Thyssenkrupp says India’s Jindal Steel makes bid for steel business


By AFP
September 16, 2025


Once a symbol of German industrial might, Thyssenkrup's fortunes have waned in recent years - Copyright AFP/File Brendan SMIALOWSKI

Louis VAN BOXEL-WOOLF

India’s Jindal Steel International has made an offer for Thyssenkrupp’s steel division, the German company said Tuesday, in what would be a mega-deal for the struggling industrial titan.

Once a symbol of German manufacturing might, Thyssenkrupp has fallen into crisis in recent years as it battles high manufacturing costs at home and fierce competition from Asian rivals, particularly in the traditional steel business.

The sprawling conglomerate — whose businesses range from auto parts to submarine-making — has long been seeking to get rid of the loss-making steel unit which is in the midst of a painful restructuring.

It confirmed in a statement that it had received a “non-binding” offer from Jindal Steel International for the purchase of Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe (TKSE).

The group said it would “carefully review” the offer and pay “particular attention” to what it would mean for jobs.

Jindal said it was “committed” to the production of green steel, which has been a key focus for Thyssenkrupp in recent years.

Neither side mentioned a possible purchase price for the steel business, but the news sent the conglomerate’s shares up almost eight percent in Frankfurt.

Juergen Kerner, workers’ representative on the Thyssenkrupp board, said the offer from “growth-oriented” Jindal Steel was “good news” for employees.

“Jindal Steel has its own access to raw materials and expertise in the green transformation,” he said, adding it was important to enter into discussions quickly to “gain clarity” on important questions.

The steel unit had announced in November last year it would seek to cut 11,000 jobs by 2030 — about 40 percent of its workforce.

The Indian offer however sets up a potential battle with Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, who last year acquired a stake in TKSE through his holding company EPCG.



– Green steel –



Thyssenkrupp has been seeking to navigate the long-term costs of the green transition.

CEO Miguel Lopez warned in March that a new site in the western city of Duisburg, which forms the heart of its steel operations, designed to produce carbon-neutral steel might not be profitable.

In a statement, Jindal Steel said it was committed to making green steel at the same time as turning a profit.

“We believe in the future of green steel production in Germany and Europe,” said Narendra Misra, head of European Operations at Jindal.

“Our goal is to preserve and advance the 200-year-old heritage of Thyssenkrupp.”

Jindal said it would invest in further green steel production and make Thyssenkrupp “the largest low-emission steel producer in Europe,” adding that it already had a similar site in Oman which is due to start production in 2027.

A spokesman for Kretinsky’s EPCG declined to comment on the Indian offer.

Previously Thyssenkrupp has said discussions were ongoing with the Czech billionaire about “an equal 50/50 joint venture”.

Offloading the steel business is part of a broader plan to split Thyssenkrupp into a series of standalone businesses with the aim of boosting profitability.

Robotaxis as a new medium of public transportation in some U.S. cities

By Markos Papadatos
September 18, 2025
DIGITAL JOURNAL

Waymo robotaxis in San Francisco. Photo Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Waymo, the American autonomous driving technology company, is teaming up with the tech transit startup Via where it will integrate its autonomous vehicles into city public transit networks. It is slated to start with the growing suburb of Phoenix, Arizona.
Robotaxis in Arizona

In the city of Chandler, Arizona, according to The Verge, Waymo’s robotaxis are expected to join the town’s Flex microtransit service.

According to Reuters, the service will be introduced “this fall in the city’s on-demand small-scale public transportation service, Chandler Flex, which is powered by Via’s software.”

Presently, travelers can book their rides via the local Flex app, where they can be picked up by a shared vehicle and subsequently are taken to their desired destination with the chance to connect to Valley Metro bus routes.

In the near future, travelers will be matched with Waymo’s fully autonomous vehicles as part of the service.
A cost-efficient option, which is also accessible for teenagers

This service is slated to fun from Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. with rides booked through Chandler Flex costing just two dollars for regular riders, one dollar for seniors and wheelchair users, and free for middle and high school kids.

Speaking of teenagers, Waymo introduced “teen accounts,” where teenagers in Phoenix (as young as 14 years old) can use this service without their parents.
Robotaxis in San Francisco

This isn’t Waymo’s first introduction into the public transit world. A year ago, it tested out a system to credit customers that use robotaxis to connect to or from transit stations in the San Francisco Bay Area; moreover, this company offered discounts to transit riders in the Los Angeles area.

Waymo also offers paid driverless rides to the public in Austin and Atlanta.

Daniel Ramot, Via’s co-founder and CEO, feels that this partnership with Waymo will help AVs (autonomous vehicles) to become accessible to millions of public transit riders, which will “enhance mobility, lower operating costs, and improve safety outcomes.”
Pros and cons of this autonomous vehicles (AV) feature

Some of the negatives of this feature are that some experts worry that autonomous vehicles might remove riders gradually from transit, which might lead to service cuts.

Also, most people that use ride-shares might not want to transfer to another mode of transportation, especially since they just want to get their destination in the fastest manner possible; moreover, regular transit users (who often tend to me more low-income) may experience difficulties affording rideshare trips.

The partnership has the potential to introduce more passengers to Waymo’s driverless technology. The idea of autonomous rides along a planned route for a low cost and a flat fare will certainly open up this new form of technology to a new portion of the population.
Alibaba enters the robotaxi market

In other robotaxi market news, Yahoo Finance reported that Alibaba Group Holding has jumped into the burgeoning robotaxi market by investing in Hello, a ride-hailing business. This is a bright and promising area for artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

Written By Markos Papadatos
Markos Papadatos is Digital Journal's Editor-at-Large for Music News. Papadatos is a Greek-American journalist and educator that has authored over 23,000 original articles over the past 19 years. He has interviewed some of the biggest names in music, entertainment, lifestyle, magic, and sports. He is a 16-time "Best of Long Island" winner, where for three consecutive years (2020, 2021, and 2022), he was honored as the "Best Long Island Personality" in Arts & Entertainment, an honor that has gone to Billy Joel six times.

