His case raised a potentially huge problem with such AI programs: what happens when they get stuff wrong in a way that causes real-world harm?

Chatbots are based on AI models trained on vast amounts of data and retraining them is hugely expensive and time consuming, so scientists are looking at more targeted solutions.

Hood said he talked to OpenAI who "weren't particularly helpful".

But his complaint, which made global headlines in April, was largely resolved when a new version of their software was rolled out and did not return the same falsehood -- though he never received an explanation.

"Ironically, the vast amount of publicity my story received actually corrected the public record," Hood, mayor of the town of Hepburn in Victoria, told AFP this week.

OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.

Hood might have struggled to make a defamation charge stick, as it is unclear how many people could see results in ChatGPT or even if they would see the same results.

But firms like Google and Microsoft are rapidly rewiring their search engines with AI technology.

It seems likely they will be inundated with takedown requests from people like Hood, as well as over copyright infringements.

While they can delete individual entries from a search engine index, things are not so simple with AI models.

To respond to such issues, a group of scientists is forging a new field called "machine unlearning" that tries to train algorithms to "forget" offending chunks of data.

- 'Cool tool' -

One expert in the field, Meghdad Kurmanji from Warwick University in Britain, told AFP the topic had started getting real traction in the last three or four years.

Among those taking note has been Google DeepMind, the AI branch of the trillion-dollar Californian behemoth.

Google experts co-wrote a paper with Kurmanji published last month that proposed an algorithm to scrub selected data from large language models -- the algorithms that underpin the likes of ChatGPT and Google's Bard chatbot.

Google also launched a competition in June for others to refine unlearning methods, which so far has attracted more than 1,000 participants.

Kurmanji said unlearning could be a "very cool tool" for search engines to manage takedown requests under data privacy laws, for example.

He also said his algorithm had scored well in tests for removing copyrighted material and fixing bias.

However, Silicon Valley elites are not universally excited.

Yann LeCun, AI chief at Facebook-owner Meta, which is also pouring billions into AI tech, told AFP the idea of machine unlearning was far down his list of priorities.

"I'm not saying it's useless, uninteresting, or wrong," he said of the paper authored by Kurmanji and others. "But I think there are more important and urgent topics."

LeCun said he was focused on making algorithms learn quicker and retrieve facts more efficiently rather than teaching them to forget.

- 'No panacea' -

But there appears to be broad acceptance in academia that AI firms will need to be able to remove information from their models to comply with laws like the EU's data protection regulation (GDPR).

"The ability to remove data from training sets is a critical aspect moving forward," said Lisa Given from RMIT University in Melbourne Australia.

However, she pointed out that so much was unknown about the way models worked -- and even what datasets they were trained on -- that a solution could be a long way away.

Michael Rovatsos of Edinburgh University could also see similar technical issues arising, particularly if a company was bombarded with takedown requests.

He added that unlearning did nothing to resolve wider questions about the AI industry, like how the data is gathered, who profits from its use or who takes responsibility for algorithms that cause harm.

"The technical solution isn't the panacea," he said.

With scientific research in its infancy and regulation almost non-existent, Brian Hood -- who is a fan of AI despite his ChatGPT experience -- suggested we were still in the era of old-fashioned solutions.

"When it comes to these chatbots generating rubbish, users just need to double check everything," he said.

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With a rise in popularity of artificial trees for environmental reasons, Londoners who prefer a real Christmas tree can now be equally sustainable.

Instead of throwing away their tree in January they can instead return it -- having watered it in its pot over the festive season -- to a new rental firm that will look after it until the following year.

"We just say it's 'rent, water, return'. After Christmas, return it and we put it back into the irrigation," said Jonathan Mearns, who runs London Christmas Tree Rental.

Mearns, who in another life was a police officer working in counter-terrorism, started the business in 2017 and now has a loyal band of customers who come back year after year.

The business uses a farm located in the Cotswolds in central England, where the trees are irrigated and looked after before being returned for another Christmas.

"It started off as I think what some people would have said was a crazy idea -- but it has grown over the years and more and more people are interested in renting a Christmas tree," he told AFP at the centre in Dulwich in south London.

