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In a post on X Apple CEO Tim Cook announced “powerful new features” across iPhone, iPad and Mac including “system-wide Writing Tools, a more conversational Siri and intelligence in photos”
Apple Intelligence is now available through a free software update with the release of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1.
However, the update will only bring Apple Intelligence to small numbers of users as it stands. For the iPhone, it’s only available on the new iPhone 16 line-up as well as last year’s iPhone 15 Pro – and, for now, the tools are only available for devices that are set to the US.
Tech & Science Daily speak to Dr Pablo Arias-Sarah, lecturer from the University of Glasgow’s School of Psychology and Neuroscience, to find out about his study which has found that AI smile-changing filters could have the power to influence who we are attracted to.
The London Standard’s health reporter, Dan Keane, explains why the fertility rate in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest level since records began, back in 1938. And according to government data, the number of live births in London has dropped to its lowest level in 15 years.
And the rest
Scientists say they’ve found the location of 'Noah's Ark' on a 3,000-year-old clay tablet - which is believed to be the oldest map in the world.
Plus, scientists say they know the reason behind why we kiss... but it's not as romantic as you might’ve thought…
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Coming up, could AI's smile-changing tech help influence our romantic attractions?
But first, Apple Intelligence and iOS 18.1 are finally here.
In a post on X, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced powerful new features across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, including system-wide writing tools, a more conversational Siri, and intelligence in photos.
Apple Intelligence is now available through a free software update, with the release of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1.
However, the update will only bring Apple Intelligence to small numbers of users as it stands.
For the iPhone, it's only available on the new iPhone 16 line-up, as well as last year's iPhone 15 Pro.
And, for now, the tools are only available for devices that are set to the US.
Also, many of the bigger updates are yet to be included.
In the coming months, Apple is set to reveal new generative AI features, such as Genmoji app, for making new emojis.
Next, AI smile-changing filters could have the power to influence who we are attracted to.
One psychological theory predicts that social alignment, so the fact that we share with each other our expressive signals, such as our smiles or others, should influence how we interact with one another.
So, particularly, we see that individuals tend to synchronise with each other, for instance, imitating their smiles, their accents, their mannerisms, their emotional expressions.
That's Dr Pablo Arias-Sarah, lecturer from the University of Glasgow's School of Psychology and Neuroscience and lead author of the study.
The research team used AI to digitally alter smiles during conversations in video-based speed-dating sessions using volunteers.
During each date, the research team used AI to align or misalign the smiles of the participants, either increasing or decreasing their smiles in real time, without the volunteers knowing.
What we wanted to know is whether creating this alignment with AI face transformation filters could also influence social interactions.
So, what we did is that we created these smile transformation algorithms that are highly realistic, that enabled us to create conversations, dating conversations where participants were either aligned on their smiles or misaligned.
And what we found is that when we align participants' smiles, they were more attracted to each other.
They use smiles for the study as they're among the most universal human emotional expressions, and their perception in things such as photographs can increase the perceived attractiveness, sincerity, sociability, competence and trust of someone.
And they say there are several significant findings from the research.
The social signals that we produce, so for instance a smile, can have a direct influence on our social interactions.
So that's kind of expected.
But one thing that is crucial here is that even if these social signals are produced by a transformation algorithm, so by a facial filter, it can also influence participants during interactions.
And this is what we find, what we saw in our data is very interesting because we see that even if participants are not seeing their own face being transformed, that very transformation influenced them back. Through behavioural feedback loops.
The results of the study also raise a number of other scientific questions.
As we can transform the alignment of participants' smiles, as we did for this experiment, but we could also think of transforming the gaze of individuals, or even the gender, the age, the appearance and the beauty, or all of these characteristics in order to really understand how the perception of these cues influences social interactions.
However, with AI becoming more advanced and readily available, there are a number of ethical questions this now raises.
In the future, once these transformations become available widely for actual social interactions, they may also have a number of applications.
People would be able to change how they are perceived, how they perceived an other person, but also how third parties perceive each other.
The potential applications are very broad, and of course there are ethical and non-ethical applications that we need to basically study from an ethical perspective before developing them.
A study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Next, the fertility rate in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest level since records began back in 1938.
And according to government data, the number of live births in London has dropped to its lowest level in 15 years.
The biggest drops in overall total fertility rate were seen in Wales of 1.46 to 1.39, and the north-west of England 1.53 to 1.46.
The fertility rate is defined as the average number of live children a group of women would have if they experienced the age-specific fertility rates throughout their childbearing life.
But what's behind the drop? The London Standard's health reporter Dan Keane has been looking into the story and explains why.
The reason behind the decline in the number of births are varied.
But usually, what campaigners talk about is the high-priced housing and childcare, and parents needing to go up to fix and often leave the city where they're working in in order to cut costs.
Childcare is the main thing you will find most people mention.
The rates are pretty exorbitant.
So, in London, parents typically pay around £218 for 25 hours of nursery childcare, which is a huge fixed cost every month for parents.
And then you, of course, have the cost of housing.
Most young people simply cannot afford a deposit for a house, even outside of London and other expensive cities.
So if you can't afford a house, you don't feel like you have the kind of stable basis to have children.
Until the housing crisis is addressed, this probably won't change.
To maintain a stable population without significant immigration, a country should have a fertility rate of above 2.1.
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Coming up, scientists reveal the evolution of snogging.
We'll see you back here in just a minute.
Welcome back.
Scientists say they found the location of Noah's Ark on a 3000-year-old clay tablet, which is believed to be the oldest map in the world.
The Babylonian artifact shows a circular diagram with a writing system that used wedge-shaped symbols to describe the early creation of the world.
Researchers at the British Museum, where the tablet is kept, say that a deeper analysis of the artifact has uncovered the biblical reference within the ancient language.
The team followed the instructions, finding a path to Urartu, where an ancient poem claims a man and his family landed an ark to preserve life.
The scientists say that it shows that the story was the same.
And also, from the Babylonian point of view, this was a matter-of-fact thing.
If you went on this journey, you would see the remnants of this historic boat.
And finally, scientists say they know the reason behind why we kiss, but it's not as romantic as you might have thought.
A new study published in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology suggests kissing in humans actually evolved as a symbolic expression of love from grooming behaviours seen in ancestral great apes.
Researchers reviewed existing theories to explore the evolution of intimate behaviour in humans, as well as parallels in the animal kingdom.
The team noticed that the final act of grooming in our ape ancestors involves protruding lips and slight suction to remove debris or parasites.
While humans evolved to have less body hair, this act that the scientists called the groomer's final kiss may have remained without its hygienic relevance.
So, there you have it then. And they say romance is dead.
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