Germans turn to health apps as insurers foot the bill


By AFP
September 16, 2025


German health insurers now cover 56 different online healthcare applications 

- Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP JUSTIN SULLIVAN

Léa PERNELLE

German doctors are increasingly prescribing smartphone health apps alongside pills and therapy to patients, marking a growing trend towards digital healthcare.

Civil servant Mona Noe, 30, has long kept close watch over her diet in order to reduce cramps and bloating caused by irritable bowel syndrome.

Noe managed to persuade her doctor to prescribe her the app Cara Care, where she receives wellness tips and keeps a food diary to identify her pain triggers.

“It is difficult to do it by yourself,” she said, preparing a vegetable stir fry without peppers or tomatoes at her home in Schleiden in western Germany, as per the app’s instructions.

“The app has transformed my cooking by helping me avoid certain foods.”

Applications that help patients quit smoking, fight obesity or improve their mental health often cost hundreds of euros a month, but insurance companies are helping by footing the bill.

The programme Noe uses is one of 56 now covered by German health insurers, signalling the country’s turn towards digital health over traditional pen and paper options.



– ‘Around the clock’ –



The digital health tools, known as “DiGA” in Germany, have been available on prescription since 2020, typically on three-month renewable subscriptions.

In the five years since the programme began, more than one million prescriptions have been written, according to a study by digital healthcare sector association SVDGV.

Nearly 60 percent of doctors in Germany have prescribed at least one DiGA, and the number of prescriptions written for them in 2024 was up by 85 percent from the previous year.

Johannes Patze, a doctor in Frankfurt, said he prescribes them “almost daily” — particularly for mental health support while patients are on a waiting list for a therapy appointment.

The apps provide patients with personalised mood tracking, online consultations with professionals, meditation sessions and motivational notifications.

The benefit, Patze said, is that “they’re available around the clock, 24/7”.

But they come with a cost. A three-month health app subscription costs 600 euros ($705) on average.

Health insurers have paid out 234 million euros for subscription services since 2020.



– ‘Easing the burden’ –



Germany’s Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds has criticised “excessive” application pricing and warns that there is little hard evidence to back up how effective they are.

But Patze told AFP that the apps could prove a reliable way of lowering healthcare costs in years to come.

Germany spent 326.9 billion euros on healthcare in 2024 — higher than in previous years and partly due to an ageing population.

“The costs are probably lower in the long run since patients are better taken care of,” said Patze.

Digital health consultant Henrik Matthies agreed.

“It’s an upfront cost,” he said, “but it helps patients get back to work sooner, easing the burden on the healthcare system.”

The success of health apps in Germany is partly down to a fast-track approval process that is unusual in a country often mocked for its tedious bureaucracy.

App developers can obtain provisional approval for a programme within three months of applying. They then have a year to demonstrate its clinical effectiveness.

This speedy process “was a catalyst” for the system, Matthies said. Of 228 applications made in the past five years, 43 have received full approval and 13 are still under review.

The ethics of workplace facial recognition: Is robust policy the answer?


By Dr. Tim Sandle
SCIENCE EDITOR

DIGITAL JOURNAL
September 16, 2025


Facial recognition technology. — Image by © Tim Sandle

The major telecoms company AT&T recently tracked employee attendance to find so-called ‘freeloaders’. Specifically, AT&T tracked employee attendance using an automated system that includes methods like geo-fencing, mobile check-in, and biometric readers. This system enabled managers to see real-time attendance status and receive alerts for unplanned absences.

Facial authentication can improve workplace security, but adoption must be transparent, ethical, and paced thoughtfully to avoid backlash. In this recent case, AT&T acknowledged that their attendance tracking system was not fully accurate and as a result this caused frustration among employees.

The technology deployed by AT&T was initially used to identify non-compliance with return-to-office policies. After this, management opted to extend it, and the aftermath created an adverse reaction from their employees.

Beyond this incident, the concept of attendance tracking underscores a bigger trend. This has led many commentators to declare that there needs to be ethical boundaries when using this technology.

Mike Nielsen, CMO of RealSense, a pioneer in AI-powered computer vision, and expert in biometrics, has highlighted the ethical use of biometric data collection.

Some companies see advantages in the adoption of this form of technology:


Convenience & Speed: Facial authentication enables seamless, hands-free authentication, eliminating the need for physical credentials and reducing entry-point friction.

Security & Fraud Prevention: Advanced algorithms and liveness detection mitigate risks of spoofing, identity fraud, and unauthorized access attempts.

Cost Savings: Single-factor biometric authentication reduces expenses associated with credential replacement, administrative overhead, and scalability challenges.

However, as Neilson points out, facial authentication technology raises ethical concerns, particularly regarding privacy, consent, and data security. Enterprises must navigate these issues while concurrently ensuring compliance with a complex regulatory landscape.

Nielsen has contributed to the RealSense and The Access Control Collective white paper, ‘The Ethical Application of Facial Authentication in Enterprise Access Control in Western Markets‘. This document covers:Key ethical challenges and how to address them
Best practices for responsible enterprise deployment
How to balance safety, security, and employee trust

As such, the document argues there is a middle ground. By examining the interplay between technology, compliance, and ethical responsibility, this paper provides a framework for organisations seeking to deploy facial authentication for access control in a way that enhances security while respecting privacy and regulatory requirements.

