Tag: technews

  • Winner of SONY photography contest turns down award, confesses image was created by AI

    Winner of SONY photography contest turns down award, confesses image was created by AI

    Boris Eldagsen, the German photographer who won the prestigious SONY World Photography Contest, has turned down the award after confessing that his image was an Artificial Intelligence (AI) creation.

    Eldagsen, a former student of photography and visual arts at the Art Academy of Mainz, and Conceptual Art and Intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, had submitted his photograph titled ‘Pseudomnesia: The Electrician’ for the creative open category. The photo was a haunting black-and-white image of two women from different generations.

    In a statement posted on his website, Eldagsen said he ‘applied as a cheeky monkey’ to check if photography competitions are prepared to identify AI images, but they are not.

    “We, the photo world, need an open discussion,” Eldagsen wrote. “A discussion about what we want to consider photography and what not. Is the umbrella of photography large enough to invite AI images to enter – or would this be a mistake? With my refusal of the award I hope to speed up this debate.”

    Eldagsen thanked the judges for picking his photograph for the award, pointing out that this was a historic moment because for the first time an AI image had won a prestigious photography competition, and hoped that this would encourage them to recognize the difference between real and AI generated photographs.

    “How many of you knew or suspected that it was AI generated? Something about this doesn’t feel right, does it? AI images and photography should not compete with each other in an award like this. They are different entities. AI is not photography. Therefore I will not accept the award.”

    A spokesperson from the World Photography Organisation has confirmed in a statement that Eldagsen had revealed to them that his image was created using AI, before he had been announced as a winner.

    “In our correspondence, he explained how following ‘two decades of photography, my artistic focus has shifted more to exploring creative possibilities of AI generators’ and further emphasising the image heavily relies on his ‘wealth of photographic knowledge’. As per the rules of the competition, the photographers provide the warranties of their entry. The creative category of the open competition welcomes various experimental approaches to image making from cyanotypes and rayographs to cutting-edge digital practices. As such, following our correspondence with Boris and the warranties he provided, we felt that his entry fulfilled the criteria for this category, and we were supportive of his participation.”

  • We asked Chat GPT to write a Pakistani horror story and this was the result

    We asked Chat GPT to write a Pakistani horror story and this was the result

    Chat GPT has swept the world up in its wake, generating responses to all kinds of topics and triggering a debate on how good it is or isn’t at its job. By simply entering a few keywords and prompts, the artificial intelligence chatbot can be used to write letters, college application essays and even novels, with Amazon already enlisting books where the co-author includes the AI bot.

    We were curious about ChatGPT’s storytelling capabilities, wondering if it is good enough to write a Pakistani story? We have all grown up listening to horror stories like Karsaaz ki Dulhan, the wandering woman at Mohatta Palace, so can Chat GPT give us something equally eerie and chilling?

    The result is printed here and we leave it to our audience to decide whether this was a good spooky story or not:

    “Once upon a time in Karachi, there was a family named Ahmed. They lived in a big house, where multiple generations of the family resided. The house was luxurious with plenty of large rooms, but there were always rumors about mysterious things that happened inside the house at night.

    One day, a new family moved next door to the Ahmeds. They had a daughter named Aisha who was just six years old. Aisha was a curious little girl who could be found playing in the front yard of her house every day. One day while playing, Aisha caught sight of the house next door. She couldn’t take her eyes off the house, so she walked up to the fence separating their properties.

    Suddenly, she saw a ghostly apparition with long hair and an old-fashioned dress in the window of the house next door. Terrified, Aisha ran back to her parents and told them everything. They didn’t believe her, thinking it was just her imagination.

    That night, the Ahmeds also noticed something unusual: the sound of footsteps could be heard from within the house. It sounded like someone was walking down the hallway. They were all very scared, and some members of the family started to believe the rumors they had heard about the house.

    Finally, the elder members of the Ahmed family decided to investigate. They searched the entire house but found nothing. But the very next night, the footsteps became louder and the ghostly apparition again appeared in the window. This time, everyone saw it.

    They decided to approach the local priest to help them with this situation. The priest told them that the house was built on an ancient burial ground, and the person buried there had been murdered. The restless soul of that victim was haunting the house, and it had now become more active because of Aisha’s presence.

