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Evidence-backed gain

Mystery sitter in Holbein portrait could be Anne Boleyn, AI analysis finds

They are two small sketches by the Renaissance master Hans Holbein: one has long been considered to be a portrait of Henry VIII’s doomed second wife, Anne Boleyn, and the other is of an unknown woman whose name was lost to time. Now researchers using AI have discovered that the unnamed woman might be the tragic queen after all, while the other figure could in fact be Boleyn’s mother. The works, which belong to the royal collection and are known as the Windsor sketch and the Unidentified Woman respectively, were…

The Guardian · Media & Arts

Mystery sitter in Holbein portrait could be Anne Boleyn, AI analysis finds

Both readings

AI analysis casts doubt on Van Eyck paintings in Italian and US museums

An analysis of two paintings in museums in the US and Italy by the 15th-century Flemish artist Jan van Eyck has raised a profound question: what if neither were by Van Eyck? Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata, the name given to near-identical unsigned paintings hanging in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Royal Museums of Turin, represent two of the small number of surviving works by one of western art’s greatest masters, revered for his naturalistic portraits and religious subjects. The only pr…

Media & Arts

Evidence-backed problem

Nine to axe 30 jobs at the Age and SMH due to ‘extreme’ AI disruption

Australia’s biggest media company, Nine Entertainment, has blamed the “extreme state of disruption” from AI for its decision to cut another 30 newsroom jobs at the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. On Tuesday, the managing director of publishing, Tory Maguire, told staff the company was looking to cut “around 30” positions, made up of voluntary and targeted redundancies. Maguire said the exercise was not simply a matter of cutting costs, but was an “evolution” to adapt to structural change. “In the last 12 mont…

Media & Arts

Evidence-backed problem

News Corp subscriptions fall in Australia as company takes aim at ‘slimy’ AI slop

News Corp has reported a slight slide in digital subscriptions at its Australian mastheads, erasing recent gains, among otherwise robust financials at the Rupert Murdoch-backed global conglomerate. Digital subscribers at News Corp Australia – a division that includes the Australian, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun, among others – fell from 1,166,000 to 1,162,000 during the financial year, according to the company’s internal data published in its full year results on Thursday morning. The figures represent…

Media & Arts

Evidence-backed problem

AI the main suspect after radio stations wrongly identify reporter as alleged violent offender | Weekly Beast

Identifying the wrong person in a news report is not new in journalism, but AI has added a whole new level of danger. Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) has been investigating this week whether its introduction of AI-assisted news bulletins led to a News Corp reporter being mistakenly named as the man who allegedly struck police with a hammer before escaping custody. The journalist’s name was aired in multiple bulletins on its Triple M and SAFM stations. The Adelaide Advertiser journalist, Dylan Hogarth, reported tha…

Media & Arts

Evidence-backed problem

UK ad agencies undergo their biggest exodus of staff as AI threatens industry

UK advertising agencies had their biggest annual exodus of staff last year, led by younger workers, as artificial intelligence tools threaten to replace workers and force the industry to cut jobs and costs. Staff numbers at creative agencies, which are facing acute pressure from the rollout of AI tools that reduce or even replace the need for agency staff, fell more than 14% in 2025. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), which has been reporting on staffing in the UK ad industry since 1959, said i…

Labor

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Nine urges Albanese to force tech companies to compensate media in face of AI threat

The head of Nine Entertainment has called on the prime minister to prioritise a policy to force global platforms to compensate local media as artificial intelligence-fuelled big tech disrupts the revenue models of publishers around the world. Nine’s chief executive officer, Matt Stanton, said while presenting the company’s half year financial results on Tuesday that the government’s long-awaited news bargaining incentive was at risk of further delay. “This policy is not just of great importance to Nine and the j…

Media & Arts

News Corp is essentially an AI ‘input company’, chief executive says, after US$150m deal with Meta

News Corp’s global chief executive has described news organisations as a valuable “input” for artificial intelligence, as the media empire signs an AI content licensing deal with Meta worth up to US$50m (A$71m) a year. In an upbeat presentation, the chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s company, Robert Thomson, said the “reliable” breaking news and information in publications like the Australian, the Times of London and Dow Jones was “hard to beat” as an “input” for AI. The Meta deal, which was revealed by the Mur…

Media & Arts

News Corp is essentially an AI ‘input company’, chief executive says, after US$150m deal with Meta

