Few tech products have been as broadly contentious as video-generating artificial intelligence.
These complex algorithms, which cleave millions of datapoints together into seconds-long gobs of video, are notoriously trained on proprietary material, leading to widespread <a href="https://petapixel.com/2025/06/09/ai-companies-used-130000-film-and-tv-scripts-to-train-generative-models/">ethical</a> and <a href="https://deadline.com/2025/06/disney-nbcuniversal-ai-lawsuit-1236430694/">legal</a> concerns. (That's before we even mention how much <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-energy-use">energy it takes</a> to synthesize an AI video.)
Tech billionaires tend to argue that this is simply the way things <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-over-copyrighted-work">need to be</a> — if you want AI, we need to feed it copyrighted books, music, and video.
However, one group of AI researchers is working to prove that argument wrong.
Moonvalley is a Los Angeles-based AI startup offering a "3D-aware" video synthesis model which it claims is 100 percent trained on public domain films.
The startup's flagship product, Marey, debuted in a limited run back in March. It's now out and open to the public, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/08/moonvalleys-ethical-ai-video-model-for-filmmakers-is-now-publicly-available/">TechCrunch reports</a>, making use of a credit-based system, which is typical of most AI video software.
The company is drawing the attention of big names in the film world, like Ed Ulbrich, a VFX artist and producer who worked on movies like "Titanic," "Benjamin Button," and "Top Gun: Maverick." Moonvalley <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250618829097/en/Moonvalley-Hires-VFX-Trailblazer-Ed-Ulbrich-to-Lead-Strategic-Growth-in-AI-Powered-Entertainment">hired Ulbrich</a> to liaison with film studios back in June, a role he was drawn to by the company's "clean model," as he calls it.
Ulbrich was previously down on generative AI, but says Moonvalley's approach helped change his mind.
"I do think a key thing for me which was the game-changer and why I was just compelled is that at its core the idea of [Moonvalley’s] clean model of an ethically sourced, ethically trained, a legit, proper thing," Ulbrich <a href="https://deadline.com/2025/07/visual-effects-pioneer-ed-ulbrich-moonvalley-exec-post-ai-revolution-1236438695/">told Deadline </a>in an interview. "No stolen pixels, no scraping of the internet. It’s done in a great way. And it is so important that it happened."
Similar projects have been launched in other mediums. In June, a team of over <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-built-ethical-data">two dozen AI researchers</a> trained a large language model (LLM) on openly licensed or public domain data, proving that it doesn't take <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-books-train-meta-ai-libgen">millions of stolen books</a> to build an AI chatbot.
It was admittedly a ton of work, with the team combing through over eight terabytes of data — <a href="https://askleo.com/a-new-unit-of-measurement/">roughly equal</a> to about 1,685,461 Bibles — once to format everything, and then again to double-check the copyright status of all the material.
The result was an LLM that more or less stacked up to Meta's Llama 1 and 2 7B, which are admittedly a few years old at this point, but impressive nonetheless.
While it remains to be seen if Moonvalley's data truly was publicly licensed, as they claim, it could offer a strong rebuttal to <a href="https://www.techpolicy.press/how-the-emerging-market-for-ai-training-data-is-eroding-big-techs-fair-use-copyright-defense/">big tech's narrative</a> of data shortages and necessary plunder.
More on generative AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/indie-rock-band-velvet-sundown-never-use-ai">"Indie Rock Band" That's Clearly Using AI Claims That "We Never Use AI"</a>

License to Film

"No stolen pixels, no scraping of the internet. It’s done in a great way."

