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I didn’t notice the scarlet tanager until the alert appeared on my phone: “Merlin heard a new bird!”Despite its brilliant plumagejet-black wings on a crimson bodythe songbird can be a hard one to spot in a forest because it prefers to stay high in the canopy. It sounds a little like a robin to an untrained ear.But the free Merlin Bird ID app detected a scarlet tanager was likely nearby by using artificial intelligence to analyze my phone’s live sound recording. I paused my hike, quietly scanned the treetops, saw the bird as it kept singing and clicked a button to add the species to my growing “life list” of bird sightings. Digital confetti dropped on my screen.Like a real-world version of Pokémon Go, a gotta-catch-’em-all drive to add to my Merlin list has helped me find a great kiskadee in Mexico and a rusty-cheeked scimitar-babbler in the Himalayas. But sometimes the greatest revelations are close to home, as more AI nature app users are starting to discover.“Our stereotypical demographic five years ago would have been retired people and already-avid birders,” said the Merlin app’s manager, Drew Weber, of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Now we’re seeing a lot of 20-and-30-year-olds posting stuff on their TikTok or Instagram.” Are you a bird person now? “Am I a bird person now? Am I a bird person now?” exclaims one incredulous TikTok user whose Merlin app detected a tufted titmouse, a cardinal and a Carolina wren within five seconds of her switching on the app.Another video shows Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold gushing about the technology.“That was a northern mockingbird,” says a smirking Darnold, then 27 and now 28, holding his phone up high while sitting in an outdoor lounge chair.The app isn’t always perfect, and mockingbirdsbecause they mimic other bird soundscan sometimes confuse the AI. Was that really a great horned owl that flew over your home and hooted while you left the app on record by the window screen? Maybe, maybe not.“Low-frequency sounds can be challenging because there’s other low frequencies, like cars driving past, that can trick it,” Weber said. AI nature apps are not just for the birds Built-in computer vision technology on newer iPhones and Android devices makes it easier to identify plants and other creatures without having to download an app. Simply look at the flower you just photographed andon iPhonesa leaf icon appears that, when clicked, can suggest the species.But their AI accuracy isn’t always the best for more obscure fauna and insectsand they are missing the immersive community and citizen science experience that free apps like Merlin and the image-based iNaturalist offer.Every observation submitted to iNaturalist, run by a nonprofit, and Cornell’s Merlin is potentially helping with conservation research as animal extinctions and biodiversity loss accelerate around the world.iNaturalist’s executive director, Scott Loarie, sees someone’s urge to identify a backyard plant as just the start of their engagement with the app.“Our strategy is really building this community of really passionate, engaged nature stewards who are not only learning and sharing knowledge about nature, but they’re actually huge engines for creating biodiversity data and conservation action,” Loarie said.Submit an incorrect ID suggested by iNaturalist’s AI and someone with real expertise will often politely correct you. Once there’s enough consensus, you’ll be notified that your observation has made it to “research grade.” Don’t use AI apps to pick strange berries (but I did) On the search for huckleberry, a favorite of jam makers and grizzly bears, I kept iNaturalist handy on an August hike through the Wyoming wilderness.And while I had a hard time finding a huckleberry bush, iNaturalist helped me discover other fruits: a type of serviceberry known as the saskatoon; the big-leafed, raspberry-like thimbleberry, and the vibrant orange berries of the Greene’s mountain-ash, a type of rowan. After cross-checking many other resources, I tasted all three. The first two were sweet, the last bitter and disgusting.“You should never trust any sort of automatic ID or a stranger on the internet for something as important as edible plants,” Loarie said. “So, I definitely don’t want to endorse that. But I’d certainly endorse getting to know plants and animals.”iNaturalist’s executive director, Scott Loarie, sees someone’s urge to identify a backyard plant as just the start of their engagement with the app. The nonprofit also owns a sibling app, Seek, that is kid-friendly and less complicated.Elsewhere, I’ve found it particularly helpful in identifying things to avoidpoison ivy, poison oak, disease-carrying ticksand things to destroy, like a nymph of the invasive spotted lanternfly that’s now infesting at least 19 U.S. states.-Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip. Matt O’Brien, AP Technology Writer
