Artificial intelligence Archives | Page 25 of 682

Australia’s CEDA event to examine AI-generated threats and trust

The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) will host an event in Brisbane examining the impact of AI-generated scams, synthetic media and the challenge of maintaining trust in digital environments. The discussion will focus on the economic and reputational risks posed by deepfakes, voice cloning, phishing campaigns and fraudulent online services.

The event, titled ‘The scam economy: How to manage AI-generated threats and build trust’, will examine how businesses can maintain trust with stakeholders when visual, audio, and written material can be generated or manipulated using AI. It will bring together communications, cyber, technology, finance, and policy experts.

The discussion comes ahead of the entry into force of Australia’s Scams Prevention Framework Act 2025 on 1 July. Under the new framework, banks, telecommunications providers and digital platforms will be required to take proactive steps to prevent, detect and respond to scam activity.

CEDA says the event will explore how businesses can manage the economic risks of AI-generated fraud as synthetic media becomes more accessible and harder to identify. The programme will be held at Pullman King George Square in Brisbane.

Why does it matter?

Advances in generative AI are making it easier and cheaper to create convincing fake content, including images, videos, voices and websites. These tools are increasingly being used in fraud schemes that target consumers, businesses and public institutions.

As AI-generated deception becomes more sophisticated, organisations face growing challenges in maintaining trust, verifying authenticity and protecting users from scams. The discussion reflects broader efforts by governments and industry to adapt regulatory and security frameworks to emerging AI-related risks.

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Meta turns to subscriptions amid growing AI infrastructure costs

Meta has launched paid subscription plans for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp as part of a broader effort to diversify revenue beyond advertising. The new offerings form part of a subscription strategy called ‘Meta One‘.

Meta said the subscriptions include additional features for users, while separate premium offerings for creators, businesses and Meta AI users are currently being tested. The company indicated that these future services will also sit under the Meta One umbrella.

The announcement comes as Meta continues to increase spending on AI infrastructure. The company has projected capital expenditure of between USD 125 billion and USD 145 billion in 2026, much of it linked to AI data centres, increasing investor attention on how those investments will generate returns.

According to Euronews, Meta shares rose following the announcement. The company said subscription products will roll out globally, while some future Meta One offerings are expected to begin testing in selected markets outside the EU.

Why does it matter?

The launch of Meta One marks a further shift in Meta’s business strategy as the company looks to diversify revenue beyond digital advertising. Subscription services could provide new income streams while supporting investments in AI infrastructure and premium digital products.

The move also reflects a broader trend among technology companies seeking alternative business models as competition intensifies and AI development costs continue to rise.

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OECD links AI openness to innovation and economic growth

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has published a discussion paper for the G7 on the potential economic and strategic benefits of AI openness.

The paper, prepared at the request of France’s 2026 G7 Presidency, is intended to inform discussions in the G7 Digital and Technology Working Group ahead of the G7 Digital and Technology Ministerial Meeting in Paris.

AI openness is defined by the OECD as the broad public availability and ease of access to key artefacts and documentation across the AI stack, including model weights and code, datasets, documentation, safety tooling, and compute resources. The paper examines how openness can affect economic outcomes, innovation dynamics, and national or regional AI ecosystems.

The OECD says open-weight AI models are becoming increasingly competitive with proprietary alternatives. According to the paper, open models achieve approximately 90% of the performance of closed models at launch, while often being available at significantly lower cost, resulting in a higher quality-to-price ratio.

The paper also finds a positive and statistically significant relationship between AI open-source activity and economic growth across the 33 countries analysed. Using GitHub contributions as a proxy for AI openness, the OECD says the evidence suggests the potential economic benefits of open-source AI activity.

Beyond economic performance, the OECD says AI openness can support stronger and more resilient national AI ecosystems by expanding access to models, data, and tools. Open approaches can shift value creation towards downstream layers of the AI stack, where start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises, public institutions, and other actors can adapt systems to local or sector-specific needs.

