AI systems use Canadian journalism but seldom cite media sources: report

OTTAWA - A new study released on Monday says AI systems depend on Canadian journalism for the information they provide users but don't offer compensation or proper attribution in return

Researchers at McGill University’s Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy tested 2,267 Canadian news stories on major AI models.

"All four models showed extensive knowledge of Canadian current events consistent with having ingested Canadian news reporting," the report says.

The researchers found when ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok were asked about Canadian news events from their training data, they did not provide source attribution about 82 per cent of the time.

Weatheradio going off the air as Environment Canada moves emphasis to online and apps

EDMONTON - A cross-Canada radio service that for decades has delivered the latest local forecasts as well as critical alerts about severe weather 24 hours a day is signing off, with listeners being advised to switch to online or cellphone-based services.

Environment and Climate Change Canada says on its website that effective Monday, Weatheradio will be permanently disconnected. The announcement says anyone who wants local weather forecasts and alerts should consult the agency's interactive weather map or download its WeatherCAN app.

In an email, the agency said the radio service, which began operating in the 1970s and broadcasts within the VHF public service band available on certain radios, has become increasingly challenging to maintain because of climbing costs.

The dial-in Good Morning service, where users can phone for a recorded local forecast, will end the same day. Marine forecasts will remain available via the Canadian Coast Guard radio system.

Moscow businesses struggle as Russia restricts cellphone internet services

MOSCOW (AP) — Many foreign websites were blocked Friday on mobile phones in central Moscow under restrictions that have gripped the Russian capital for more than a week, derailing the routine of millions of residents and slamming businesses that rely on cellphone internet.

Russian authorities have said the restrictions are part of security measures to fend off Ukrainian drone attacks, but many industry experts suspect they are part of preparations by the authorities to block Russians' access to the global web if the Kremlin decides to do so.

The intermittent shutdowns, which had previously been recorded in dozens of Russia’s regions for months, have prompted some Moscow residents to turn to long-forgotten gadgets like walkie talkies, pagers and media players.

The shutdowns are part of multipronged efforts by the authorities to rein in the internet. They have adopted restrictive laws and banned websites and platforms that don’t comply. Technology also has been perfected to monitor and manipulate online traffic.

New government bill would help police, spy service probe online activities

OTTAWA - Proposed legislation would give police and Canada's spy service new powers to investigate online activities — powers they say they need to keep pace with criminals in the digital age.

The bill tabled in the House of Commons on Thursday would require internet and phone companies to tell authorities whether they provide service to a particular person or account number.

The legislation would allow police to then seek a production order from a court to obtain subscriber information from a company, such as the name, address, phone number and services provided.

The bill also updates warrant powers for computer searches and proposes a new authority to allow Canadian police to make requests of foreign electronic service providers, including social media and AI chatbot companies.

AI — when you find your servant is your master

When I was 17 and fresh out of high school, I spent a couple of months with friends in Charlottetown, P.E.I., and landed a summer job at an A&W drive-in.

Two-thirds of Manitobans using AI, but a lot aren’t happy about it, survey reveals

Manitobans admit they rely on artificial intelligence for daily activities, but are troubled by the emerging technology’s impact on the environment, job security and beyond.

‘Uncover what’s really going on’: UFO researcher in Manitoba supports AI tracking

WINNIPEG - Artificial intelligence is going to make it easier to spot whether a bird, a plane or an otherworldly creature is in the sky, as Canadians continue to report sightings of unidentified flying objects, says Canada's top UFO expert.

Chris Rutkowski has spent decades researching the phenomenon and is part of Ufology Research, a Manitoba-based organization that tracks UFO sightings in Canada and publishes an annual report.

The group's 2025 analysis, released Monday, includes data taken from observation stations set up by passionate UFO enthusiasts across the country.

"They're gathering scientific data above and beyond just the average person seeing something in the night sky. This is an attempt to quantify UFO sightings," said Rutkowski.

Mother of wounded Maya Gebala sues OpenAI over mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.

VANCOUVER - OpenAI's artificial intelligence chatbot acted as the "collaborator, trusted confidant, friend and ally" of the shooter in the Tumbler Ridge, B.C., mass killings, according to a lawsuit by the mother of a girl critically wounded in the attack.

Cia Edmonds, whose 12-year-old daughter Maya Gebala was shot three times, launched the civil court lawsuit on Monday against the American firm, saying its ChatGPT bot provided "information, guidance and assistance" to carry out such an attack.

Edmonds alleges that OpenAI had “specific knowledge of the shooter utilizing ChatGPT to plan a mass casualty event like the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting.”

OpenAI came forward to police after 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar killed eight people and then herself on Feb. 10. The firm said the killer’s ChatGPT account had been shut down last June, but added that she got around the ban by having a second account.

TikTok to continue operating in Canada, subject to safety conditions

OTTAWA - TikTok is being allowed to continue its operations in Canada after the government wrapped up a national security review.

Industry Minister Mélanie Joly says the decision hinges on key conditions, including for TikTok to bring in stronger protections for minors and the personal information of all Canadians.