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The world of work is constantly evolving. Our understanding of the office has shifted over generations, from bustling open-plan floors, to the rise of individual cubicles. And more recently, the widespread adoption of flexible work arrangements and coworking spaces. Beyond physical environments, the very nature of work has transformed, too. Weve seen the rise of the gig economy, an increasing demand for work-life balance, and a growing emphasis on mobile productivity. These shifts fundamentally redefine how and where we get things done. The mobile productivity paradox As the professional landscape becomes increasingly fluid, a new paradox is emerging. Professionals are more connected than ever, utilizing smartphones to stay productive while on the move. However, for many, true PC-level productivity only happens when they are tethered to their static workstations. This forces compromises, indicating that regular smartphones have not yet adapted to modern ways of working. When we look at how we work on our PCs, its pretty rare that we focus on a single task at once. On a laptop we may be working on split-screen mode. When in the office, more often than not were using at least one external monitor. Should we not expect the same level of multi-tasking on our mobile devices? Smartphone technology advances will reshape work Ultimately, many professionals are concluding that single-screen, single-task devices like regular smartphones are simply not enough for mobile productivity. Sure, they are sufficient for simple one-line email responses, but beyond that, users tend to revert back to their laptops, hindering agility and responsiveness. Foldable form factors are fundamentally changing the way we interact with technology. Their multiscreen, adaptable nature directly addresses regular smartphone limitations for mobile productivity, enabling users to easily switch between their email app and one or two other windows, like instant messaging or PowerPoint. With a stylus, professionals can also easily take notes or sketch on the unfolded screen. Its no surprise, then, that the demand for foldable smartphones is rapidly rising; shipments are expected to exceed 100 million by 2027. They are clearly more than a novelty. Agentic AI: The brains behind foldable technologys brawn The more tech-savvy among you know that foldable smartphones arent new. Theyve been around for quite a few years. While were proud that the HONOR Magic V5 is the worlds thinnest foldable phone, the softwaremore specifically agentic AIis whats pushing mobile productivity to the next level. In the latest Gemini-enabled foldable devices, AI brings about a new type of PC-level mobile productivity. Users can run up to three app windows side by side, for example, reviewing notes, joining a video call, chatting with Gemini, or sharing information with it for feedback at the same time. In the meantime, we are also seeing multiple agents collaborating together to enable new experiences for users. For example, your phone can automatically generate a presentation deck from a shared article, with just one voice command. The future of work is flexible and intelligent For todays professionals, the lines between a personal and work device are quickly blurring. When Steven Jobs first launched the iPhone, it was a combination of iPod, browser, and phone, simplified into one revolutionary device with a less is more ethos. Now, foldables can bring your smartphone, tablet, and even laptop into one. This convergence means your personal device can truly become a fully-functional mobile office, no matter where you arefrom a bustling airport lounge to a quiet home study, or even a client site. This new era of mobile productivity enables heightened levels of agility and responsiveness. It empowers you to focus on the high-value, creative aspects of your work, as your intelligent device handles the more routine or complex organizational tasks, paving the way for a more productive and fulfilling professional life. Rui Guo is group CMO of HONOR Device Co., Ltd.
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Japan’s top trade negotiator abruptly canceled a trip to Washington aimed at issuing a joint statement on a tariffs deal with the Trump administration, as a top government spokesman urged the U.S. side to speed up implementation of the agreement.Trade envoy Ryosei Akazawa was scheduled to leave Tokyo for Washington on Thursday for a 10th round of talks, following up on the agreement announced on July 22.But Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters some details required further consultations, so the trip was postponed.In July, the two sides agreed on a 15% tax on imports of most Japanese goods, effective Aug. 1, down from an earlier 25% rate announced by President Donald Trump as so-called “reciprocal tariffs” on the major U.S. ally. Japanese officials discovered days later that the preliminary deal would add a 15% tariff to other tariffs and objected. Officials in Washington have acknowledged the mistake and agreed to abide by the agreement on a 15% tariff, and to refund any excess import duties that were paid.So far, that hasn’t happened.“We will strongly request the United States to amend its presidential order to correct the reciprocal tariffs and to issue the presidential order to lower tariffs on autos and auto parts,” Hayashi said.In an interview with Fox News earlier this week, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Washington was ready to finalize the deal, in which Japan also pledged to invest up to $550 billion in the United States in coming years.Plans for Akazawa to visit Washington are undecided, Hayashi said during a daily briefing, with another nudge at the Trump administration.“Japan and the United States have confirmed the importance of sincere and prompt implementation of the agreement between the two countries,” he said, adding that a deal was essential for the economic security of both countries. Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press