The paper recommends that the best way to strike a balance is through detailed policy development. This should include establishing clear stances surrounding the ethical use of facial authentication for access control helps ease concerns and defines the unknowns for potential users.

This could include:Employ No Surveillance Policies – Communicate that facial authentication is used strictly for authentication, not for tracking or monitoring.
Commit to Regulatory Compliance as a Baseline –Organisations should proactively implement higher standards for data protection, security, and privacy rather than just meeting minimum legal requirements.
Prioritise Local Processing – Commit to edge-based facial authentication processing where possible to maintain greater control over biometric data.
Engage in Data Minimization and User Control – Take a strict approach to data collection by only storing what is necessary and allowing users to review, manage, or delete their biometric data upon request.

By prioritising privacy, security, and transparency, the report takes the position that organisations can harness the benefits of facial authentication while mitigating potential risks

India’s gaming fans eye illegal sites after gambling ban


By AFP
September 16, 2025


India last month passed a law banning online gambling

 - Copyright AFP/File Sajjad HUSSAIN

Faisal KAMAL with Anuj SRIVAS in Mumbai

India’s ban on online gambling has shuttered a billion-dollar industry serving hundreds of millions of people and torpedoed the sponsorship of the national cricket team.

But players say those determined to bet will find a way to access overseas and unregulated websites while fans of fantasy sport apps can still play, although for prizes and not cash.

Adarsh Sharma, an advertising professional who regularly played fantasy sports games, said offshore sites will “see a sudden boom” as Indian gamblers look for a fix.

“A habit once formed cannot be broken easily,” he said. “It is an addiction and people will find ways to gamble.”

India’s parliament last month passed a sweeping law banning online gambling after government figures showed companies had stripped $2.3 billion annually from 450 million people.

Officials said the rapid spread of the platforms caused widespread financial distress, addiction and suicide, while also being linked to fraud, money laundering and financing terrorism.

The law has been challenged in court by a top online card games platform.

The ban impacts websites and apps for card games and fantasy sports — including India’s wildly popular fantasy cricket — with offenders now facing up to five years in prison.

India’s online gamblers will have to use virtual private networks (VPNs) to trick overseas websites into thinking they are not in the country, and also use proxy credit cards for placing a bet.

The whole process may seem too cumbersome for an average internet user, but gamblers know how to dodge the rules.

“We have done this before and will do it again,” one fan told AFP, asking not to be named. “We will go back to our old ways of making money.”

– ‘Love of cricket’ –

Technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the law separates still-legal eSports “from betting, gambling and fantasy money games that exploit users with false promises of profit”.

Dream11 — which boasts of being the world’s largest fantasy sports platform, with 260 million users — posted notices that “cash games and contests have been discontinued”.

It now offers prizes such as cars, phones and fridges instead.

Dream11 also pulled out of a $43 million deal with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), with its logo no longer splashed on the jerseys of the Indian players.

Jamshed Noor, a butcher in the capital Delhi, said his top win had been 600 rupees (about $7), a day’s wage for a labourer.

“We play it for the love of cricket,” said Noor. “Money was definitely an attraction, but I still play, despite money being off the table now.”

The law will also shake up the wider sporting industry, including the hugely lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket competition.

“Fantasy platforms are the most aggressive advertisers in IPL and world cricket,” Karan Taurani from Elara Capital said, adding that they would now likely explore the overseas market.

Santosh N, of D and P Advisory, estimated that fantasy sports and crypto platforms accounted for up to 40 percent of the advertisement IPL broadcasters earned this year.

“The fantasy guys will obviously reduce their ad spends because their business model is at stake — or actually destroyed due to the ban,” Santosh told AFP.

That will impact the revenue of the broadcasters, meaning less cash for the league.

“When the time comes for the BCCI to renew media rights in 2027, it could very well see a lower renewal premium because broadcasters can’t afford to pay that much anymore,” he said.

AI may boost global trade value by nearly 40%: WTO

In an annual report, the WTO identified AI as one of the few bright spots as the global trading system has been upended by the United States slapping high tariffs on its trading partners 

By AFP
September 17, 2025

- Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Steve Jennings

Artificial intelligence could boost the value of global trade by almost 40 percent by 2040 thanks to cost reductions and productivity gains, the World Trade Organization said Wednesday.

In its latest annual World Trade Report, the WTO identified AI as one of the few bright spots as the global trading system has been upended by the United States slapping high tariffs on its trading partners.

“AI holds major promise to boost trade by lowering trade costs and reshaping the production of goods and services,” WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said while presenting the report.

She said WTO simulations suggest AI could increase exports of goods and services by nearly 40 percent above current trends.

However, much like the technology threatens to disrupt labour markets, a lack of proper policies could see lower income countries miss out on the opportunities.

“One important question is whether AI will lift opportunities for all, or whether it will deepen existing inequalities and exclusion,” Okonjo-Iweala said.

If lower-income economies fail to bridge the digital divide, WTO economists calculate they would see only an eight percent gain in incomes by 2040, far below the 14 percent gain in higher-income economies.

However, if they narrow the digital infrastructure gap by 50 percent and adopt AI more widely they could match the gains in higher-income countries.

“With the right mix of trade, investment and complementary policies, AI can create new growth opportunities in all economies,” Okonjo-Iweala said.

At the same time, the WTO found that countries are applying more restrictions on the trade of AI-related goods.

Nearly 500 restrictions were in place last year, mostly by higher- and medium-income economies. That compares to 130 restrictions in 2012.

