CES hasn’t stopped, so how can we not talk about it, Facebook says it’s going to ban deepfake videos, and Uber and Hyundai unveil their concept electric flying car for the future of air taxi service.
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The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas continues, and so does the news coming out of the event. Mercedes-Benz unveiled a concept car with “bionic flaps” inspired by the movie “Avatar”, which is wonderfully silly, IBM once again dragged its quantum computer out of the lab to show off to the world, and dozens of new augmented reality apps are flexing their muscles. AMD unveiled its new 64-core Threadripper processor, while Dell and Lenovo, alongside a number of other vendors, pulled the curtains back on new devices. Catch up on all the latest right here.
Facebook says it will ban “deepfake” videos that have been manipulated with artificial intelligence from its platform, as well as Instagram’s. But a lot of people on LinkedIn are pointing out how many “shallow fake” videos, which can often be pretty convincing at a glance, are made using conventional editing tools. Those videos, by the way, are still allowed on Facebook. The news comes in the run-up to the U.S. elections. It wasn’t that long ago when a recently doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made its rounds on the internet. That too, was also made with traditional editing software.
And lastly, some more CES, this time about flying cars. Uber and Hyundai have outlined their partnership at the tech conference earlier this week, with Uber saying Hyundai’s mass production history and resources mean they can build air taxis at the scale the ridesharing company requires. While the news made for some great photo ops, people on Twitter are pointing out how the costly method of travel widens the gap between the rich and the poor, and that additional investments in public transit would be preferred.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing.