AI builds buildings, helps marketplace vendors, and comes up with blockbuster movie plots

September was generous in news. From far away territories in Australia to dark forests in Canada, from sports advances to vendor announcements – here is what happened as the autumn has begun.

But let’s start with ChatGPT. A group of prominent authors filed a lawsuit against OpenAI over allegations that products like ChatGPT make illegal use of their copyrighted work. While the lawsuit follows a series of similar legal challenges, it features well-known plaintiffs including authors George R.R. Martin and Jodi Picoult. The case could fundamentally shape the direction and capabilities of generative AI, either imposing a new set of limits on a mechanism at the core of the technology or cementing an expansive approach to online material that has fuelled the rise of products currently offered.

In the world

Canadian state of Alberta turns to artificial intelligence to outsmart wildfires. Alberta Wildfire piloted the wildfire occurrence prediction system, an AI tool which uses more than three decades of wildfire data and connects the dots between carbon emissions, climate change and human behaviour. The solution is widely used to tame dozens of blazes throughout the province’s forestry protection zones.

An indigenous community in Australia’s Far North Queensland is harnessing modern technology to help preserve and catalogue its culture. The rural town of Laura, about 330 kilometers from Cairns, is surrounded by more than 10,000 rock art sites. Cataloguing them is a time-consuming task, and in the past 10 years about 260 sites have been found. Now an app allows local rangers and even school kids to take photos of the rock art, then tag and store it in a database. Previously, this had to be done manually by the Laura Indigenous Rangers.

Police in Spain have started an investigation after images of young girls, altered with artificial intelligence to remove their clothing, were sent around a town in the south of the country. A group of mothers from Almendralejo, in the Extremadura region, reported that their daughters had received images of themselves in which they appeared to be naked. According to the outlet, the images were made using an app which uses AI to create images of people without any clothes on.

We keep on getting news on AI usage in construction. A massive condominium building in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, is being built with the help of artificial intelligence. Suffolk Construction is using AI and 3D modeling, getting down to the ductwork and studs, all from 2D plans. Suffolk can click through the model, and it will identify problems that exist within the plans, so they are alerted to it before big mistakes happen at the site.