"There's big growth, big growth in it. We're not saying we have perfect trees what we say is we have real trees," he added.

Publishing worker Jess Sacco and doctor Rachel Gordon Boyd, both in their mid-thirties, said the green aspect of renting a tree was appealing.

- Cutting waste -

"We're trying to be more sustainable in general I guess in our lives... we thought it's just a nice alternative to buying a tree and throwing it away," Sacco said.

Mearns says he finds it dispiriting every January to see so many lifeless brown trees abandoned and destined to decompose.

"You will see on the streets of London in January or anywhere around the country, there will be lots of cut trees strewn on the roadside.

"Now those trees are dead, once they're cut they're dead, recovering them is impossible," he said.

The entrepreneur and motivational speaker, who says he is on a mission to reduce waste at Christmas, says that a three-foot (one-metre) tree from his company could be a four-foot tree next year.

The idea has tapped into Londoners' concerns about the amount they throw away and adopting a sustainable lifestyle.

"Because there's so much waste that goes on with chucking them every year. I wanted to have a real Christmas tree but something more sustainable," said Joe Potter, a 36-year-old policy manager said.

"It's something that's on our mind a lot as a family, he added.

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The beaming face of a cute-looking teddy bear appears to have been carved into the surface of our nearest planetary neighbor, waiting for a passing satellite to discover it.

And when the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter passed over last month, carrying aboard the most powerful camera ever to venture into the Solar System, that's exactly what happened.

Scientists operating the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment), which has been circling Mars since 2006, crunched the data that made it back to Earth, and have now published a picture of the face.

"There's a hill with a V-shaped collapse structure (the nose), two craters (the eyes), and a circular fracture pattern (the head)," said scientists at the University of Arizona, which operates the kit.

Each one of the features in the 2,000-meter (1.25-mile)-wide face has a possible explanation that hints at just how active the surface of the planet is.

"The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater," the scientists said.

"Maybe the nose is a volcanic or mud vent and the deposit could be lava or mud flows?"

HiRISE, one of six instruments aboard the Orbiter, snaps super-detailed pictures of the Red Planet helping to map the surface for possible future missions, either by humans or robots.

Over the last ten years the team has managed to capture images of avalanches as they happened, and discovered dark flows that could be some kind of liquid.

They've also found dust devils twirling across the Martian surface, as well as a feature that some people thought looked a lot like Star Trek's Starfleet logo.

One thing they have not found, however, is the little green men who were once popularly believed to inhabit the planet.

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The sunset gathering in Hua Hin, part of a Muay Thai Festival in the seaside resort town, broke the previous Guinness World Record of 250 by having 3,660 participants simultaneously performing the traditional pre-match dance of respect for their coach.

The sun had baked the sheets of concrete hot as the barefoot performers -- organised by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), the Royal Thai Army, and the culture and sport ministries -- filed onto the parade ground at Rajabhakti Park in front of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-Cha.

Dressed in red uniforms with white Mongkhon headbands, as well as white Muay Kard Chuek ropes -- the hemp wrappings fighters wore before gloves -- the phalanx of men moved in near perfect unison to the directions of famed Muay Thai fighter Sombat "Buakaw" Banchamek.

"Congratulations, you're officially amazing," said the official Guinness adjudicator, confirming the record had been broken.

"I feel really proud," said 27-year-old performer Phukrit Purimchaithanat, adding he and his fellow-cadets were glad they had pulled it off after months of preparations.

A mix of bemused locals and tourists passing through the popular resort watched the spectacle from a few rickety metal bleachers, gathering around the sides of the fenced area as a loudspeaker blared.

"It's stunning, it's crazy, also in front of the kings and everything," said Hua Hin resident Siena Cruz, 32, as she enjoyed the show with friends.

"The visual is something connected to the tradition," she said, noting how integral the pre-match ritual was to the sport.

"To be part of another bit of history for Thailand, it's bragging rights," she said of the Guinness record.

"I like to watch, but boxing is scary," said June Rubyung, who had taken her grandson to watch the performance.

The 50-year-old Hua Hin local, who lives close to the army grounds where they performed, said she knew the army cadets had been practising for a month.

