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YouTube’s likeness detection has arrived to help stop AI doppelgängers

Likeness detection will flag possible AI fakes, but Google doesn’t guarantee removal.

AI content has proliferated across the Internet over the past few years, but those early confabulations with mutated hands have evolved into synthetic images and videos that can be hard to differentiate from reality. Having helped to create this problem, Google has some responsibility to keep AI video in check on YouTube. To that end, the company has started rolling out its promised likeness detection system for creators.

Google’s powerful and freely available AI models have helped fuel the rise of AI content, some of which is aimed at spreading misinformation and harassing individuals. Creators and influencers fear their brands could be tainted by a flood of AI videos that show them saying and doing things that never happened—even lawmakers are fretting about this. Google has placed a large bet on the value of AI content, so banning AI from YouTube, as many want, simply isn’t happening.

Earlier this year, YouTube promised tools that would flag face-stealing AI content on the platform. The likeness detection tool, which is similar to the site’s copyright detection system, has now expanded beyond the initial small group of testers. YouTube says the first batch of eligible creators have been notified they can use likeness detection, but interested parties will need to hand Google even more personal information to get protection from AI fakes.

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Satellite operators will soon join airlines in using Starlink in-flight Wi-Fi

“This starts to enable a whole new category of capabilities.”

A little over a year ago, one of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft flew a team of four private astronauts to orbit on a mission that made history with the first fully commercial spacewalk.

Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis briefly floated out the door of the Dragon capsule, wearing SpaceX-built pressure suits to protect them against the hostile environment of space. It was the first time anyone ventured outside of their spacecraft without the involvement of a government space agency.

The mission, named Polaris Dawn, made an important contribution in another area. It was the first space mission to connect with SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, using laser links between the Dragon spacecraft and Starlink satellites to communicate with the Earth.

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MINIX ER939-AI is a compact AI workstation with Ryzen AI Max+ 395

Ten months after AMD introduced its Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” mobile processors, most of the computers to actually use the chips have… not been all that mobile. While we’ve seen a handful of Strix Halo laptops and tablets, the v…

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“Butt breathing” might soon be a real medical treatment

Ig Nobel-winning research could one day be used to treat people with blocked airways or clogged lungs.

Last year, a group of researchers won the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize in Physiology for discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus. But as with many Ig Nobel awards, there is a serious side to the seeming silliness. The same group has conducted a new study on the feasibility of adapting this method to treat people with blocked airways or clogged lungs, with promising results that bring rectal oxygen delivery one step closer to medical reality.

As previously reported, this is perhaps one of the more unusual research developments to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated shortages of ventilators and artificial lungs to assist patients’ breathing and prevent respiratory failure. The Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center team took their inspiration from the humble loach, a freshwater bottom-dwelling fish found throughout Eurasia and northern Africa. The loach (along with sea cucumbers) employs intestinal breathing (i.e., through the anus) rather than gills to survive under hypoxic conditions, thanks to having lots of capillary vessels in its intestine. The technical term is enteral ventilation via anus (EVA).

Would such a novel breathing method work in mammals? The team thought it might be possible and undertook experiments with mice and micro-pigs to test that hypothesis. They drew upon earlier research by Leland Clark, also of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, who invented a perfluorocarbon liquid called Oxycyte as a possible form of artificial blood. That vision never materialized, although it did provide a handy plot point for the 1989 film The Abyss, in which a rat is able to “breathe” in a similar liquid.

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Cards Against Humanity lawsuit forced SpaceX to vacate land on US/Mexico border

CAH: Trespassing lawsuit forced SpaceX to “pack up the space garbage” and leave.

A year after suing SpaceX for “invading” a plot of land on the US/Mexico border, Cards Against Humanity says it has obtained a settlement and will provide supporters with a new pack of cards about Elon Musk.

The party-game company bought the land in 2017 in an attempt to stymie President Trump’s wall-building project, but alleged that SpaceX illegally took over the land and filled it with construction equipment and materials. A September 2024 lawsuit filed against SpaceX in Cameron County District Court in Texas sought up to $15 million to cover the cost of restoring the property and other damages.

Cards Against Humanity, which bought the property with donations from supporters, told Ars today that “we’ve been in negotiations with SpaceX for much of the last year. We held out for the best settlement we could get—almost until the trial was supposed to start—and unfortunately part of that negotiation was that we’re not allowed to discuss specific settlement terms. They did admit to trespassing during the discovery phase, which was very validating.”

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M5 iPad Pro tested: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before

It’s a gorgeous tablet, but what does an iPad need with more processing power?

