Exclusive: NSPCC finds Apple implicated in more cases of predators sharing child abuse imagery in England and Wales alone than the company reported globally in a year

Apple is failing to effectively monitor its platforms or scan for images and videos of the sexual abuse of children, child safety experts allege, which is raising concerns about how the company can handle growth in the volume of such material associated with artificial intelligence.

The UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) accuses Apple of vastly undercounting how often child sexual abuse material (CSAM) appears in its products. In a year, child predators used Apple’s iCloud, iMessage and Facetime to store and exchange CSAM in a higher number of cases in England and Wales alone than the company reported across all other countries combined, according to police data obtained by the NSPCC.

Only a handful of people grasp the magnitude of the changes that are about to hit us. They’re exciting – and terrifying

A short while ago, a screenwriter friend from Los Angeles called me. “I have three years left,” he said. “Maybe five if I’m lucky.” He had been allowed to test a screenplay AI still in development. He described a miniseries: main characters, plot and atmosphere – and a few minutes later, there they were, all the episodes, written and ready for filming. Then he asked the AI for improvement suggestions on its own series, and to his astonishment, they were great – smart, targeted, witty and creative. The AI completely overhauled the ending of one episode, and with those changes the whole thing was really good. He paused for a moment, then repeated that he had three years left before he would have to find a new job.

In 2020, I participated in an experiment that I gave a lecture on the following year, later published as a booklet titled My Algorithm and I. In it, I describe my failed collaboration with a large language model at a time when these AIs were not yet publicly available. If you want to understand AI better and analyse our current situation, please do not read my book. It has been so overtaken by technical development in the past three years that today it is so outdated it’s as though it came from a different period in world history, like a text about the first railways or a biplane airshow.

Daniel Kehlmann is a German-language novelist and playwright. His TV series, Kafka , is on Channel 4

This article is adapted from a speech given in Berlin this month at a celebration of German cultural politics in the presence of the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz

CrowdStrike has ‘fixed’ defect but knock-on effects of disruption continue to affect NHS and air travel

NHS patients have been warned GP services “cannot be resumed immediately”, and stranded holidaymakers told it could take “days” to get them to their destinations, as the effects of Friday’s global IT outage continue.

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company at the heart of the crisis, said on Sunday that it had deployed a fix for the “defect” with its software, which has caused chaos around the world for businesses that use Microsoft operating systems.

As the school holidays begin, Donat Rétif says the hi-tech travel agency is well placed to profit from Britons’ steadily rising appetite for travel

Before the age of 20, Donat Rétif had never set foot in a plane: his world was confined to the quiet southern Belgian mining region he called home, and neighbouring France.

A year studying in Quebec as part of his business degree would prove the precursor to a globe­trotting career, culminating in landing the top job at loveholidays, the online travel agent responsible for millions of travellers taking to the skies each year. “I had a very simple upbringing. Canada was a big opening for me; I wanted to discover the world,” he says.

CEO Sarah Franklin got such intense pushback on her company’s plans that she suspended them after three days

One thing seems for sure: people are not ready for “digital workers” just yet.

That’s the lesson learned by Sarah Franklin, the CEO of Lattice , a human resources and performance management platform that offers performance coaching, talent reviews, onboarding automation, compensation management and a host of other HR tools to more than 5,000 organizations around the world.

Microsoft’s IT outage reveals the fragility of our software systems and the risks of a more serious technology collapse

• Global Microsoft IT outage: latest updates

Planes grounded, trains delayed, television stations off air, hospital appointments cancelled, electronic payments halted. No, it wasn’t the start of a massive cyber-attack from Russia, or the backdrop to a Hollywood blockbuster, but an IT upgrade that unexpectedly went disastrously wrong.

That it had such widespread effects is to some extent testament to the ubiquity of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, a well-known global dependency, and more particularly to a faulty software update pushed out by the security and anti-virus company CrowdStrike to its widely used Falcon software system.

Delays and disruption at GP practices with doctors unable to access patients’ records or refer them on to hospitals

• Global Microsoft IT outage: latest updates

The global IT outages are causing serious problems for the NHS, including GP surgeries, with some forced to turn away patients with routine appointments and see only those classed as an emergency.

Family doctor practices are experiencing major disruption because they cannot access patients’ records or refer them on for tests or appointments at their local hospital.

Passengers facing long queues to check in for flights and short-notice rail cancellations after Microsoft problem

• Business live – latest updates

Passengers have described “bedlam” at UK airport check-ins after a global IT outage on what was due to be the busiest day for flying since the start of the pandemic, while train networks have also been disrupted.

More than 1,000 flights have been cancelled worldwide as Microsoft Windows systems used by airlines, airports and some air traffic systems were affected by the outage.

We’d like to hear from people who have been affected by the global outage

Widespread outage linked to Windows workstations has affected major companies , including Sky News UK, Melbourne Airport and Thameslink.

Businesses including banks, airlines, telecommunications companies, TV and radio broadcasters, and supermarkets have been taken offline after blue screen of death error screens were seen on Windows workstations across the globe.