"I think they're good," she said, "they do it the correct way."

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Revealing a very French love affair with words, over 50,000 applied to participate in the event, a world first, in which hopefuls attempt to faithfully and without error transcribe a text read to them.

Over 5,000 applicants aged 10-90 were chosen to participate in three sessions led by novelist Rachid Santaki.

With 1,779 desks laid out on Paris' most famous boulevard in each session, organisers had sought to break the world record for a dictation spelling competition.

In the first round, an excerpt of La Mule du Pape by renowned French writer Alphonse Daudet was read by journalist Augustin Trapenard, of Libraries Without Borders.

Silence fell when the first session started, but for 10-year-old Samson, the dictation was "too fast". He gave up.

In his final year of primary school, top student Antoine attended with his father and, despite being a star pupil, he had struggled to fill his page.

"It was impossible! The dictation was for adults," he said.

His father Adrien Blind, 42, was equally relieved when the session wrapped, saying he "was in a state of stress and worry".

But 65-year-old retiree Touria Zerhouni was more upbeat.

"I only made two mistakes! I expected it to be much harder," she said.

The competition went beyond the French classics, with a sport themed round read by rugby player Pierre Rabadan, and another with a contemporary flavour read by writer and journalist Katherine Pancol.

Marc-Antoine Jamet, president of the Champs-Elysees Committee which hosted the dictation during , said the event went beyond spelling.

"Dictation helps us to live together. It's unifying," he said.

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Nationalism and populism are on the rise in the Balkan nation, where many remain strongly Russophile despite Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

The immense 1,110-square-metre flag, meant to symbolise Bulgaria's territory of 111,000 square kilometres, was hoisted up the record-breaking 111-metre (364-foot) pole last week in a forest meadow in the Rhodope mountains.

With it Bulgaria takes the flagpole crown from Finland -- which has a 100-metre one -- though it does not nearly touch the heights of some outside Europe which are almost twice as high.

"This won't make Bulgarians richer but it will raise people's spirits," said Simeon Karakolev, 45, the organiser of an historic annual folk festival at Rozhen, whose foundation is behind the project.

Karakolev raised 500,000 euros ($560,000) in donations for the pole in a campaign embraced by Bulgaria's pro-Russian President Rumen Radev.

Local media said that a number of public companies were approached on Radev's behalf to donate money for the mast on the mountain meadow where the festival is held.

- Marred by controversy -

The campaign was widely mocked on the social media with one meme depicting the president swinging on the pole going viral, while many said a country wracked with high emigration and a crumbling health system had more urgent concerns than collecting funds for a massive flag mast.

Political scientist Ognyan Minchev lamented how patriotism had been hijacked by "leaders who measure national pride by the height of a flag mast... quasi-nationalists dominated by Russian propaganda."

A recent Open Society Foundation study found Bulgaria was among the EU countries most susceptible to Russian propaganda and disinformation.

The concrete poured for the flagpole's foundations on the pristine mountain meadows, and alleged irregularities with its permits, also sparked calls from environmentalists to ban it.

A petition against it collected thousands of signatures.

Karakolev said this was "undeserved hate" and thanked authorities for not "backing down to pressure as checks showed everything is perfectly legal."

Radev slammed "dishonourable attempts to denigrate and break this initiative" as he and Karakolev inaugurated the structure with shouts of "Long live Bulgaria!"

Several thousand people of all ages, many in national costumes, gathered for the ceremony ahead of the three-day annual festival, taking the chance to touch the gigantic flag before it went up.

"Yes, some people don't like it... (but) there are flags in every country. They are one of the symbols of a nation," said reserve army colonel Dimitar Mitev, 69, adding that he hoped this initiative would boost patriotism.

Others were less positive.

"I felt unwell when I saw this rod sticking out of the ground in the middle of the meadows and the surrounding forests. This is human interference in nature," business consultant Sofia Botusharova, 38, from the nearby town of Chepelare told AFP.

Still, thousands of phone screens lit up the night as the cheering crowd waited for the flag to be hoisted. But when the big moment came there was disappointment as the lack of a breeze left it hanging listlessly from the pole.

