Publisher Gannett to Include Generative AI in Its System; May be More Efficient

Publisher Gannett plans to include generative artificial intelligence in the system it uses to publish stories as it and other news organizations begin to roll out the popular technology that may help save money and improve efficiency. But the largest U.S. newspaper publisher with over 200 daily outlets said it will include humans in the process so that the technology can't be deployed automatically, without oversight. Generative AI is a way to create efficiencies and eliminate some tedious tasks for journalists, Renn Turiano, senior vice president and head of product at Gannett said in a recent interview with Reuters. However, Turiano added, “The desire to go fast was a mistake for some of the other news services,” he said without singling out a specific outlet. “We're not making that mistake.” Gannett is hardly alone in its balancing act. For instance, Reuters President Paul Bascobert said in a statement Thursday, responding to a reporter's request for comment about the company's plans, that as the news agency embraces AI technologies, it is "taking a responsible approach that safeguards accuracy and fosters trust.” Many U.S. newsrooms are grappling with how best to incorporate AI tools that generate new content or data in response to a prompt, or question, by a user. But generative AI's limitations, which include the tendency to “hallucinate,” or serve up misinformation with a veneer of certainty, are particularly problematic in an industry that demands accuracy, some experts say. “Where I am right now is I wouldn't recommend these models for any journalistic use case where you're publishing automatically to a public channel,” said Northwestern University associate professor Nicholas Diakopoulos. Gannett's strategy reflects the measured approach a number of mainstream newsrooms are taking. Their caution follows well-publicized generative AI gaffes at media outlets including CNET and Men's Journal. Both publications used the technology to generate stories that contained factual errors. Next quarter Gannett will roll out a live pilot program using AI to identify the most important points of an article and create bulleted summaries at the top of it. It will launch that feature in the fourth quarter at USA Today. Journalists will have the final say, deciding whether to use what the AI proposed. Gannett will eventually incorporate that summarization technology into its publishing system. Gannett's journalists are fighting to ensure that they aren't replaced by the technology. Hundreds walked off the job over staff cuts and stagnant wages on June 5. Generative AI is a sticking point in some negotiations with the company, the union said. “The concern other than seeing our colleagues replaced is that we don't believe it's an adequate replacement,” said Ilana Keller, a journalist at the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey. A company spokesperson said its use of AI will not replace journalists, and that it is being used as a tool to help them be more efficient and focus on creating more valuable content. Last year Gannett, which has $1.23 billion (roughly Rs. 10,07,500 crore) in debt from its 2019 merger with GateHouse, laid off more than 600 employees. But its cost-cutting has made it profitable. As part of its push, Gannett is also developing a generative AI tool that would take long-form stories and break them into various lengths and formats, like bullet points or captions on photos to create a slideshow. To summarize its stories, Gannett is relying on Cohere, a company that competes with Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which developed the ChatGPT chatbot. Gannett spent two weeks training Cohere's large language model on 1,000 previously-published stories with summaries written by its reporters. To train the model further, journalists from USA Today's politics team reviewed and edited automated summaries and bullet point highlights. While most news organizations have long relied on some form of artificial intelligence to do things like recommending and personalizing content, new developments in generative AI are reigniting industry interest. Gannett has also experimented with natural language generation (NLG), a form of artificial intelligence that builds a text narrative around factual data, creating a story. It doesn't "think" like generative AI. Journalists review the stories prior to publication. Other news outlets are approaching generative AI with varying levels of commitment and caution. The New York Times and the Washington Post are in the planning phase, according to a Times memo seen by Reuters and a Washington Post announcement. Bloomberg, which competes with Reuters, is developing its own generative AI model, BloombergGPT, which it trained on financial data. The New York Times, Washington Post and Bloomberg declined to provide additional comment on their plans. Reuters is using AI for voice-to-text transcription to produce scripts and subtitles for video, for example, but it is not publishing AI-generated stories, videos or photographs, according to a May message to staff from Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni about AI guidance for Reuters journalists. BBC News Labs, the broadcaster's innovation incubator, is testing whether it can semi-automate the generation of short-form explainers. For those stories, BBC News Labs built a prototype that draws on pre-published pieces of BBC content and uses the ChatGPT-3 model to write it. “It could never get anywhere near an audience unless a journalist has manually pulled it out," said Miranda Marcus, head of the BBC News Labs. “There's a whole other universe of what kinds of stories can we tell with these tools,” added Marcus. “But we're not there yet.” © Thomson Reuters 2023 (This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Barbie Could Dominate in Early Box Office Standings Against Bout With Oppenheimer: Report

