Ask Meta’s AI chatbot to generate an image of a presidential debate, and the platform’s usual commitment to photorealism is replaced by a clunky cartoonishness.

Fed the same prompt, Microsoft’s Image Creator produced a scene of two figures who vaguely resembled the Democratic and Republican candidates but for their indistinct features and a general lack of detail.

Meanwhile, X’s Grok image generator will readily offer up near-photo-quality images of the two candidates.

With the US presidential election now in the home stretch, most of the major image generators seem to be taking sometimes subtle steps to steer users away from creating election deepfakes. Large online platforms, many of which now have AI generation features embedded, have—mostly—made moves to crack down on election-related misinformation.

Yet reports show that AI-powered misinformation has continued to spread online in recent months, though experts say its true scope and influence is hard to gauge. And with the bad actors behind these deepfakes sometimes tricky to pin down, some new regulatory pushes around the issue have raised the question of holding tools that create deepfakes and platforms that spread them liable.

“Who has the most money to go after is my question,” Veronica Torres, worldwide privacy and regulatory counsel at identity verification company Jumio. “It’s a hard question to answer, because the answer should be both…The producer of the content should be the one who has the most fault, but they might not be the ones who are easily identifiable. And so there’s a certain level of responsibility across the different use cases and across the different distributors along the line.”

Keep reading here.—PK

Even amid hand-wringing around the state of AI hype, companies are still looking to hire more AI-savvy workers.

Indeed data shows AI-related job postings now make up around 2.2% of all US listings on the site, having steadily climbed from a low of 1.6% last summer, when tech companies scaled back on hiring. The company’s report last week also said that AI-related jobs now make up around 22% of software development roles for hire, an increase from 19% in June of last year.

The report comes as AI remains a solid bright spot in an otherwise turbulent time for tech workers. Startup funding is in the midst of a two-year slump, despite money still pouring into AI upstarts, per Crunchbase’s most recent report, and Meta and Intel both reportedly held widespread layoffs last week.

“What we’re finding is that there’s a higher demand for some of the more niche technologies, the ones that are more focused on AI, GenAI, that’s where we’re seeing a lot more of that demand, where there’s not enough skill sets out there to fill those roles,” Linsey Fagan, senior talent strategy advisor at Indeed, told Tech Brew.

Keep reading here.—PK

The clean energy transition has been a hot topic on the campaign trail, where presidential candidates have presented drastically different visions on basically everything climate-related.

For consensus on the US’s current approach to tackling the climate crisis, look to business leaders in the clean energy industry.

E2, a nonpartisan business group focused on environmental and economic issues, recently commissioned a survey from BW Research of more than 900 business stakeholders to get their thoughts on the Biden administration’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The law, which went into effect in mid-2022, includes hundreds of billions of dollars in direct grants and tax credits to spur the clean energy transition.

The results suggest that the IRA has been a boon for business, and that its rollback could lead to layoffs, operations moving to other countries, and business closures.

“The impacts of this landmark policy are now crystal clear––as are the consequences if it’s repealed or rolled back,” E2 Executive Director Bob Keefe said in a statement. “We now also know that if it goes away, businesses will lose money, workers will lose jobs, and our economy will lose steam.”

Keep reading here.—JG