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Unlike the Leagues Cup, which Messi won with Miami last month, the title up for grabs at DRV PNK Stadium is one with a long and rich history, albeit one little known outside of American soccer circles.

The U.S. Open Cup, which began in 1914, is the oldest tournament in the American soccer landscape having managed to survive while all manner of leagues and clubs have vanished around it.

For decades, the competition was stuck in relative obscurity with semi-professional and amateur teams playing in front of a few hundred die-hard fans.

In the early years, the competition was dominated by Bethlehem Steel, backed by the factory in Pennsylvania, who won four of the first six editions.

The club were typical of that early era of the game in the United States when factory teams from northern industrial cities came close to establishing the game as the country's working class sport.

Attempts to create a stable professional league collapsed and often the clubs disappeared with them.

But as internal disputes took hold and gridiron American football established itself, the sport and the Cup became the preserve of ethnic-based immigrant teams.

After World War Two, the champions included teams such as New York German–Hungarian, Philadelphia Ukrainian Nationals, New York's Greek-American, Maccabee Los Angeles and Brooklyn Italians.

When during the Pele-inspired, short-lived soccer boom in the 1970s, his New York Cosmos and other NASL teams opted against playing in the cup.

Similar in format to England's FA Cup or Spain's Copa del Rey, the competition is organised by the U.S. Soccer Federation.

Amateur clubs qualify for the main draw through regional qualifiers with Major League Soccer clubs joining from the third round.

With no promotion or relegation in American soccer, the Open Cup is the only chance for teams from lower division leagues such as USL and NPSL to face top flight clubs.

As with other such competitions, upset wins by underdogs are part of the appeal.

Last season, Sacramento Republic from the second-tier USL Championship, went all the way to the final after beating three MLS opponents including the Los Angeles Galaxy.

In the final, Sacramento fell to Orlando City who maintained MLS teams' record of winning every edition of the Cup since the now defunct Rochester Raging Rhinos, of the old A-League, won in 1999.

The sight of MLS teams battling against lower league opponents in small venues, far more rudimentary than the modern stadiums that are home to most top flight clubs, adds to the charm of the competition for many fans.

- Romance -

But MLS commissioner Don Garber is not one of those to get caught up in the 'romance' of the Cup.

"It's just not the proper reflection of what soccer in America at the professional level needs to be," Garber said in May, when asked about the low television ratings for the competition.

"I would say that they're not games that we would want our product to be shown to a large audience. So frankly, I'm not all that disappointed that the audience is small," he added.

But the audience for Wednesday's final will be anything but small.

Thanks to Messi, the final will be broadcast around the world with CBS Sports and Telemundo in the United States promoting the match heavily.

Messi's involvement, however, remains in doubt with the Argentine facing a late fitness test before the game, having missed Miami's MLS game at Orlando on Sunday.

Watching in the stands will be Houston's general manager Pat Onstad, who knows all about the history of the Cup, having been goalkeeper for the Raging Rhinos in their upset win in the 1999 final against MLS's Colorado Rapids.

"That was a special run (but) it was a different time," Onstad told CBS Sports of the 1999 final, played in front of 4,555 fans in Columbus, Ohio.

"From a personal standpoint I thought I would get to a lot of these but I haven't been to a U.S. Open Cup final since 1999, it's been a long time," he said.

Whether Houston or Messi's Miami have their name engraved on the old Dewar Challenge Trophy, three days later, the second round of qualifying for next year's competition gets under way.

The history is never far away -- battling among the raft of new clubs trying to make their mark, is the Philadelphia Ukrainian Nationals, four-times champions in the 1960s.

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Contestants fight under bright studio lights with a cheering audience as opponents push down the other person's arm in the Pro Panja League (PPL) at New Delhi's Indira Gandhi Stadium.

The Indian Arm Wrestling Federation launched in 1977, but the sport, known as "panja" in India, has been given new lease of life by league owners and Bollywood acting couple Parvin Dabas and Preeti Jhangiani.

"Our athletes are literally sons and daughters of our soil. Somebody is a government servant, a gym trainer, somebody is a mechanic," Dabas told AFP.

