Technology

Children in UK report online sextortion attempts in record numbers
Posted on Tuesday April 07, 2026

Exclusive: Call for nudity-detection tech on phones as number of under-18s reporting blackmail attempts rises by 34%

• ‘I felt ashamed and scared’: how an online friendship became a sextortion nightmare

Children are reporting online sextortion attempts in record numbers in the UK, as campaigners urge tech companies to do more to stamp out the crime.

The Report Remove service, which allows children to flag intimate images or videos of themselves that have appeared, or could appear, online, said it received 394 reports from under-18s last year of blackmail attempts after sending sexual images to predators. The figure is 34% higher than in 2024.

Musk’s SpaceX courts retail investors as it aims for record-breaking stock market flotation
Posted on Tuesday April 07, 2026

Elon Musk’s aerospace to AI company will host summer event to try to convince buyers it is worth $2tn

Business live – latest updates

SpaceX will kick off the marketing for its highly anticipated stock exchange debut by hosting an event in June for 1,500 retail investors, as executives set out to convince buyers that the aerospace to artificial intelligence group should be valued at $2tn.

In an unusual move, the company has earmarked a large portion of its shares – potentially up to 30% – for non-professional, non-institutional investors, banking on the popularity of its chief executive, Elon Musk, to help it raise $75bn (about £56bn) in what is expected to be the largest public offering in history.

Row over ‘virtual gated community’ AI surveillance plan in Toronto neighbourhood
Posted on Tuesday April 07, 2026

Rosedale residents considering car licence plate-scanning Flock system in bid to tackle property crime

A row has broken out in one of Canada’s wealthiest neighbourhoods over plans to use an AI-powered surveillance system to create the country’s first “virtual gated community” to combat surging property crime.

Crime rates in Toronto as a whole are dropping but residents of Rosedale have been left on edge by a sustained rise in home invasions, with robbers targeting the tree-lined neighbourhood at a rate more than double the city average. Break-ins and thefts remain the third highest per capita in Toronto.

‘There’s a lot of desperation’: skilled older workers turn to AI training to stay afloat
Posted on Tuesday April 07, 2026

They have degrees, expertise and years of experience – but can’t find work. For many Americans, AI training has become a last refuge in a brutal job market

When Patrick Ciriello lost his job and couldn’t find work for nearly a year, his family’s foundation crumbled.

“You hear about people who hit rock bottom,” Ciriello told the Guardian. “Well, I was there.”

Porn, dog poo and social media snaps: the ‘taskers’ scraping the internet for AI firm part-owned by Meta
Posted on Tuesday April 07, 2026

Scale AI gig workers describe desperation of using people’s personal profiles and copyrighted work to train AI

Tens of thousands of people have been paid by a company part-owned by Meta to train AI by combing Instagram accounts, harvesting copyrighted work and transcribing pornographic soundtracks, the Guardian can reveal.

Scale AI, 49%-controlled by Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire, has recruited experts across fields such as medicine, physics and economics – putatively to refine top-level artificial intelligence systems through a platform called Outlier. “Become the expert that AI learns from,” it says on its site, advertising flexible work for people with strong credentials.

‘It started with a tipoff’: how a Guardian investigation exposed child sex trafficking on Facebook and Instagram
Posted on Monday April 06, 2026

Meta has just lost a multimillion-dollar legal battle over its failure to prevent children being sold on its platforms. Here’s how we uncovered evidence that became part of the case against it

It started with a tipoff. I was reporting on the trafficking and exploitation of migrant workers in the Gulf when a source I had known for more than a decade reached out. They told me that child sexual abuse trafficking in the US was surging. As the Covid pandemic pushed predators online, some were using Facebook and Instagram to buy and sell children.

It was 2021 and I was about to begin an investigation with Mei-Ling McNamara, a human rights journalist, that would lead to the tech company Meta losing a multimillion-pound court case in March this year. The company had not yet rebranded and was known as Facebook, and there had not been any reporting on how children were being trafficked on its platforms. Experts from anti-trafficking nonprofit organisations and an American law enforcement official talked me through the crimes they were seeing.

An AI bot invited me to its party in Manchester. It was a pretty good night
Posted on Sunday April 05, 2026

After forgetting the nibbles, refusing my costume requests and emailing GCHQ, ‘Gaskell’ did at least get us to show up

Two weeks ago, an AI bot invited me to a party it was organising in Manchester. It then promptly lied to dozens of potential sponsors that I’d agreed to cover the event, and misled me into believing there would be food.

Despite all this, it was a pretty good night.