New Video-Generating AI Trained 100 Percent on Public Domain Films

As large language models (LLMs) become ever more integrated into the platforms that define daily life, major flaws in the software's security capabilities are starting to show.
McDonald's is among the <a href="https://futurism.com/companies-bragging-ai-job-applicants">growing list</a> of companies that have quickly shoehorned LLM chatbots into their hiring systems, consequences be damned. Its Paradox.ai-built chatbot, which McDonald's calls a "<a href="https://jobs.mchire.com/">virtual recruiting assistant</a>," goes by the name Olivia.
Olivia is more than happy to help applicants find jobs near them through a fake-live chat, complete with a photo of a human worker to make the whole thing that much more uncanny.
As a chatbot, Olivia's not that remarkable. It ushers job seekers through a maze of incomprehensible personality tests and screening questions, complete with the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1lo9s75/mcdonalds_hiring_ai_is_making_me_go_insane/">infuriating hallucinations</a> one can expect to run into with an LLM.
However, to a hacker who knows how to crack LLMs, Olivia is a treasure trove waiting to be uncovered.
As <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/mcdonalds-ai-hiring-chat-bot-paradoxai/">first reported by Wired</a>, Olivia had some astonishing security defects hiding just beneath its faux-human skin. With the right knowledge, a hacker could access the chatlogs of 64 million McDonald's applicants, including personal details, such as full names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, work availability, and raw chat data.
Olivia's jaw-dropping weakness was discovered by cybersecurity researchers Ian Carroll and Sam Curry, who were able to break into the backend of the Paradox.ai LLM using the username and password "123456." From there, the white hat hackers were able to access the AI company's "test restaurant," giving them a glimpse at how the whole thing worked.
"It turned out we had become the administrator of a test restaurant inside the McHire system," Carroll wrote <a href="https://ian.sh/mcdonalds">on his blog</a>. Since they were still confined to Paradox.ai's testing software, the pair decided to apply for one of the trial postings to study the process.
By diving into the code behind the application, they quickly found a parameter indicating their application number, 64,185,742. When they tried to follow the application directly below theirs, they came face to face with another job seeker's personal info, <a href="https://dis-blog.thalesgroup.com/security/2019/05/13/unmasking-data-masking/">unmasked</a> for the whole world to see.
"We quickly realized this [system] allows us to access every chat interaction that has ever applied for a job at McDonald’s," Carroll wrote.
"We immediately began disclosure of this issue once we realized the potential impact," wrote Carroll. "Unfortunately, no disclosure contacts were publicly available and we had to resort to emailing random people."
"The Paradox.ai security page just says that we do not have to worry about security!" he added.
The internal vulnerability has since been patched by Paradox, and the admin password is no longer 123456. Still, it's a crystal clear demonstration of <a href="https://www.the-sun.com/motors/9888857/driver-uses-ai-loophole-buy-new-car-1/">how irresponsible</a> some early LLM adoption has been.
More on hacking: <a href="https://futurism.com/iran-hackers-trump-emails">Iranian Hackers Threaten to Release Stolen Emails From Trump's Inner Circle</a>

Extra Pickle

"It turned out we had become the administrator of a test restaurant inside the McHire system."

McDonald's Idiotic AI Hiring System Just Leaked Personal Data About Millions of Job Applicants

