TECHNOLOGY

With a drone camera, a survivor is spotted in the rubble. "My idea is to help people such as firefighters with my machines," Izu, 61, told AFP. It was Attraclab that co-developed the small delivery robot squeezing through the cardboard rubble at the Japan Mobility Show and designed the remote-control stretcher on wheels or tracks.

A year ago Elon Musk purchased X, formerly known as Twitter, taking the platform on a journey that has resulted in lost money, advertisers and trust.

Tokyo's rebranded auto show returns this weekend just as China looks set to overtake Japan as the world's biggest car exporter after Toyota, Nissan and others got stuck in the electric vehicle slow lane.

Music streaming giant Spotify on Tuesday said it registered 26 percent growth in active users for the third quarter as it reported a rare quarterly profit.

Twitter won fame in the Arab uprisings nearly a decade ago as a pivotal source for real-time crisis information, but that reputation has withered after the platform's transformation into a magnet for hate speech and disinformation under Elon Musk.

Netflix on Wednesday said subscriber numbers grew nearly 11 percent to 247 million in the recently ended third quarter as it cracked down on password sharing and refined an ad-supported tier.

The EU announced probes Thursday into Facebook owner Meta and TikTok, seeking more details on the measures they have taken to stop the spread of "illegal content and disinformation" after the Hamas attack on Israel.

Artificial intelligence models lack transparency, according to a study published Wednesday that aims to guide policymakers in regulating the rapidly-growing technology.

After years earning bumper profits by producing parts for fossil fuel-powered cars, German suppliers to the crucial auto industry are struggling as the transition to electric mobility gathers pace.

The social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, said Tuesday it has started charging new users in New Zealand and the Philippines for basic features such as posting messages in a trial aimed at reducing spam.

Chinese internet giant Baidu unveiled the newest version of its AI chatbot ERNIE on Tuesday, claiming it rivals the capabilities of OpenAI's latest ChatGPT. Baidu led Chinese tech firms in rolling out generative artificial intelligence apps, which are trained on vast amounts of data and interactions with users to answer questions, even complex ones, in human-like language.

Mike Skinner of The Streets has returned "rejuvenated" with a new album and his own self-made movie, optimistic for the future of music as it sits on the cusp of an AI revolution.

Xbox-maker Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, whose video games include "Call of Duty" and "Candy Crush", are set to seal one of the biggest technology tie-ups after overcoming final hurdles Friday.

The US Internal Revenue Service is asking that Microsoft pay a whopping $29 billion in unpaid taxes from 2004 to 2013, the company said in an official filing on Wednesday.

The EU's top internet enforcer took to X, the rebranded Twitter, on Wednesday to trumpet a rival platform, as a duel with Elon Musk over disinformation ratcheted up.

From fake accounts impersonating journalists to war-themed video games fueling false narratives, tech platforms are struggling to contain a tsunami of misinformation around Palestinian-Israeli hostilities after rolling back content moderation policies.

US market regulators on Thursday asked a judge to order Elon Musk to comply with a subpoena to answer questions about his purchases of Twitter shares last year.

Elon Musk's social media platform X has stripped headlines from news articles shared by users, in a move likely to further worsen relations with media groups.

Meta is proposing to offer European users a subscription-based version of Instagram and Facebook if they would rather not be tracked for ads, a source said on Tuesday.

Their language was salty and the message was clear: game developers believed their livelihoods were under threat and they were not going to accept it.

The artificial intelligence revolution is fully underway, but soaring demand for its most crucial component has startups scratching their heads on how they can deliver on AI's promise.

Researchers at Google DeepMind, the tech giant's artificial intelligence arm, on Tuesday introduced a tool that predicts whether genetic mutations are likely to cause harm, a breakthrough that could help research into rare diseases.

Across the globe, data servers are humming, consuming both megawatts and precious natural resources to bring life to our digital world.

OpenAI on Monday said it was launching a business version of ChatGPT as its artificial intelligence sensation grapples with declining usership nine months after its historic debut.

From generating story lines to coding entire games to turning ideas into animation, artificial intelligence is front and centre at Gamescom, one of the video game industry's biggest fairs.

From doctored photos making small crowds big to posts praising government accomplishments that never were, WhatsApp has become the channel of choice for disinformation in Zimbabwe before this month's elections.

The White House said Friday that OpenAI and others in the artificial intelligence race have committed to making their technology safer with features such as watermarks on fabricated images.

Google is working with news publishers to design a new AI-backed tool to help journalists report and write their stories, the company said on Thursday.

The mind-blowing growth of artificial intelligence poses many questions that have no answers yet, the United Nations admitted Thursday at its AI summit, attended by some exceptionally life-like humanoid robots.