CTV National News: How people can protect themselves from smishing attacks
It is getting harder for people to spot smishing attacks as scammers turn to AI to make their text messages seem more legit. John Vennavally-Rao explains.
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CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Winnipeg police expand AI agent pilot program for non-emergency line
More Winnipeg residents will have their non-emergency calls answered by artificial intelligence as the police service expands its AI-powered voice agent pilot program next week. Winnipeg Police Service said in a Friday news release that it has been testing the system for nearly a year, with the hopes that the AI agent will replace the existing automated voice system that guides callers through a pre-recorded list of options. Police said the non-emergency line has received about 900 calls per day, with about 172,000 calls logged so far this year. Insp. Gord Spado says the new AI system is intended to be more conversational and user-friendly compared to the "cumbersome" voice system Winnipeg police currently use. "Our goal of this project is really about improving customer service and giving a modern flair to the call-taking process with our organization," Spado said at a news conference on Friday. He said the police will begin ramping up daily testing next week, starting with two hours per day. If all goes well, the AI agent will soon be triaging calls for six to seven hours per day. Eventually, the service will operate 24 hours a day, Spado said. "We really want to get it to the point where a person can call, say what they need and not worry about where they are in that list of options, and the AI agent can forward them to the most appropriate resource," he said. The non-emergency line agent is one of six AI-centred pilot projects the city announced last June. Other pilots include an automated chat agent for 311 inquiries and automated invoice processing. Mayor Scott Gillingham said the police service's AI agent is "exactly the kind of innovation that [he] hoped for" when he pushed city staff to consider how AI could be used across municipal services. "This is about delivering good customer service to the people of Winnipeg and making a heavy workload a little more manageable for our frontline staff," Gillingham said during the press conference announcing the pilot's expanded scope. He said the city is taking a "careful" and "measured" approach to AI integration by slowly expanding the pilot. Brandon University sociology professor Chris Schneider, who specializes in the social impact of new media, said he's "cautiously optimistic" about Winnipeg police using AI, emphasizing the caution. Vancouver police use a similar AI-powered tool for calls, which was developed by an American company called Genesys. Schneider said relying on large international companies raises concerns around data privacy and public safety. "Can they assure the public that there will be no manipulation, or that it's perfectly safe and cannot be manipulated by outside actors?" he said in an interview with Up to Speed 's Chloe Friesen on Friday afternoon. "There's a lot of questions here and very few answers, unfortunately." He said the AI agent will likely help callers get service faster, making them less likely to hang up before they get the help they need. However, the automated experience could become frustrating without a human on the other end of the line, Schneider said. According to Winnipeg police's website, residents should use the non-emergency line to report crimes where the suspect has left the scene, property crimes that are no longer in progress, and suspicious circumstances. In Friday's news release, police encouraged callers to speak in clear, full, sentences, while limiting background noise and being patient while the AI agent finishes its prompts. Schneider said calm, clear communication may be difficult if a caller has recently witnessed or been the victim of a crime, even if it's not an emergency. "This is one of the basic problems with the incorporation of AI, is AI does not have any kind of empathy. I think empathy goes a long way in talking people through situations where they might be upset because something terrible has happened to them, their family or their property," he said. Spado said the police service hopes to decide whether the AI agent will become permanent by the end of the year. He said it is only available in English, but they are working to expand the tool to French-speaking residents soon.
CTV News
2 hours ago
- CTV News
Tips from a tech expert on spotting AI-generated fakes
With the upsurge in deepfakes and how easy it is to create them we talk spotting fakes and how you can stay vigilant. The widespread availability and ease of use of image and video generators powered by artificial intelligence (AI) means what you see on the internet may not be what it seems. These programs and apps can create increasingly realistic-looking pictures, videos, and sound with only a few simple text prompts. In one recent example, a popular indie rock band that had more than a million monthly listeners on Spotify turned out to be AI-generated. In another case, officials in the U.S. warned of attempts to use AI tools to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre also recently warned about a rise in AI-generated voice messages being used to impersonate high-profile figures to extort victims for money and personal data. Even CTV News Ottawa was subject to impersonation using these kinds of tools. Following a report about an online scam that affected a local family, a fake version of our report circulated online, changing the words our anchors said to make it sound like they were advertising the scam in a positive light. Technology analyst and journalist Carmi Levy told CTV Morning Live that, for now, most AI-generated images and videos have imperfections that can give the game away. 'The two words that we usually use that seem to work for now are 'lean in.' So, when you're watching a video, slow it down, lean in and watch for what we like to call 'tells' that give away the fact that it's not real, it is synthetically generated, AI-created,' he said. Some things to watch out for include how the subject of the video moves. 'The movement might not be as smooth, it might be kind of stop-and-start,' said Levy. 'There might be little hitches here and there; sometimes the lips, the audio doesn't quite match what you're seeing on the individual's face.' The lighting or shading of the video might not look natural, or there might be other artefacts that seem out of place, Levy says. 'For example, if someone puts their arm around the back of somebody, there might be a placement issue or extra pieces; sometimes there are additional fingers or not enough fingers.' Levy warns, however, that these tools are becoming more sophisticated and are better able to replicate a realistic scene. 'With each new generation of these video generator apps, they get better and so it gets even harder to tell that something was AI-created. In fact, the new version of Veo, Veo 3, is so good that for a lot of people, even if they lean in, it's increasing difficult to tell,' he said. The federal government says rapid advances in AI have underscored the risks associated with the technology. 'The Government is taking actions to ensure that AI is developed in a safe and responsible manner,' a spokesperson for Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada said in a statement to CTV News Ottawa. 'Just last November, the Government of Canada launched the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute with the mandate to advance scientific understanding of the risks associated with the most advanced AI systems, develop measures to reduce those risks, and build trust to foster AI innovation. 'In addition, the government also launched a Voluntary Code of Conduct on the Responsible Development and Management of Advanced Generative AI Systems in September of 2023. The Code calls on AI developers and managers to take risk-mitigation measures such as developing and implementing reliable and freely available methods to detect content generated by their AI system. Greater transparency on AI generated content can help protect Canadians against AI-enabled scams and fakes. The Government is protecting Canadians from fraud and impersonation, including cases involving AI, and will continue to explore all options to strengthen these protections.' Levy says when you see something online, before sharing it, ask questions and make sure it's coming from a trustworthy source. 'How do you tell if it's real or not real? You check the source. You make sure it's coming from a legitimate source that you can trust. In many cases, if you can't trace it back to its origin, you should start with the assumption that it's not real,' he said. 'That's what I do; I start cynically and require the content to prove to me that it is, in fact, real.'