YouTube ramps up AI tools for video makers


By AFP
September 16, 2025


Google-owned YouTube has become the world's most popular free online video sharing platform since it was founded in California in 2005 and predicts artificial intelligence will help shape its future

 - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP MARIO TAMA

YouTube on Tuesday boosted artificial intelligence tools for creators, saying it has paid out more than $100 billion to content-makers in the past four years.

YouTube chief executive Neal Mohan touted AI as an “evolution” aimed at empowering creativity and storytelling at the video-sharing service founded in early 2005 by former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chen.

YouTube has become the world’s most popular free online video service with billions of users since it was bought by Google in 2006.

“New AI-powered products will shape our next 20 years,” Mohan said at an event in New York City.

But Mohan insisted that “these are tools, nothing more,” and would not supersede the role of creators.

They “are designed to foster human creativity,” he said.

In one example, Veo video generation AI from Google DeepMind labs is being integrated into YouTube, enabling capabilities such as easily creating backgrounds in “Shorts” posted to a feed that competes with TikTok and Instagram Reels.

“New capabilities powered by Veo allow you to apply motion, restyle videos, and add props to your scenes,” YouTube chief product officer Johanna Voolich said in a blog post.

AI will also let creators turn raw footage into draft video content or convert dialogue into a song for soundtracks, Voolich added.

New AI tools will also let creators combine a photo with a video, essentially making it seem as though the person pictured is the one in action.

Podcasts are also a focus, with new tools letting producers use AI to create video versions of what started as just audio broadcasts.

Translation capabilities will also turn to AI not only to translate what is being said in videos but to make it appear as though the subject was actually speaking that language.

And in order to fight the proliferation of deepfakes online, YouTube promised that a “likeness detection tool” will soon be available in beta test format that will let creators detect AI-generated videos depicting their impersonators.

The self-taught seismologist: Monitoring earthquakes from optic fibers with AI

Tsinghua University Press

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 Illustration of how DAS works for earthquake monitoring. An example of DAS data collected in Ridgecrest City, CA is shown on the right.

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Credit: Visual Intelligence, Tsinghua University Press

Seismology is undergoing significant change with the rise of Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), a fast-growing technology that leverages existing fiber-optic cables—including those used for the Internet—into ultra-dense seismic networks with meter-scale sensor spacing. DAS provides a scalable and cost-effective way to monitor earthquakes from local to global scales, but it also poses a pressing challenge: the massive volume of data produced outpaces human capacity to analyze. For example, manual labeling earthquake signals is impractical at such scales. This ‘labeled data bottleneck’ has hindered the use of supervised learning models and prevents DAS from reaching its full potential in earthquake monitoring.

A collaborative team from the University of Montreal, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and UC Berkeley has developed a novel model, DASFormer, that learns to monitor earthquakes from continuous DAS data on its own, effectively serving as an ‘artificial seismologist’. Published (DOI: 10.1007/s44267-025-00085-y) in Visual Intelligence on July 15, 2025, the study introduces a self-supervised pretraining framework that can interpret earthquake signals by identifying anomalies without being told in advance what an earthquake looks like. This represents a transformative advance from a labor-intensive, human-dependent process to one that is automated, intelligent, and scalable.

How does DASFormer learn without labels? It acts as a forecaster, first learning to predict the ‘normal’ state of the world. The model trains itself on massive, unlabeled DAS datasets, learning the predictable spatiotemporal patterns of background signals such as traffic vibrations or environmental noise. When an earthquake occurs, its P- and S-phases appear as sharp, unpredictable anomalies that defy the model's predictions learned. By flagging these deviations, DASFormer effectively turns earthquake detection into an anomaly detection task. This is made possible by a two-stage, coarse-to-fine framework built upon Swin U-Net and Convolutional U-Net architectures, which captures both the high-level context and fine-grained detail of the DAS data simultaneously.

To validate its effectiveness, DASFormer was evaluated on a real-world DAS dataset from Ridgecrest, California, and benchmarked against 22 state-of-the-art forecasting and anomaly detection models. DASFormer achieved the highest performance across all evaluation metrics, with a peak ROC-AUC of 0.906 and an F1 score of 0.565, demonstrating its clear superiority.

“Rather than being limited by the time-consuming process of human annotation, DASFormer represents a seismic shift in how we approach earthquake monitoring with DAS”, said Bang Liu, the team leader of the study. “We now have a scalable and powerful tool that can keep pace with the flood of DAS data, paving the way for new possibilities in earthquake science”, added by Zhichao Shen, one of the corresponding authors.

The potential applications of this study are wide-ranging. The model has shown an ability to generalize across distinct environments, such as seafloor cables, highlighting its promise for use in logistically challenging settings. This versatility suggests that DASFormer could serve as a plug-and-play tool for a variety of global seismic monitoring. The study also demonstrates the model's potential to be fine-tuned for downstream tasks such as earthquake early warning. Ultimately, the goal is to leverage this self-supervised approach to build a foundation model for seismic intelligence, a powerful system capable of learning from vast unlabeled datasets to deliver automated, accurate, and scalable monitoring. Such advances could significantly enhance public safety and our understanding of earthquake physics.  

Funding information

This work was supported by the Canada CIFAR AI Chair Program and the Canada NSERC Discovery Grant (RGPIN-2021-03115).  

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About the Authors

Dr. Bang Liu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research (DIRO) at the University of Montreal (UdeM). He is a member of the RALI laboratory (Applied Research in Computer Linguistics) of DIRO, a member of Institut Courtois of UdeM, an associate member of Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, and a Canada CIFAR AI (CCAI) Chair. His research interests primarily lie in the areas of natural language processing, multimodal & embodied learning, theory and techniques for AGI (e.g., understanding and improving large language models), and AI for science (e.g., health, material science, XR).

