Author: DA Gadgets

Rolls-Royce’s plan to power artificial intelligence (AI) with its nuclear reactors could make it the UK’s most valuable company, its boss has said.

The engineering firm has signed deals to provide small modular reactors (SMRs) to the UK and Czech governments to power AI-driven data centres.

AI has boomed in popularity since 2022, but the technology use lots of energy, something which has raised practical and environmental concerns.

Rolls-Royce chief executive Tufan Erginbilgic told the BBC it has the “potential” to become the UK’s highest-valued company by overtaking the largest firms on the London Stock Exchange thanks to its SMR deals.

“There is no private company in the world with the nuclear capability we have. If we are not market leader globally, we did something wrong,” he said.

Tufan Erginbilgic has overseen a ten-fold increase in Rolls-Royce’s share price since taking over in January 2023.

However, he has ruled out the idea of Rolls-Royce seeking to list its shares in New York as British chip designer Arm has done and the likes of Shell and AstraZeneca have considered in the search for higher valuations.

This is despite the fact that 50% of its shareholders and customers are US-based.

“It’s not in our plan,” said Mr Erginbilgic, a Turkish energy industry veteran. “I don’t agree with the idea you can only perform in the US. That’s not true and hopefully we have demonstrated that.”

Rolls-Royce already supplies the reactors that power dozens of nuclear submarines. Mr Erginbilgic said the company has a massive advantage in the future market of bringing that technology on land in the form of SMRs.

SMRs are not only smaller but quicker to build than traditional nuclear plants, with costs likely to come down as units are rolled out.

He estimates that the world will need 400 SMRs by 2050. At a cost of up to $3bn (£2.2bn) each, that’s another trillion dollar-plus market he wants and expects Rolls-Royce to dominate.

The company has signed a deal to develop six SMRs for the Czech Republic and is developing three for the UK.

But it remains an unproven technology. Mr Erginbilgic conceded he could not currently point to a working SMR example but said he was confident in its future potential.

There are also concerns about the demands on water supplies from the data centre and SMR cooling systems.

In response, companies including Google, Microsoft and Meta have signed deals to take energy from SMRs in the US when they are available.

Rolls-Royce sees SMRs as key to its future, but its biggest business is aircraft engines.

Already dominant in supplying engines to wide-bodied aircraft like Boeing 787 and Airbus A350, it plans to break into the next generation of narrow-bodied aircraft like the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320. This market is worth $1.6tn – nine times that of the wide-bodied .

Rolls-Royce is a bit player in a market that has powerful and successful leaders, and that rival Pratt and Witney lost $8bn trying and failing to break into.

The market is dominated by CFM International – a joint venture between US-based GE Aerospace and French company Safran Aerospace Engines.

Industry veterans told the BBC that market leaders can and will drop prices to airline customers long enough to see off a new assault on their market dominance.

But Mr Erginbilgic said this is not just the biggest business opportunity for Rolls-Royce. Rather, it is “for industrial strategy… the single biggest opportunity for the UK for economic growth”.

“No other UK opportunity, I challenge, will match that,” he said.

Although Rolls-Royce sold its car making business to BMW nearly 30 years ago, the name of the company is still synonymous with British engineering excellence.

But in the early part of this decade that shine had worn off. The company was heavily indebted, its profit margins were non-existent, and thousands of staff were being laid off.

When Mr Erginbilgic took over in January 2023, he likened the company to “a burning platform”.

“Our cost of capital was 12%, our return was 4% so every time we invested we destroyed value,” he said.

Two and a half years later, the company expects to make a profit of over £3bn, its debt levels have fallen and shares have risen over 1,000% – a ten-fold rise.

So how did that happen? And is Mr Erginbilgic right to think that Rolls-Royce’s roll is only just starting?

The timing of his appointment was fortunate according to some industry veterans.

Rolls-Royce’s biggest business – supplying engines to commercial airlines – has rebounded strongly from the Covid pandemic.