    The family was very scared, but the priest performed an exorcism and recited some holy verses to calm the spirit. Soon the house was free of the ghostly presence, and the family members were able to live there in peace.

    From that day on, the Ahmed family knew that they should never underestimate the power of spirits and the potential for paranormal activity. They lived on, never forgetting what had happened and always being careful to not disturb the burial grounds next door.”

  • Huawei faces lawsuit after allegedly spying on Pakistani citizens through stolen tech

    Huawei faces lawsuit after allegedly spying on Pakistani citizens through stolen tech

    Huawei has been sued in California federal court for creating a “backdoor” that allowed it to collect sensitive data “important to Pakistan’s national security”, reports Reuters.

    Business Efficiency Solutions (BES), a California-based IT consultant company, filed a complaint against the China-based tech giant on Wednesday, August 11.

    According to the complaint, Huawei subcontracted with BES in 2016 for its $150 million bid to develop software for a Pakistani government programme providing new technology for police and law enforcement in Lahore. BES said it created software for the project that collects data from government agencies, controls access to buildings, monitors social media and manages drones, among other things.

    Huawei officials allegedly demanded that BES send this information to the company in China for testing, and BES said it agreed to the demand but terminated its authorisation to use the technology after Huawei revoked its access to the testing laboratory.

    The complaint said Huawei has yet to return any of the confidential software design tools or uninstall the software, as BES said it had agreed to.

    BES said Huawei later demanded it install its data-aggregation software – used by Pakistani law enforcement to collect and analyse “sensitive data from different sources and government agencies” – in its Chinese lab, “this time not merely for testing purposes but with full access to data at the Lahore Safe City project.” BES said it agreed, under threat of termination and withheld payments, after Huawei said it had approval from the Pakistani government.

    Huawei has yet to respond to the lawsuit filed by BES through its legal team. BES also did not share any more information beyond the case that it filed in the federal court.

    The IT consulting firm also accused Huawei of stealing the “trade secrets, and other intellectual properties in its possessions after officials of the China tech company demanded it for testing.”

    Up until now, the lawsuit alleged that Huawei has not returned the software design tools to BES.

    Moreover, BES said that it only allowed Huawei to use the software with full access as the latter threatened that they will not be paid, which the Chinese giant has yet to do for some of the software in the project.

    Huawei is a Chinese firm that has been banned in the United States (US) after it was accused of being a security risk. Thus, Google forcibly removed its services from the devices of the Chinese phone maker.

    However, Huawei recently decided to live without Google by debuting its own operating system across all of its devices.

  • Facts that you did not know about Pakistan’s digital scene

    Moiz Sayed, who is Google’s Industry Head for Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka has shed light on what brands in Pakistan can achieve if marketers adopt a shift in mindset and break away from traditional forms of marketing and advertising in the digital era.

    Compared to the 90s, the way Pakistanis communicate and connect has changed drastically. “Pakistan now has 169 million cellular subscribers, 85 million 3G+ subscribers, and 87 million broadband, subscribers.”

    In the digital era, advertisement budgets appear to follow a traditional model, based on strategies that have succeeded in the past. “I’ve realised our industry believes Pakistan has limited internet penetration and poor access to smartphones, thus thinking digital won’t have sufficient reach.”

    Here are some of the facts presented in the article regarding Pakistan’s digital scene that you did not know :

    Fact 1 : Despite being in the digital era 65-70% of current ad spend being allocated to TV by default in Pakistan.

    Fact 2 : Most brands only leverage 20%-30% of the available reach on YouTube among their target audience.

    Fact 3 : Over 90% of the campaigns don’t capture their full target audience because of low funding. 

    Fact 4 : YouTube brand campaigns Drove an 89% increase in awareness and consideration of brands.

    Fact 5 :95% brands saw a significant offline sales lift after a YouTube campaign.

    Fact 6 : YouTube has a reach of over 36 million people

    Fact 7 : Watch time for YouTube has grown to 45% from 2019 to 2020

    How Nestlé Pakistan challenged traditional thinking

    The company focused on their Cerelac brand.They did a two-years of brand activity, which included studying media investments, impressions, sales volume, and revenue across TV and YouTube.