"They come from all walks of life and come from small-town India, and that's what we love about it, that's what the audience is getting attracted by."

Arm wrestler Shaikh Tawheed worked as a stone mason, motorbike mechanic and gym cleaner before finding PPL fame in the 90 kilogram category.

A charming smile on his well-sculpted body adds to the 23-year-old Tawheed's appeal as he defeats opponents in a quick strike -- and then celebrates by blowing kisses to his fans.

"It's a dream living in fancy hotels, having good food, and some money," Tawheed told AFP, adding he had earned around 75,000 rupees ($900) during the competition period so far, a 10-fold jump on his previous earnings.

"I couldn't have asked for more".

- 'Power in their hands' -

The six teams have to include men, women and people with disabilities -- including athletes who use wheelchairs with impressive upper-body strength -- with the winning team getting two million rupees ($24,000).

Launched in 2020 with some exhibition matches and tournaments, this is the first league season to be shown live on Sony Sports Network in India and Willow TV in the United States between July 28 and August 13.

The top four teams will play in the semi-finals and the winners will clash in the final on Sunday.

Sylvester Stallone's 1987 film "Over the Top" made arm wrestling popular around the globe but the ancient sport in India remains rooted in Hindu mythology and is widely popular -- making Tawheed a local star.

Tawheed has moved from a one-room rented house in his home city of Aurangabad in Maharashtra state, and bought his own home.

"The fame I got from arm wrestling helped me in my career as a gym trainer which in turn got me the cash," he said.

"Pro Panja has changed arm wrestling," he said. "We travel in flights in contrast to moving in unreserved train coaches for tournaments."

League owners are confident of the growing popularity of arm wrestling after the success of Indian sports leagues including the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL), which has made stars out of humble villagers.

Among the athletes is also 38-year-old mother Farheen Dehalvi, who went from participating in local competitions in the state of Madhya Pradesh to taking down her opponents in a bright-coloured team jersey in front of a large TV audience.

Decades of cleaning, cooking and household chores left Dehalvi with powerful arms -- and she has put them to good use.

"Girls who stay at home including housewives are more powerful because they work and have power in their hands," said Dehalvi, a part-time teacher and mother to a 17-year-old son.

- Olympic dreams -

Dehalvi, who competes in the 65+ kilogram women's category, won her opening match by defeating a 19-year-old, winning on points over several wrestles.

"I went to see an arm-wrestling match in my district and people urged me play the sport as they thought I am powerful," Dehalvi told AFP.

"In our region daughter-in-laws are not allowed to step out of their homes, but my husband backed me to display my power in the sport. And here I am."

Her success has inspired others, she said. Two gyms have opened in her village after her league entry and girls have started working out.

"It was tough juggling between household duties and pursuing the sport, but I kept my hopes high," Dehalvi said.

"People watch me on TV back home and it has inspired them to go to the gyms and I tell them to come to Pro Panja".

Future PPL seasons could witness a player auction, like the hugely successful Indian Premier League (IPL) T20 cricket tournament, which has spawned the growth of other sports leagues.

The PPL, like IPL, boasts of foreign coaches for all six teams -- mostly from Kazakhstan, where arm wrestling is widely popular.

"There are lot of people in India, there are lot of people in Kazakhstan," seven-time world champion and PPL coach Yerkin Alimzhanov told AFP. "From both sides we can try to get the game to the Olympics".

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At the Meow Cat Cafe which opened this week in Gaza City, owner Nehma Maabad set out food for a clowder of kittens.

"Cats, for me, are a refuge that relieves me of psychological stress. So I thought of creating a project that combines serving people with something to cheer them up," said the 50-year-old.

Part of the space is kitted out with wooden platforms covered in astroturf for the cats to clamber onto, while feline murals and portraits adorn the walls.

Meow is part of a growing global trend of cat cafes, but the circumstances in Gaza are unique.

The territory has been under a crippling Israeli blockade since 2007 and scars of repeated wars fought between Palestinian militants and Israel are visible across the city.

Customers pay nearly 10 shekels ($2.65) per hour to play with the cats, which Maabad said covers their food as well as costly vet bills.