The minister says the decision will also save jobs by ensuring TikTok Canada has a physical presence in the country.

The move reverses a 2024 order for TikTok to close its offices in Canada due to national security concerns.

AI company Anthropic sues Trump administration seeking to undo ‘supply chain risk’ designation

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is suing to stop the Trump administration from enforcing what it calls an “unlawful campaign of retaliation” over its refusal to allow unrestricted military use of its technology.

Anthropic asked federal courts on Monday to reverse the Pentagon’s decision last week to designate the artificial intelligence company a “ supply chain risk.” The company also seeks to undo President Donald Trump's order directing federal employees to stop using its AI chatbot Claude.

The legal challenge intensifies an unusually public dispute over how AI can be used in warfare and mass surveillance — one that has also dragged in Anthropic's tech industry rivals, particularly ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which made its own deal to work with the Pentagon just hours after the government punished Anthropic for its stance.

Anthropic filed two separate lawsuits Monday, one in California federal court and another in the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., each challenging different aspects of the government's actions against the San Francisco-based company.

Children’s book on Ramadan put back on school shelves

A Ramadan-themed children’s book is returning to elementary school shelves in Winnipeg following public outcry.

The Louis Riel School Division announced on Friday afternoon that it was bringing Upside-Down Iftar back into circulation.

The newly released picture book by Palestinian author Maysa Odeh is about a girl and her grandmother preparing a traditional dish for their family to break their fast together after sunset.

It was temporarily pulled from schools last week following a complaint about an illustration of a map.

Pentagon’s chief tech officer says he clashed with AI company Anthropic over autonomous warfare

A top Pentagon official said Anthropic's dispute with the government over the use of its artificial intelligence technology in fully autonomous weapons came after a debate over how AI could be used in President Donald Trump's future Golden Dome missile defense program, which aims to put U.S. weapons in space.

U.S. Defense Undersecretary Emil Michael, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, said he came to view the AI company's ethical restrictions on the use of its chatbot Claude as an irrational obstacle as the U.S. military pursues giving greater autonomy to swarms of armed drones, underwater vehicles and other machines to compete with rivals like China that could do the same.

“I need a reliable, steady partner that gives me something, that’ll work with me on autonomous, because someday it’ll be real and we’re starting to see earlier versions of that," Michael said in a podcast aired Friday. "I need someone who’s not going to wig out in the middle.”

The comments came after the Pentagon formally designated San Francisco-based Anthropic a supply chain risk, cutting off its defense work using a rule designed to prevent foreign adversaries from harming national security systems.

Eby says OpenAI’s Altman will apologize to Tumbler Ridge, B.C., in wake of shootings

VICTORIA - British Columbia Premier David Eby said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has agreed to apologize to the people of Tumbler Ridge after the mass shooting by a user of the firm's technology, whose worrisome online behaviour wasn't flagged to police by the company.

"Everybody on the call recognized that an apology is nowhere near sufficient, but also that is completely necessary," Eby said of his conversation with Altman on Thursday.

OpenAI will also work with the province to come up with recommendations for federal regulatory standards on artificial intelligence and reporting of problematic interactions with its users, Eby said.

The premier said after the virtual meeting with Altman that OpenAI will work on the apology with the mayor of Tumbler Ridge where eight victims were shot dead on Feb. 10 by Jesse Van Rootselaar.

VistaVision, a vintage format left for dead, is revived in ‘One Battle After Another’ and more

NEW YORK (AP) — When Paul Thomas Anderson told his cinematographer Michael Bauman that he wanted to shoot “One Battle After Another” on VistaVision — a large-scale film format born in the 1950s — he had some questions.

“Question one was: Is this even going to be reliable?” Bauman recalls.

For much of the past 60 years, the few remaining VistaVision cameras have been mostly collecting dust on shelves. Though the format was widely used in the 1950s, when Alfred Hitchcock shot “Vertigo” on it and Cecil B. DeMille used it for “The Ten Commandments,” VistaVision went dormant by the early 1960s.

Yet at the March 15 Academy Awards, a movie made largely with decades-old antique cameras is poised to win best picture. Even in 2026, when most films are shot digitally and AI has begun filtering into moviemaking, “One Battle After Another” has — with film equipment borrowed from collectors and museums — showed that a vintage, analog film system can still astonish moviegoers.

OpenAI agrees to strengthen safeguards following B.C. mass shooting: minister

Federal Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon says the CEO of OpenAI has agreed to take several actions to bolster safety, including providing a report outlining the new systems the firm is developing to identify high-risk offenders and policy violators.

A statement from Solomon following his meeting Wednesday with Sam Altman says the minister will also ask the Canadian AI Safety Institute to examine the company's model and provide expert technical advice to his office.

The meeting follows the revelation that OpenAI banned the mass shooter in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., from using its ChatGPT chatbot last June due to worrisome interactions but did not alert law enforcement before the killings last month.

