--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Wednesday, May 22nd. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Coming up on today's show, why the U.S. government is concerned about Ukraine stumbling in its fight against Russia, new legal battles that are pitting actors against AI, and the insects that came to rule the world. But first, let's take a quick look at some other stories that are in the news.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Ireland, Norway, and Spain are now recognizing Palestine as an independent state. It's a diplomatic show of support for a two-state solution, with Israel existing alongside an independent Palestinian state. Israel quickly recalled ambassadors in protest. It says the announcements are a reward to Hamas.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In Gaza, the U.N. suspended food deliveries in Rafah. It cites a lack of supplies and inability to access parts of the area safely because of Israeli military activity. Aid workers say that many civilians have already been struggling to get enough to eat.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In the U.S., authorities say there are several deaths and injuries in Iowa after a powerful tornado ripped through the town of Greenfield. The local ABC station talked to a lifelong resident there, Valerie Warrior.
--:-- Valerie Warrior: It wasn't even five minutes. It was done. And I came upstairs and looked around and looked outside, and it was just devastating. You see it on television, but it's different when it happens to you and your house and your town and your people. It's different.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Teams are in place trying to provide shelter and food for residents and to restore power for people whose homes are still standing.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In legal news, Donald Trump's New York criminal trial is nearing its end. His defense team rested yesterday after calling two witnesses. Trump himself did not testify. Closing arguments are set for Tuesday after the Memorial Day holiday.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Meanwhile, there were primaries across the country last night. Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis, the prosecutor in Trump's Georgia election interference case, won in the state's Democratic primary.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The judge in the case, Scott McAfee, also won his race in a nonpartisan election. There's more coverage of all the primaries in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And Los Angeles police are further investigating the death of Matthew Perry. The Friends actor died in his hot tub in October. He had an unusual amount of ketamine in his blood.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The LAPD is working alongside the Drug Enforcement Administration and the criminal probe is looking into where he got so much of the drug. Ketamine can be legally prescribed. The medical examiner said that Perry had previously received ketamine infusion therapy, but the ketamine that was found in his system when he died was not from an earlier infusion.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Ukraine is in the fight of its life against Russia, and Vladimir Putin's forces have made some recent significant gains. The front line, the land warfare itself, is looking very grim right now.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: NPR's Ukraine Bureau Chief Joanna Kakissis spoke to us from Kiev. She says that one big issue for Ukraine is the shortage of weapons.
--:-- Joanna Kakissis: It took the U.S. Congress seven months to approve tens of billions of dollars in new aid. And during that holdup, troops lost some critical ground. And so you saw that slowly happening month after month.
--:-- Joanna Kakissis: Soldiers rationing ammunition, soldiers saying there are just too many of them. There's not enough of us and we can't keep up with them. We don't have the weapons to fire back.
--:-- Joanna Kakissis: The Russians have opened up several fronts. And the most recent front is actually in the northeast, outside of Khadokhiv, which is the second largest city in Ukraine.
--:-- Joanna Kakissis: It had a pre-war population of 1.4 million people, but recently thousands have had to evacuate. Russian forces have moved within striking distance. They're already bombing the city daily, and Ukraine has been forced to divert troops to hold them off.
--:-- Joanna Kakissis: But if the Ukrainians can't keep the Russians back, the Russian troops could come close enough to the city to hit it with artillery. And that would make Khadokhiv a very hard place to live.
--:-- Joanna Kakissis: And she says there's a noticeable difference in how certain Ukrainian leaders are talking about the war amid these setbacks, compared to just a year ago when hopes were high for a counteroffensive that ultimately didn't have a major impact.
--:-- Joanna Kakissis: Everyone used to talk about victory. They would start their senses with, when we have victory or when we achieve the victory. And you don't hear people talking that way anymore.
--:-- Joanna Kakissis: People don't talk about the war in those terms anymore. They're kind of grimly committed to holding the line. But beyond that, the future seems very unclear.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: An increasing number of actors and artists say artificial intelligence companies are using their voices without permission. Just this week, Scarlett Johansson accused OpenAI of creating a voice that sounds a lot like hers.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Once upon a time, in a world not too different from ours, there was a robot named Byte. That's a clip from a demo of the chat GPT voice assistant called Sky, played on NPR.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It immediately drew comparisons to Johansson's role in the movie Her, where she voices a virtual assistant. Now, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had previously said that was his favorite movie, and in fact had reached out to Johansson about licensing her voice for the new product.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The company said that it went with a different actor when Johansson declined. OpenAI has since dropped the voice and said it was sorry that it didn't communicate better.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Other celebrities say that they've been in the same boat. Tom Hanks says an AI version of himself was used in a video ad for a dental plan without his permission.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And at a Senate hearing on the issue just last month, lawmakers played a clip of an AI-generated Tupac verse on a Drake song. Tupac's estate sent a cease and desist letter demanding the song be taken down, and Drake obliged.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But it's not just high-profile voices being recreated. Last year, voice actors Linnea Sage and Paul Sky Lehrman were listening to a podcast featuring a voice that sounded a lot like Lehrman, except he had never been on the show.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: They both say they previously recorded voice projects that they were told were for research or testing purposes. Now they allege that an AI firm called Loveo recorded their voices under false pretenses, and they want $5 million in damages.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The New York Times posted audio comparisons of the real and AI-generated voices.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Hi, my name is Linnea Sage, and I'm a voiceover artist. This is my normal speaking voice, but this is the corporate and commercial speaking voice that I use in most of my voiceover.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And this is an example of the AI-generated voice. Our certified teachers are ready to help your son or daughter conquer their fears of reading, writing, arithmetic, and more.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Loveau denies the claims in the suit. CNN explains how it's the latest in a wave of legal action by creators against various tech companies.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The artists say their work is being used to train AI systems that could ultimately compete with them. The lawsuits raise concerns over how building these AI models which require troves of data both voice and text could run afoul of copyright and intellectual property laws.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And these are just the first legal fights of many as a new technology gets bigger and bigger, and lawmakers and judges work to figure out how to deal with it.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Sorry in advance, but we're going to close today talking about bugs. And not just any bugs, but maybe the worst kind to encounter, the dreaded cockroach.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The type you're most likely to find scuttling around a building anywhere in the world is called the German cockroach.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: For centuries, scientists have been working to crack the code on how these tiny brown pests got so pervasive. The Washington Post looks at a new study that offers an answer.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And I'm sorry to say, humans are the ones to blame here. This cockroach evolved specifically to live and to thrive in homes and buildings.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So without us, they really wouldn't exist. Researchers concluded they evolved from a close relative called the Asian cockroach after moving in with people from either India or Myanmar more than two millennia ago.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: As humans moved around the world, the bug moved with them, staying nice and cozy on planes, trains, and cars.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And these roaches developed an uncanny ability to survive. If you've ever tried to smash, trap, or poison one, you know exactly what I mean.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The researcher's discovery is a big win for Germans, who've been saddled with the reputation for these roaches for hundreds of years.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That was a combination of bad timing and geopolitics. So when the cockroach was first recorded in Europe, the old German state was involved in a war with Sweden.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The thing to do back then was to name a nasty bug after your enemies. The legendary Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus chose the name German cockroach, and it stuck.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Understanding the origin of the roaches and trying to figure out how to stop the spread is important because they're a risk to public health.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: As scientists do the work, one has a recommendation. It's time to give these bugs a new, more accurate name and let Germany off the hook.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we have a Narrated article coming up next. Smithsonian Magazine tells the story of the doctor responsible for one of the most controversial health concepts of our time, calorie counting, and what we know today about the science of this practice.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
