Digital fingerprints of a million child abuse images made

  • The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) reports that the digital fingerprints of a million images of child sexual abuse have been created.
  • The fingerprints, known as hashes, help companies and police find copies of the images in hope that reuse of the images can be prevented.
  • The IWF also produces accompanying metadata for images which explains the exact nature of the abuse taking place to the child which aims to speed up enforcement action.
  • You can read the full story on the BBC’s website.

Instagram adds new AMBER alerts to help raise awareness of missing children

  • Instagram has added a new AMBER Alerts feature to distribute important information about missing people in the app.
  • It will work by sharing timely and critical updates to help address child abductions and related situations.
  • Alerts will include details about the child including a photo, description, location of the abduction and any other available information.
  • Users can respond to an alert if they have information and share the alert with friends to spread the word.
  • You can read the full story on the Social Media Today’s website.

Google bans deepfake-generating AI from Colab

  • Google has banned the training of AI systems that can be used to generate deepfakes on its Google Colab
  • A deepfake is an image, video, sound, voice, or GIF which has been manipulated by a computer to superimpose someone’s face, body, or voice onto something else.
  • Users of the open source deepfake generator DeepFaceLab noticed the change when they received an error message after attempting to run the software.
  • However, testers have found that some software doesn’t trigger the warning.
  • To find out more about Deepfakes, check out our beginner’s guide.
  • You can read the full story on Tech Crunch’s website.

Meta’s new Reels video editing tools

  • Meta is rolling out new creator tools for all users on Reels for Instagram and Facebook to encourage the creation of original content.
  • Reels will let users import their own audio clips from their camera roll, now supports 90-second videos and is adding interactive stickers like polls, quizzes and emojis.
  • Instagram is also adding templates which let users replicate the pattern of another Reel, which speeds up the creation process.
  • You can read the full story on The Verge’s website.