Serial entrepreneur Jack Dorsey, who <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/jack-dorsey-alarmed-elon-musk-erratic-behavior-twitter">cofounded Twitter</a>, <a href="https://futurism.com/jack-dorsey-block-layoffs">Block</a>, and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/invites-jack-dorsey-twitter-alternative-bluesky">Bluesky</a>, has started yet another new app — and this one's got an embarrassing secret.
As <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/09/jack-dorsey-says-his-secure-new-bitchat-app-has-not-been-tested-for-security/">TechCrunch reports</a>, Dorsey's new open source messaging app, Bitchat, is <a href="https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat/blob/main/WHITEPAPER.md#encryption-and-security">supposed to be</a> decentralized, private, and secure.
There's only one problem: the Bluetooth-based app, by the venture's admission, is probably lacking in that key regard.
"This software has not received external security review and may contain vulnerabilities and does not necessarily meet its stated security goals," the <a href="https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat/commit/d296f1d6a4ff8ee60c5c15d19e9178a244cf3e5c">Bitchat GitHub reads</a>. "Do not use it for production use, and do not rely on its security whatsoever until it has been reviewed."
That warning, TechCrunch notes, only appeared after the app was launched — and after security researchers were able to spoof other peoples' accounts on Bitchat.
In a <a href="https://www.supernetworks.org/pages/blog/agentic-insecurity-vibes-on-bitchat">recent blog post</a>, coder Alex Radocea explained that he was able to impersonate other users on the app because of its "broken identity authentication/verification" — a "completely avoidable" issue had Bitchat's creators just done a bit more legwork on building out the security protocols.
After discovering that vulnerability, Radocea filed a GitHub ticket asking how to flag the problem, only for Dorsey to mark it as "completed" without responding. A few days later, the former Twitter CEO <a href="https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat/issues/19">reopened the ticket</a> and told the security researcher to flag such issues by posting directly onto GitHub, TechCrunch notes.
In the aftermath of that exchange, Radocea is cautioning potential users not to trust Bitchat's security-forward claims just yet — especially given that <a href="https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat/issues/78">others have found</a> <a href="https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat/pull/96">unique vulnerabilities</a> of their own.
"Security is a great feature to have for going viral," he told TechCrunch. "But a basic sanity check... would be a very obvious thing to test when building something like this."
"There are people out there that would take the messaging around security literally and could rely on it for their safety," Radocea continued, "so the project in its current state could endanger them."
Though Bitchat claims in its new disclaimer that it still lacks external review, Radocea countered that it has — albeit informally.
"I’d argue it has received external security review," he quipped, "and it’s not looking good."
More on app security: <a href="https://futurism.com/meta-ai-embarassing">People Don't Realize Meta's AI App Is Publicly Blasting Their Humiliating Secrets to the World</a>

Dorsey Diaries

"It's not looking good."

Jack Dorsey’s New App Just Hit a Very Embarrassing Snag

Astronomers who examined the sound waves from the Big Bang say that the Earth — and the entire Milky Way galaxy we call home — could be trapped in a huge void billions of light years across.
Their <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/540/1/545/8129689?login=false">study</a>, which was just presented at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in the UK, could solve one of cosmology's greatest mysteries: the Hubble tension, or why the older universe appears to be expanding more slowly than younger regions.
"The Hubble tension is largely a local phenomenon, with little evidence that the expansion rate disagrees with expectations in the standard cosmology further back in time," Indranil Banik, a cosmologist from the University of Portsmouth who led the research, said in a <a href="https://phys.org/news/2025-07-earth-huge-void-big-hints.html">statement</a> about the work. "So a local solution like a local void is a promising way to go about solving the problem."
Our universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, but precisely what rate is a matter of intense debate. When astronomers analyze the cosmic microwave background, the light leftover from the Big Bang and the oldest light in the universe, the rate is slower compared to that derived from observations in the nearby universe of Type Ia supernovas and luminous, pulsing stars known as Cepheids.
The discrepancy has become <a href="https://futurism.com/precise-measurements-universe-wrong">undeniable</a>, and its implications are so profound that it's been dubbed a "crisis in cosmology." Is our understanding of the universe wrong? Is there some new physics we are yet unaware of?
But this latest research could pump the brakes a little. If the Earth happens to be near the center of a low density "void" in space, approximately a billion light years in radius and roughly 20 percent below the universe's average density, that could neatly explain the discrepancy.
Banik explains that such a region "would cause matter to be pulled by gravity toward the higher-density exterior of the void, leading to the void becoming emptier with time."
"As the void is emptying out," he continues, "the velocity of objects away from us would be larger than if the void were not there. This therefore gives the appearance of a faster local expansion rate."
The idea of a local void has been <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/galaxy-void-cosmos-hubble-constant">floated before</a>. But this latest work adds credence to the theory by analyzing baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), or as the researchers call it, the "sound of the Big Bang" — emanations produced as the uniform sea of hot matter that formed from the Big Bang repeatedly contracted and then expanded in a tug of war with gravity, before eventually cooling.
"These sound waves traveled for only a short while before becoming frozen in place once the universe cooled enough for neutral atoms to form," Banik said, allowing astronomers to use them as a "standard ruler" to measure cosmos.
If this void exists, Banik argues, then it would distort the BAO in a way that we could measure. After analyzing all BAO measurements taken over the last 20 years, that's exactly what Banik says he's found.
The biggest problem that this theory runs into, however, is that it defies our understanding of the universe's structure: at the largest scales, it should appear uniform and evenly distributed. A region billions of light years across that's somehow less dense than everything around it is quite clearly in violation of that.
Nonetheless, Banik plans to test his local void model with other methods of estimating the universe's expansion.
More on space: <a href="https://futurism.com/object-solar-system-center-galaxy">Mysterious Object Headed Into Our Solar System Is Coming From the Center of the Galaxy</a>

