The annual Consumer Electronics Show boasts more than 3,500 exhibitors and is expecting around 130,000 visitors.

Companies big and small hosted previews for the press on Monday, with AI a repeated mantra as they pitched products promising better lives.

LG chief executive William Cho said the world is at "a historical turning point" due to AI.

His company aims to be part of that transformation, tapping into data gathered by sensors in hundreds of millions of smart devices in use around the world to detect patterns of behavior and provide insights, Cho said.

"We have a unique opportunity to leverage the real-life data gathered across devices in real-time. Of course, with your permission," he said.

LG, Samsung and other TV titans also showcased AI enhancements to vastly improve images, help viewers find shows they will like, and more.

Televisions will advance to a "smart command hub" connecting appliances, security cameras, and even incorporating thermal scanning for health insights, according to Jessica Boothe, a research director at the Consumer Technology Association that organizes CES.

"We will watch as TVs become the command center for the home beyond just streaming entertainment," she said.

- ChatGPT on wheels -

Volkswagen, meanwhile, presented what it described as the first vehicles built with a chatbot powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT technology.

The "Cerence Chat Pro" digital assistant made in a partnership with Cerence Inc. will be standard in many Volkswagen vehicles starting in the second quarter of this year, according to the car maker.

"We are offering our drivers added value and direct access to the AI-based research tool," said Volkswagen management board member Kai Grunitz.

Nvidia, whose graphics chips are coveted for their ability to handle the intense computing demands of AI, took CES as an opportunity to announce new chips for gamers and creators.

Innovations being teased ahead of the CES show floor opening included tech for translating multiple languages simultaneously, and glasses for augmented reality that essentially turn the space in front of a viewer into a screen they can control with gestures.

Apple, which is not at CES, said Monday that it will release its highly anticipated Vision Pro mixed reality headset in the United States on February 2, in its first major product release since the Apple Watch in 2015.

Announced in June, the Vision Pro will cost a hefty $3,499 before tax, more than double the price of Meta's top-of-the-range Quest Pro headset.

"The era of spatial computing has arrived," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, calling the Vision Pro "the most advanced consumer electronics device ever created."

- Year of AI at CES -

CES exhibitor and attendee numbers have jumped each year since the Covid-19 pandemic caused it to be an online-only event in 2021.

While the show is increasingly a showcase for startups, big brands such as Amazon, Google, Intel, Netflix, Samsung, Sony and TikTok will also be there.

"There's some exciting innovation' there's some boring innovation, and there's some just really plain weird innovation," said Techsponential analyst Avi Greengart.

Analysts expect it to be the year of AI when it comes to product pitches at CES.

Models on which AI is built have improved dramatically since last year's CES and the debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT, and they are being applied in meaningful ways for consumers, according to Greengart.

Ending Friday, CES is expected to see strong themes of AI-infused health, cars, beauty, entertainment and sustainability.

"AI will be reshaping industries beyond technology and it has the power to make life easier, more than inclusive for all," said Jong-Hee Han, CEO and Head of Samsung's device experience division.

More than a decade of investments in AI "are coming to life," he added.

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"Where the hot girls at?" the dreadlocked 41-year-old American (real name: Tyrone William Griffin Jr) bellowed into the microphone during his set at the Balad Beast music festival.

"How many of you trying to get lit after the show tonight? How many of you trying to get faded?"

It was an eyebrow-raising scene in conservative Saudi Arabia, which first allowed large-scale mixed-gender festivals only about five years ago, and maintains a strict no-alcohol policy.

Yet Ty Dolla $ign's performance in Jeddah's oldest neighbourhood, known as Al-Balad, alongside artists like Wu-Tang Clan and Major Lazer underscored efforts to revamp the UNESCO World Heritage site, expanding its allure for young Saudis and foreigners.

Under Vision 2030, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's ambitious plan to develop a post-oil economy in the world's biggest crude exporter, authorities are targeting 3,000 new hotel rooms in Al-Balad as they try to attract millions more tourists.