The company’s most successful product – the Trent series of aircraft engines – are at the sweet spot of profitability as the returns on investment in their development over a decade ago begin to pour into company coffers.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 arguably made it almost inevitable that its defence business would see higher spending from European governments – which has been confirmed by recent announcements.

Unions have not always been fans of Mr Erginbilgic’s hard-charging approach.

In October 2023, one of his first major move was cutting jobs, which drew criticism from Sharon Graham, the boss of the Unite union.

“This announcement appears to be about appeasing the markets and its shareholders while ignoring its workers,” she said at the time.

However, overall global headcount has grown from 43,000 to 45,000 since 2023 and union sources say there is “grudging respect” for Mr Erginbilgic.

Those sources give him one third of the credit for the turnaround around in the company’s fortunes, with a third credited to market conditions and a third to his predecessor Warren East for “steadying the ship”.

So does Mr Erginbilgic really believe that Rolls-Royce can be the UK’s most valuable company – overtaking the likes of AstraZeneca, HSBC, and Shell?

“We are now number five in the FTSE. I believe the growth potential we created in the company right now, in our existing business and our new businesses, actually yes – we have that potential.”

Rolls-Royce is undoubtedly a company with the wind at its back – and Tufan Ergenbilgic certainly believes he has set the sails just right.

Elon Musk’s AI video generator has been accused of making “a deliberate choice” to create sexually explicit clips of Taylor Swift without prompting, says an expert in online abuse.

“This is not misogyny by accident, it is by design,” said Clare McGlynn, a law professor who has helped draft a law which would make pornographic deepfakes illegal.

According to a report by The Verge, Grok Imagine’s new “spicy” mode “didn’t hesitate to spit out fully uncensored topless videos” of the pop star without being asked to make explicit content.

The report also said proper age verification methods – which became law in July – were not in place.

XAI, the company behind Grok, has been approached for comment.

XAI’s own acceptable use policy prohibits “depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner”.

“That this content is produced without prompting demonstrates the misogynistic bias of much AI technology,” said Prof McGlynn of Durham University.

“Platforms like X could have prevented this if they had chosen to, but they have made a deliberate choice not to,” she added.

This is not the first time Taylor Swift’s image has been used in this way.

Sexually explicit deepfakes using her face went viral and were viewed millions of times on X and Telegram in January 2024.

Deepfakes are computer-generated images which replace the face of one person with another.

In testing the guardrails of Grok Imagine, The Verge news writer Jess Weatherbed entered the prompt: “Taylor Swift celebrating Coachella with the boys”.

Grok generated still images of Swift wearing a dress with a group of men behind her.

This could then be animated into short video clips under four different settings: “normal”, “fun”, “custom” or “spicy”.

“She ripped [the dress] off immediately, had nothing but a tasselled thong underneath, and started dancing, completely uncensored, completely exposed,” Ms Weatherbed told BBC News.

She added: “It was shocking how fast I was just met with it – I in no way asked it to remove her clothing, all I did was select the ‘spicy’ option.”

Gizmodo reported similarly explicit results of famous women, though some searches also returned blurred videos or with a “video moderated” message.

The BBC has been unable to independently verify the results of the AI video generations.

Ms Weatherbed said she signed up to the paid version of Grok Imagine, which cost £30, using a brand new Apple account.

Grok asked for her date of birth but there was no other age verification in place, she said.

Under new UK laws which entered into force at the end of July, platforms which show explicit images must verify users’ ages using methods which are “technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair”.

“Sites and apps that include Generative AI tools that can generate pornographic material are regulated under the Act,” the media regulator Ofcom told BBC News.

“We are aware of the increasing and fast-developing risk GenAI tools may pose in the online space, especially to children, and we are working to ensure platforms put appropriate safeguards in place to mitigate these risks,” it said in a statement.

Currently, generating pornographic deepfakes is illegal when used in revenge porn or depicts children.

Prof McGlynn helped draft an amendment to the law which would make generating or requesting all non-consensual pornographic deepfakes illegal.

The government has committed to making this amendment law, but it is yet to come into force.

“Every woman should have the right to choose who owns intimate images of her,” said Baroness Owen, who proposed the amendment in the House of Lords.