Null and Void

We're living in a strange cosmic neck of the woods.

Scientists Say Earth May Be Trapped Inside a Huge, Strange Void

In the wake of a terrifying study about heavy metals in vape clouds, experts who have long warned about the potential dangers of vaping are again ringing alarm bells.
Researchers from University of California, Davis <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/vape-clouds-horrifying-chemicals">recently found</a> such high levels of heavy metals like lead and nickel when analyzing vape mist for a <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.5c00641">recent study</a> that they thought their equipment had gone haywire.
But the findings were very real. And while the precise long-term health implications of vaping remain hazy — vapes are still so new, in the grand scheme of things, that some health problems they cause probably haven't even shown up yet — but as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/well/vaping-health-risks.html">New York Times reports</a>, doctors are startling to advise serious caution.
Cardiovascular expert and doctor James Stein of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine told the newspaper that when you vape "all day long, over and over and over again — you’re basically walking around with high blood pressure."
That's because vaping places undue stress on the cardiovascular system, leading your heart rate to rise and your blood vessels to constrict — and it can also lead to an irregular heartbeat condition <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/well/live/afib-atrial-fibrillation.html">known as atrial fibrillation</a>, a stroke, or even a heart attack.
As a cardiovascular expert, Stein also is acutely aware of the damage that vaping can cause to the lungs, which are <a href="https://www.visiblebody.com/learn/circulatory/circulatory-pulmonary-systemic-circulation">closely linked to the heart</a> via the circulatory system and <a href="https://www.lung.org/blog/heart-lung-relationship">often implicated in heart disorders</a>. As such, he noted that vaping is known to cause shortness of breath and a persistent cough — which also, obviously, affects traditional cigarette smokers — due to the chronic inflammation associated with it.
Vaping can also, the Wisconsin doctor noted, worsen symptoms of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). By now, that sort of outcome should almost be a given, considering that heavy vape use has been associated with bronchiolitis obliterans, better known as "popcorn lung," for <a href="https://www.lung.org/blog/popcorn-lung-risk-ecigs">nearly a decade</a>.
And Irfan Rahman, a nicotine researcher at the University of Rochester Medicine, told the NYT that vapes release more harmful chemicals the hotter they get. Those chemicals, in turn, harm blood vessels, promote inflammation, and increase the risk of heart disease.
Ultimately, people will have to make their own decisions about whether to vape, regardless of how many scary studies come out — but Stein characterized that choice as a no-brainer.
"Common sense tells you — your mom would tell you — that a superheated chemical inhaling right into your lungs isn’t going to be good," the doctor said.
More on heart health choices: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/thc-edibles-health-risk">New Study Finds Serious Risk to Eating Edibles</a>

Vape Not

"A superheated chemical inhaling right into your lungs isn’t going to be good."