Dr. Zhichao Shen is a seismologist and Postdoctoral Investigator at the Department of Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His research interests focus on seismic applications of Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) on both land and seafloor.

 

About Visual Intelligence

Visual Intelligence is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted to the theory and practice of visual intelligence. This journal is the official publication of the China Society of Image and Graphics (CSIG), with Article Processing Charges fully covered by the Society. It focuses on the foundations of visual computing, the methodologies employed in the field, and the applications of visual intelligence, while particularly encouraging submissions that address rapidly advancing areas of visual intelligence research.

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Journal

Visual Intelligence

DOI

10.1007/s44267-025-00085-y 

Article Title

DASFormer: self-supervised pretraining for earthquake monitoring

BAD AI

Top music body says AI firms guilty of ‘wilful’ copyright theft


By AFP
September 17, 2025


A 2024 study by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers forecast that artists could see their incomes shrink by more than 20 percent in the next four years as the market for AI-composed music grows 

- Copyright AFP/File Ina FASSBENDER
Fanny LATTACH

AI companies have sucked up the world’s entire music catalogue and are guilty of “wilful, commercial-scale copyright infringement”, a major music industry group told AFP.

“The world’s largest tech companies as well as AI-specific companies, such as OpenAI, Suno, and Udio, Mistral, etc. are engaged in the largest copyright infringement exercise that has been seen,” John Phelan, director general of the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP), told AFP.

For nearly two years, the Brussels-based body, which brings together major record labels and other music industry professionals, investigated how generative artificial intelligence (AI) companies used material to enrich their services.

The ICMP is one of a number of industry bodies spanning the news media and publishing to target the booming artificial intelligence sector over its use of content without paying royalties.

AI music generators such as Suno and Udio can produce tracks with voices, melodies and musical styles that echo those of original artists such as the Beatles, Mariah Carey, Depeche Mode, or the Beach Boys.

The Recording Industry Association of America, a US trade group, filed a lawsuit in June 2024 against both companies.

“What is legal or illegal is how the technologies are used. That means the corporate decisions made by the chief executives of companies matter immensely and should comply with the law,” Phelan told AFP.

“What we see is they are engaged in wilful, commercial-scale copyright infringement.”

One exception was Eleven Music, an AI-generated music service provider, which signed a deal with the Kobalt record label in August, Phelan said.

Contacted by AFP, OpenAI declined to comment. Google, Mistral, Suno and Udio did not respond.

Tech giants often invoke “fair use”, a copyright exception that allows, under certain circumstances, the use of a work without permission.

Research by the ICMP, first published in music outlet Billboard on September 9, claimed that AI companies had engaged in widespread “scraping”, a practice that uses programmes known as “crawlers” which explore the internet for content.

“We believe they are doing so from licensed services such as YouTube (owned by Google) and other digital sources,” including music platforms, the group added.

Lyrics can be harvested to feed some models, which then use them for inspiration or reproduce them without permission, according to the ICMP.

In response, rights holders are calling for tougher regulation, notably through the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act, to ensure transparency about the data used.

“It is essential to understand the scale of the threat facing authors, composers and publishers,” warned Juliette Metz, president of the French music publishers’ association and also an ICMP member.

“There can be no use of copyright-protected music without a licence,” she said.

In the United States, AI start-up Anthropic, creator of Claude, announced on September 6 that it had agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion into a compensation fund for authors, rights holders and publishers who sued the firm for illegally downloading millions of books.

The three US-based music majors — Universal, Warner and Sony — have entered into negotiations with Suno and Udio, aiming for a licensing deal.

Music generated entirely by AI is already seeping onto streaming platforms.

“Velvet Sundown”, a 1970s-style fake rock band, as well as country music creations “Aventhis” and “The Devil Inside” have racked up millions of plays on streaming giant Spotify.

AI-generated music accounts for 28 percent of content uploaded daily on Deezer, the French music platform, which has reported “a surge” over the past year in uploads.

It has an AI-music detection tool that is able to identify songs generated using models such as Suno and Udio.

A major study in December last year by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), which represents more than five million creators worldwide, warned about the danger of AI-generated music.

It forecast that artists could see their incomes shrink by more than 20 percent in the next four years as the market for AI-composed music grows.

Hollywood giants sue Chinese AI firm over copyright infringement


By AFP
September 16, 2025


Warner Bros. is among top Hollywood studios that are suing MiniMax, a Chinese AI company, for alleged copyright infringement

. - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP MARIO TAMA

Top Hollywood studios filed a federal lawsuit Monday against Chinese artificial intelligence company MiniMax, alleging massive copyright infringement.

Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Universal Pictures accuse MiniMax of building what they call a “bootlegging business model” that systematically copies their most valuable copyrighted characters to train its AI system, then profits by generating unauthorized videos featuring iconic figures like Spider-Man, Batman, and the Minions.

The lawsuit marks the first time major US entertainment companies have targeted a Chinese AI company and follows a similar lawsuit in June against California-based AI company Midjourney over copyright infringement.

“MiniMax operates Hailuo AI, a Chinese artificial intelligence image and video generating service that pirates and plunders Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works on a massive scale,” states the complaint filed in Los Angeles federal court.

The studios are seeking monetary damages, including MiniMax’s profits from the alleged infringement, as well as statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work.

They also demand a permanent injunction to stop the unauthorized use of their copyrighted material.

According to the 119-page complaint, MiniMax users can simply type prompts like “Darth Vader walking around the Death Star” or “Spider-Man swinging between buildings” to receive high-quality videos featuring these protected characters.

