On a cool morning along the esplanade of the sleepy bayside town of Toorbul, bird songs and squabbles fill the air. Suddenly a more persistent sound can be heard amid the morning chorus at the shorebird sanctuary, about 60 kilometres north of Brisbane. Researchers worked out the best altitude and distance to fly the drones…
When Bundaberg Mayor Helen Blackburn compared the cost of the city’s rate rise to that of a loaf of bread or block of cheese per week, the backlash was swift. AI was used to generate images of mountains of the grocery items outside the council offices, as well as a South Park-inspired parody song. A…
An Australian staffy named Rosie gave hope to cancer patients around the world when her tumours were successfully treated with the help of artificial intelligence. Now, scientists say outdated regulatory hurdles are preventing Australia from leading the future of cancer care in the face of an AI revolution. The Staffordshire crossbred Shar Pei, was diagnosed…
Hello, ABC Middle East correspondent Matthew Doran in Jerusalem here. It’s now 114 days since the war between the US, Israel and Iran began, and four days since the US and Iran signed their interim deal to halt the hostilities ahead of more detailed negotiations. Here’s what you need to know right now: US President…
Pauline Hanson began her National Press Club speech last week by saying the key issues were immigration and housing. To support the idea of linking them, Hanson quoted the Housing Industry Association (HIA): “The underlying problem we have is trying to fit 11 million households into 10 million homes.” But that’s not true. The latest…
If you want to work out where the next frontier of political and social conflict will come from, it’s often worth listening to what politicians on both the hard left and hard right are saying. Last week, while everyone was focused on Pauline Hanson calling for a monoculture, railing against mainstream media, and branding Australian…
When Koteka Wenda stumbled across an AI-generated video of her circulating on social media, she was shocked. In the video, she was speaking out against a documentary that has become the subject of fierce debate. “The resemblance of my likeness is so sinister,” she told the ABC. “I felt like me and my people were…
The most annoying thing about reheated internet pasta is that, like the real thing, it might taste great on the second go-round, but it can really stick to the pan. If you don’t know it, “internet pasta” — originally known as “copypasta” — is a block of digital text that’s repeatedly copied and pasted across…
When the Tedesco family bought a sprawling property in Sydney’s Hills District, they knew nothing of its more than 220-year history. Nicolas Tedesco’s elderly parents jumped at the opportunity to buy the heritage-listed Baulkham Hills home three years ago, with hopes of passing it down through their family. They had wanted a smaller “family farm”…
In the 80 years since George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead ambled into public consciousness, zombies have been a vehicle for the full spectrum of societal ills. From terrorism to racial tensions to capitalistic collapse, filmmakers have been stuffing ideological motivations into the undead’s empty heads to the delight of audiences and box offices…