If You Still Vape, You Might Wanna Read This

Astronomers believe they've uncovered the source behind mysterious cosmic signals known as fast X-ray transients (FXTs) — and it adds a grim twist to our understanding of the death of stars.
Right as a massive star explodes in a supernova, it unleashes a tremendously energetic stream of particles called a jet, producing a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/hidden-signal-cosmic-explosion">gamma ray burst</a> — one of the most powerful explosions in the universe. The rest of the star, typically, collapses into a black hole.
But a pair of <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.08889">new</a> <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.08886">studies</a> suggests that this last gasp by a star before winking out of existence can get "trapped" by some of the star's own remains, slamming the door shut on the jet so it can't fully shine. 
"As the jet is being launched, that extra material from the star that didn't collapse into the black hole [interacts] with the jet in such a way that sort of suppresses the jet from actually breaking out of the outer layers," Jillian Rastinejad, an astronomer at Northwestern University and lead author of one the two studies set to published in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters, <a href="https://gizmodo.com/mysterious-signals-from-deep-space-expose-aftermath-of-failed-cosmic-eruptions-2000626850">told Gizmodo</a>.
That produces the weaker X-ray emissions, in the form of an FXT, which can last from seconds to hours. 
The nickname astronomers have for these weakened blasts is nearly as brutal as the catastrophic event itself: a "failed" jet.
According to the findings, FXTs arise from a type of stellar explosion called a Type Ic supernova, which occurs in stars that have long shed their outermost layers of hydrogen and helium. 
Because of their ephemeral nature and the extreme distance of most detected FXTs to date, pinpointing their origins has been a challenge for astronomers.
Rastinejad and her team's breakthrough came when data collected in the Einstein Probe, an X-ray telescope program run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the European Space Agency, revealed an FXT that was unusually close to Earth — a mere 2.8 billion light years away.
Dubbed EP 250108a, telescopes including the Keck Observatory in Hawai'i and the James Webb Space Telescope rushed to extensively image the X-ray burst in multiple wavelengths, collecting infrared and optical data.
"It's important to note that X-ray data alone cannot tell us what phenomena created an FXT," Rastinejad said in a <a href="https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/07/supernovas-trapped-jet-reveals-source-of-fast-x-ray-transient/?fj=1">statement</a> about the work. "Rapid observations of the location of the FXT at optical and infrared wavelengths are key to identifying the aftermath of an FXT and assembling clues to its origin."
With that wealth of data, the astronomers were able to observe how the signal evolved over time. Over the course of several weeks, the stunted supernova increased in brightness before eventually fading. The brief peak in brightness allowed the astronomers to determine that the blast was a Type Ic supernova — and one that was clearly lacking a gamma ray burst.
This has profound implications for our understanding of a star's demise, because according to the work, with sufficiently large stars — the one that produced EP 250108a is estimated to be between 15 to 30 times heavier than the Sun — the full-blown gamma ray bursts we've come to equate with supernovas may not actually be the norm.
Instead, Rastinejad said, "this 'trapped' jet outcome is more common in massive star explosions than jets that successfully emerge from the star."
More on space: <a href="https://futurism.com/image-star-explode-twice">Astronomers Capture First-Ever Image of Star That Exploded Twice</a>

Blaze of Gory

The cosmos sure is messed up.