Early box office tracking for the two biggest movies of the year — Barbie and Oppenheimer — suggest that the pink, live-action doll movie would be stealing the show. As per The Hollywood Reporter's sources which have tracked various polling services, the Christopher Nolan film was initially the favourite, but things soon turned in Barbie's favour as it became a social media phenomenon, thanks to its ensemble cast, internet memes, and outrageous reports of them causing a pink paint shortage. Both films are budgeted at roughly $100 million (about Rs. 819 crore) as well, which makes this clash all the more exciting. In recent years, production studios have intentionally steered clear of having their films' release dates clash with each other, as a means to maximise ticket sales. Some would even go as far as shifting them around — Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two is a solid example of this, having brought forward its release date by two weeks to avoid direct competition with The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which is set for November 17. So you can see why the prospect of Barbie vs Oppenheimer would have fans excited. Even more so, considering the background drama between director Nolan and Warner Bros. It's not uncommon for Nolan to pick an American Summer release window for his movies, with Oppenheimer following suit on July 21. As per THR, Warner Bros. originally planned for John Cena's Coyote vs. Acme to drop around that time, only for it to then pull the film out of the calendar and replace it with Greta Gerwig's Barbie instead. Rumours surrounding the subject claim that it was a deliberate move by Warner Bros. out of spite, to mess with Nolan's release. Back in late 2020, Warner Bros. announced that it would release its entire 2021 slate of films simultaneously in theatres and HBO Max. Nolan, who was appalled at that decision, called HBO Max the ‘worst streaming service' and chose to part ways with Warner Bros. — ending a two-decade-long partnership. His film Oppenheimer was then shopped around to several studios until Universal Pictures stepped in to distribute it. However, recent reports somewhat dispute this theory of WB trying to sabotage Universal, with Warner Bros. Pictures co-CEO Michael De Luca confirming that they have been trying to mend their relationship with Nolan and bring him back into the fold. In fact, some sources familiar with the situation claimed that Nolan received a seven-figure royalty cheque for his work on Tenet, and he even did some post-production work for Oppenheimer at WB. The box office numbers for the film against Barbie will be interesting to track, for if Oppenheimer turns over a huge profit, Universal Pictures might try to hold onto Nolan and give him all the budget and resources he needs for the future. It's a battle between studios as well. The competition between the two movies has inspired several memes, with people online comparing the stark contrast in tones, with Oppenheimer boasting a gritty look (some scenes are even shot in monochrome), focussing on the obsessive father of the atomic bomb. Meanwhile, Barbie is bright pink and cheerful, with everyone's go-to silent protagonist/ ‘literally me' actor Ryan Gosling sporting a uniquely goofy appearance. Adding fuel to the flame is Tom Cruise, who is reportedly upset that both Barbie and Oppenheimer have booked most of the IMAX screens in July, essentially sabotaging his Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One film, which is out a week prior on July 12. Yep, there's a third competitor and its box office revenue is bound to be impacted by the other two films. July is shaping up to be an interesting month for blockbuster movies, in terms of both on and off-screen drama.

Google Files Lawsuit Against US Firm, Aims to Curb Fake Business Listings

Alphabet's Google on Friday sued a Los Angeles man and his companies in San Jose, California federal court, claiming he created hundreds of fake business listings on its platforms and sold them to real businesses to lure in unsuspecting customers. Fake reviews have been a recurring problem on internet commerce sites. Google said in a statement that it filed the lawsuit against Ethan QiQi Hu to "help put an end to these types of malicious schemes." Hu did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Google's lawsuit said Hu creates sham businesses that appear in its search engine and Google Maps, using an "elaborate set of props" to verify them on video calls with the tech giant's agents. The lawsuit said Hu keeps a tool bench as a prop to verify fraudulent listings for garage repair, tree cutting and plumbing, and essential oils for verifying fake aromatherapy and reiki therapy businesses. Google said Hu buys thousands of fake positive reviews to make the businesses appear legitimate. He then allegedly sells the profiles as "leads" to real businesses in the same fields, which receive contacts from potential customers who reach out to the fake businesses. Google said Hu created more than 350 false profiles bolstered by over 14,000 illegitimate reviews. The lawsuit accused Hu of false advertising, unlawful business practices and violating Google's terms of service. Google asked the court for an unspecified amount of money damages and an order to block Hu's alleged misconduct. The case is Google LLC vs Hu, US District Court of the Northern District of California, No. 5:23-cv-02964. © Thomson Reuters 2023

