Episodes
US President Joe Biden signed a law this week giving TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance nine to 12 months to sell the popular video-sharing app or face a ban. The company has vowed to fight this in the courts. How might the showdown play out, and what does it mean for TikTok users globally? FRANCE 24's Tech Editor Peter O'Brien tells us more.
Published 04/26/24
Published 04/26/24
Legal proceedings began in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Thursday, targeting the cryptocurrency exchange Binance and two of its executives on charges of money laundering and tax evasion. Tigran Gambaryan, a US citizen and Binance's head of financial crimes compliance, appeared alone in court after Nadeem Anjarwalla, a British-Kenyan and the company’s regional manager for Africa, escaped custody and fled. Gambaryan's family is asking for the US to do more to secure his release. Find out why...
Published 04/05/24
The United Nations has unanimously approved its first resolution on artificial intelligence, with all member states agreeing to make sure the technology respects human rights. The UN also hopes that AI will help it achieve its development goals for 2030, which are well behind schedule.
Published 03/22/24
French daily and website Le Monde has become the latest publisher to strike a deal with OpenAI, allowing the San Francisco company to use its journalists' work to train artificial intelligence systems. To deal with claims that AI firms have plagiarised content scraped from the internet in order to build tools like ChatGPT, publishers have taken different approaches.
Published 03/15/24
As people continue to turn to artificial intelligence for romance, new research suggests that almost every romantic AI companion disregards your privacy, and could be selling your data. We take a closer look in this edition of Tech 24.
Published 02/16/24
After a week in the wild, the consensus is in: Apple's new "spacial computing" headset, the Vision Pro, is impressive, expensive, and ludicrous to wear in public.
Published 02/09/24
The world's first major regulation on artificial intelligence should almost be done and dusted – but France is causing trouble. FRANCE 24's Tech Editor Peter O'Brien tells us more.
Published 01/26/24
Fantasy role-playing video game "Baldur's Gate 3" has won Game of the Year at the Game Awards in Los Angeles – the Oscars of gaming – after three and a half hours of speeches, prizes, announcements and adverts. The awards themselves were mostly a hurried afterthought as almost five million viewers of the Game Awards' official stream were subjected to a bombardment of trailers.
Published 12/08/23
Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation, says a leaked French government memo risked undermining public trust in cybersecurity protocols, after it was revealed that Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne had ordered cabinet members and their staff to delete popular messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp. 
Published 12/01/23
The tech sector in Africa is expected to have another year of growth in 2023, despite a turndown in venture capital investment worldwide. There are big opportunities in connectivity – mobile internet, fibre, satellite, subsea cables – thanks in part to Africa’s growing population. FRANCE 24’s Technology Editor Peter O’Brien reports from the 2023 Africa Tech Festival in Cape town.  
Published 11/17/23
You may not have heard of it, but the social movement called "effective altruism" continues to influence public discourse around artificial intelligence, despite the fall from grace of the movement's highest-profile figure and one of its biggest donors: disgraced "crypto king" Sam Bankman-Fried. We take a closer look in this edition of Tech 24.
Published 11/03/23
Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel was a shocking breach of Israeli defence technology, which is among the world's most renowned. But things weren’t exactly easy before the war. Investment in Israeli startups plunged amid a global tech sector turndown and domestic political turmoil. Many young tech industry workers have now been drafted. In this week's Tech 24, we take a look at how the Israeli tech sector is responding ahead of an anticipated ground invasion of Gaza.
Published 10/20/23
The European Commission has opened an investigation into X, Elon Musk's social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The move comes after Brussels ordered X, as well as rivals Meta and TikTok, to act quickly to tackle the spread of disinformation, which has surged on each of these platforms since Hamas's deadly attack on Israel.
Published 10/13/23
It’s already proving a very busy September for artificial intelligence (AI) regulation, with tech billionaires meeting US lawmakers, the EU wrangling over a landmark law and the UK concerned that AI might end life as we know it.
Published 09/15/23
Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has made waves this summer, enjoying millions of signups and raising $115 million, while other crypto startups struggle. But it's come under intense regulatory scrutiny, not least in France and Germany, over privacy concerns. We take a closer look in this edition of Tech 24.
Published 09/08/23
It's the starting gun for the busiest time of the year in tech: IFA Berlin. Europe's largest tech trade show has kicked off, with more folding phones and robot lawnmowers than anyone could possibly need. With the "smart home" facing privacy and interoperability concerns and the smartphone industry dogged by falling sales, can we still get excited by new gizmos? FRANCE 24's Technology Editor Peter O'Brien went to Berlin to find out.
Published 09/01/23
The world's top neurotechnology companies can keep indefinite possession of the data generated by the brains of their trial subjects and customers, and even share it with third parties, according to upcoming research. FRANCE 24's Tech Editor Peter O'Brien tells us more.
Published 07/14/23
Google Search and Google News will block local media in Canada, in a drastic response to a new law. The Online News Act, passed last week and due to come into effect by the end of the year, intends to force big tech platforms to cut deals with Canadian news outlets, essentially making them pay to use snippets of content. But internet giants Google and Meta don't want to pay and will pull local media from their sites instead, in a decision that could have consequences for Canadian journalists....
Published 06/30/23
The world learnt a lot about the perils of deep-sea exploration this week, as we slowly discovered the fate of those on board the OceanGate Titan submersible. But we've also learnt things about the use – or misuse – of technology for such high-risk missions, as FRANCE 24's Technology Editor Peter O'Brien explains.
Published 06/23/23
Elon Musk, the eccentric and controversial CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of Twitter met with French President Emmanuel Macron this Friday. He then attended the VivaTech trade fair in Paris, giving a conference in front of 4,000 tech enthusiasts. Artificial intelligence was at the heart of this year's edition, along with the development of deep tech. FRANCE 24's Julia Sieger tells us more.
Published 06/16/23
The European Union's Internal Market commissioner Thierry Breton has called on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to take "immediate action" or face heavy fines after a report this week revealed Instagram to be the worst social network for child sexual abuse material.
Published 06/09/23
In a big gamble for the world’s most valuable company, Apple is widely expected to launch its first major new product in almost a decade at its annual developers' conference next week: a virtual reality headset.
Published 06/02/23
Nintendo has once again put playfulness at heart of gaming with the release of "Tears of the Kingdom", the latest instalment in its beloved Zelda franchise, to rapturous critical acclaim.
Published 05/12/23
Brazil's landmark fake news law hit a hurdle this week when a vote in parliament was postponed. If it's eventually passed, online life will change for more than 160 million Brazilians who use social media, and potentially for internet users around the world. But Big Tech is putting up a fight, as our Technology Editor Peter O'Brien explains. We also get insight from our Rio de Janeiro correspondent Constance Malleret.
Published 05/05/23