Digital standards

Streaming platforms face pressure over AI-generated music

Musicians are raising the alarm over AI-generated tracks appearing on their profiles without consent, presenting fraudulent work as their own. British folk artist Emily Portman discovered an AI-generated album, Orca, on Spotify and Apple Music, which copied her folk style and lyrics.

Fans initially congratulated her on a release she had not made since 2022.

Australian musician Paul Bender reported a similar experience, with four ‘bizarrely bad’ AI tracks appearing under his band, The Sweet Enoughs. Both artists said that weak distributor security allows scammers to easily upload content, calling it ‘the easiest scam in the world.’

A petition launched by Bender garnered tens of thousands of signatures, urging platforms to strengthen their protections.

AI-generated music has become increasingly sophisticated, making it nearly impossible for listeners to distinguish from genuine tracks. While revenues from such fraudulent streams are low individually, bots and repeated listening can significantly increase payouts.

Industry representatives note that the primary motive is to collect royalties from unsuspecting users.

Despite the threat of impersonation, Portman is continuing her creative work, emphasising human collaboration and authentic artistry. Spotify and Apple Music have pledged to collaborate with distributors to enhance the detection and prevention of AI-generated fraud.

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Russia rejects crypto as money but expands legal recognition

Russian lawmakers have reiterated that cryptocurrencies will not be recognised as money, maintaining a strict ban on their use for domestic payments while allowing limited application as investment assets.

Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market, emphasised that all payments within Russia must be conducted in rubles, echoing the central bank’s long-standing stance against the use of cryptocurrencies in internal settlements.

At the same time, legislative proposals point to a more nuanced legal approach. A bill submitted by United Russia lawmaker Igor Antropenko seeks to recognise cryptocurrencies as marital property, classifying digital assets acquired during marriage as jointly owned in divorce proceedings.

The proposal reflects the growing adoption of cryptocurrency in Russia, where digital assets are increasingly used for investment and savings. It also aligns family law with broader regulatory shifts that permit the use of crypto in foreign trade under an experimental framework.

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AI generated podcasts flood platforms and disrupt the audio industry

Podcasts generated by AI are rapidly reshaping the audio industry, with automated shows flooding platforms such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Advances in voice cloning and speech synthesis have enabled the production to large volumes of content at minimal cost, allowing AI hosts to compete directly with human creators in an already crowded market.

Some established podcasters are experimenting cautiously, using cloned voices for translation, post-production edits or emergency replacements. Others have embraced full automation, launching synthetic personalities designed to deliver commentary, biographies and niche updates at speed.

Studios, such as Los Angeles-based Inception Point AI, have scaled the model to scale, producing hundreds of thousands of episodes by targeting micro-audiences and trending searches instead of premium advertising slots.

The rapid expansion is fuelling concern across the industry, where trust and human connection remain central to listener loyalty.

Researchers and networks warn that large-scale automation risks devaluing premium content, while creators and audiences question how far AI voices can replace authenticity without undermining the medium itself.

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Zoom launches AI Companion 3.0 with expanded features

Zoom has unveiled AI Companion 3.0, its latest AI assistant, which extends functionality beyond meetings with a new web interface, workflow tools, and agentic search. Select features are now accessible to free Zoom Workplace Basic users, while full access is available via a paid add-on.

Free users can generate meeting summaries, action item lists, and insights, albeit with usage limitations.

The updated AI Companion introduces agentic retrieval, enabling searches across meeting summaries, transcripts, and connected services, such as Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, with Gmail and Outlook support planned.

Users can automatically generate follow-up tasks and draft emails using a post-meeting template, while the Daily Reflection Report summarises tasks and updates to help prioritise work.

A new agentic writing mode allows drafting, editing, and refining business documents in a canvas-style interface, and AI-created content can be exported in multiple formats, including Markdown, PDF, Word, and Zoom Docs.

Additional tools include AI-based brainstorming and, for Custom AI Companion users, a deep research mode consolidating insights from multiple meetings and documents.

Basic plan users get limited access for up to three meetings per month, including automated summaries, in-meeting queries, and AI-generated notes. Up to 20 prompts are included via the side panel and web interface, while broader access requires a subscription priced at Rs 1,080 per month.

The new web interface also offers built-in prompts to guide users in exploring the assistant’s capabilities.

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Canada advances quantum computing with a strategic $92 million public investment

Canada has launched a major new quantum initiative aimed at strengthening domestic technological sovereignty and accelerating the development of industrial-scale quantum computing.

Announced in Toronto, Phase 1 of the Canadian Quantum Champions Program forms part of a wider $334.3 million investment under Budget 2025 to expand Canada’s quantum ecosystem.

The programme will provide up to $92 million in initial funding, with agreements signed with Anyon Systems, Nord Quantique, Photonic and Xanadu Quantum Technologies for up to $23 million each.

A funding that is designed to support the development of fault-tolerant quantum computers capable of solving real-world problems, while anchoring advanced research, talent, and production in Canada, rather than allowing strategic capabilities to migrate abroad.

The initiative also supports Canada’s forthcoming Defence Industrial Strategy, reflecting the growing role of quantum technologies in cryptography, materials science and threat analysis.