Reddit Says 80 Percent Top Subreddits Open After Blackout Over API Pricing Protest

Reddit said that most of the company's communities were operating as normal — four days after a protest that shut down thousands of its online forums in protest over its plans to raise fees. In a blog post-Thursday, the company said that 80 percent of its top subreddits, or digital message boards, are currently open. The post was Reddit's first since June 9.  The website Reddark, which has been tracking the blackout on the site, indicated on Thursday evening that more than 5,000 subreddits still were limiting access to their content. That's lower than the almost 9,000 forums that initially pledged to go dark for a protest starting on June 12, which was slated to last at least two days.   The dissent stems from Reddit's decision to charge for access to its application programming interface, or API, which allows developers to embed Reddit's functionality into their own apps. The developer of one popular app, called Apollo, wrote that he would have to pay Reddit $20 million (roughly Rs. 160 crore) a year to continue operating under the new pricing policy. Apollo plans to shut down on June 30, the day before Reddit's pricing change will take effect.  Reddit has defended its decision to start charging its biggest users, who rely on its technology to make apps for browsing the site and organizing its troves of posts and data. It also responded to concerns over the fate of accessibility-focused apps, such as those geared at reading posts to the visually impaired, and said certain apps would be exempt from the new charges. In Thursday's post, Reddit said that 98 percent of third-party apps wouldn't have to pay anything under the new fee structure, and that the fees it would charge developers were in line with its own costs. “Mods and users want communities to be open and accessible,” the company wrote, and after expressing their point of view “many communities have decided to reopen.” © 2023 Bloomberg LP (This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Samsung Galaxy S23 Series Gets June 2023 Security Patch With Several Camera Improvements: Report

Samsung Galaxy S23 series with Android 13-based One UI 5.1 skin was launched in February this year. Now the flagship smartphones have reportedly started receiving the June 2023 Android security patch. The latest firmware brings a 2x portrait option to the camera app and addresses autofocus issues. The update is said to have several stability improvements and bug fixes as well. Eligible Samsung Galaxy S23 series smartphones in some South East Asian markets are reportedly receiving the update now. It is said to have a 2.2GB file size. As reported by SamMobile, the update for Samsung Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+, and Galaxy S23 Ultra with firmware version S91xBXXU2AWF1 is currently rolling out for handsets in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand. The update brings the June 2023 Android security patch and is said to add a new 2x zoom option in the camera app's Portrait mode apart from the general bug fixes and One UI improvements. The update is 2.2GB in size and purportedly addresses autofocus issues and makes changes to the Night mode feature. The Galaxy S23 series models are getting subtle improvements in haptics as well. The update is expected to include fixes for the camera blur issue that was acknowledged by the company earlier this month. As per the report, the update should arrive automatically over the air to eligible Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+, and Galaxy S23 Ultra units. However, users in the above-mentioned regions can manually check for the update by heading to Settings > Software update > Download and Install. Users are advised to update their phones while they are connected to a strong Wi-Fi network and a charger. It is expected to arrive in more regions in the coming days. The Galaxy S23 was launched in India in February during the Galaxy Unpacked event with a starting price tag of Rs. 74,999 for the base 8GB RAM + 128GB storage variant. They are powered by a customised version of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC and sport Dynamic AMOLED 2X displays. On the front, the handsets feature Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection.

Binance to Leave Netherlands After Failing to Meet Registration Requirements

Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Friday that it was leaving the Dutch market because it had been unable to meet registration requirements to operate as a virtual asset service provider. It is the latest in a string of setbacks for Binance including the June 5 decision by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to charge the company with evading securities laws. Binance disputes the SEC charges. A spokesperson for Binance, which had been operating in the Netherlands without permission from regulators, said that the company had tried "many alternative avenues" to meet Dutch registration requirements. "While Binance is disappointed that this has become necessary, it will continue to engage productively and transparently with Dutch regulators," they said. The company said that starting July 17, trading in the Netherlands will be halted and existing Dutch users will only be able to withdraw assets from its platform. The Dutch Central Bank (DNB), which registers financial service providers in the Netherlands said it had previously warned the company it was operating in the Netherlands without proper registration and then fined it for the same reason in January. Binance has also recently announced plans to leave Cyprus, Canada and Australia. The company said on Friday however that it has received registration in other European Union countries, including France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden and Lithuania, and will continue to operate there. © Thomson Reuters 2023 (This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)