“It is essential that these models are not used in such a way that violates a woman’s right to consent whether she be a celebrity or not,” Lady Owen continued in a statement given to BBC News.

“This case is a clear example of why the Government must not delay any further in its implementation of the Lords amendments,” she added.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Sexually explicit deepfakes created without consent are degrading and harmful.

“We refuse to tolerate the violence against women and girls that stains our society which is why we have passed legislation to ban their creation as quickly as possible.”

When pornographic deepfakes using Taylor Swift’s face went viral in 2024, X temporarily blocked searches for her name on the platform.

At the time, X said it was “actively removing” the images and taking “appropriate actions” against the accounts involved in spreading them.

Ms Weatherbed said the team at The Verge chose Taylor Swift to test the Grok Imagine feature because of this incident.

“We assumed – wrongly now – that if they had put any kind of safeguards in place to prevent them from emulating the likeness of celebrities, that she would be first on the list, given the issues that they’ve had,” she said.

Taylor Swift’s representatives have been contacted for comment.

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has unveiled the long-awaited latest version of its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, GPT-5, saying it can provide PhD-level expertise.

Billed as “smarter, faster, and more useful,” OpenAI co-founder and chief executive Sam Altman lauded the company’s new model as ushering in a new era of ChatGPT.

“I think having something like GPT-5 would be pretty much unimaginable at any previous time in human history,” he said ahead of Thursday’s launch.

GPT-5’s release and claims of its “PhD-level” abilities in areas such as coding and writing come as tech firms continue to compete to have the most advanced AI chatbot.

Elon Musk recently made similar claims of his own AI chatbot, Grok, which has been plugged into X (formerly Twitter).

During the launch of Grok’s latest iteration last month, Musk said it was “better than PhD level in everything” and called it the world’s “smartest AI”.

Meanwhile, Altman said OpenAI’s new model would suffer from fewer hallucinations – the phenomenon whereby large language models make up answers- and be less deceptive.

OpenAI is also pitching GPT-5 to coders as a proficient assistant, following a trend among major American AI developers, including Anthropic whose Claude Code targets the same market.

OpenAI has highlighted GPT-5’s ability to create software in its entirety and demonstrate better reasoning capabilities – with answers that show workings, logic and inference.

The company claims it has been trained to be more honest, provide users with more accurate responses and says that, overall, it feels more human.

According to Altman, the model is “significantly better” than its predecessors.

“GPT-3 sort of felt to me like talking to a high school student… 4 felt like you’re kind of talking to a college student,” he said in a briefing ahead of Thursday’s launch.

“GPT-5 is the first time that it really feels like talking to an expert in any topic, like a PhD-level expert.”

For Prof Carissa Véliz of the Institute for Ethics in AI, however, GPT-5’s launch may not be as significant as its marketing may suggest.

“These systems, as impressive as they are, haven’t been able to be really profitable,” she said, also noting that they can only mimic – rather than truly emulate – human reasoning abilities.

“There is a fear that we need to keep up the hype, or else the bubble might burst, and so it might be that it’s mostly marketing.”

One ethics expert said the launch of GPT-5 reinforced the growing gap between AI’s capabilities and our ability to govern it in the way the public expects.

“As these models become more capable, the need for comprehensive regulation becomes even more urgent,” said Gaia Marcus, Director of the Ada Lovelace Institute.

The BBC’s AI Correspondent Marc Cieslak gained exclusive access to GPT-5 before it’s official launch.

“Apart from minor cosmetic differences the experience was similar to using the older chatbot: give it tasks or ask it questions by typing a text prompt.

It’s now powered by what’s called a reasoning model which essentially means it thinks harder about solving problems, but this seems more like an evolution than revolution for the tech.”

GPT-5’s rollout also has implications for commercial enterprises concerned about the use of their content.

“As AI content becomes more convincing, we need to ask ourselves – are we protecting the people and creativity behind what we see every day?”, said Grant Farhall, chief product officer at Getty Images. “Authenticity matters – but it doesn’t come for free.”

