Researchers warn generative tools are helping militant groups from neo-Nazis to the Islamic State spread ideology
While the artificial intelligence boom is upending sections of the music industry, voice generating bots are also becoming a boon to another unlikely corner of the internet: extremist movements that are using them to recreate the voices and speeches of major figures in their milieu, and experts say it is helping them grow.
“The adoption of AI-enabled translation by terrorists and extremists marks a significant evolution in digital propaganda strategies,” said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism and a research fellow at the Soufan Center. Webber specializes in monitoring the online tools of terrorist groups and extremists around the world.
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© Illustration: Guardian Design
© Illustration: Guardian Design
© Illustration: Guardian Design
Vonn places third again in super-G at Val-d’Isère
41-year-old logs 142nd World Cup podium finish
Milan-Cortina Olympics firmly in sight for US star
Sofia Goggia finally got the win her fast skiing this season deserved in a World Cup super-G on Sunday and Lindsey Vonn was third for the second straight day.
The two former Olympic downhill champions were split on a high-class podium by runner-up Alice Robinson, who is already a two-time winner this season on the World Cup circuit.
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© Photograph: Action Press/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Action Press/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Action Press/Shutterstock
Attackers wound 10 others in Bekkersdal after opening fire at people in a bar and ‘randomly’ shooting in the street, police say
Nine people have been killed after gunmen opened fire at a bar near Johannesburg in the second mass shooting in South Africa this month.
Ten more were wounded in the early morning attack at the tavern in the impoverished Bekkersdal township in a gold mining area about 25 miles (40km) south-west of Johannesburg.
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© Photograph: Alfonso Nqunjana/AP
© Photograph: Alfonso Nqunjana/AP
© Photograph: Alfonso Nqunjana/AP
Group of 120 experts including Joseph Stiglitz urge fresh debt restructuring plan given scale of destruction
A group of the world’s top economists – including the Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz – have called for Sri Lanka’s debt payments to be suspended as it tackles the devastation caused by Cyclone Ditwah.
More than 600 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed across the island, in what Sri Lanka’s president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, called the “largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history”.
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© Photograph: Ishara S Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Ishara S Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Ishara S Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images
The romantic proclivities of the Shelleys, a notable corpse and a diner delight – test your knowledge with questions posed by favourite authors
• In the mood for more? For all our crosswords and sudoku, as well as our new football game, On The Ball, and film quiz, Film Reveal, download the Guardian app. Available in the Apple App Store and Google Play.
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© Composite: Phil Hackett; Ali Smith, Antonio Olmos, Andy Hall/The Guardian
© Composite: Phil Hackett; Ali Smith, Antonio Olmos, Andy Hall/The Guardian
© Composite: Phil Hackett; Ali Smith, Antonio Olmos, Andy Hall/The Guardian
Maria Farmer, whose sister Annie was abused by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, says Epstein ‘stole’ nude images
While Donald Trump’s justice department did not deliver on a legal requirement to disclose all Jeffrey Epstein-related files by Friday, one document in an otherwise underwhelming disclosure lifted the veil on authorities’ inaction – and its dire consequences for dozens of teen girls.
That document is an FBI report from Maria Farmer, a painter who worked for Epstein around 1996.
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© Photograph: Netflix/Courtesy of Netflix
© Photograph: Netflix/Courtesy of Netflix
© Photograph: Netflix/Courtesy of Netflix
The commercialisation of the cosmos is already underway, and our current laws aren’t fit for purpose
If there is one thing we can rely on in this world, it is human hubris, and space and astronomy are no exception.
The ancients believed that everything revolved around Earth. In the 16th century, Copernicus and his peers overturned that view with the heliocentric model. Since then, telescopes and spacecraft have revealed just how insignificant we are. There are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, each star a sun like ours, many with planets orbiting them. In 1995, the Hubble space telescope captured its first deep-field image: this showed us that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in our known universe, huge wheeling collections of stars dispersed through space.
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© Illustration: Elia Barbieri/The Guardian
© Illustration: Elia Barbieri/The Guardian
© Illustration: Elia Barbieri/The Guardian
From Emily Henry to Rebecca Yarros and Alison Espach’s The Wedding People – romance has dominated the book charts this year. So why is it still dismissed by critics?
People buy lipstick when the world is falling apart. This genuine economic theory, known as the “lipstick index”, was first noted by Leonard Lauder (son of the more famous Estée). When the world seems very bleak – in the weeks and months after the twin towers fell, for instance, or after the 2008 financial crash – and spending generally goes down, lipstick sales trend strongly upwards.
The psychological truth at the heart of this equation is real: when people have less than they need, they spend more on small, beautiful things. It’s easy, maybe, to dismiss this in the way most feminine-coded things are dismissed: frivolous, wasteful, foolish. But that would be a mistake. A single treasure, bright and gorgeous, is like a talisman; a candle in the night. It is possible, with your small candle, to make your way in the darkness. One delight, against all this. The world crumbles, and lipstick sales go up.
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© Composite: N/A
© Composite: N/A
© Composite: N/A
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