The paper also links AI openness to technological sovereignty and strategic autonomy. It says local deployment and adaptation of models can help organisations and governments retain control over sensitive data, reduce dependence on external providers, and support transparency, auditability, and trust.

The OECD notes that the paper focuses on the benefits of AI openness, while potential risks and downsides fall outside its scope and are left for future research.

Why does it matter?

The paper adds economic and strategic arguments to the debate over open AI. For policymakers, openness is not only a technical design choice but a question of innovation diffusion, local value creation, competitiveness, and dependence on foreign providers. However, because the paper focuses mainly on benefits, its conclusions should be read alongside separate work on the safety, misuse, security, and governance risks of more open AI systems.

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Canada pushes digital innovation agenda at G7 Digital Ministers’ Meeting

Canada highlighted AI, quantum technologies, and digital innovation during the 2026 G7 Digital Ministers’ Meeting in Paris, where ministers discussed responsible technology development and economic competitiveness.

Minister Evan Solomon engaged with counterparts and industry leaders on strengthening cooperation in AI and quantum research. Canada and France signed a joint statement to expand cooperation in quantum science through joint research, knowledge sharing and workforce development initiatives.

Discussions at the G7 and related business forums emphasised the importance of aligning public policy and industry innovation to support the adoption of emerging technologies. Priorities included secure AI deployment, digital resilience, and ensuring that technological progress supports inclusive economic growth.

Canada also announced new international partnerships, including projects applying AI to medical diagnostics and surgical support systems. Officials emphasised that trusted global cooperation remains central to ensuring that innovation delivers both economic value and wider societal benefits.

Why does it matter?

International coordination on AI and quantum technologies is becoming increasingly important as these systems move from research settings into core areas of economic activity, healthcare, and industrial production.

Stronger cooperation between governments and industry can help shape common standards, reduce fragmentation in digital policy, and ensure that technological innovation translates into sustainable growth and broadly shared benefits.

The Canada–France partnership and broader G7 discussions reflect growing efforts to shape common approaches to emerging technologies while supporting their adoption across sectors such as healthcare, industry and digital infrastructure.

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G7 agrees on the first common principles on protecting children online

G7 digital ministers have agreed a shared set of principles for protecting children and young people from online harm for the first time, marking the first coordinated approach adopted by the group on the issue. The agreement, reached during talks in Paris, sets shared principles for addressing risks linked to harmful content, exploitation and the use of AI chatbots.

The principles call for stronger digital literacy, robust online safety practices by digital service providers and safety measures built into digital services from the start. The agreement also sets expectations for effective age assurance and closer cooperation between providers, children, parents and guardians.

Ministers also called for improved access to data and research on how digital services affect children’s well-being, including greater cooperation among platforms, researchers and families. UK Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said: ‘The agreements we have reached today are an important step on that journey: outlining a shared approach to protecting our children, backing our small businesses to adopt AI, and ensuring AI is developed safely and responsibly.’

The G7 also reaffirmed its commitment to promoting trustworthy AI while continuing discussions on assessing and managing AI-related risks. Under France’s presidency, members agreed to continue discussions on a mutual understanding of AI risk assessment frameworks, including in relation to cyberattacks and chemical and biological capabilities.

Ministers also backed support for small and medium-sized enterprises to adopt AI through a tool developed with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). G7 members also agreed a Vision on AI Openness and committed to further work on AI-generated content detection, secure AI systems, trusted data flows, and resource-efficient digital and AI infrastructure.

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Finland proposes rules for EU Cyber Resilience Act

The Finnish Government has proposed the approval of national provisions supplementing the EU Cyber Resilience Act, which sets cybersecurity requirements for products with digital elements.

The legislation will enter into force on 1 June 2026, with phased application aligned with the Cyber Resilience Act’s transitional periods during 2026 and 2027. The aim is to improve the cybersecurity of connected devices and software placed on the EU market.