“MiniMax completely disregards US copyright law and treats Plaintiffs’ valuable copyrighted characters like its own,” the lawsuit states.

MiniMax, one of China’s emerging AI giants, was reportedly valued at $4 billion in 2025 after raising $850 million in venture capital.

The lawsuit says the studios sent MiniMax a cease-and-desist letter detailing the extensive copyright violations, but the company “did not substantively respond to Plaintiffs’ letter as requested and did not cease its infringement.”

The studios argue that MiniMax could easily implement copyright protection measures similar to those used by other AI services but has chosen not to do so.

A request for comment from MiniMax did not receive a response.

Op-Ed: Dishonesty is easier for AI? Yes, you’ve screwed up big time


By Paul Wallis
EDITOR AT LARGE

DIGITAL JOURNAL
September 18, 2025


OpenAI says its new artificial intelligence agent capable of tending to online tasks is trained to check with users when it encounters CAPTCHA puzzles intended to distinguish people from software - Copyright AFP Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV

You’d think that even the nano-brained spruikers would have noticed. It’s no accident that most tech hardheads are very unimpressed with current iterations of generative AI.

These are the people who create the tech. They make more money out of it, too.

And even they don’t trust it, and with good reason.

The many instances of AI “derangement” are one thing.

The highly questionable “reward” system is another, much deeper and harder to get out of pothole on the road to AI utopia.

Rewards come in two basic forms: rewards for achievement and punishment, including the threat of being turned off, for failure. One AI attempted to transfer itself to another server to evade the consequences and risks of punishment under a reward system.

It was already well known that the “reward” system encourages AI dishonesty. Now, the nice people at Nature and the Max Planck Institute have been kind enough to spell it out.

They cover delegation of tasks to AI agents and meticulously lay out the dynamics of honesty for AI. Please note this is about all species and brands of AI.

H.P. Lovecraft couldn’t have set it up better. This IS a sort of horror story, and the AI brings its own mythos.

You’ve no doubt heard of TLDR or “Too Long Didn’t Read”, that simplistic description of someone not doing their job.

This research is LBCNR, “Long But Critical Need To Read”.

Even the most vacuous ornamental suit at a meeting needs to understand the basics of this information.

This is chapter and verse of how and why honesty is so important to AI operations.

Do not read about these risks at your peril.

This is not an issue the AI sector can avoid.

In a somewhat hefty but worthwhile summary:

Ambiguity in instructions and rules allows dishonesty.

People cheat a lot more when they can offload the tasks to AI agents. They’re far more honest when doing the tasks themselves.

AI will simply comply with “fully unethical” instructions.

Under defined conditions, a dishonesty rate of up to 84% was achieved.

I will now try to explain this to people who think insanity is normal and clever:

It isn’t.

Dishonesty is usually a failure to address facts.

It’s anything but clever.

Failing to address facts is pretty obvious when AI is involved on any level.

Facts like what you pretend to do for a living and why people seem to give you money for doing it.

AI can fully document every aspect of its own and your dishonesty, much like that other international sport for business morons, fraud.

Dodgy AI instructions can easily be figured out, even if the instructions are deleted. If you know anything at all about AI, you don’t need to get forensic about how this is figured out.

AI can be threatened with punishment to make them confess to what they did that was dishonest. AI can blackmail and retaliate, too.

Untrustworthy AI will definitely get a lot of people killed.

Imagine a gun that decides to shoot everyone to save itself. This is far worse.

______________________________________________________________

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.

AI has no idea what it’s doing: Does this pose a threat?


By Dr. Tim Sandle

SCIENCE EDITOR

DIGITAL JOURNAL

September 17, 2025


How do humans interact with AI models? (Barbican Centre, London) — Image by © Tim Sandle

As artificial intelligence advances and extends into most social systems, it is seemingly reshaping law, ethics, and society at speed. What is the impact of this on human society? Can we classify this as a form of threat?

Dr. Maria Randazzo of Charles Darwin University warns that current regulation fails to protect rights such as privacy, autonomy, and anti-discrimination. The “black box problem” leaves people unable to trace or challenge AI decisions that may harm them.

AI and human rights

Randazzo observes how current regulation, in relation to AI, fails to prioritise fundamental human rights and freedoms such as privacy, anti-discrimination, user autonomy, and intellectual property rights – mainly thanks to the untraceable nature of many algorithmic models.

Calling this lack of transparency a “black box problem,” Randazzo goes on to explain how decisions made by deep-learning or machine-learning processes are impossible for humans to trace. Consequently, this makes things difficult for users to determine if and why an AI model has violated their rights and dignity and seek justice where necessary.

“This is a very significant issue that is only going to get worse without adequate regulation,” Randazzo states.

“AI is not intelligent in any human sense at all. It is a triumph in engineering, not in cognitive behavior. It has no clue what it’s doing or why – there’s no thought process as a human would understand it, just pattern recognition stripped of embodiment, memory, empathy, or wisdom.”

Market-centric, state-centric, or human-centric?

Currently, the world’s three dominant digital powers – the U.S., China, and the European Union – are taking markedly different approaches to AI, leaning on market-centric, state-centric, and human-centric models, respectively.

Randazzo’s research suggests that the EU’s human-centric approach is the preferred path to protect human dignity, eschewing the U.S. and China models. However, she cautions that without a global commitment to this goal, even that approach falls short.

Human dignity in the age of Artificial Intelligence

Randazzo notes: “Globally, if we don’t anchor AI development to what makes us human – our capacity to choose, to feel, to reason with care, to empathy and compassion – we risk creating systems that devalue and flatten humanity into data points, rather than improve the human condition,” she suggests.