Beyond events such as Balad Beast, the 2.5-square-kilometre (nearly one square mile) area is being transformed by an influx of cafes, museums, performance spaces and workshops for artists and craftspeople.

Jeddah residents acknowledge some anxiety about the changes in a neighbourhood strongly associated with the annual hajj pilgrimage and traditional Ramadan markets.

But that was hard to glean from the droves of ravers who crowded the four stages at Balad Beast, some with glittery face paint and glow sticks. Most of the women had their hair and faces uncovered.

"Every time I come to Saudi, it's a vibe," Ty Dolla $ign said at one point, inserting an expletive for emphasis.

- Historic city, modern vibes -

Al-Balad came to prominence in the seventh century as a hub for pilgrims and traders.

Saudi Arabia's founding ruler King Abdulaziz conquered Jeddah in the 1920s, and in 1947 fast growth prompted authorities to tear down the walls surrounding Al-Balad, the city's heart.

Some of the gates still stand, however, as do Al-Balad's distinctive coral stone buildings, many with balconies built from latticed teak wood.

UNESCO granted Al-Balad World Heritage site status in 2014, and in 2018 "revitalisation" efforts overseen by the culture ministry began in earnest.

Today, green barricades erected by the ministry protect restoration work on centuries-old villas, mosques and markets, known as souks.

The ever-expanding calendar of festivals and art exhibitions has enlivened the neighbourhood, attracting people who might otherwise have little interest in it, said Ali Assi Loush, a Lebanese DJ who has lived in Jeddah for 20 years.

"If Balad didn't have Balad Beast, or whatever events it has now, none of the new generation would come to Balad. They'd go to the beach," he said.

"They're not interested in those old shops."

For some elderly residents, though, the new additions can be jarring, he said, likening this wariness to that of a grandmother who refuses to part with a beloved, if battered, chair.

"She would never let you remove it, throw it away, even though it's broken into pieces... No, it's her chair. It's the same thing," Loush said.

Abir Abusulayman, a Saudi tour guide, said most people were enthusiastic about Al-Balad's future, and that there was a clear solution for those who were not.

"They can stay at home," she said. "Easy and simple."

- 'Extraordinary' -

The debate about what's happening in Al-Balad is partly fuelled by broader changes in Jeddah, where an ongoing $20-billion redevelopment project stands to displace half a million people.

Authorities pitch the project as an upgrade that can replace "slums" with amenities like a stadium, an oceanarium and an opera house.

But some affected residents have complained they don't know how to seek compensation, and seethe about official portrayals of their neighbourhoods as dens of drugs and crime.

Abusulayman, the tour guide, said she did not mourn the neighbourhoods that have been razed –- most of them far from Al-Balad –- predicting they would be replaced by something better.

"I'm very happy that they are gone. These were unplanned districts... no schools, no gardens, no clinics, and some people just built their houses without having the land," she said.

Instead she preferred to focus on new features of life in Al-Balad, as did those who partied late into the night during Balad Beast.

"Personally I like to dress in a vintage style and this is the same thing, it's the same vibe," said Abdulrahman Alhabshi, 20, as images of the performers were projected on nearby walls.

Adnan Manjal, a Jeddah-born DJ known as AZM, was similarly effusive about Al-Balad's evolution.

"To see it transform not only into a UNESCO heritage site but also a dance floor," he said, "is just extraordinary."

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The portly prizewinner crushed her rival in a heavyweight head-to-head battle for public votes, with a four-to-one margin of victory over 32 Chunk.

"She's beauty and she's grace, she stuffed so much salmon in her face," the National Park Service wrote on Instagram.

"You will wear the crown, be the crown! You ate the crown!?!