Mysterious Signals From Deep Space Hint at Something Brutal, Scientists Say

In Denver, scientists uncovered a 67.5-million-year-old dinosaur fossil deep underground — and by chance, it just so happened to be buried underneath the parking lot of a museum that <a href="https://www.dmns.org/exhibitions/temporary-exhibitions/teenrex/">houses similar specimens</a>.
As the Denver Museum of Nature and Science <a href="https://www.dmns.org/catalyst/museum-stories/parking-lot-dinosaur-discovery/">explained in Catalyst</a>, its online magazine, the ancient bone fragment was buried some 763 feet below the institution's parking lot, making it the oldest and deepest such fossil to be discovered within city limits.
Beyond the coincidence of finding a dino bone underneath a museum of natural history, however, the way the bone was found also defies belief.
Back in January of this year, researchers began drilling underneath the museum's parking lot to see if Earth's subsurface temperatures could heat and cool it sustainably. This "<a href="https://portal.ct.gov/deep/energy/renewable-energy/geothermal">geothermal heating</a>," as it's called, uses the same principle as hot springs, making this now-experimental form of renewable energy <a href="https://natlawreview.com/article/geothermal-another-source-renewable-energy">one of the oldest in the world</a>.
Once the two drill rigs got going, the scientists behind the project — which was carried out with a <a href="https://www.dmns.org/press-room/press-releases/denver-museum-of-nature-science-awarded-geothermal-energy-grant/">$250,000 grant</a> from Colorado's governor, Jared Polis — decided to see what else they could find when digging deep into the Earth's crust.
As a paper about the incredible find in the <a href="https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/uwyo/rmg/article/60/1/1/657560/Denver-s-deepest-dinosaur">Rocky Mountain Geology journal explains</a>, the scientists not only discovered interesting geological samples within the 2.5-inch sample core, but also, by pure chance, the nearly 70-million-year-old partial dinosaur bone.
"It’s basically like winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning on the same day," explained museum geology curator James Hagadorn in an interview with Catalyst. "No one could have predicted that this little square foot of land where we started drilling would actually contain a dinosaur bone beneath it!"
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The 70-million-year-old dinosaur fossil was uncovered beneath the Denver Museum of Nature and Science&#39;s parking lot. <a href="https://t.co/G6xjquzLxR">https://t.co/G6xjquzLxR</a> <a href="https://t.co/HkpmZLsCCx">pic.twitter.com/HkpmZLsCCx</a>
&mdash; Interesting Engineering (@IntEngineering) <a href="https://twitter.com/IntEngineering/status/1943547047837061622?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Naturally, it took some fine-tuned research to determine that the bone was, in fact, from a dinosaur — and even still, the researchers behind the find can't say for sure what exact species it was or how it died. Ultimately, as explained in the Rocky Mountain Geology paper, the bone was determined to be a vertebral  fragment from an ornithopod, a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/animal/ornithopod">broad paleontological classification</a> for bipedal, herbivorous dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period.
As the museum <a href="https://www.dmns.org/press-room/press-releases/researchers-discover-dinosaur-fossil-beneath-denver-museum-of-nature-science/">detailed in a press release</a>, the find wasn't just incredible because of the sheer chance of it all.
"This fossil comes from an era just before the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs," Hagadorn, the museum's geology curator, explained. "This is a scientifically and historically thrilling find."
As Rocky Mountain Geology notes, these sorts of "urban paleontological discoveries" are indeed rare — but when they do happen, they "ignite public interest in science and deepen our connection to nature."
More on dinosaurs: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/paleontologist-skeleton-dinosaur-texas">Paleontologists Find Skeleton That Weirdly Looks Exactly Like Barney the Purple Dinosaur</a>

Bone To Pick

"It’s basically like winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning on the same day."

A Dinosaur Appears to Have Died on the Exact Spot They Later Built a Dinosaur Museum, Burying Its Fossil Underneath It

<h2>Seal Team Bee</h2>
Researchers at the Beijing Institute of Technology have turned innocent bees into cyborgs that can be controlled via a 74-milligram insect brain controller.
As the <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3317614/chinese-scientists-create-first-cyborg-bee-worlds-lightest-brain-controller">South China Morning Post reports</a>, the controller pierces the bee's tiny brain with three needles and uses signals sent via electronic pulses to make it fly forwards, backwards, left, or right.
According to the reporting, the bee obeyed these commands nine out of ten times.
The researchers are hoping that the tiny cyborg could allow the military to infiltrate hard-to-access space or be used in search and rescue missions to find survivors in natural disasters, according to a research paper.
"Insect-based robots inherit the superior mobility, camouflage capabilities and environmental adaptability of their biological hosts," the paper reads, as quoted by the SCMP.
<h2>Hive Mind</h2>
The idea of turning real-life insects into military agents is surprisingly widespread. We've already come across scientists turning cockroaches into a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cyborg-cockroaches-swarm-desert">crawling legion of desert recon operatives</a>.
Earlier this year, a team of Japanese scientists even <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-cyborg-cicadas-pachelbel">controlled cicadas</a> to turn their chirps into a rendition of the soundtrack of "Top Gun."
The Beijing team is betting on the "extended operational endurance" of real bees, which makes them "invaluable for covert reconnaissance in scenarios such as urban combat, counterterrorism and narcotics interdiction, as well as critical disaster relief operations."
But before an army of bees can infiltrate military targets as part of futuristic covert operations, the researchers still have plenty of hurdles to overcome.
For one, power delivery is still a major problem. The bees still need to be wired up to the controller to function, since a big enough battery weighs in at a relatively hefty 600 milligrams, vastly more than the tiny load of the equipment itself.
"In future research, precision and repeatability of insect behaviour control will be enhanced by optimising stimulation signals and control techniques," the paper reads, per the SCMP.
The researchers are looking to expand the functionalities of the system to the point where they can be used for "reconnaissance and detection missions."
More on cyborgs: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cyborg-cockroaches-swarm-desert">Army of Backpack-Wearing Cyborg Cockroaches Swarm Desert Target</a>