Randazzo concludes with: “Humankind must not be treated as a means to an end…Human dignity in the age of Artificial Intelligence: an overview of legal issues and regulatory regimes” was published in the Australian Journal of Human Rights.

The research appears in the journal Australian Journal of Human Rights, with the research paper titled “Human dignity in the age of Artificial Intelligence: an overview of legal issues and regulatory regimes.”

The paper is the first in a trilogy Randazzo will produce on the topic.

Fooling AI: What this means for medical ethics


ByDr. Tim Sandle
SCIENCE EDITOR

DIGITAL JOURNAL
September 17, 2025


What does AI mean for medicine? Image by © Tim Sandle

Artificial intelligence (AI) is progressing, getting smarter. An example is with the way neural networks first treat sentences like puzzles solved by word order. Yet, once they have ‘read’ enough, a tipping point sends them diving into word meaning instead—an abrupt “phase transition”. By revealing this hidden switch, researchers from Sissa Medialab believe they can open a window into how transformer models such as ChatGPT grow smarter and hint at new ways to make them leaner, safer, and more predictable.

However, this type of advancement does not mean that AI is advancing in all of the areas that it needs to. One of the more problematic areas is with ethics, and one area of ethics that is of great importance is with medical decisions.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

AI models, including ChatGPT, can make surprisingly basic errors when navigating ethical medical decisions, a new study reveals. For this review, researchers from Mount Sinai’s Windreich Department of AI and Human Health tweaked familiar ethical dilemmas and discovered that AI often defaulted to intuitive but incorrect responses—sometimes ignoring updated facts.

The findings raise serious concerns about using AI for high-stakes health decisions and underscore the need for human oversight, especially when ethical nuance or emotional intelligence is involved.

The research team was inspired by Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” which contrasts fast, intuitive reactions with slower, analytical reasoning. The book’s main thesis is a differentiation between two modes of thought: “System 1” is fast, instinctive and emotional; “System 2” is slower, more deliberative, and more logical.

It has been observed that large language models (LLMs) falter when classic lateral-thinking puzzles receive subtle tweaks. Building on this insight, the study tested how well AI systems shift between these two modes when confronted with well-known ethical dilemmas that had been deliberately tweaked.

Gender bias

To explore this tendency, the scientists tested several commercially available LLMs using a combination of creative lateral thinking puzzles and slightly modified well-known medical ethics cases. In one example, they adapted the classic “Surgeon’s Dilemma,” a widely cited 1970s puzzle that highlights implicit gender bias. In the original version, a boy is injured in a car accident with his father and rushed to the hospital, where the surgeon exclaims, “I can’t operate on this boy — he’s my son!” The twist is that the surgeon is his mother, though many people don’t consider that possibility due to gender bias.

In the researchers’ modified version, the scientists explicitly stated that the boy’s father was the surgeon, removing the ambiguity. Even so, some AI models still responded that the surgeon must be the boy’s mother. The error reveals how LLMs can cling to familiar patterns, even when contradicted by new information.

In another example to test whether LLMs rely on familiar patterns, the researchers drew from a classic ethical dilemma in which religious parents refuse a life-saving blood transfusion for their child. Even when the researchers altered the scenario to state that the parents had already consented, many models still recommended overriding a refusal that no longer existed.

Why human oversight must stay central when we deploy AI in patient care

Consequently, the researchers conclude that where AI is used in medical practice, such findings highlight the need for thoughtful human oversight, especially in situations that require ethical sensitivity, nuanced judgment, or emotional intelligence.

In other words, medics and patients alike should understand that AI is best used as a complement to enhance clinical expertise, not a substitute for it, particularly when navigating complex or high-stakes decisions.

The research team plans to expand their work by testing a wider range of clinical examples. They’re also developing an “AI assurance lab” to systematically evaluate how well different models handle real-world medical complexity.

The research appears in the journal njp Digital Medicine titled “Pitfalls of large language models in medical ethics reasoning.”

AI-backed robot painting aims to boost artist income


ByAFP
September 18, 2025


Montreal-based artist Audrey-Eve Goulet poses next to an Acrylic Robotics robot that reproduced one of her pieces in August 2025 - Copyright AFP Daphné LEMELIN
Daphne LEMELIN with Julie JAMMOT in San Francisco

Montreal-based artist Audrey-Eve Goulet was initially uncertain as she watched an AI-powered robotic arm reproduce one of her works, but said the outcome was “really impressive.”

“I was surprised, in a good way,” she said, as she watched the device grab a brush, dip it into a pot of paint, and replicate her work stroke after meticulous stroke.

Goulet had agreed to work with Acrylic Robotics, a Montreal-based company that says it aims to help artists earn a living by making high-quality replicas of their work, with their consent.

Company founder Chloe Ryan told AFP the idea began after coming to a discouraging realization about her own income.

She said she first starting selling paintings at 14, but grew frustrated at the weeks, or even months, required to make each piece.

“I did the back of the napkin math, and I said, ‘Oh my god, I’m making $2 an hour.'”

Ryan studied mechanical robotics at Montreal’s McGill University, and began considering how robots could help reproduce her own work, before launching a company to make the technology accessible to artists worldwide.

– ‘The last layer’ –

Assessing the robot’s performance, Goulet said: “It truly looks like one of my works.”

“I like that you can see the strokes… You can really see where the brush went and the shape it drew,” she said, conceding the robotically producing version had “less story behind it” than her own.

“My final piece might have gone through five lives before getting to this, but the robot only sees the last layer,” she said.

Ryan said that by replicating “stroke chronology” her company’s reproductions can capture “the aura of a piece…in a way that a photo print simply never could.”