"Congrats to the 2023 #FatBearWeek champion, 128 Grazer! With a dominant performance (We haven't seen a walk like that since Jurassic Park)"

Grazer and Chunk, along with around 2,000 others of their kind, are residents of Katmai National Park, where for the last few months they have been gorging themselves on salmon as they try to pile on the pounds for hibernation.

Summer and early autumn are key fueling periods for the brown bears, who will not eat for five months, losing as much as a third of their body weight.

More than 1.3 million ballots were cast in this year's contest, with members of the public tuning in to watch live webcam footage of bears in the wild.

Voters were asked to compare before-and-after pictures of the animals showing just how much pudgier they managed to become, with the champion being the bear who made it through a series of match-ups.

The online contest began in 2014 with just a few thousand people voting, but has now turned into an eagerly awaited exercise in tongue-in-cheek democracy.

The aim is to raise awareness of brown bears and their habitat in Alaska, and the risks they face from human activity.

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The six-bedroom house in tony San Jose offers a "great location" with easy access to the freeway, according to a realtor's listing, which notes it affords more than 2,700 square feet (250 square meters) of living space.

That might appeal to anyone needing an easy commute into Silicon Valley, with Apple's Cupertino campus just 20 minutes' drive, and Google's Mountain View home less than half an hour away.

It's in a quiet neighborhood, part of a good school catchment area and has a backyard planted with orange, apple and lemon trees.

There are three-and-a-half bathrooms, a swimming pool, a luxury spa, garage parking for one car, solar panels and airconditioning throughout.

It also has a big patio that is just perfect for entertaining.

Oh, and a place you can cook up deadly and addictive illegal drugs.

"Great opportunity to own a large home on a large 6,000sqft lot," says the listing on property website Redfin before sheepishly noting: "Home has inactive Meth lab and meth contamination."

"Home has not been cleared of contamination and will be transferred to the new buyer in its current state."

So, a "fixer-upper" then?

The San Jose home's previous owner was Peter Karasev, the Los Angeles Times reported, who was arrested in March on suspicion of attacking electricity transformers.

As well as the meth lab, police searching his house also found a weapons stockpile including guns and "homemade liquid explosive, multiple energetic homemade destructive devices," according to a police press conference at the time.

Karasev, who the paper said lived there with his wife and three young children, has been hit with a raft of charges, including possession of a destructive device, igniting a destructive device and child endangerment.

For those who don't mind taking on a bit of a project, the $1.55 million price tag makes the house good value by California's expensive real estate standards.

A nearby four-bedroom house sold in May for $1.725 million.

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Mean Tithpheap used 500 bicycle and motorbike tyres to create the 2.5-metre (eight-foot) King Kong over five weeks with two helpers.

The 37-year-old artist, who studied at fine art school in Phnom Penh, has been turning tyres into sculptures for four years.

He has made around 40 statues for clients, including King Kongs, elephants, lions, cobras and garudas -- a mythical man-bird creature.

Tithpheap said he hoped others would follow his example and put discarded rubber and plastic to creative use so that it does not pollute the environment.

"I have used old tyres of bicycles and motorbikes to make such animals because these tyres are waste and if we can recycle them, it will help the environment some," Tithpheap told AFP.

Cambodia faces a huge and growing challenge in waste management, despite some government efforts.

The population is growing, income and consumption rising, and urbanisation spreading, but waste collection and treatment are not keeping up.

Effective recycling of plastic waste is nearly impossible in Cambodia, where plastic consumption is widespread and and waste management infrastructure is lacking, so waterways and some green sites have become burgeoning heaps of garbage.

Tithpheap charges clients between $2,000 and $3,000 for a King Kong statue -- his most popular model -- depending on the size.

He is also working on a Captain America statue for a cafe, while the entrance to his workshop is guarded by a giant cobra, also made of tyres.

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An analysis published  in the journal iScience found that while animals are well represented by the current emoji catalog, plants, fungi, and microorganisms get short shrift.