This year’s iPad Pro is what you might call a “chip refresh” or an “internal refresh.” These refreshes are what Apple generally does for its products for one or two or more years after making a larger external design change. Leaving the physical design alone preserves compatibility with the accessory ecosystem.

For the Mac, chip refreshes are still pretty exciting to me, because many people who use a Mac will, very occasionally, assign it some kind of task where they need it to work as hard and fast as it can, for an extended period of time. You could be a developer compiling a large and complex app, or you could be a podcaster or streamer editing or exporting an audio or video file, or maybe you’re just playing a game. The power and flexibility of the operating system, and first- and third-party apps made to take advantage of that power and flexibility, mean that “more speed” is still exciting, even if it takes a few years for that speed to add up to something users will consistently notice and appreciate.

And then there’s the iPad Pro. Especially since Apple shifted to using the same M-series chips that it uses in Macs, most iPad Pro reviews contain some version of “this is great hardware that is much faster than it needs to be for anything the iPad does.” To wit, our review of the M4 iPad Pro from May 2024:

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Zotac stuffed a desktop GPU into a 2.65 liter mini PC

The Zotac Magnus EN275060TC is a desktop computer that’s smaller than a typical game console. But by pairing an Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX mobile processor with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti desktop graphics card featuring 16GB of GDDR7 memory, thi…

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Warner Bros. Discovery raises HBO Max prices as it puts itself up for sale

HBO Max subscription fees have risen every year for the past three years.

HBO Max subscriptions are getting up to 10 percent more expensive, owner Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) revealed today.

HBO Max’s ad plan is going from $10 per month to $11/month. The ad-free plan is going from $17/month to $18.49/month. And the premium ad-free plan (which adds 4K support, Dolby Atmos, and the ability to download more content) is increasing from $21 to $23.

Meanwhile, prices for HBO Max’s annual plans are increasing from $100 to $110 with ads, $170 to $185 without ads, and $210 to $230 for the premium tier.

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MacBook Pro: Apple’s most awkward laptop is the first to show off Apple M5

Apple M5 trades blows with Pro and Max chips from older generations.

When I’m asked to recommend a Mac laptop for people, Apple’s low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro usually gets lost in the shuffle. It competes with the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air, significantly cheaper computers that meet or exceed the “good enough” boundary for the vast majority of computer users. The basic MacBook Pro also doesn’t have the benefit of Apple’s Pro or Max-series chips, which come with many more CPU cores, substantially better graphics performance, and higher memory capacity for true professionals and power users.

But the low-end Pro makes sense for a certain type of power user. At $1,599, it’s the cheapest way to get Apple’s best laptop screen, with mini LED technology, a higher 120 Hz ProMotion refresh rate for smoother scrolling and animations, and the optional but lovely nano-texture (read: matte) finish. Unlike the MacBook Air, it comes with a cooling fan, which has historically meant meaningfully better sustained performance and less performance throttling. And it’s also Apple’s cheapest laptop with three Thunderbolt ports, an HDMI port, and an SD card slot, all genuinely useful for people who want to plug lots of things in without having multiple dongles or a bulky dock competing for the Air’s two available ports.

If you don’t find any of those arguments in the basic MacBook Pro’s favor convincing, that’s fine. The new M5 version makes almost no changes to the laptop other than the chip, so it’s unlikely to change your calculus if you already looked at the M3 or M4 version and passed it up. But it is the first Mac to ship with the M5, the first chip in Apple’s fifth-generation chip family and a preview of what’s to come for (almost?) every other Mac in the lineup. So you can at least be interested in the 14-inch MacBook Pro as a showcase for a new processor, if not as a retail product in and of itself.

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Google Fi is getting enhanced web calls and messaging, AI bill summaries

Google’s MVNO gets better web support, clearer audio, and yes, more AI.

Google’s Fi cellular service is getting an upgrade, and since this is 2025, there’s plenty of AI involved. You’ll be able to ask Google AI questions about your bill, and a different variation of AI will improve call quality. AI haters need not despair—there are also some upgrades to connectivity and Fi web features.

As part of this update, a new Gemini-powered chatbot will soon be turned loose on your billing statements. The idea is that you can get bill summaries and ask specific questions of the robot without waiting for a real person. Google claims that testers have had positive experiences with the AI billing bot, so it’s rolling the feature out widely.

Next month, Google also plans to flip the switch on an AI audio enhancement. The new “optimized audio” will use AI to filter out background sounds like wind or crowd noise. If you’re using a Pixel, you already have a similar feature for your end of the call. However, this update will reduce background noise on the other end as well. Google’s MVNO has also added support for HD and HD+ calling on supported connections.

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