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Colorado governor vetoes block on surveillance pricing as other states push for bans

3 June 2026 at 20:12

Consumer advocates decry Democrat Jared Polis for ‘choosing to side with dominant corporations’ over workers

Colorado’s governor vetoed a bill on Tuesday that would have banned companies from using surveillance pricing to set workers’ wages and prices for consumer goods.

The measure would have been the strongest in the nation against algorithmic pricing. While Maryland became the first state to approve a law banning surveillance pricing in grocery stores in April, Colorado’s proposed measure was more expansive.

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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

HIV and Ebola viruses were created in a lab

3 June 2026 at 14:31

In a 1997 lecture, Dr. Leonard Horowitz provided evidence that HIV, Ebola and other “emerging viruses” were created in a laboratory.  People were then infected through hepatitis B and smallpox vaccines. Earlier […]

The post HIV and Ebola viruses were created in a lab first appeared on The Expose.

Can autonomous AI-powered killer drones take morality onboard?

While the technology is set to play a growing role in modern warfare, there remains an unresolved ethical challenge

Should the AI-powered drones of the future have a licence to kill? The question is becoming ever more pressing as governments and the defence industry acknowledge that drone systems will play an increasingly crucial role in future warfare.

With drones being deployed in huge numbers in the Ukraine war and AI being used to assist bombing missions in the Iran conflict, there is an expectation among some observers that weapons will have to operate with increased operational autonomy, which means they will need something approximating a moral framework.

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© Photograph: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

© Photograph: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

© Photograph: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

‘The CGI would have cost millions. I spent $2,000.’ Is Dreams of Violets AI slop – or the future of film-making?

3 June 2026 at 05:00

It should have taken years, but Ash Koosha made a drama about Iran’s anti-government protests in weeks – and now it’s the first AI-made movie to screen at a major film festival. It could transform indie film-making, claims the director

Next week a breakthrough 75-minute drama about the brutal crackdown in Iran on anti-government protesters in January will premiere at the Tribeca film festival in New York. It is called Dreams of Violets and is based on journalism, video footage and eyewitness accounts. “I would say 80% of it is a recreation of events that actually happened,” says its Iranian-British director Ash Koosha. But Dreams of Violets is a work of fiction, not a documentary: a drama following a group of strangers caught up in the protests, who meet by chance in an alleyway. How on earth has Koosha managed to pull together a drama about the killings in less than six months?

The answer, it turns out, is by using artificial intelligence. Every image and character in Dreams of Violets is AI-generated. Koosha says he created the characters by describing their physical appearances, using people he has known in the past as references. It would be too dangerous to base characters on living people in Iran, he says. “Because of the security issue, it would not be safe for the characters to even remotely resemble someone.”

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© Illustration: Courtesy of Ash Koosha

© Illustration: Courtesy of Ash Koosha

© Illustration: Courtesy of Ash Koosha

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