"While the biodiversity crisis may seem distant from the online world, in our increasingly digitized society, we should not underestimate the potential of emojis to raise awareness and foster appreciation for the diversity of life on Earth," wrote authors Stefano Mammola, Mattia Falaschi, and Gentile Francesco Ficetola.

"The development and maintenance of diverse and inclusive emoji sets are crucial to ensure the equitable representation of the tree of life in digital communication tools," added the University of Milan conservation biologists.

The team assessed emojis related to nature and animals available in Emojipedia, a curated online catalog of emojis, and tracked how these changed between 2015 and 2022.

Among animals, vertebrates -- including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and bony fish -- were overrepresented, making up 76 percent of animal emojis.

Arthropods, including insects, arachnids, crustaceans, were proportionally underrepresented, despite there being 1.3 million described species of arthropod compared to 85,000 known species of vertebrate.

The researchers also noted there were no emojis representing either platyhelminths -- flatworms, including tapeworms -- or nematodes, despite there being more than 20,000 platyhelminth species and almost 20,000 nematode species.

On the flip side, they found emoji biodiversity was increasing. "Annelids gained representation in 2020 with the addition of the 'worm' emoji, which most likely represents an earthworm, and cnidarians gained representation in 2021 with the addition of a red coral emoji," they found.

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Police said the unmarked delivery truck had stopped for fuel on the outskirts of Sydney when a 28-year-old woman allegedly hopped inside and made off with the freshly baked booty.

Detectives followed a trail of crumbs to a suburban carpark, where they found the abandoned vehicle more than a week later.

The woman was arrested on Thursday, and police said her just desserts was to be charged with taking a truck without its owner's consent.

Police said the doughnuts were "destroyed".

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The 15-second meow-vie featuring an orange tabby named Taters is the first to be streamed from deep space, and demonstrates it's possible to transmit the higher-data-rate communications needed to support complex missions such as sending humans to Mars.

The video was beamed to Earth using a laser transceiver on the Psyche probe, which is journeying to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to explore a mysterious metal-rich object. When it sent the video, the spaceship was 80 times the distance between the Earth and Moon.

The encoded near-infrared signal was received by the Hale Telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, and from there sent to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.

"One of the goals is to demonstrate the ability to transmit broadband video across millions of miles. Nothing on Psyche generates video data, so we usually send packets of randomly generated test data," said Bill Klipstein, the tech demo's project manager at JPL.

"But to make this significant event more memorable, we decided to work with designers at JPL to create a fun video, which captures the essence of the demo as part of the Psyche mission."

Space missions have traditionally relied on radio waves to send and receive data, but working with lasers can increase the data rate by 10 to 100 times.

- Giant pounce for catkind -

The ultra-HD video took 101 seconds to send to Earth at the system's maximum bit rate of 267 megabits per second -- faster than most home broadband connections.

"In fact, after receiving the video at Palomar, it was sent to JPL over the internet, and that connection was slower than the signal coming from deep space," said Ryan Rogalin, the project's receiver electronics lead at JPL.

So why a cat video? First, there's the historic connection, said JPL. When American interest in television began growing in the 1920s, a statue of Felix the Cat was broadcast to serve as a test image.

And while cats may not claim the title as man's best friend, few can dispute their number-one position when it comes to internet videos and meme culture.

Uploaded before launch, the clip shows Tabby, the pet of a JPL employee, chasing a laser light on a couch, with test graphics overlayed. These include Psyche's orbital path and technical information about the laser and its data bit rate.

While laser transmission has been demonstrated in low Earth orbit and as far away as the Moon, the Psyche mission is the first time it's been deployed in deep space. Aiming a laser beam from millions of miles away requires extremely precise "pointing," a major technical hurdle engineering teams had to solve.

The technology demonstration even needs to compensate for the fact that in the time it takes for light to travel from the spacecraft to Earth, both the probe and the planet will have moved -- so the uplink and downlink lasers need to adjust for the change accordingly.

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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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