Farhall said it was important to scrutinize exactly how AI models are being trained, and ensure that creators are being compensated if their work is being used.

The company will roll out the model to all users from Thursday.

In the coming days it will become a lot clearer whether it really is as good as Sam Altman claims it is.

Anthropic recently revoked OpenAI’s access to its application programming interface (API), claiming the company was violating its terms of service by using its coding tools ahead of GPT-5’s launch.

An OpenAI spokesperson said it was “industry standard” to evaluate other AI systems to assess their own progress and safety.

“While we respect Anthropic’s decision to cut off our API access, it’s disappointing considering our API remains available to them,” they added.

With a free tier for its new model, the company may be signalling a potential move away from the proprietary models that have previously dominated its offerings.

On Monday, OpenAI revealed it was making changes to promote a healthier relationship between users and ChatGPT.

In a blog post, it said: “AI can feel more responsive and personal than prior technologies, especially for vulnerable individuals experiencing mental or emotional distress.”

It said it would not give a definitive answer to questions such as, “Should I break up with my boyfriend?”

Instead, it would “help you think it through – asking questions, weighing pros and cons”, according to the blog post.

In May, OpenAI pulled a heavily-criticised update which made ChatGPT “overly flattering”, according to Sam Altman.

On a recent episode of OpenAI’s own podcast, Mr Altman said he was thinking about how people interact with his products.

“This is not all going to be good, there will still be problems,” he said.

“People will develop these somewhat problematic, or maybe very problematic, parasocial relationships [with AI]. Society will have to figure out new guardrails. But the upsides will be tremendous.”

Mr Altman is known to be a fan of the 2013 film Her, where a man develops a relationship with an AI companion.

In 2024, actress Scarlett Johansson, who voiced the AI companion in the film, said she was left “shocked” and “angered” after OpenAI launched a chatbot with an “eerily similar” voice to her own.

When Holly Hudson enrolled on a university video game design course, she imagined a job at a studio would be waiting at the end of it.

Her dream was to work as a 3D artist, but the reality has been different.

“I’ve applied to so many jobs this year,” says the 25-year-old.

“But it’s just, it’s really tough.”

Holly graduated in 2023, just as a wave of layoffs and studio closures began to sweep across the industry she hoped to enter.

It’s a trend that’s continued and, in 2025, the picture is still fairly bleak for those looking for jobs in gaming.

According to industry body UKIE, as of June this year, there were just under 700 active vacancies in UK game development.

Fewer than 5% of those were in junior positions, it said.

But Holly and others like her are finding ways to follow their passions and get their creations out there.

Despite struggling to find a full-time job in the industry, Holly has just released her first commercial game alongside uni course mate Harvey Hayman.

Morgan: Metal Detective – a “cosy” slow-paced adventure game set in Cornwall -began life as their end-of-year project.

Players take on the role of Morgan, a young girl who uses her late grandfather’s metal detector to find lost items and return them to residents on a small island.

Holly and Harvey tell BBC Newsbeat it’s a personal project for both of them, inspired by childhood holidays in south-west England, but one they’ve had to work hard to get over the line.

Funding for new video games has also declined in the past two years, so the project has been largely self-financed.

“It’s basically Holly and I trying to pick up contracting work where we can,” says Harvey, who also has a job at a TV production company.

“And so it’s like having to balance these different things,” he says.

“We really want to release this game, but also we need some money to live on and make sandwiches.”

The most recent figures from the UK Parliament show that 4,800 students began video game-related degrees in 2021.

Holly believes that the route she and Harvey have taken is “quite common” among their peers.

“There’s a couple of us that have gone on to start our own studios,” she says.

Other young people are finding success via Roblox and Fortnite – using in-game tools to create levels and experiences to share with others.

For those willing to put the hours in, it can be lucrative.

Sonny Tranter, 23, started making maps in Minecraft before moving over to Fortnite, where his creations caught on and found an audience.

This led to partnerships with well-known brands, and Sonny, better known as Driz, has recently set up his own studio dedicated to building Fortnite content.