    This is what they found out :

     67% incremental increase in sales per dollar on YouTube than TV.

    The study revealed that even without increasing the overall media budget, they could improve the incremental sales per dollar by 21% by simply reducing the dark periods of online video.

    Constant coverage on YouTube could generate 40% more impressions per week than the 2019 average.

    A similar study from Nestle Australia revealed that in more than 93% cases, YouTube had greater incremental sales per impressions than TV.

    After the analysis, Nestle has since taken a more data-centric approach, rather than only relying on their past experience to guide their media strategy. Moiz suggests that experiment with new channels to keep up with ever-changing consumer behaviors.

    This article was originally published on Think with Google.

  • Ministry of Science and Tech to introduce a video games certification programme

    Ministry of Science and Tech to introduce a video games certification programme

    Federal Minister of Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry, announced a special programme of animation and video games certification to encourage young people to be part of the multi-billion dollar gaming industry.

    The minister said that they are looking to make people a part of the $900 million programming industry. He said that this new programme is especially targeted at those uninterested in studying and looking into video game development instead. According to him, the certification program should prove to be a “game-changer” for many. The tweet does not reveal any details, but since the Minister talks about Smartphone games, we can expect the program to lean more towards phone apps and games.

    The new initiative will be providing animation and video games certification programmes to young people in order to boost the local gaming industry.

  • New study reveals ‘all messengers are leaking your personal information’

    New study reveals ‘all messengers are leaking your personal information’

    All messaging applications have support for link previews, this feature expands any website links you send or receive in a chat with images and any brief description. A recent study has shown that these previews can leak all your sensitive data, drain your battery and consume bandwidth.

    To preview, you have to visit the link through the app, open the file that’s in there and survey it. This can leave you vulnerable to malware or force an app to download files that are too big, causing it to crash and drain the battery.

    Surprisingly, the list of apps included messengers from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Line and few others. Some cases of these apps were found with issues such as leaking IP addresses, unnecessarily downloading gigabytes of data in background and exposing links sent in end to end encrypted chats.

    Facebook Messenger and Instagram showed the worst results as they would download a copy of a linked file in its entirety, even if it was gigabytes in size. Most other apps would cap the amount of data anywhere from 15MB to 50MB.

    These findings are quite alarming; your personal information isn’t safe on any online platform. Private messages are not so private.

  • Facebook, Amazon chiefs’ wealth rose 15pc amid coronavirus pandemic

    Facebook, Amazon chiefs’ wealth rose 15pc amid coronavirus pandemic

    Amid the coronavirus pandemic, wealth of the chief executive officers (CEOs) of Amazon and Facebook increased by 15 per cent.

    According to reports, wealth of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg witnessed the increase within the past two months.

    More than 600 billionaires in the United States (US) became even richer as tech stocks rose during virus lockdowns.
    Between March 18 and May 19, their total net worth went up by $434 billion while coronavirus continued to cause unemployment around the world.

    Bezos’s wealth grew over 30 per cent to $174.6 billion while Zuckerberg’s fortune increased by more than 45 per cent to $80b billion.

    As per a study conducted by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institution for Policy Studies’ Programme for Inequality, Amazon and Facebook stocks have surged following new programmes that pushed their businesses ahead at a time when many consumers are stuck at home.

    Reportedly, job losses in the US have surpassed 36.8 million since business shutdowns began in the middle of March to stop the spread of the deadly new disease.

    Data also shows that housing sale and manufacturing businesses also collapsed during the said time period.

    Coronavirus has killed at least 94,700 people in the US where more than 1.5 million infections have so far been confirmed.

  • Abrarul Haq accused of stealing ‘Mohafiz’ smartphone app

    Abrarul Haq accused of stealing ‘Mohafiz’ smartphone app

    Abrarul Haq, Pakistani singer and chairman of Pakistan Red Crescent Society allegedly infringed the idea of an existing app, ProPakistani reported.

    Abrar Ul Haq and Pakistan Red Crescent Society launched an emergency response application under the name of “Muhafiz.” However, they are accused of copying already available application ‘Mohafiz” by HumanTek. 