Globe and Mail
5 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
This Stock Outperformed Nvidia and Palantir in the First Half. Is It Still a Buy?
Key Points CoreWeave stock surged by 300% in just a few months. The company is benefiting from high demand for computing power to support AI training and inferencing. 10 stocks we like better than CoreWeave › Over the past couple of years, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) have both shown their strengths in artificial intelligence (AI) -- and as a result, their earnings and stock performance have soared. Last year, Nvidia was the best-performing component in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (though it only was added to the venerable blue chip index in November), and Palantir posted the biggest gain in the S&P 500. Both of these players have continued to advance, and considering that we're in the early stages of the AI boom, more earnings growth and stock price gains could be on the way. But, in the first half of 2025, another company emerged as a potential AI powerhouse. In fact, this particular stock actually outperformed Nvidia and Palantir in the period, climbing by a mind-boggling 300%. Now you may be wondering whether this high flyer is still a buy. Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue » A company with close ties to Nvidia This top-performing AI stock actually is new to the market, completing its initial public offering in late March, so its triple-digit gains took place over a period of only three months. I'm referring to CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV), a company that is closely linked to Nvidia. This is because CoreWeave generates most of its revenue by renting out access to its vast collection of Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs). The company has more than 250,000 of them deployed across its cloud infrastructure platform, and it specializes in handling AI workloads, offering customers the configurations they need to accomplish their goals faster. CRWV data by YCharts. Nvidia owns a 7% stake in CoreWeave, and made it possible for the young company to be the first to launch its latest GPUs. In February, CoreWeave became the first hyperscaler to make Nvidia's new Blackwell architecture broadly available -- and it just did the same recently with the latest iteration, Blackwell Ultra. So, a bet on CoreWeave is a bet on demand for Nvidia's latest chips. Its first-quarter earnings report showed this demand is going strong, as its revenue climbed by more than 400% year over year, and Nvidia's own Q1 earnings report offered additional clues: For example, Nvidia said it saw a leap in demand for inferencing computing power in the quarter. This sort of trend is likely to benefit CoreWeave. GPUs to fuel inferencing Inferencing is the process an AI model goes through when attempting to answer complex questions -- and it takes significant parallel processing power of the type provided by GPUs and other AI accelerators. As more people and organizations apply AI to real-world problems, inferencing could drive a whole new era of growth for companies like Nvidia and CoreWeave. It's important to remember that the need for GPUs doesn't end once a model is trained. CoreWeave's fleet of cloud servers may have plenty of busy days ahead over the long term. All of this is great, but CoreWeave still carries some risk for shareholders -- and that's due to the enormous and ongoing investments in infrastructure required to serve demand for GPUs. The company will have to keep up its capital spending to increase the size and power of its fleet of GPU clusters, and considering that Nvidia aims to roll out new chip architectures annually, CoreWeave will have to make those investments frequently to keep its offerings top of the line. All of this makes it difficult to estimate when CoreWeave will reach profitability. In the first quarter, its technology and infrastructure expenses surged by more than 500% to about $500 million, and it's fair to say the company is early in its growth story. It's also important to note that CoreWeave is in an expansion phase that involves other investments too. Some of those up-front costs may result in savings down the road. Acquiring Core Scientific One example is the company's recently announced plan to buy Core Scientific -- once that deal closes, CoreWeave no longer will have to pay rent to the data center operator, resulting in the savings of $10 billion in future lease payments. Though this will be a positive, CoreWeave's stock fell after the announcement earlier this week due to investors' concerns about share dilution -- it's an all-stock deal with a value of $9 billion. Investors also know that any acquisition comes with some risks and costs, as the buyer will have to integrate its new operations into its existing business. So the question remains: After strongly outperforming two of the market's biggest AI companies year to date, is CoreWeave still a buy? The answer depends on your investment strategy. If you're a cautious or value investor, you'd be better off exploring other opportunities. But if you're an aggressive investor who buys and holds stocks for the long term, now would still be a good time to add a few CoreWeave shares to your portfolio -- demand for AI and CoreWeave's immediate access to Nvidia's latest GPUs could result in major gains over the long run. Should you invest $1,000 in CoreWeave right now? Before you buy stock in CoreWeave, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and CoreWeave wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $674,432!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,005,854!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is1,049% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to180%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025
