can be a major time-saver.
To get started with Help Me Write on Android or iOS you’ll need to download the Gmail app and sign into the account that has access to the Workspace prototype. Then, when you next compose an email you should see a Help Me Write prompt appear in the bottom right corner of your screen.
The update is steadily rolling out, so even if you’re signed up for Workspace Labs you might not yet see the Help Me Write option in Gmail on mobile yet
.
How to get Help Me Write…
The Beatles are dropping one last track with the help of AI
AI has the potential to change the music industry. Here’s what Paul McCartney has to say about it.
Generative AI has made it possible to transform snippets of a person’s voice into an entire song. Artists and music labels have taken a position against it claiming it’s copyright infringement.
However, this technology has the potential to bring a deceased artist’s voice back to life and The Beatles are taking advantage of that.
On BBC’s Best of Today podcast, Paul McCartney shared his thoughts on AI in the music industry and revealed that The Beatles would be dropping a new track soon with the help of AI.
“So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles record, it was a demo that John had that we worked on,” said McCartney in the BBC interview. “We were able to take John’s voice, and get it pure through this AI so then we could mix the record as we would normally do.”
Without revealing the name of the demo, he did share that the record was just finished and will be released this year…
OpenAI reportedly warned Microsoft about Bing’s bizarre AI responses
A new report details some of the competition between OpenAI and Microsoft on AI-powered tools.
OpenAI reportedly warned Microsoft to move slowly on integrating GPT-4 into its Bing search engine to avoid the inaccurate and unpredictable responses it launched with. The Wall Street Journal reports that the OpenAI team warned of the negative risks of pushing out a chatbot based on an unreleased version of GPT-4 too early.
Microsoft went ahead, despite warnings that it might take time to minimize the inaccurate and strange responses. Days after Bing Chat launched in February, users discovered the chatbot was unpredictable and could insult users, lie to them, sulk, gaslight people, and even claim to identify its enemies.
Microsoft was quick to limit Bing Chat responses to stop the AI from getting real weird, and it has taken months of work to get the Bing chatbot back to a point where you can have a long back-and-forth conversation without an unexpected outburst. It still often gets things wrong, though…
How to Hide Your Phone Number (USA TODAY)
Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope you found these articles informative, interesting, fun, and helpful. Darcy & TC
