Zao, a Chinese artificial intelligence-powered app that allows users to swap faces with actors and other celebrities in videos and GIF images, has sparked serious privacy concerns due to how convincing the transformation can be.

Uploaded to China’s iOS App Store last Friday, Zao became the number one downloaded app on the platform in only two days and looking at what it can do, it’s easy to see why. By using artificial intelligence, the app is able to take a simple picture of the user and superimpose it on to the face of any character in a video or GIF with truly breathtaking results. For example, one user claims it only took them under 8 seconds to swap faces with Leonardo DiCaprio and fulfil their dream of starring in blockbusters like Titanic.

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A Japanese tech startup claims to have developed an artificial intelligence software that analyzes surveillance camera footage in order to detect suspicious behavior and prevent shoplifting before it actually happens.

In 2002, when the movie Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, came out, the concept of preventing a future crime before the perpetrator did anything remotely suspicious was nothing more than a cool sci-fi idea, but thanks to the rapid advancement of artifical intelligence, we already have an early version of the technology displayed in that movie. VaakEye, an AI software developed by Japanese startup Vaak, can allegedly detect shoplifting before it occurs by analyzing surveillance camera footage for discrete suspicious movements and behaviors of people caught in the camera’s field of view. If the algorithm decides that there is a high-enough probability of a person shoplifting, it sends an alert via a smartphone app so the crime can be prevented.

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China’s state-run news agency, Xinhua, yesterday unveiled its newest news anchor, Xin Xiaomeng. Why is this newsworthy? Well, because Xin isn’t a real person, but an ultra-realistic computer generated model powered by advanced AI technology.

The perfectly coiffed Xin Xiaomeng introduced herself to Xinhua’s viewers in a short clip, announcing that she will make her professional debut as news anchor in March. She was developed by the state-run news agency in collaboration with search engine Sogou, and her appearance and voice were inspired by those of a real-life Xinhua broadcaster named Qu Meng. In her introduction video, the perfectly coiffed AI news anchor spoke only in Chinese, and it’s unclear if she’ll be able to tackle English news reports as well.

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China’s state news agency Xinhua unveiled two very realistic looking AI news anchors that can “tirelessly” report the news 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, from anywhere in the world.

We’ve known that robots and artificial intelligence were coming for our jobs, but somehow I never thought news anchors would be among the first to be replaced. However, if the two AI broadcasters who made their debut last week during China’s annual World Internet Conference are anything to go by, the future of human news anchors looks very bleak. The newest additions to Xinhua’s team of broadcasters not only look disturbingly realistic, but they can also move their mouths to match the audio, blink, nod their head in emphasis, or raise their eyebrows. But their most important quality is that they can work 24/7, both on the agency’s website and on social media platforms, greatly “reducing news production costs and improving efficiency”.

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Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have trained an artificial intelligence algorithm  to become a psychopath by exposing it to gruesome and violent images on popular social network Reddit.

Called Norman, after the iconic Anthony Perkins character in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic “Psycho”, the AI was trained to perform image captioning, a popular deep learning method of generating a textual description of an image. But there was a fun twist – for an extended period of time, Norman was only exposed to gruesome and violent images from an infamous subreddit dedicated to documenting and observing the disturbing reality of death. Researchers then used Rorsach inkblots to compare Norman to other AI which hadn’t been exposed to the same gruesome images.

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Students at the No. 11 Middle School in Hangzhou, China, may want to think twice before dozing off or getting distracted in class as a new facial recognition system will be scanning their faces every 30 seconds to make sure they are paying attention.

Called a “smart classroom behavior management system”, the new monitoring solution recently installed at Hangzhou’s No. 11 Middle School is made up of three high-tech cameras positioned above the blackboard that constantly feed information to an AI-powered software that analyzes the students’ facial expressions and general behavior and assesses whether they are enjoying lessons or if their minds are wandering.

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We’ve heard of robots and artificial intelligence taking human jobs, but I bet mayors didn’t really think their jobs would be threatened any time soon. They were wrong, and the AI running for mayor of a Tokyo district is clear proof of that.

Artificial Intelligence can’t legally run for high-ranking public administration positions yet, but one mayoral candidate from Tama City, Tokyo, intends to maximize the use of artificial intelligence in running municipal affairs, so he’s running his campaign as ‘AI Mayor’. Basically, he’s proposing replacing human public officials with AI and having them collect city data and create fair and balanced policies that will benefit everyone.

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To make sure his cat doesn’t have to wait too long at the door waiting to be let in, a Dutch engineer built a face-recognition gadget that identifies the feline and messages him so he can let it in.

Arkaitz Garro, a WeTransfer software engineer in Holland, doesn’t have a cat-flap on his door, so every time his cat wants to come inside, it has to wait until he or his wife notices it at the door and lets it in. That didn’t really do, so he decided to use his skills to solve the problem. Instead of installing a good old cat-flap, he decided to go for a more high-tech solution involving artificial intelligence, motion-detection sensors, face recognition software and a messaging app. You might think it’s overkill, but Arkaitz claims that it only took him a few hours to do it, as all the hardware and software he used is available to anyone.

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You probably didn’t even know there was such a thing as a hipster-only bar, did you? Well, there is (sort of) and if you plan on getting in, you better grow a beard, put on some glasses and wear those checkered shirts hipsters love so much.

The Hipster Bar isn’t technically a bar, but an art project thought up by English artist Max Dovey, who created a software that relies on artificial intelligence and face recognition technology to tell hipsters apart from regular folks. He has been touring the UK for the last two years, turning regular watering holes into pop-up hipster bars by having patrons pass his hipster test in order to gain entry. According to 28-year-old Dovey, his machine will only grant you entry if you register as over 90% hipster.

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