Hachette pulls horror novel Shy Girl after suspected AI use

Hachette Book Group has withdrawn a horror novel after allegations circulated online that its author relied heavily on artificial intelligence. The book is to be discontinued in the UK after being published in November 2025, and its US launch date has been cancelled. The book, Shy Girl by Mia Ballard, had been scheduled for release in the US this spring under Hachette’s Orbit imprint. However, the publisher confirmed it had halted publication after an internal review. The title has also been removed from online…

Media & Arts

Hachette pulls horror novel Shy Girl after suspected AI use

‘Obvious markers of AI’: doubts raised over winner of short story prize

A few syntactical tics – and the verdict of an AI detection platform – have sparked a furore over the possibility that a short story given a prestigious literary award was written by AI. The foundation that awarded the prize and Granta, the magazine that published the winning story, said they had considered the allegations but had not reached a conclusion as to whether they were true. “It may be that the judges have now awarded a prize to an instance of AI plagiarism – we don’t yet know, and perhaps we never wil…

Media & Arts

‘Obvious markers of AI’: doubts raised over winner of short story prize

What If We Got AI Right? by Eleanor Drage review – avoiding apocalypse

The AI ethicist Eleanor Drage believes that to thrive alongside artificial intelligence, humans need to recognise AI’s “humanity”. She means that while we often speak of AI as though it were some mystical, formless thing, it is the product of hours of human labour, in silicon and quartz mines, microchip factories and data labelling centres. If citizens want to wrest power from the tech companies that are building AI, it helps to understand clearly what they are selling us. This also means seeing through the mark…

Labor

What If We Got AI Right? by Eleanor Drage review – avoiding apocalypse

Book publishers sue Google for copyright infringement over Gemini AI training

A group of major publishers have filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of illegally using millions of copyrighted books to help build its Gemini artificial intelligence models, in “one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history”. The case, filed in federal court in New York, has been brought by three publishers – Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier – and bestselling American author Scott Turow. The publishers argue that Google repurposed books that had b…

Media & Arts

Book publishers sue Google for copyright infringement over Gemini AI training

$2m crime novel deal collapses amid questions over AI use

A high-profile publishing deal for a debut crime novel has collapsed after doubts emerged over whether artificial intelligence played a role in writing it. The hotly anticipated manuscript Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body, by Jerry Falade, was withdrawn from sale by its agent despite reportedly receiving an offer for more than $2m (£1.5m) from Minotaur, owned by Macmillan US, as part of a 14-way auction. The plan was to publish it in 2028. An email sent to publishers by Falade’s agents and seen by the Guardian said:…

Media & Arts

$2m crime novel deal collapses amid questions over AI use

“It Was 80% Me, 20% AI”: Seeking Authenticity in Co-Writing with Large Language Models

Given the rising proliferation and diversity of AI writing assistance tools, especially those powered by large language models (LLMs), both writers and readers may have concerns about the impact of these tools on the authenticity of writing work. We examine whether and how writers want to preserve their authentic voice when co-writing with AI tools and whether personalization of AI writing support could help achieve this goal. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 professional writers, during which they co-wrote with both personalized and non-personalized AI writing-support tools. We supplemented writers’ perspectives with opinions from 30 avid readers about the written work co-produced with AI collected through an online survey. Our findings illuminate conceptions of authenticity in human-AI co-creation, which focus more on the process and experience of constructing creators’ authentic selves. While writers reacted positively to personalized AI writing tools, they believed the form of personalization needs to target writers’ growth and go beyond the phase of text production. Overall, readers’ responses showed less concern about human-AI co-writing. Readers could not distinguish AI-assisted work, personalized or not, from writers’ solo-written work and showed positive attitudes toward writers experimenting with new technology for creative writing.

Media & Arts

“It Was 80% Me, 20% AI”: Seeking Authenticity in Co-Writing with Large Language Models

The Use of AI in the Creation of News: Application Framework, Ethical Challenges, and Governance Pathways of AIGC

The rapid creation of technological systems, and the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in almost every field, including journalism, is changing the entire news sector. AI is becoming an invaluable tool for journalists in data mining as well as improving their craft. AI enhances efficiency and productivity in news generation. An amazing amount of news products can be created in collaboration with humans and AI. Technology, however, and its rapid advancement creates numerous challenges including every type of pr…

Media & Arts