In a small Spanish town, several schoolboys used generative models to create fake nudes of their fellow pupils. Police, prosecutors, and parents are at a loss on how to pursue a case that shows, once again, that women are the main victims of deepfakes.
A leak from Amazon gave us a glimpse of what they have planned for youngsters - and parents. How much personal data do we (or should we) accept handing over when it comes to our children?
Read more
Apps like Google and Waze are redirecting traffic to secondary roads that are not equipped to handle the traffic, disrupting their infrastructure. Small cities have little capacity to change this.
Read more
Welfare fraud scoring, predictive policing, or ChatGPT: Lawmakers and government officials around the world are increasingly relying on algorithms, and most of them are completely opaque. Algorithmic Accountability Reporting takes a closer look at how they work and the effects they have. But only very few media outlets conduct such reporting. Why?
Read more
In Spain, 200 students of the International University of La Rioja failed their exams. Some blame a glitch in the proctoring software, but it might have been a change in the system’s rules. University officials gave contradictory explanations, leaving students to fight against bureaucracy and the assessment of a machine.
Read more
Mannheim, a large city on the Rhine, deployed a video system that claims to automatically detect physical violence in some streets. It can confuse hugging with strangling, and it is unclear whether it can actually prevent violence.
Read more
Algorithms have been developed to help track down cybergroomers, who stalk minors online. But the reliability of automated systems is controversial – and they can even criminalize children and teens.
Read more
A lack of source material, investment, and commercial prioritization are all holding back the development of generative models and automated moderation for languages spoken in smaller countries and regions.
Read more
Building up from a decade of surveillance creep, the new French law is yet another example of how sporting events are used to normalize automated surveillance systems in public spaces.
Read more
Frieder Schmelzle from the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW) gives an overview of the current mobility and digital strategies of the German state governments on the issue of public transport connections in rural regions. Great expectations lie on the automation of local transport. However, this overshadows more fundamental questions about sustainable mobility in rural areas.
Read more