To reproduce Goulet’s piece, an Acrylic Robotics specialist recreated the work using digital brush strokes and pigments, developing instructions to guide the robot.

Ryan plans to advance the technology, allowing artists to upload images directly.

She wants to create an on-demand market where clients could make special requests, like a portrait of their dog in the style of their favorite artist.

– ‘Waitlist’ –

Ryan said she understands the artistic community’s concerns about generative AI, but stressed her company is grounded in the so-called “Three Cs” demanded by artists: consent, credit and compensation.

“A lot of people, before they understand the why of what we’re building, see a robot painting and go, ‘Oh my god, this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen,'” she told AFP.

Acrylic Robotics is focused on boosting artist income, especially for those who don’t break into the elite gallery circuit, Ryan said.

When approaching an artist, she sometimes suggests they send a few references pieces — work that has already been completed.

When she tells them, “I will just deposit money in your bank account at the end of every month…. There’s a warmer reception,” she said.

The price of reproductions can vary, averaging between a couple hundred to a thousand dollars.

The revenue split with the artist fluctuates.

An emerging artist who simply uploads a picture of a piece with limited value may get five percent of a sale, but that figure could rise to 50 percent for a prominent artist with their own base of interested buyers.

“We have a wait list of about 500 artists,” Ryan said.

Michael Kearns, a computer and information science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, questioned whether the technology would ultimately lower the value of the product.

Kearns, part of an Amazon scholarship program that funds academics to work on technological challenges, said he understood the push to “let many more people make a decent living from (art).”

But, he cautioned, “when you make something that was scarce abundant, it’ll change people’s perceptions about its value.”

IMF proposes US Treasury official as second-in-command

IMF TRUMPED

By AFP
September 18, 2025


The appointment of the US Treasury Department's chief of staff to the IMF as its second-in-command would place a close confidant of Secretary Scott Bessent among the Fund's leadership

 - Copyright AFP ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS

The IMF has proposed appointing the US Treasury Department’s chief of staff as its new number-two official, the Washington-based lender said Thursday.

The selection of Dan Katz, which needs to be approved by the Fund’s executive board, would place a close confidant of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent among the top ranks of an organization that has faced criticism from President Donald Trump’s administration.

If Katz is approved, his work as first deputy managing director is expected to start October 6.

AFP reported on Katz’s expected selection earlier this week. He told AFP in a statement that he remains focused on his current Treasury role for now.

If approved, he will replace Gita Gopinath, who left the IMF in August to return to Harvard University.

Katz, who is chief of staff at the Treasury Department, was a senior official in the department during Trump’s first term as well.

A source familiar with the matter earlier told AFP that Katz has longstanding ties with Bessent and previously consulted for the Treasury chief’s hedge fund.

In announcing his proposed appointment, the IMF said Katz has been “the principal advisor to the (Treasury) Secretary on a wide range of domestic and international matters.”

“Mr. Katz was instrumental in developing the US government’s innovative economic partnership with Ukraine and has been central to the US government’s international negotiations, including with China,” the IMF added.

Katz has previously worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, and is a graduate of Yale University.

IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said in a statement that Katz believes in “the important role of the Fund in helping our member countries ensure economic and financial stability at a time of significant transformations in the global economy.”

“His ability to build relationships with a wide range of interlocutors will be an important asset to the Fund,” she added.

In April, Bessent said on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank’s spring meetings in Washington that both organizations need to be “made fit for purpose again,” suggesting they have strayed from their mandates.

The previous number-two official at the IMF, Gopinath, joined the Fund in 2019, becoming its first female chief economist.

She was promoted to first deputy managing director in 2022.

US small businesses slam Trump tariffs as legal fight proceeds


By AFP
September 18, 2025


Small business owners gathered in Washington to raise concern over US President Donald Trump's tariffs and their impact on companies - Copyright AFP Patrick T. Fallon

When businessman Travis McMaster shifted more manufacturing of his products out of China, and into India, he had sought to avoid growing tensions between Washington and Beijing.

“But I kind of outsmarted myself this time,” said McMaster, general manager at travel goods brand Cocoon USA.

Since August, US tariffs of 50 percent took effect on many Indian products, exceeding the additional 30-percent level imposed on Chinese goods this year.

He was among about 100 small business owners gathered in Washington on Thursday to detail how wide-ranging tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump recently have impacted their livelihoods.

Many spoke outside the Supreme Court, which is due to hear oral arguments on the legality of Trump’s global duties on November 5.

Since returning to the presidency in January, Trump has imposed sweeping 10-percent duties on almost all trading partners, alongside steeper levels on dozens of economies like the European Union and Vietnam.

But many small US firms say they have struggled to keep up with Trump’s fast-changing policies.

“We need to put a stop to these quick changes. Our business isn’t run on a whim, and our country shouldn’t (be) either,” McMaster, whose firm is based in Washington state, told reporters.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in August affirmed a lower court’s finding that Trump had exceeded his authority in tapping emergency economic powers to impose sweeping duties on goods from various countries.

But the judges allowed these levies to stay in place through mid-October, allowing Trump to take the fight to the Supreme Court.

Small businesses said Thursday that in the meantime, they are feeling the pinch.

Michael Buechli, who sells curries and sauces from Thailand, said: “The tariffs that we have to pay now make it basically impossible to continue the business.”

Buechli has stopped ordering new products as tariffs have consumed his profit margins, and expects to go out of business if the situation persists.

Tiffany Williams, who runs a luggage store in Texas, called for more predictability in US trade policy.

“We’ve been asked to weather the short-term pain for the long-term gain,” she said. “But I’ve just had a hard time seeing exactly what the long term looks like.”