Search Engines

YouTube has updated its rulebook for the era of deepfakes. Starting today, anyone uploading video to the platform must disclose certain uses of synthetic media, including generative AI, so viewers know what they’re seeing isn’t real. YouTube says it applies to “realistic” altered media such as “making it appear as if a real building caught fire” or swapping “the face of one individual with another’s.”The new policy shows YouTube taking steps that could help curb the spread of AI-generated misinformation as the US…

Google is taking action against algorithmically-generated spam. The search engine giant just announced upcoming changes, including a revamped spam policy, designed to keep AI clickbait out of its search results.“It sounds like it’s going to be one of the biggest updates in the history of Google,” says Lily Ray, senior director of SEO at the marketing agency Amsive. “It could change everything.”In a blog post, Google claims the change will reduce “low-quality, unoriginal content” in search results by 40 percent. It will…

If you’ve noticed more iffy links creeping into your Google results, you’re not alone. Even Google says it’s keenly aware that it could do a better job of deflecting widely-used tactics for gaming its search engine. And it just announced several changes it’s making to push substandard pages down in results or eliminate them altogether.Known as the March 2024 Core Update, this round of fixes builds on algorithmic tweaks the company began implementing in 2022 to prevent questionable sites from competing with the useful ones…

Chatbots, GPTs and search engines powered by artificial intelligence (AI) are the talk of the town, but so are dire warnings about the unbridled development of the ‘revolutionary’ technology and the threat it poses to humans. Industry and policymakers agree that AI needs regulating. But no one is quite sure how. Amidst all of this, a tussle is shaping up, as much by geopolitics as by the surge in research and development. Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteMITMIT Technology…

The experiments found that about 73 percent of about 500 people using that new design clicked results that kept them inside Google’s ecosystem—an increase over the 55 percent who did so when the design Google is phasing out in Europe was tested with a smaller pool of roughly 250 people.Yelp also tested a variation of the new design. In this version, which Google has shared with regulators, the new box featuring review websites is placed above the maps widget. It was more successful in drawing people to try alternatives to…

Google has also been running a parallel experiment with using AI to remake its core search interface, launching a generative search experience that serves up chatbot-like answers ahead of the familiar list of ads and links.The company said just a few weeks ago that it doesn’t anticipate a “lightswitch moment” when the generative search experience fully replaces Google Search as we know it. But Google plans to push “the boundaries of what’s possible” and think about “which use cases are helpful and that we have the right…

“I’m not a fan of AI,” Nebojša Vujinović Vujo says. The admission surprises me: He has built a bustling business by snapping up abandoned news outlets and other websites and stuffing them full of algorithmically generated articles. Although he accepts that his model rankles writers and readers alike, he says he’s simply embracing an unstoppable new tool—large language models—in the same way people rationally swapped horse-drawn buggies for gas-powered vehicles. “I hate cars. They’re making my planet bad,” he says. “But…

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.We all know to be careful about the details we share online, but the information we seek can also be revealing. Search for driving directions, and our location becomes far easier to guess. Check for a password in a trove of compromised data, and we risk leaking it ourselves.These situations fuel a key question in cryptography: How can you pull information from a public database without revealing anything about what you’ve accessed? It’s the equivalent of…

Image Source : FREEPIK Deepfake Google and Microsoft's Bing- two popular search engines have reportedly been showing non-consensual deepfake adult videos (porn) at the top of search results along with the tools that advertise the ability to create such kind of content. In instances of non-consensual deepfake pornography, individuals' appearances are manipulated…

 A study has found that people who performed online searches to verify the truthfulness of a piece of possible misinformation actually ended up believing it due to "poor quality results" from search engines.The findings, according to researchers, flag the need for online search engines to address the challenge posed by the appearance of non-credible information at the top of search results. The study conducted by a research team from the University of Central Florida, New York University, and Stanford University, US,…