Tech Digest daily roundup: Goodbye Google Stadia
Google has just released the last ever game for the Stadia platform, ahead of its shutdown today (January 18). After much speculation, Google confirmed that the Stadia would be shutting down last September, with the cloud gaming service set to shut up shop today. Ahead of the shutdown though, Google has released one last game on the Stadia, Worm Game. An internally developed version of Snake, Worm Game is a solo and multiplayer title that was used to “test many of Stadia’s features, starting well before our 2019 public launch, right through 2022”. NME
Getty Images is taking legal action against the makers of an artificial intelligence image-creation tool. The agency, which sells the rights to use photographers’ and illustrators’ images, said Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion system had infringed these. AI image generators “learn” to create images from simple text instructions by analysing human-made pictures, including images found online. Many artists and photographers say they use their work without permission. Some artists find image generators a valuable way to express themselves creatively – but many others worry they can convincingly imitate their style and use it to produce images in seconds. BBC
Facebook and Instagram’s parent company could soon free the nipple. More than a decade after breastfeeding mothers first held a “nurse-in” at Facebook’s headquarters to protest its ban on breasts, Meta’s Oversight Board has called for an overhaul to the company’s rules banning bare-chested images of women – but not men. In a decision dated 17 January, the Oversight Board – a group of academics, politicians, and journalists who advise the company on its content-moderation policies – recommended that Meta change its adult nudity and sexual activity community standard. Guardian
London EV drivers face a massive hike in running costs for their cars after one of London’s largest charging point providers has tripled prices. Last month the firm took the decision to introduce peak pricing of 79p per kilowatt hour between the hours of 4pm and 7pm, while the fee outside of these hours stood at 45p. A year ago, Ubitricity charged just 24p per kilowatt hour for EV charging, before raising the price to 32p in April and introducing an additional 35p connection fee. Standard
A recruitment team unknowingly recommended ChatGPT for a job interview after the AI was used to complete an application task. Since its release back in November, the internet at large has been putting the impressive language model through its paces to see just how flexible and human-like it can be. With little more than a short prompt, the bot has had a go at everything from writing articles to solving PC problems, putting the fear of potential redundancy into copywriters, customer support staff and beyond. Sky News
A 2016 video that Tesla used to promote its self-driving technology was staged to show capabilities like stopping at a red light and accelerating at a green light that the system did not have, according to testimony by a senior engineer. The video, which remains archived on Tesla’s website, was released in October 2016 and promoted on Twitter by Elon Musk as evidence that “Tesla drives itself”. But the Model X was not driving itself with technology Tesla had deployed, Ashok Elluswamy, director of Autopilot software at Tesla, said in the transcript of a July deposition taken as evidence in a lawsuit against Tesla for a 2018 fatal crash. The Guardian
