Tech Digest daily roundup: AI generated newsreader ‘Fedha’ unveiled in Kuwait

An AI-generated newsreader has been revealed by a media outlet in Kuwait. Kuwait News posted a video to their Twitter account over the weekend showing the computerised anchor introducing “herself” as “Fedha”. The AI video showed a blonde woman wearing a black jacket and a white T-shirt. “I’m Fedha, the first presenter in Kuwait who works with artificial intelligence at Kuwait News. What kind of news do you prefer? Let’s hear your opinions,” she said in Arabic. Sky News

London has been given £35.7m to invest in its electric vehicle charge points. The money, issued by the Government’s Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) fund, will help expand the charging network across all 32 boroughs and the City of London. A further £3m will help councils deliver the LEVI projects. Sadiq Khan said: “This funding will help reach our ambition to have at the very least one electric vehicle charge point on every street where needed.” London has almost 13,000 charge points, making up a third of the UK’s total. BBC 

MacBook Air 15-inch rumors have circulated for a long time, but things are heating up ahead of WWDC 2023(opens in new tab) in June with production of the long-awaited laptop allegedly ramping up yet again. As reported by MacRumors, a tweet by respected display analyst Ross Young indicates that the MacBook Air 15-inch has entered a third round of production. Production of the larger Air started this past February, with a ramp in production also happening in March, according to previous reports. Young stated that he doesn’t know the “precise launch timing.” He estimates it may happen in “late April/early May.” LaptopMag

What would happen if you filled a virtual town with AIs and set them loose? As it turns out, they brush their teeth and are very nice to one another! But this unexciting outcome is good news for the researchers who did it, since they wanted to produce “believable simulacra of human behavior” and got just that. The paper describing the experiment, by Stanford and Google researchers, makes for interesting reading. The idea was to see if they could apply the latest advances in machine learning models to produce “generative agents” that take in their circumstances and output a realistic action in response. Tech Crunch

Google makes some of the best Google Assistant-powered smart displays. There are also offerings available from Lenovo, JBL, and LG in a different form factor or at a lower price point, though admittedly, third-party Assistant display options were always limited. Until now, non-Google smart displays provided mostly the same experience as the Google Nest Hub or the Hub Max. But going forward, this won’t be the case as the big G won’t provide software updates to any third-party smart displays.

Three top Twitter executives who were sacked by Elon Musk last year when he took over the social media company filed suit on Monday, seeking to be reimbursed for costs of litigation, investigations and congressional inquiries related to their former jobs. Ex-CEO Parag Agrawal, along with the company’s former chief legal and financial officers, claim in the suit that they are owed a total of more than $1 million, and that Twitter is legally bound to pay them. Twitter responded to an AFP request for comment with a poop emoji, as has become its practice. NDTV