France 24 – AI

Italy's diesel-price protest halts buffalo mozzarella production, with producers estimating €3 million in losses in just 24 hours as milk fails to reach dairies and finished cheeses cannot reach customers. In banking, Barclays announces it will cut around 5,000 jobs - roughly 5% of its workforce - as it uses AI to reduce costs. This comes as Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang urges "responsible optimism" on AI in Berlin, even as AI-exposed stocks slide.

A daily update on the latest business and economic news.

Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is using AI-generated videos to mock Palestinians and push political messages ahead of the country’s election, including videos magically transporting Gazans to Paris or calling them "donkeys" for choosing to stay. One video has sparked an online spat with France. AI is playing a growing role in the campaign, with parties using deepfakes, bots and AI-generated content, raising concerns about disinformation and the technology’s influence on voters.

One in four Europeans has fallen victim to an online scam, from identity fraud to fake romances. The rise of artificial intelligence is ushering in new risks. Minh Nguyen, Chief Product Officer at security solutions provider Entrust, says both online platforms and governments can play a role in protecting consumers and businesses.

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted the company's progress on artificial intelligence during an earnings call on Wednesday and called for more investment. The tech giant's Muse AI agent has garnered 10 million users since its launch six weeks ago, while third-quarter revenue rose to $64.6 billion. Meanwhile, the company is accused of political interference in Brazil's presidential election. Also in this edition, we check in on France's rising borrowing costs.

As governments and corporations alike scramble to install a patch to fix fundamental security flaws in a programming language that helps run roughly 70 percent of the world's websites, here's what you need to know about how AI has helped bring these critical vulnerabilities to light.

The Canadian publisher representing Thélyson Orélien on Wednesday said it had dropped the prize-nominated writer over new information indicating that he did use artificial intelligence to write his acclaimed debut.

Government and corporate websites were shut down across the world overnight into Wednesday after cybersecurity firms used artificial intelligence to reveal critical flaws in widely used programming language PHP. PHP programmers on Wednesday released a patch fixing the vulnerability.

Tuesday, October 20 saw protests in more than 50 US cities against the rise of artificial intelligence. Demonstrators are calling for a moratorium on AI development, and the sentiment is shared by many: according to a recent study, 71 percent of Americans believe AI will lead to job losses. In the heart of Silicon Valley, record investment is now on a collision course with public fear and uncertainty. FRANCE 24's Pierrick Leurent and Valérie Defert report, with Wassim Cornet.

French President Emmanuel Macron took aim at world leaders including US President Donald Trump for trying to exploit the riots and looting that broke out alongside peaceful demonstrations in France Saturday for their own political advantage. Another wave of demonstrations against France's worsening cost of living is planned for the coming Saturday.

Two weeks out from the US midterm elections, there's bipartisan pushback against data centres that suck the water and power out of communities. Just two years ago, ChatGPT was still a brand-new thing, and AI was admired with awe by most voters. Like in 2024, the hot-button issue in swing constituencies remains inflation, or "the price of eggs". But anxiety over the end of the month is now coupled with anxiety over the end of the world.

Both candidates in Brazil's presidential election called for their rival's disqualification Tuesday over allegations of social media malfeasance, according to court filings. Left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s campaign said they will request the annulment of right-wing rival Flavio Bolsonaro's candidacy over alleged election interference by tech giant Meta, while Bolsonaro's team is accusing Lula of "abuse of power" in the mass sharing of government postings on WhatsApp.

AI-generated photos falsely claiming to show an elderly couple being "stripped and robbed" during unrest in France have racked up millions of views. Amplified by far-right accounts, the images fuelled inflammatory claims about Muslims, Jews and the riots. The FRANCE 24 Observers traced one image to an AI photomontage published by a pro-Israel account. The images were created using OpenAI tools, and the alleged assault remains unverified, with no official reports confirming the attack.

To train artificial intelligence models, millions of physical books are being digitised and destroyed. Our colleagues at France 2 investigate this controversial practice and the risk of seeing many rare second-hand books disappear forever.

A protester who heckled US President Donald Trump at his midterm rally in Youngstown, Ohio, was physically assaulted and removed from the event, but fake AI-generated photos recreating the incident are going viral online. The images carry digital watermarks identifying them as AI-generated. While footage confirms the woman was punched, there is no evidence to support Trump's claim that the protester was "paid" to disrupt his speech, as he mocked her weight. Vedika Bahl explains in Truth or Fake.

Artificial intelligence is "changing the security landscape". That's according to Ledger, a French unicorn of cryptocurrency that's seeking a bigger role in digital security. Chief Technology Officer Charles Guillemet says: "Finding vulnerabilities and exploiting them costs almost nothing. So this is the new challenge that we have, as the security industry in general – how can we raise the bar for security so it becomes so difficult to break systems? And I think hardware is part of the equation."

US President Donald Trump has sparked outrage after sharing the distressing footage of a 23-year-old man with mental illness being fatally mauled by a tiger at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in the UK, captioned "Don't ever mess with nature!" This was followed hours later by an AI-generated video of himself taming a tiger. The posts have been condemned as disrespectful to the victim and his grieving family, who have urged people to stop sharing harrowing content of the attack. Vedika Bahl tells us more.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stops by Paris to tout new stakes in French AI-enabled tech firms like medical booking site Doctolib. Also in this edition: OpenAI says it caught a spy red-handed, and China's trade surplus continues to boom despite soaring energy costs and trade conflicts.

The FBI said on Wednesday it has arrested a Saudi national employed as an engineer at OpenAI on suspicions that he had bugged a conference room at the company's San Francisco office with a "sophisticated recording device".

Thélyson Orélien, the Haitian-Canadian writer whose best-selling debut novel was pulled from the prestigious Goncourt prize list amid an AI uproar, said Tuesday "not a single sentence" had been written by a machine. He did, however, admit to "unacceptable mistakes" regarding accusations of plagiarism involving earlier works.