Tech Digest daily roundup: Jaguar Land Rover to build gigafactory in Somerset, UK

The UK is set to win a major battery plant for electric vehicles as Tata Group, the parent company of Jaguar Land Rover, appears to have decided against Spain. The boss of Jaguar Land Rover-owner Tata (TATAMOTORS.BO) is expected to fly to London next week to finalise the deal, the BBC reported. The massive state-of-the-art factory would be located at the Gravity business park, a 635-acre “smart campus” currently under construction near the M5 motorway at Puriton. The proposed gigafactory could potentially create up to 9,000 jobs. Yahoo!

The “existential” risk of artificial intelligence has been acknowledged by No 10 for the first time, after the prime minister met the heads of the world’s leading AI research groups to discuss safety and regulation. Rishi Sunak and Chloe Smith, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, met the chief executives of Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic AI on Wednesday evening and discussed how best to moderate the development of the technology to limit the risks of catastrophe. The Guardian

ChatGPT is gaining access to real-time internet search data that will let it provide answers based on up-to-date news and current affairs. Microsoft announced OpenAI’s chatbot will be integrated with its Bing search engine, effectively allowing it to trawl through the entire internet when responding to queries. It addresses one of the key limitations of ChatGPT, which until now has only been able to offer answers based on training data from up to 2021. The chatbot will also provide citations when utilising Bing search data, linking to its sources, which addresses another major concern users have had since it launched late last year. Sky News 

Anglo-Moroccan start-up the Atlas E-Mobility Group has announced its plans to develop and launch a premium electric SUV by 2026. The as-yet-unnamed EV will be a “simple but also functional” car inspired by “Moroccan design and identity”, co-founder and CEO Mohammed Yehya El Bakkali told Autocar. He said it will “only use the technologies that actually the consumer needs and looks for”, adding: “Anything that’s unnecessary will be cut off.” Atlas will initially target the European, African and Middle Eastern markets, aiming to capture the attention of middle-class buyers. Autocar

A paralysed man has been able to walk simply by thinking about it thanks to electronic brain implants, a medical first he says has changed his life. Gert-Jan Oskam, a 40-year-old Dutch man, was paralysed in a cycling accident 12 years ago. The electronic implants wirelessly transmit his thoughts to his legs and feet via a second implant on his spine. The system is still at an experimental stage but a leading UK spinal charity called it “very encouraging”. “I feel like a toddler, learning to walk again,” Mr Oskam told the BBC. He can also now stand and climb stairs. BBC

An Android recording app called iRecorder Screen Recorder began as an innocent screen recording app but turned evil nearly a year after it was first released, as detailed by Ars Technica. The app first came out in September 2021, but after an update the following August, it began recording a minute of audio every 15 minutes and forwarding those recordings, through an encrypted link, to the developer’s server. The app had 50,000 downloads by the time it was reported and removed from the Play store. The Verge