Welcome back to Lately, the Globe’s weekly tech newsletter. We’re still newish around here and would love to hear from readers. Have any feedback? Send me an e-mail and let me know what you think.
In this week’s issue:
💬 An assassination attempt in the age of social media
👾 Using AI to breathe more life into video games
📵 The highs and lows of giving up my smartphone
⚡ A portable battery pack to wait out power outages
An assassination attempt in the age of social media
The rally site is empty and littered with debris after the shooting.Evan Vucci/The Associated Press
Moments after Saturday’s shooting at Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania, a torrent of misinformation and disinformation flooded social media from across the political spectrum. On the left, posts claimed the blood was fake and the shooting was staged by Republicans who wanted to paint Trump as indestructible. Elon Musk, the owner of X where many of the false claims were spreading, suggested the Secret Service’s failure to stop the shooter may have been “deliberate,” while Republican congressman Mike Collins posted “Joe Biden sent the orders.”
Although real users helped spread these false claims, social media bots played an outsized role. According to an analysis by tech firm Cyabra, 45 per cent of the accounts using hashtags such as #fakeassassination and #stagedshooting on X, TikTok and Instagram were fake.
This raises questions over whether social media platforms – which are the main source of news for many Canadians, despite Meta not allowing news links on Facebook or Instagram – are doing enough to take down fake accounts or quell the spread of conspiracy theories. And even if platforms have their own fact-checking tools or warning labels, in a breaking news event, AI-generated videos or photos can make the rounds before they’re flagged.
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The NPC comes alive
In Super Mario Bros., Toad delivers this iconic NPC line.Wikimedia
In video games, typically every line of dialogue and action is scripted by developers. This becomes obvious when you encounter the friendly shopkeeper or the cute, wise toad delivering the same five lines over and over again. Proponents of generative artificial intelligence believe the technology can be used to breathe more life into these nonplayer characters, or NPCs.
The Edmonton-based startup Artificial Agency has just raised US$16-million to build out its generative AI gaming engine that will allow developers to create more realistic and interactive characters that can take actions based on what’s happening within the game, rather than having prescriptive behaviours. Artificial Agency’s technology could also produce AI companions within the games that help a player complete tasks, like making food or killing zombies.
But as reporter Joe Castaldo explains, not every game studio is going to be enthusiastic about generative AI, owing to concerns about the impact on jobs and the creative process. Scripting dialogue and behaviour might consume time and resources, but it can result in a cohesive game that reflects the story the developer set out to tell.
Google eyes US$23-billion acquisition of cybersecurity startup
Google is considering a US$23-billion acquisition of Wiz, a cybersecurity startup that uses AI to detect real-time threats, such as hackers trying to gain control of cloud resources or steal data. If Google moves ahead with the deal, it will be the company’s largest acquisition ever – and a rare example of a big tech company attempting a megadeal amid heightened regulatory scrutiny of the sector under Biden’s administration.
My life without a smartphone: inconvenient, but kinda nice?
Me and my new flip phone. (And why yes, I did take this using Photobooth)The Globe and Mail
For the past five days, I haven’t used my iPhone. Instead, I am using a TCL Flip, a chunky phone that can text, make calls and that’s about it. It doesn’t even have emojis!
I’m in the middle of a two-week social experiment to recalibrate my relationship with my iPhone, and hopefully, by the end, feel less dependent on it. I miss my group chats, listening to podcasts during my commute and scrolling TikTok. But it’s also been freeing not doomscrolling myself to sleep or immediately checking my email when I wake up. The real test will come next week, when I travel to New York without Google Maps. Wish me luck! (Have you given up your smartphone in recent years? I’d love to hear about your experience for the article I’m writing. E-mail me!)
What else we’re reading this week:
When facial recognition helps police target Black faces (The Walrus)
To find alien life, we might have to kill it (Wired)
Why tech titans are turning toward Trump (Vox)
Soundbite
“We should be skeptical of Saudi Arabia and its multi-billion dollar spends in the sports realm, but we also should be skeptical of what corporations are attempting to convince us of.” – Globe reporter Simon Houpt on sportswashing, as heard on this week’s episode of Lately.
Adult Money
This would've come in handy during Tuesday's power outage.Supplied
Anker Power Bank, $79.99
Torrential downpours flooded Toronto on Tuesday, turning streets into rivers and basements into wading pools. Large swaths of the city were without power, including my own home, which was stuck in the dark for nearly 12 hours. As I watched my laptop die after two hours, I kicked myself for not having a battery pack charged and ready to go. This Anker Power Bank would have come in handy. It can charge three devices at once and has an integrated USB-C so you’re not scrambling to find cables. For a quick top up, it can charge a 14-inch MacBook Pro to 50 per cent in under 40 minutes.
Culture Radar
Wraparound screens and motion-controlled chairs are becoming the norm at theatres.Ruby Ash/The Globe and Mail
Movie theatres go super high tech
The next time you walk into the movie theatre, or more likely, buy a ticket on your phone beforehand, you’ll notice it’s increasingly difficult to see a film without any supersized bells and whistles. Your screen options will look something like this: IMAX, Ultra AVX, D-Box, ScreenX or 4DX, each choice descending further into a nonsensical scramble of letters and numbers.
As film editor Barry Hertz explains, we’re living in the Premium Large Format (PLF) era, where you can go big or go home. Broadly speaking, PLF is used to define any auditorium that features best-in-class image and sound technology, often alongside other extras like motion-control seating and panoramic screens. And while the proliferation of this new tech may feel like a natural next step in the evolution of movie-going, it can also feel unnecessary. “My ScreenX viewing of Godzilla Minus One felt so needlessly gimmicky that I left midway, waiting for the later IMAX screening,” Hertz says.
More tech and telecom news:
Corus Entertainment faces debt problem as it warns about company’s future
How FLO aims to conquer the EV charging market
AI presents opportunities and challenges to Indigenous collaborators trying to retain languages