Visiting the cafe, Manar Abu Samra said it was reasonably priced and she had told her friends and sisters about the new venture.

"The quality of cats here is beautiful and sweet, so it's a wonderful idea -- despite its strangeness to society -- and when I heard about it I felt happy," she said.

Pets are rare in Gaza although cats are ever-present, particularly around the port or fishmongers as they try to paw away some scraps.

Maabad said she had cats at home to bring to Meow, while others came from friends.

"The idea of the cafe was to have something nice with a cup of coffee," she said.

"A cat that you play with and it makes you smile and forget the pressures of life."

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Fashion innovator Calvin Wong has developed the Interactive Design Assistant for Fashion (AiDA) -- the world's first designer-led AI system.

It uses image-recognition technology to speed up the time it takes for a design to go from a first sketch to the catwalk.

"Designers have their fabric prints, patterns, colour tones, initial sketches and they upload the images," Wong told AFP.

"Then our AI system can recognise those design elements and come up with more proposals for designers to refine and modify their original design."

Wong said AiDA's particular strength was its ability to present "all the possible combinations" for a designer to consider, something he said was impossible in the current design process.

An exhibition at Hong Kong's M+ Museum in December featured collections by 14 designers developed using the tool.

But Wong stressed it was about "facilitating designers inspiration" not "using AI to take over a designers job, to take over their creativity".

"We must treasure the designer's original creativity," he added.

Wong heads up the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence in Design (AidLab), a collaboration between Britain's Royal College of Art (RCA) and Hong Kong Polytechnic University where he is a professor in fashion.

- 'Transformational'

RCA vice chancellor Naren Barfield predicted the impact of AI on the fashion industry would be "transformational".

"The impact is going to be huge from the ideation and conception stage through to prototyping, right the way through to manufacture, distribution and then ultimately recycling," he said.

So-called personalisation is already being used to improve customer experience with better product recommendations and more effective searches, helping shoppers find what they want quickly and easily.

But as the technology evolves so too is the range of highly specialised tools being developed.

AiDA was just one of the AidLab projects being showcased in the British capital ahead of London Fashion Week, which started on Friday.

Others included the Neo Couture project which aims to use advanced technologies to digitally preserve the specialised skills and techniques used by couturiers.

With the UK fashion industry facing a skills shortage, it is creating an AI-assisted training system to help teach couture skills.

Another project aims to increase sustainability to reduce the estimated 92 million tonnes of clothing that ends up in landfill each year.

One potential use of the AI Loupe project is to help designers overcome the problems of using so-called dead stock fabric.

Designers can photograph leftover fabric and then use the tool to get the missing details to assess its suitability for their designs.

"It uses the camera as your index, the material is the QR code that brings the information," said project researcher Chipp Jansen.

- Retain control -

The future of AI in fashion design, however, is not clear cut.

New York brand Collina Strada's founder Hillary Taymour this week admitted that she and her team used AI image generator Midjourney to create the collection they showed at New York Fashion Week.

Although Taymour only used images of the brand's own past looks to help generate its Spring/Summer 2024 collection, looming legal issues could keep AI-generated clothes off the catwalks for now.

"In terms of fashion designed by AI, I would expect to hear from designers that there are questions of intellectual property rights," said Rebecca Lewin, a senior curator at London's Design Museum.

"Because whatever comes back will have been scraped from published images and to get that regulated will need a lot of work."

The RCA's Barfield said the area would be tricky but he expected it to be resolved through test cases and legislation.

"I don't know how fast (AI) will be transformational but if it gives companies competitive advantage I think they'll invest and take it up quickly," he said.

The only thing currently holding companies back was the "massive investment" in infrastructure required, he said.

"But once they've done that they can take the plunge then they will be making savings on material waste and productivity," he added.

As for designers' fears that it might become a substitute for the human creative process, he said the key was who controlled the decision making.

Using a "genetic algorithm" where you started with one design and used the software to generate successive ones the computer could produce 1,000 varying looks, something that might take weeks to draw, he said.

On the other hand if the designer retained control AI could offer huge benefits by hugely speeding up the process "without necessarily making the decisions for them", he added.

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