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Misshapen eyes and hands with too many fingers once made AI-generated art easy to spot. Now, as the technology advances, its becoming harder to tell human work from machine-made creations. With some fearing the replacement of human creatives, AI-generated art has plenty of detractors. Algorithm aversion, the bias against AI-created work, seems to only be growing, and just 20% of U.S. adults think AI will have a positive impact on arts and entertainment. Artists are among the most vocal opponents, not only because AI is already cutting into their income as more image needs are met by machines, but also because the models may have been trained on their own work. This is a very critical topic, says Philip Rieger, a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Darmstadt. AI can easily imitate and manipulate images, violating artists copyrights, he adds. In response, artists have filed lawsuits alleging AI companies violated intellectual property laws by training on copyrighted works. Others are turning to digital tools to shield their art. But experts say artists’ work remains vulnerablemore than they may realize. How does AI violate artists copyrights? Popular generators like Midjourney and OpenAIs DALL-E train on millions of artworks, from Renaissance classics to modern digital pieces. This massive database allows them to mimic human styles with uncanny accuracy, making it harder than ever to tell the difference. A 2023 Yale University survey found undergraduates could identify whether art was AI-made just 54% of the time. These models rely on copyrighted art under the banner of fair use,” which allows the use of copyrighted work without the owners permission in certain circumstancesfor example, if the work is being used for noncommercial purposes, or if the use doesnt impact the original works value. But experts say that claim doesnt hold up. These models are training on everyones work without their authorization, says Kevin Madigan, senior vice president of policy and government affairs at the Copyright Alliance, an advocacy group for copyright-holders. They have the capability to supplant the need for human created work in the marketplace, which is one of the reasons we argue that it should not be considered fair-use to use those things. Some AI companies, such as OpenAI, further defend their use of copyrighted material by mentioning that artists can opt-out of their work being used. However, copyright advocates say this is not enough. Some companies, like OpenAI, argue that artists can opt out of datasets. Advocates counter thats meaningless if training has already happened. “Copyright is an opt-in regime,” Madigan says. “It’s sort of like putting the toothpaste back in the tube.” Arguments over how AI should be using copyrighted works are continuing to be hashed out in courts across the country and around the world, but little has been done to settle the debate for artists and they have had few legal successes so far. What tools are artists using to protect their work? Since removing artwork from training sets is nearly impossible, some artists are trying to stop AI from accessing it in the first place. Digital tools, like those developed by the University of Chicagos Glaze Project, work to poison images by modifying the pixels that make up digital artworks in a way that is imperceptible to humans but enough to confuse AI models. Its pretty interesting to be looking at, says Hanna Foerster, a computer science PhD student at the University of Cambridge who has studied the security of these models. You can optimize these pixels inside a picture although they seem almost the same to the human eye. One of their tools, Nightshade, works by making AI models see different images than the artist originally rendereda handbag where there once was a cow, for example. Glaze, another of their tools, alters the style instead, making a model see a Jackson Pollock-esque painting where the artist had created a charcoal portrait. These poisons aim to protect artists work once they have already made their way into a training dataset. Others, like robots.txt, work to prevent work from ending up in a dataset. The .txt file tells automated bots combing websites for content where they arent allowed to look. Why arent these anti-AI tools enough? While there are several ways to keep AI models from training on artwork, each comes with trade-offs and vulnerabilities, experts say. Robots.txt, for instance, can block bots scraping the web to build training sets, but it also blocks search engines, hurting artists visibility. Theres a few different issues with that, Madigan says. Its not practical to say, Dont put your work online, because thats basically peoples livelihoods, to have a presence online. The pixel-level poisons that distort images to confuse AI systems also have limits. LightShed, a new tool built by system security researchers, shows just how easily those poisons can be undone. To build LightShed, the researchers studied how these protective programs alter images. They found consistent patterns in the way poisons were applied, and trained their own model to recognize them by feeding it both clean and poisoned versions of the same images. It looks different from image to image, obviously, but its still the same process that is applied, says Foerster, who worked on LightShed during an internship at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Once their model could reliably detect the poison, it simply stripped it awayrevealing the original, unprotected image underneath. The researchers, who presented their work earlier this month at the USENIX Security Symposium, stress that their goal isnt to endanger artists or attack protective