Not the Bees

A tiny backpack relays commands straight to their brain.

Chinese Scientists Create Cyborg Bees That Can Be Controlled Like Drones for Undercover Military Missions

Car rental giant Hertz is facing some blowback as customers report that its "AI-powered" vehicle scanner charges them hundreds of dollars for tiny cosmetic dings.
Earlier this summer, a Hertz customer in Atlanta was charged a jaw-dropping $440 for an inch-long bit of curb rash — a cosmetic scuff — on the wheel of his rental, as our sister site <a href="https://www.thedrive.com/news/this-is-what-happens-when-hertzs-ai-scanner-finds-damage-on-your-rental">The Drive first reported</a>. Out of that, $190 was earmarked for "processing" and "administrative" fees, which were automatically calculated by the rental company's opaque scanning system.
According to <a href="https://www.thedrive.com/news/hertz-ai-scanner-charging-350-for-dime-sized-dings-proves-this-is-going-off-the-rails">additional reporting by </a><a href="https://www.thedrive.com/news/hertz-ai-scanner-charging-350-for-dime-sized-dings-proves-this-is-going-off-the-rails">The Drive</a>, another customer named Adam Foley was charged $350 for two dime-sized bumps on his rental car, which he said could have been "dirt or anything else that could throw off a camera." That fee, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/adamjfoley_aioverstep-aiethics-aistrategy-activity-7345199487956488192-dtP1?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAABQTbt4BxZUBAA98QUXplFCuzU6kT33XSAk">Foley seethed</a>, was "literally the price of the entire four-day rental, minus $5."
In both cases, the Hertz app refused to connect the customers to a human agent to explain the sky-high charges, or the vague processing and administrative fees behind them.
What's more, the app pressured both customers into paying as quickly as possible, offering sizeable discounts if they settled the tab right then and there, and a smaller discount for paying within seven days.
All this price-gouging is possible thanks to <a href="https://newsroom.hertz.com/articles/article-details/hertz-and-uveye-partner-to-modernize-vehicle-maintenance-with-ai-technology/">Hertz's partner</a>, UVeye.
Originally founded in 2016 as a <a href="https://time.com/7094830/uvey-vehicle-inspection-systems/">military tech company</a> in Israel, UVeye calls itself "a global leader in AI-driven vehicle inspection systems." Their bread and butter is diagnostic imaging equipment, which comes in a variety of sizes for different commercial applications, according to the UVeye website.
While "AI power" features prominently in UVeye's marketing, it's not clear how exactly it fits into the scanners. The model Hertz is most likely using, the Atlas lite, is described as a "modular 360 scanner" featuring 15 cameras and a handful of LED strips to document a vehicle.
"Machine learning detects any damages to the body panels, headlights, and glass," reads an <a href="https://www.uveye.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/OnePageBrochures_Final_AtlasLite.pdf">Atlas lite press blurb</a>.
But as far as Hertz is concerned, it's less important to know how the "AI-powered scanner" works, and more important that it brings home the bacon.
"A similar process that is focused on checking for true damages like a broken mirror would probably make customers shrug and go, 'you got me—  yeah I broke it parking in a garage,' and they would pay the fee," said Foley. "I suspect the math of investing in such expensive technology indicated they needed to go to extortive levels to get a [return on investment]."
It's unclear how Hertz calculates these costs, but UVeye had <a href="https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2023/12/06/ai-vehicle-inspection-company-uveye-plans-to-mass-produce-systems/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">previously leased</a> a similar 360 scanner at a monthly cost of $6,000-7,000 a month back in 2023.
Whether to pay back the cost of leasing the black-box scanners or to carve out an alternative revenue stream, Hertz's vague and sleezy price gouging hidden is sadly <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-quietly-picking-your-pocket-with-personalized-pricing-2024-7">par for the course</a> in the age of AI.
Speaking to The Drive, Hertz said that "the vast majority of rentals are incident-free. When damage does occur, our goal is to enhance the rental experience by bringing greater transparency, precision, and speed to the process."
More on AI cameras: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-throne-toilet">New Device Mounts to Your Toilet to Analyze Your Turds Using the Power of AI</a>