The Cyber Resilience Act will be supplemented in Finland by a new national act on the cyber resilience of certain products and cybersecurity certification. The act covers supervision of product-related obligations, notification of conformity assessment bodies under the Cyber Resilience Act, administrative sanctions, and national provisions linked to the EU cybersecurity certification.

Market surveillance under the Cyber Resilience Act, along with the designation and supervision of notified bodies, will be assigned to the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency, Traficom. Market surveillance of high-risk AI systems will be carried out by the authorities responsible for supervising compliance with the AI Act, depending on the sector.

Conformity assessment bodies will be able to apply to Traficom from 11 June 2026 to be notified for assessment tasks under the Cyber Resilience Act. Bodies notified by Finland will be able to carry out conformity assessments across the EU member states within their area of competence.

Finland will also add a new chapter to the Act on Electronic Communications Services concerning the collection and disclosure of domain name registration data under the NIS2 Directive. The obligations will extend beyond .fi and .ax domains where the registrar or top-level domain registry is located in Finland, after a three-month transitional period.

The Government said the domain name provisions will complement Finland’s national implementation of NIS2 and improve the availability of registration data, making it easier to tackle illegal activity online.

Why does it matter?

Finland’s legislation shows how EU cybersecurity rules are being translated into national enforcement structures. The Cyber Resilience Act sets product security obligations at the EU level, but member states still need national provisions for supervision, notified bodies, sanctions, and certification. The added NIS2 domain registration rules also show how cybersecurity implementation is expanding beyond products into online infrastructure and data availability for enforcement.

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Anthropic launches Claude Opus 4.8 with improved reasoning capabilities

Anthropic has introduced Claude Opus 4.8, an upgraded version of its flagship AI model, with improvements across coding, agentic tasks, reasoning, and practical knowledge work.

The company said the model builds on Claude Opus 4.7 and is available at the same regular pricing. Anthropic also said that fast mode for Opus 4.8 can run 2.5 times as fast and is now 3 times cheaper than fast mode for previous models.

A key focus of the release is reliability. Anthropic said early testers found Opus 4.8 sharper in judgement when performing agentic tasks, more likely to flag uncertainty, and less likely to make unsupported claims. The company’s evaluations also found the model to be around four times less likely than its predecessor to leave flaws in its own code unremarked.

New features include dynamic workflows in Claude Code, available in research preview, allowing Claude to plan and run hundreds of parallel subagents in a single session for large-scale tasks. Anthropic said the feature can support codebase-scale migrations across hundreds of thousands of lines of code.

Users on claude.ai and Claude Cowork can also control how much effort Claude applies to a response. Higher effort settings are designed to improve quality for difficult tasks, while lower effort settings allow faster responses and slower use of rate limits.

Anthropic also reported stronger alignment results for Opus 4.8 compared with Opus 4.7. Its alignment assessment found lower rates of misaligned behaviour, such as deception or misuse of cooperation, and stronger support for user autonomy and user interests.

The model is available across Anthropic’s platforms, and developers can access it through the Claude API using the claude-opus-4-8 model name.

Why does it matter?

Claude Opus 4.8 shows how frontier AI competition is moving beyond benchmark performance towards reliability in professional workflows. Features such as effort control, dynamic workflows, cheaper fast mode, and stronger agentic task performance point to a market shift in which AI systems are expected to manage longer, more complex work in coding, research, analysis, and enterprise operations while giving users greater control over cost, speed, and reasoning depth.

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GCHQ outlines AI-driven cyber defence programme for protecting critical infrastructure

The UK’s signals intelligence agency GCHQ has announced plans to develop an AI-powered national cyber defence capability that would use autonomous software agents to identify and respond to cyber threats at machine speed. Speaking publicly, GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler described the initiative as a ‘blueprint for a new national cyber defence capability’ to be operational within five years.

The programme would apply agentic AI to monitor and protect critical sectors including energy, water, healthcare, transport, and financial services. According to Keast-Butler, advances in AI are accelerating the discovery of software vulnerabilities, increasing pressure on defenders to identify and mitigate risks more quickly.