tools. Our work wasnt intended as a real attack, neither against the tools nor against the artists, Rieger says. We just wanted to show the need for more robust detection tools and that, basically, people shouldnt trust blindly to these tools. LighShed is only available for research, but the team hopes it will spark stronger safeguards against AI scraping and manipulation. Basically, we are playing nice and informing the people since the bad guys who are not playing as nice as we do wouldnt inform them, Rieger says, noting that the team alerted poison creators to the vulnerabilities they found. They also hope word of their findings reaches artists who may rethink how they protect their work. The future of anti-AI protections Researchers say that creating a foolproof defense against AI models may be nearly impossible, especially as image generation systems grow more advanced. To block tools like LightShed, image poisons would need to be far more random, but that would risk making the image unrecognizable to humans. We have thought about how to construct a kind of perturbation that would be a lot stronger than the ones that exist, but I dont think we can guarantee at all that they wont be broken a different way, Foerster says. Other approaches, such as cryptographic watermarking, could help artists detect when their work has been used in AI-generated content. But its definitely a very difficult problem, Foerster adds. Beyond the technical fixes, some experts argue that the real solution lies in regulation. Madigan says protecting artists will require legislation and legal action to force AI companies to be transparent about their training practices. In particular, Madigan has hope in bipartisan legislation introduced last month by Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that would hold tech companies accountable for training models on copyrighted materials. AI companies are robbing the American people blind while leaving artists, writers, and other creators with zero recourse, Hawley said in a statement. Its time for Congress to give the American worker their day in court to protect their personal data and creative works. If passed, the bill could give artists new legal tools to sue tech companies for copyright infringement, whether individually or through class action lawsuits, and levy financial penalties against firms that misuse copyrighted material. Even with such challenges, experts stress that artists shouldnt lose hope. The landscape around AI is evolving quicklyand so are the efforts to defend against its risks. Staying on top of these issues, that helps empower the whole community of artists, Madigan says.
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Snowflake has had a good 24 hours. On Wednesday, August 27, the cloud-based data storage company announced its second-quarter earnings and reported $1.1 billion in revenuea 32% jump year-over-year (YOY). The companys second quarter of fiscal year (FY) 2026 also saw a net revenue retention rate of 125%. Plus, it grew from 606 to 654 customers with more than $1 million in trailing 12-month product revenue. Perhaps most notably, Snowflake has now increased its expected product revenue for FY 2026 to $4.4 billion from $4.3 billion. If met, this figure would signify a 27% growth YOY and beat analysts predictions, according to consensus estimates cited by Reuters. Investors responded positively to the news, with Snowflakes stock price (NYSE: SNOW) jumping about 14% after-hours and into premarket trading on Thursday. What is fueling Snowflakes success? In an earnings call, Snowflakes CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy attributed a great deal of the companys success to AI. Snowflake remains laser focused on our mission to empower every enterprise to achieve its full potential through data and AI, Ramaswamy stated. Were delivering our more than 12,000 customers tremendous value throughout their entire data life cycle with an AI data cloud thats designed to enable faster innovation and remove friction from business operations. Ramaswamy added that Snowflake delivered on our product strategy, introducing incredible new innovations to drive value at each stage of our customers data journey.” “Of course, AI is front and center,” he added. “We are continuing to advance our leadership in enterprise AI with Snowflake Intelligence now in public preview. This platform enables every user to talk to their enterprise data, turning structured and unstructured data into actionable insights through natural language. Shares of Snowflake are up 27% year to date and almost 80% over the last 12 months as of Wednesdays close. Mixed week for AI-adjacent tech However, the AI boom wasnt strong enough to propel every company. Wednesday also saw Nvidia announce its second-quarter earnings for FY 2026, and even a 56% boost in revenue YOYto $46.7 billionwasnt enough to lift its shares. The chip manufacturers stock initially fell 3.5%, though it has almost fully rebounded in premarket trading. The lack of excitement came in part due to Nvidias $41.1 billion in data center revenue. Despite also being up 56% YOY, it failed to meet Wall Streets predicted $41.34 billion, according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC. Nvidia is also facing continued uncertainty about selling its H20 chips to China, despite giving the Trump administration a 15% cut of sales for the go-ahead. The company sold no H20 chips to China during quarter two, and reports indicate that Nvidia has halted production of the chips.
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