    It bears mentioning that Abrar and his team launched their app at the Muahfiz Youth Force Launching Ceremony that took place on the 5th of April 2020 in Lahore. The honour was done by President Arif Alvi.

    The original Mohafiz application was launched almost 5 years ago. It was developed by HumanTek after 2014’s APS attack as an Emergency service smartphone application. 

    According to the CEO of HumanTek, they have saved over 8,000 lives. Furthermore, this application is already downloaded by almost 80,000 plus users. 

    Since the situation came out, Abrarul Haq has not commented on this matter. 

    Despite several allegations against each other, officials on both sides are trying to resolve this matter amicably. 

    Fahad Khan, the founder of real ‘Mohafiz’ said that both sides should work together to server humanity under dire situation rather than competing with each other. 

  • ‘Worst clampdown on freedom of expression,’ rights groups regret PTI’s social media laws

    ‘Worst clampdown on freedom of expression,’ rights groups regret PTI’s social media laws

    Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFU), lawyers and civil society members have decided to launch a nationwide movement for getting trashed the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government’s Citizens Protection (Against Online Harm) Rules, DAWN reported.

    Addressing a press conference at the National Press Club on Thursday, the journalists’ union, lawyers, and civil society termed the government’s notified rules unacceptable, and demanded that the government revoked them.

    READ: PM House’s conversion into university to cost taxpayers over Rs35 billion

    Members of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), the Islamabad High Court Bar Association (IHCBA) and Media Matters for Democracy attended the presser.

    READ: Pakistan secures four-months to comply with FATF agenda

    Many prominent journalists were of the view that these rules exceeded the mandate given by the 2016 Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act. In addition, they all said the regulation was a clampdown on online content as the final extreme in the series of restrictions on freedom of expression as well as press freedom in the country.

    READ: Here is everything that happened at the opening ceremony of PSL V

    They, however, appreciated Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan’s statement regarding having consultation with all stakeholders before enforcing the rules.

  • ‘I already love her,’ say Twitterati about former Google exec leading ‘Digital Pakistan’ campaign

    ‘I already love her,’ say Twitterati about former Google exec leading ‘Digital Pakistan’ campaign

    A senior Pakistani executive of Google, Tania Aidrus quit her position at the tech giant to lead Prime Minister Imran Khan’s ‘Digital Pakistan’ initiative. Her decision to serve the country has won the hearts of Pakistanis who took to Twitter to thank her for her efforts.

    https://twitter.com/NeelumMunirKhan/status/1202569193964654592?s=20

    According to reports, Tania arrived in Pakistan from Singapore to offer her services to the country’s digitalisation programme.

    Tania was the Chief of Staff and Head of Strategic Initiatives on the Next Billion Users (NBU) team at Google which is focused on building new products and services that are aimed at addressing the emerging trends and needs of users in growth markets.

    Prior to this, Tania was a leader in the Global Business Organisation at Google in the US and then in Singapore where she was the Country Manager for South Asia Frontier Markets at Google focused on expanding the Internet ecosystem, increasing product adoption amongst consumers and businesses and accelerating innovation.

    Before being part of Google, Tania co-founded a mobile health diagnosis company called ClickDiagnostics which was focused on connecting rural patients in emerging markets to doctors globally. She also spent a portion of her career consulting for Fortune 500 companies and the US Government at Booz Allen Hamilton.

    Tania holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a BSc from Brandeis University.

    PM Imran Khan inaugurated the ‘Digital Pakistan’ campaign on Thursday. The campaign was executed by the Ministry of Information Technology (MoIT), who were tasked with digitising all correspondence between the government offices. They were given only three months to complete the task.

    According to a statement, Digital Pakistan is a comprehensive plan which will help the country in competing in the digital market globally and will also create jobs and ease for the people of Pakistan.

    Earlier in September, senior PTI leader Jahangir Tareen had announced the government had engaged a senior former Google executive to help revamp its payment system and set into motion the digitisation initiative.

    He said the government had persuaded the Google executive, who was in Singapore, to lead the project from Pakistan, after a lot of effort and headhunting.

    “She is leaving Google. In fact, she has left it and she is moving to Pakistan and will lead the digitisation initiative,” Tareen had said.