OpenAI has said new protocols would have resulted in Jesse Van Rootselaar's interactions being flagged to police, but Solomon says the tragedy "demands answers and stronger safeguards when powerful AI technologies are involved."

Google settles with Epic Games with offer to lower its app store commissions

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google will lower the lucrative fees imposed on its Android app store and offer a way for rival options to gain its stamp of approval, ending a bruising legal battle that led to one of several rulings condemning its tactics as an illegal monopoly.

The proposed changes filed Wednesday with a federal court in San Francisco mark the latest twist in a case that began in August 2020 when video game maker Epic Games filed an antitrust case seeking to make it easier for alternative payment options to compete against Google's Play Store system, which charges 15% to 30% commissions on a wide variety of in-app transactions.

Google's concessions come five months after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the company's attempt to overturn a federal judge's order requiring a far more extensive overhaul of the Play Store following a 2023 trial that culminated in a jury declaring the setup an illegal monopoly.

Backed into a legal corner, Google is now prepared to decrease its baseline commissions for subscriptions and e-commerce transactions into the 10% to 20% range. It's also offering an optional 5% payment processing charge that would be applied in addition to the other service fees for apps that prefer to keep everything within the Play Store.

Province asks public to weigh in on rules for AI

The Manitoba government may consider setting age limits on using artificial intelligence or require private sector users to ask for consent before accessing residents’ data.

The province is launching a series of public consultations to explore changing the province’s data privacy laws so residents have enforceable rights, Innovation and New Technology Minister Mike Moroz said Wednesday in a news release.

The consultations will also look to establish clear rules for responsible AI use, particularly when the systems are designed to “make, recommend or influence decisions that affect a person’s rights, opportunities, benefits or access to essential services,” the release said.

The measures aim to address risks such as identity theft, deepfakes, child-targeted manipulation, biased algorithms and misuse of personal data in public and private systems.

Dueling documentaries illuminate the promise and perils of artificial intelligence

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Artificial intelligence's dystopian specter has spawned a pair of documentaries dissecting a technology that's depicted in the films as a ravenous parasite devouring humanity's knowledge, creativity and empathy.

The films, “Deepfaking Sam Altman” and “The AI Doc," examine the issue through different lenses while similarly illuminating why the technology evokes both existential fears and utopian visions about how it might change the world.

Both documentaries coincide with an intensifying debate about whether AI will become a catalyst that helps enlighten and enrich people or a technological toxin that insidiously dulls human intelligence while wiping out millions of high-paying jobs that have traditionally required college educations.

Dealing with AI dread

Trial against Meta in New Mexico highlights video depositions by top executives

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Prosecutors began presenting never-before-seen video depositions of Meta executives at a trial in New Mexico on Tuesday to bolster accusations that the social media conglomerate failed to disclose what it knows about harmful effects to children on its platforms, including Instagram.

New Mexico prosecutors are billing depositions from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram leader Adam Mosseri as centerpieces of the state's case against Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Prosecutors have accused Meta of violating state consumer protection laws.

Prosecutors say the dangers of addiction to social media as well as child sexual exploitation on Meta's platforms weren’t properly addressed or disclosed by the company.

Meta attorney Kevin Huff pushed back on those assertions during opening statements on Feb. 9, highlighting efforts to weed out harmful content from its platforms while warning users that some content still gets through its safety net. He said Meta discloses the risks.

High-tech snowplows and AI help cities clean up from big storms

Residents of Syracuse, New York — America’s snowiest city — once barraged a service hotline with street neglect complaints during blizzards, even if plows had passed two hours earlier but the work was hidden by fresh snow.

Now public trust seems to be rising as Syracuse and other cities across the U.S. integrate upgrades such as video monitoring, GPS mapping and artificial intelligence into snow operations that once relied almost entirely on manual planning.

Syracuse was one of the first to revamp the way it deploys its snowplows, and complaint calls have dropped by 30% under the new system, said Conor Muldoon, the city’s chief innovation officer.

“People will look out their window and say, ‘Hey, you guys are doing a terrible job,’” Muldoon said. “And we can point to a public map and say, ‘Here’s all the breadcrumbs for when that plow was there.’”

Solomon to meet OpenAI CEO Altman in wake of mass killings in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.

VANCOUVER - Federal Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon will meet with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman next week looking for a plan on how the company might prevent another tragedy like the mass killings in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.

Solomon said in a statement on Friday that he plans to talk to Altman "to seek further clarity and to ensure that the commitments made are translated into concrete action."

OpenAI had sent a letter to Solomon on Thursday, outlining its commitment to strengthen detection systems, to identify potential warning signals of serious violence, and better prevent attempts to evade safeguards.

Tumbler Ridge shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar had her ChatGPT account flagged internally and shut down by OpenAI last June, but the company did not notify police at the time. She went on to murder eight people on Feb. 10 in Tumbler Ridge, before killing herself.

When the internet extortionist comes calling

Everyone has, no doubt, heard of the prevalence of internet scams — the police warn you about them, your bank warns you regularly, and the list goes on.