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Public turning to AI bots for news updates

Greenwashing rife in EU aviation: Consumer groups

during the booking process and Wizz Air similarly did away with an option touted as offsetting carbon emissions. But other changes have often been light, such as the choice of words or colour codes. “These improvements should not hide that greenwashing is still widespread,” said Reyna. Airlines for Europe (A4E), an industry association, said it did not have any comment beyond what it said last year. After the EU probe was launched, the group said it recognised the importance of clear, transparent information about sustainability and it was engaging in discussions with EU bodies to that end. BEUC said yesterday that many of the companies analysed, which included Air France and Lufthansa, still offered “green” fares, charging passengers more to purchase carbon credits or sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Yet, the former did little to offset a flight’s climate impact, and the latter were not widely available. EU rules currently require carriers to include only 2% of SAF in their fuel mix. Airlines also often oversold their long-term sustainability goals, BEUC said. Greenwashing is when companies use deceptive claims to convince the public that their products or operations are environmentally friendly. – AFP

BRUSSELS: The European aviation industry is awash with misleading climate-related claims, consumer groups said yesterday, over a year after the EU launched a probe into airlines’ greenwashing. An analysis of 17 air carriers found many misled passengers by suggesting that flying was more eco-friendly than it really is – a breach of EU rules – pan-European consumers organisation BEUC said. “Travellers are lulled into believing they are choosing a sustainable transportation rather than a highly polluting one,” said BEUC director-general Agustin Reyna. Aviation accounts for up to four percent of all the European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to Brussels. In 2023, BEUC filed a complaint with the European Commission, accusing European airlines of greenwashing and unfair commercial practices for inflating their green credentials. A year later, the commission opened a probe, which is still ongoing, into 20 firms over misleading green claims. In a report published to coincide with the Paris Air Show, a major trade fair, BEUC said yesterday that little has since changed. Some of the airlines analysed have removed or amended their climate-related marketing claims. Norwegian airlines for example removed all climate-related claims

a long-squeezed market, some news organisations have struck deals to share their content with developers of AI models. Agence France-Presse (AFP) allows the Mistral model from the French company of the same name to access its archive of news stories going back decades. Other media have launched copyright cases against AI makers over alleged illegal use of their content, for example the N ew York Times against ChatGPT developer OpenAI. Away from AI, the Reuters Insti tute report pointed to traditional media – television, radio, news papers and news sites – losing ground to social networks and video-sharing platforms. Almost half of 18-24-year-olds report that social media like TikTok is their main source of news, especially in emerging countries like India, Brazil, Indonesia and Thailand. The shift in news consumption habits has hit outlets’ bottom lines. Yesterday’s report said it has also given a leg-up to politicians like American President Donald Trump or Argentina’s Javier Milei, who have been able to talk past traditional gatekeepers to reach voters directly. – AFP

o Readers appreciate relevant and personalised articles, survey finds

BAMAKO: A Mali court ruled on Monday that western gold mines held by Canadian giant Barrick would be managed for six months by an appointee, effectively stripping operation of one of the world’s largest gold complexes from the firm. The decision allows Mali’s military government to appoint a new administrator in charge of the Loulo-Gounkoto complex and comes amid rising tensions between the junta and the Toronto-based company over taxes and mining. The court named the administrator as Zoumana Makadji. The ruling marked the first time Mali has placed a mining company under such a status. Makadji will be tasked with “ensuring the mine is opened as quickly as possible”, a magistrate from Bamako’s commercial court told AFP, adding that after six months a judge will assess the progress of PARIS: People are increasingly turning to generative artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT to follow day-to-day news, a respected media report published yesterday found. The yearly survey from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found “for the first time” that significant numbers of people were using chatbots to get headlines and updates, director Mitali Mukherjee wrote. Attached to Britain’s Oxford University, the Reuters Institute annual report is seen as unmissable for people following the ways the media is changing. Just 7% of people report using AI to find news, according to the Institute’s poll of 97,000 people in 48 countries, carried out by YouGov. But the proportion is higher among the young, at 12% of under-35s and 15% of under-25s. The biggest-name chatbot – OpenAI’s ChatGPT – is the most widely used, followed by Google’s Gemini and Meta’s Llama.

negotiations or an agreement with Barrick. The military junta running Mali has tightened regulations on the mining sector, which is key to the economy. It introduced a new industry code in recent years that grants the government a bigger share of profits from mining activities in the name of national sovereignty. Mali “accused Barrick of not properly paying taxes, royalties and dividends owed to the state, of having a contract that does not reflect Mali’s legitimate interests, and of keeping the state out of the effective management of the mine and its revenues”, a source representing the government’s interests told AFP. For these reasons, Mali “has decided to place the site under temporary administration through legal channels”, the source said. – AFP Respondents appreciated re levant and personalised news from chatbots. Many more used AI to summarise (27%), translate (24%) or recommend (21%) articles, while almost one in five asked questions about current events. Distrust remains, with those polled on balance saying artificial intelligence risked making the news less transparent, less accurate and less trustworthy. Rather than being programmed, today’s powerful AI “large language models” (LLMs) are “trained” on vast quantities of data from the web and other sources – including news media like text articles or video reports. Once trained, they are able to generate text and images in response to users’ natural-lan guage queries. But they present problems including “hallucinations”, the term used when AI invents information that fits patterns in their training data but is not true. Scenting a chance at revenue in

Mali court strips Barrick of gold mine operation for six months

The Barrick logo is seen as visitors arrive at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada annual convention in the Canadian city of Toronto. – REUTERSPIC

Volvo and Daimler look to technology joint venture in bid to save costs BERLIN: European truckmaking rivals AB Volvo and Daimler Truck hope to cut costs and reduce reliance on suppliers by jointly developing a software-defined vehicle program, they said yesterday. produce technology-packed vehicles while also grappling with the need to reduce costs. software-defined vehicle platform and reduce that dependence. The companies are looking to create an “industry standard”, Daimler Trucks CEO Karin Radstrom told reporters. suppliers – which drives both cost and sometimes timelines – and instead looking at what’s the next generation of software that we need to bring to the vehicle,” Radstrom said.

connectivity platform in 2027 and further deliveries towards the end of the decade. While rivals, Volvo Group and Daimler have collaborated on various businesses in recent years, such as within charging and hydrogen fuel cell development. – Reuters

Truckmakers are currently heavily reliant on suppliers because their software is closely tied to hardware, but Daimler and Volvo’s new business – called Coretura – aims to develop a

The Gothenburg-based venture will employ 50 employees to start, with the hope of first deliveries of its

“We’re looking at how we can move from our current reality where we are very much dependent on our

Fleets and truck manufacturers, like automakers, have been racing to