Russian hydrologist Alexander Tsvetkov was detained in February 2023, after an AI system determined that his face was a 55% match to the sketch of a murderer drawn 20 years ago by a witness.

Alexander Tsvetkov, a scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Inland Water Biology, has been living a nightmare for the past 10 months. He was removed from an airplane in February, following a work trip to Krasnoyarsk, and informed that he had been identified as the author of a series of murders over 20 years ago. Investigators claimed that he and his alleged accomplice killed at least two people in Moscow and the Moscow region in August 2002, ignoring the testimonies of multiple scientists that Tsvetkov had been with them at the time of the murders. The state’s smoking gun? An AI-powered system that found a 55% match between Tsvetkov and a sketch drawn by a witness over two decades ago…

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Aitana Lopez, aka Fit Aitana, has only been on Instagram for four months, but she already has over 110,000 followers and generates over $4,000 in monthly revenue. Not bad for someone who doesn’t exist.

Virtual models have been around for a few years now, and the advent of artificial intelligence has only made them more realistic and more popular. One standout representative of this new wave of AI-created digital influencers is Aitana, a cute, pink-haired female model from Barcelona who has managed to attract over 100k followers in just a few months. She only posts photos of her, since video is likely to make her digital form a bit too obvious, but every one of her photos garners tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. Her popularity has translated into a steady monthly income for her creators, who claim that she generates over 4,000 euros a month.

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China’s online store is becoming increasingly dominated by AI-powered clones that never tire of trying to sell you things and can literally work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The Chinese online shopping scene is very different than what we’re used to in the West. Live streaming is by far the most lucrative marketing channel these days, with popular influencers on platforms like Taobao and Douyin able to close massive deals in just a few hours every day. However, these crazy achievements come at a cost for businesses and brands. It takes time and money to train a great online seller, and there is nothing stopping them from reaching an agreement with competitors, leaving you no option but to restart the process. Having camera crews and assistants around during the live stream also adds to the expenditures, and last, but definitely not least, every top influencer has to sleep at some point. That’s where AI-powered avatars come in…

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Chinese state media outlet People’s Daily recently unveiled the newest member of its news anchor team, Ren Xiaorong, a virtual, AI-powered anchor that can allegedly provide 24/7 news coverage.

In a video published last Sunday by People’s Daily, a virtual young woman called Ren Xiaorong introduced herself to the world as an AI-driven chatbot that has learned the skills of ‘thousands of news anchors’ and that can constantly evolve based on viewers’ feedback. Beautiful and smartly dressed, Ren certainly looked like an agreeable news anchor, and if not for the synthesized, out-of-synch dubbing, you could hardly tell she wasn’t a real person. Using an app, anyone can ask the news anchor questions on a variety of topics, including education, epidemic prevention, housing, employment, environmental protection, and many others, but she can currently only deliver generic answers in line with the rhetoric favored by the Chinese Communist party.

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AI Suitcase is a smart suitcase developed by a blind computer scientist to aid the visually impaired in navigating their surrounding more efficiently without the aid of white canes or guide dogs.

65-year-old Chieko Asakawa has been completely blind since she was only 14, following a tragic accident. A computer scientist and also the director of the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, also known as Miraikan, in Tokyo she is living proof that the visually impaired can overcome their disability to achieve great things. But as someone who has long struggled with navigating unfamiliar and crowded places, Asakawa came up with an idea to help the visually impaired get around easier. In 2017, her own experiences inspired her to come up with the idea of a smart suitcase that could guide its user with the help of built-in sensors and cameras. Six years later, the AI Suitcase is almost ready for its commercial debut.

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AI is everywhere these days, and the humble baby stroller industry is no exception. Canadian stroller maker Glüxkind is set to release the world’s most advanced AI-powered baby stroller.

Originally unveiled at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the Glüxkind Ella is a technological wonder compared to most other baby strollers. Calling it a stroller sounds a bit unfair, considering that it’s more of a high-tech many that can independently rock your baby to sleep, assist the user on uphill and downhill slopes, and constantly monitor surroundings via an array of sensors and cameras, among many other impressive functions. It may look like a regular stroller at first sight, but Ella is actually a small battery-powered vehicle powered by artificial intelligence.

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A South Carolina college professor is sounding the alarm on the use of advanced chatbots powered by artificial intelligence by students to complete various assignments.

Darren Hick, an assistant philosophy professor at Furman University, claims that one of his students used ChatGPT, an advanced AI-powered chatbot recently released by OpenAI and freely available to the public, to create a philosophy essay. While checking the essays turned in by his students, one caught his eye because of the unusual wording. It wasn’t grammatically incorrect, but it wasn’t language that a human college student would use. Hick compared it to the work “of a very smart 12th grader,” adding that the chatbot’s capacity to produce original works both terrorized and fascinated him.