Technical progress will be assessed through a new Benchmarking Quantum Platform led by the National Research Council of Canada, with further programme phases to be announced as development milestones are reached.

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Study warns that LLMs are vulnerable to minimal tampering

Researchers from Anthropic, the UK AI Security Institute and the Alan Turing Institute have shown that only a few hundred crafted samples can poison LLM models. The tests revealed that around 250 malicious entries could embed a backdoor that triggers gibberish responses when a specific phrase appears.

Models ranging from 600 million to 13 billion parameters (such as Pythia) were affected, highlighting the scale-independent nature of the weakness. A planted phrase such as ‘sudo’ caused output collapse, raising concerns about targeted disruption and the ease of manipulating widely trained systems.

Security specialists note that denial-of-service effects are worrying, yet deceptive outputs pose far greater risk. Prior studies already demonstrated that medical and safety-critical models can be destabilised by tiny quantities of misleading data, heightening the urgency for robust dataset controls.

Researchers warn that open ecosystems and scraped corpora make silent data poisoning increasingly feasible. Developers are urged to adopt stronger provenance checks and continuous auditing, as reliance on LLMs continues to expand for AI purposes across technical and everyday applications.

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Google boosts Translate with Gemini upgrades

Google is rolling out a major Translate upgrade powered by Gemini to improve text and speech translation. The update enhances contextual understanding so idioms, tone and intent are interpreted more naturally.

A beta feature for live headphone translation enables real-time speech-to-speech output. Gemini processes audio directly, preserving cadence and emphasis to improve conversations and lectures. Android users in the US, Mexico and India gain early access, with wider availability planned for 2026.

Translate is also gaining expanded language-learning tools for speaking practice and progress tracking. Additional language pairs, including English to German and Portuguese, broaden support for learners worldwide.

Google aims to reduce friction in global communication by focusing on meaning rather than literal phrasing. Engineers expect user feedback to shape the AI live translation beta across platforms.

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CES 2026 to feature LG’s new AI-driven in-car platform

LG Electronics will unveil a new AI Cabin Platform at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, positioning the system as a next step beyond today’s software-defined vehicles and toward what the company calls AI-defined mobility.

The platform is designed to run on automotive high-performance computing systems and is powered by Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon Cockpit Elite. LG says it applies generative AI models directly to in-vehicle infotainment, enabling more context-aware and personalised driving experiences.

Unlike cloud-dependent systems, all AI processing occurs on-device within the vehicle. LG says this approach enables real-time responses while improving reliability, privacy, and data security by avoiding communication with external servers.

Using data from internal and external cameras, the system can assess driving conditions and driver awareness to provide proactive alerts. LG also demonstrated adaptive infotainment features, including AI-generated visuals and music suggestions that respond to weather, time, and driving context.

LG will showcase the AI Cabin Platform at a private CES event, alongside a preview of its AI-defined vehicle concept. The company says the platform builds on its expanding partnership with Qualcomm Technologies and on its earlier work integrating infotainment and driver-assistance systems.

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Conduit revolutionises neuro-language research with 10,000-hour dataset

A San Francisco start-up, named Conduit, has spent six months building what it claims is the largest neural language dataset ever assembled, capturing around 10,000 hours of non-invasive brain recordings from thousands of participants.

The project aims to train thought-to-text AI systems that interpret semantic intent from brain activity moments before speech or typing occurs.

Participants take part in extended conversational sessions instead of rigid laboratory tasks, interacting freely with large language models through speech or simplified keyboards.

Engineers found that natural dialogue produced higher quality data, allowing tighter alignment between neural signals, audio and text while increasing overall language output per session.

Conduit developed its own sensing hardware after finding no commercial system capable of supporting large-scale multimodal recording.

Custom headsets combine multiple neural sensing techniques within dense training rigs, while future inference devices will be simplified once model behaviour becomes clearer.

Power systems and data pipelines were repeatedly redesigned to balance signal clarity with scalability, leading to improved generalisation across users and environments.

As data volume increased, operational costs fell through automation and real time quality control, allowing continuous collection across long daily schedules.

With data gathering largely complete, the focus has shifted toward model training, raising new questions about the future of neural interfaces, AI-mediated communication and cognitive privacy.

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Europe risks falling behind without telecom scale, Telefónica says

Telefónica has called for a shift in Europe’s telecommunications policy, arguing that market fragmentation is undermining investment, digital competitiveness, and the continent’s technological sovereignty, according to a new blog post from the company.

In the post, Telefónica says Europe’s emphasis on maximising retail competition has produced a highly fragmented operator landscape. It cites industry data showing the average European operator serves around five million customers, far fewer than peers in the United States or China.

The company argues that this lack of scale explains Europe’s lower per-capita investment in telecoms infrastructure and is slowing the rollout of technologies such as standalone 5G, fibre networks, and sovereign cloud and AI platforms.

Telefónica points to recent reports by Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta as signs of a policy shift, with EU institutions placing greater weight on investment capacity, resilience, and dynamic efficiency alongside traditional competition objectives.

The blog post concludes that Europe faces a strategic choice between preserving fragmented markets or enabling responsible consolidation. Telefónica says carefully regulated mergers could support sustainability, reduce regional digital divides, and strengthen Europe’s digital infrastructure.

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