Month: June 2023

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The FBI on Monday warned of the increasing use of artificial intelligence to generate phony videos for use in sextortion schemes that attempt to harass minors and non-consulting adults or coerce them into paying ransoms or complying with other demands.

The scourge of sextortion has existed for decades. It involves an online acquaintance or stranger tricking a person into providing a payment, an explicit or sexually themed photo, or other inducement through the threat of sharing already obtained compromising images to the public. In some cases, the images in the scammers’ possession are real and were obtained from someone the victim knows or an account that was breached. Other times, the scammers only claim to have explicit material without providing any proof.

After convincing victims their explicit or compromising pictures are in the scammers’ possession, the scammers demand some form of payment in return for not sending the content to family members, friends, or employers. In the event victims send sexually explicit images as payment, scammers often use the new content to keep the scam going for as long as possible.

CUPERTINO, Calif.—People have been asking for a 15-inch MacBook Air for about as long as the Air has existed.

The Air was originally conceived as a laptop that was all about extreme portability. But over time it became the default MacBook for most people—and plenty of users don’t need the performance of a MacBook Pro but might like a little more desktop space or a bigger screen on which to watch streaming TV.

Apple has targeted those people here. I spent a few minutes handling and using the 15-inch MacBook Air and—surprise! It’s just like the most recent 13-inch Air but wider and taller.

Enlarge / This is Apple’s Vision Pro headset. It looks a bit like a particularly bulky pair of ski goggles, with the materials and design language of Apple’s AirPods Max headphones. (credit: Samuel Axon)

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Going into the Vision Pro demo room at Apple’s WWDC conference, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The keynote presentation, which showed everything from desktop productivity apps to dinosaurs circling a Vision Pro user in space, seemed impressive, but augmented reality promotional videos often do.

They depict a seamless experience in which the elements of digital space merge with the user’s actual surroundings completely. When you actually put on the headset, though, you'll often find that the promotional video was pure aspiration and reality still has some catching up to do.

That was not my experience with Vision Pro. To be clear, it wasn’t perfect. But it’s the first time I’ve tried an AR demo and thought, “Yep, what they showed in the promo video was pretty much how it really works.”