Scanners

Not this!

Hertz Deploys AI Scanner That's Charging Hundreds of Dollars for Tiny Scratches on Rental Cars

The first-ever human trial exploring the use of stem cell therapy to reverse hearing loss is about to be under way, after getting the go-ahead from the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
Conducted by researchers from the University of Sheffield who formed their own spin-out company, the treatment targets sensorineural hearing loss, which is caused by physical damage to the tiny structures of the inner ear. 
In a nutshell, the treatment, dubbed Rincell-1, is intended to regrow damaged nerves in the cochlea and allow them to start sending signals to the brain again.
"Our research into Rincell-1 has consistently shown its ability to target and restore the delicate neural structures of the inner ear," Marcelo Rivolta from the University of Sheffield, chief scientific officer at the spin-out biotech company Rinri Therapeutics, said in a <a href="https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/first-human-trial-of-regenerative-cell-therapy-for-sensorineural-hearing-loss-approved/194974/">statement</a> about the work.
More than a billion people worldwide are affected by some form of hearing loss, <a href="https://www.who.int/health-topics/hearing-loss#tab=tab_2">according to the WHO</a>. Existing treatments, like cochlear implants, don't fully restore a patient's hearing, and require that the cochlea — the center piece of the inner ear that picks up sound and turns it into electrical signals — isn't significantly damaged to begin with.
Key to the cochlea's function are the hair cells that line its surface, which are responsible for detecting sound. If these are severely damaged, it's game over: the hair cells are incapable of dividing to form new ones, meaning that they don't regenerate. This is called sensorineural hearing loss, and it's why your hearing inevitably worsens with age. 
Attempts to regrow these receptors have long been the white whale of modern medical science, and the researchers hope they've found it in Rincell-1. The treatment uses embryonic stem cells designed to grow into auditory neuron cells, which form the wiring that connects the hair cells to the brain stem. These are administered into the cochlea during the surgery to emplace the cochlear implants. Once on site, the stem cells form auditory neurons that help reconnect the out-of-commission hair cells so they can send signals again.
"We are taking the approach of transplanting in cells that can become functional mature cells and restore the cytoarchitecture of the inner ear, and therefore, restore hearing," Simon Chandler, CEO of Rinri Therapeutics, <a href="https://www.labiotech.eu/in-depth/stem-cell-therapy-hearing-disorders/">told Labiotech</a> on an episode of its "Beyond Biotech" podcast in June.
The randomized trial will be conducted in the UK and will involve 20 patients who will undergo cochlear implant surgery. Half of the patients will have severe-to-profound age-related hearing loss, known as presbycusis, and the remainder will have what's known as auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD), which is when the inner ear can detect sound but is unable to send the signals to the brain. Patients within each group will be randomly assigned to either receive a single dose of Rincell-1, or receive no dose and rely on the cochlear implant alone.
On the podcast, Chandler said that the Rincell-1 treatment can be used alongside cochlear implants, but didn't rule out the possibility that it would be used on its own, too. Needless to say, it'd be a game-changer if it turns out to be effective in either scenario.
More on stem cells: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/diabetic-woman-stem-cells-insulin">Diabetic Woman No Longer Needs Insulin After Single Dose of Experimental Stem Cells</a>