UK Security Minister Dan Jarvis had previously outlined the national cyber shield concept in April, noting that protecting critical infrastructure in an AI-enabled environment would require approaches beyond standard commercial security products. The Cabinet Office has since approached AI companies to contribute to the development of these capabilities.

GCHQ is separately integrating AI into its intelligence analysis workflows, including language translation and large-scale data processing.

Alongside the cyber defence announcement, Keast-Butler addressed two further technical priorities. On quantum computing, she noted that post-quantum encryption is now an active planning requirement rather than a future consideration, pointing to National Cyber Security Centre guidance on transitioning to quantum-resistant algorithms. On space, she observed that the volume of orbital infrastructure has grown substantially — over 10,000 new objects launched in three years — with GCHQ working to secure space-based systems that underpin data transmission globally.

GCHQ’s Mathematics directorate is developing new cryptographic methods suited to the post-quantum environment, building on the agency’s role in pioneering public-key cryptography in the 1970s.

Taken together, the announcements sketch a broader shift in how GCHQ positions its role. The announcements suggest a broader role for GCHQ, combining intelligence, cybersecurity, cryptography and infrastructure protection as part of the UK’s wider digital resilience strategy.

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Australian trial tests AI-guided radiotherapy for liver cancer

The Central Coast Cancer Centre in New South Wales is playing a lead role in a clinical trial exploring how AI can improve the precision of radiotherapy for liver cancer.

Led by the University of Sydney’s Image X Institute, the trial uses AI-powered X-ray imaging to track liver tumours in real time as patients breathe. The Central Coast Cancer Centre is the lead site for liver cancer in the study.

Current treatment practices often involve surgically implanting markers into the liver to help locate the tumour as it moves with the patient’s breathing. The AI tool maps and tracks tumour location with high precision, potentially reducing the need for invasive surgical intervention.

Liver tumours can shift during breathing, creating challenges for accurate radiation delivery. Researchers hope the technology will help indicate when clinicians need to intervene in radiotherapy delivery and, in future, support automated intervention during treatment.

Around 3,000 people are diagnosed with liver cancer in Australia each year, representing about 2% of all new cancer cases. NSW officials said early results from the trial are promising, but researchers are currently using the AI tool in a non-interventional setting.

The trial is supported by NSW investment in clinical trial infrastructure, with the state government providing A$5 million a year through the Cancer Institute NSW to strengthen clinical trial sites across New South Wales.

Why does it matter?

The trial shows how AI is moving into clinical workflows where precision, timing, and patient comfort matter. If validated, AI-guided imaging could reduce reliance on invasive marker implantation and improve tumour tracking during radiotherapy. However, the technology remains under clinical evaluation, so the policy-relevant point is not that AI has already transformed liver cancer treatment, but that public health systems are testing practical AI applications in treatment delivery.

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Digital citizenship education key focus at Council of Europe policy forum

The second European Forum on digital citizenship education has concluded in Strasbourg, bringing together policymakers, educators, civil society groups, youth organisations, and parents to discuss responsible participation in digital societies.

Participants examined practical approaches to digital citizenship education, with discussions focusing on AI in education, children’s rights online, critical thinking, inclusion, and safe participation in digital spaces. Particular attention was given to the role of parents and families in helping young people develop responsible and informed online behaviours.

The forum also contributed to preparations for the Council of Europe’s Road Map for strengthening digital citizenship education for 2027–2031. Stakeholders highlighted the need for closer cooperation between public authorities, the private sector, and civil society to support effective implementation.

Outcomes from the event will inform ongoing Council of Europe work to promote democratic values, human rights, and active participation in the digital era, while helping learners and education professionals respond to the growing influence of technology on society.

Why does it matter?

Digital citizenship education is becoming a strategic policy issue as societies try to ensure that technological change is matched by the skills needed for safe, informed, and responsible participation online. The Council of Europe forum links digital literacy with democratic participation, children’s rights, critical thinking, inclusion, and human rights-based digital transformation.

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