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Eternity is an A.I.-generated virtual K-pop idol group consisting of 11 members created using advanced deep-fake technology.

K-pop has really taken the world by storm in recent years, with groups like BTS and Black Pink conquering market after market with their catchy songs and energetic dance routines. The genre has become one of South Korea’s main exports, generating tens of billions in revenue, but despite its massive international success, the massive corporations behind the K-pop wave aren’t resting on their laurels. Instead, they are constantly looking for ways to stay relevant in this constantly changing industry, and artificial intelligence is apparently the next big thing. So it’s not that big of a surprise that A.I.-generated virtual K-pop groups are already a thing.

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A team of graduate students at China’s Wuhan University recently unveiled an innovative “invisibility cloak” that circumvents AI-powered security cameras.

China is one of the world’s most heavenly surveilled countries, with AI-powered cameras being used for everything from monitoring employees’ toilet habits to students’ attention in classrooms. But as advanced as these surveillance systems may be, they are not perfect. A group of Chinese graduate students recently showcased an intriguing invention that they claim is essentially an invisibility cloak against surveillance cameras powered by artificial intelligence.

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The Synthetic Party is a new political group in Denmark that is committed to following the platform thought up by an AI entity known as Leader Lars.

Out of all the political parties eyeing a seat in the Danish Parliament this year, the Synthetic Party has to be the most intriguing, by far. Founded in May by artist collective Computer lars and non-profit art and tech organization MindFuture Foundation, the new political party is dedicated to following the policies of an AI programmed on the policies of all Danish fringe parties since the 1970s that have never obtained a seat in the parliament. Apart from promoting the presence of AI in politics, the Synthetic Party also aims to become an alternative for the 20 percent of the Danish population that never votes in elections.

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Chinese metaverse company NetDragon Websoft recently made history by appointing an AI-powered virtual humanoid robot as its CEO.

The new AI-powered CEO, known as ‘Ms Tang Yu’, will reportedly be at the forefront of  Fujian NetDragon Websoft’s “organizational and efficiency department”, overseeing operations at the technology company valued at almost $10 billion. The board of NetDragon Websoft apparently believes that artificial intelligence is the future of corporate management, and the appointment of Ms. Tang Yu is a symbolic commitment to embrace the use of AI and change the way the company does business.

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Scientists at the University of Chicago have developed a new algorithm that forecasts crime with up to 90% accuracy by analyzing data and learning patterns.

Minority Report is a very popular sci-fi film about a special police unit that can arrest murderers before they commit their crimes with the help of three clairvoyant humans called Precogs, which can visualize impending homicides. It’s a brilliant film, if you like sci-fi murder mysteries, or you’re simply a fan of Tom Cruise, but the reason we bring it up in this story is that a team of researchers claims to have come up with a real-world, AI-powered system that is also able to predict crimes with an accuracy of 90%. And their systems doesn’t require Precogs, just past data so it can predict the future.

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Prism Courage, a 134,000-tonne commercial tanker, recently sailed from the Gulf of Mexico to South Korea while controlled mostly by an artificial intelligence system called HiNAS 2.0.

Avikus, a subsidiary of South Korean technology giant Hyundai, recently announced that Prism Courage, a tanker designed to transport natural gas, had become the first large ship to make an ocean passage of over 10,000 km (6,210 miles) autonomously. The key to this incredible achievement was HiNAS 2.0, an AI-powered system capable of analyzing different kinds of sensor readings in real-time and responding to them swiftly, efficiently, and, most importantly, in accordance with the rules of maritime laws.

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Speech2Face is an advanced neural network developed by MIT scientists and trained to recognize certain facial features and reconstruct people’s faces just by listening to the sound of their voices.

You’ve probably already heard about AI-powered cameras that can recognize people just by analyzing their facial features, but what if there was a way for artificial intelligence to figure out what you look like just by the sound of your voice and without comparing your voice to a database? That’s exactly what a team of scientists at MIT has been working on, and the results of their work are impressive, kind of. While their neural network, named Speech2Face, can’t yet figure out the exact facial features of a human just by their voice, it certainly gets plenty of details right.

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Chinese real-estate giant Vanke Group recently sparked controversy after naming its advanced AI-powered debt collector its employee of the year for 2021.

Looking at a picture of Cui Xiaopan, Vanke Group’s employee of 2021, you’d think she was a woman in her 20s with a very determined look on her face, but in reality, she isn’t even human. The AI-generated photo that the Chinese company uses to depict its star debt collector is just an attempt of attaching an eye-pleasing face to what is otherwise a cold-and calculated artificial intelligence. However, when it comes to performance, the AI debt-collector managed to surpass her human colleagues by quite a large margin, registering a 91.44% success rate in collecting overdue payments.

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