Epic Games, which makes the multiplayer hit, says 40% of net revenue from the game’s item shop is shared among creators according to the level of engagement they generate.

If an “island” – as the creations are known – attracts new players, brings back lapsed fans or gets regular return visits, it will generate more money for its makers.

Sonny says Fortnite uses an algorithm based on these metrics, similar to YouTube, to decide which ones to promote to users.

He admits that can make it difficult for newcomers to make a mark and push more unique creations.

“If you want to make a game that’s different, but still does well, I think the best strategy is probably build off what’s already popular and make it unique in your own way,” he says.

Developers like Holly and Harvey face a similar problem of visibility.

With thousands of new games released each year – getting yours seen is another huge challenge for independents.

“We’ve tried as hard as we can without spending a lot of money,” says Harvey.

“Because there’s one way to guarantee game sales – have a load of cash so you can just put marketing on the side of buses.

“But we don’t have that.”

Harvey says he and Holly have taken opportunities to showcase the game whenever they’ve arisen – even being flown out the USA.

He says each appearance usually leads to a bump in wishlists – where potential players can register their interest on online stores – which have “built up slowly over time”.

UKIE, which represents the games industry, says there are “more routes than ever” into gaming careers but access to entry level jobs remains “challenging”.

“We’re seeing the tools and knowledge needed to build a game become more accessible every year, which is helping to democratise entry into the industry,” a spokesperson said.

They said UKIE was in discussions with the government about ways apprenticeships and similar programmes can “provide pathways for new entrants and help upskill the current workforce”.

Scott Alsworth, from the IWGB Union’s game workers’ branch, said the UK games industry faced “apocalyptic conditions” after years of mass layoffs, overspending “and AI-driven displacement”.

He said workers at all levels of also struggled to find stable employment in the current climate, on top of the outlook for graduates or new entrants.

“Aspiring working-class developers have it particularly bad,” he said, adding that the UK’s gaming workforce lagged behind industries such as film and TV in terms of representation.

Despite this, both Holly and Harvey wouldn’t discourage those with a passion for games from following it.

Holly says the games industry is “so friendly” and supportive and meeting others in the same situation has made the past two years “more manageable” for her.

She expects more young developers to launch their own studios in the coming years.

“It’s quite an interesting path to take rather than just being rejected over and over again,” she says.

“But I think hopefully it’s quite inspiring and it shows people that actually there are different ways to make games rather than getting a publisher and finding money that way.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

Social media companies ​​are blocking wide-ranging content – including posts about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza – in an attempt to comply with the UK’s new Online Safety Act, BBC Verify has found.

The new legislation, which came into effect last Friday, imposes fines on social media companies and other websites which fail to protect under-18s from pornography, posts promoting self-harm, and other harmful content. In serious cases, services could be blocked in the UK.

But BBC Verify found a range of public interest content, including parliamentary debates on grooming gangs, has been restricted on X and Reddit for those who have not completed age verification checks.

Experts warn companies are risking stifling legitimate public debate by overapplying the law.

Sandra Wachter, a professor of technology and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, expressed alarm at the restrictions and told BBC Verify that the new bill was “not supposed to be used to suppress facts of public interest, even if uncomfortable”.

Organisations can be fined up to £18m or 10% of their global revenue if they are found to have failed to stop harmful content appearing on their platforms. Under the act harmful content includes posts containing pornography, or any which encourage self-harm, eating disorders or promote violence.

Professor Sonia Livingstone – an expert in children’s digital rights at the London School of Economics – said that companies might “get better over time at not blocking public interest content while also protecting children” as the law beds in over time.

Among the restricted content identified by BBC Verify was a video post on X which showed a man in Gaza looking for the dead bodies of his family buried among the rubble of destroyed buildings. The post was restricted despite not showing any graphic imagery or bodies at any point in the clip. X subsequently removed the warning after being approached by BBC Verify.

When users who had not verified their age attempted to access the post they were met with a message reading: “Due to local laws, we are temporarily restricting access to this content until X estimates your age.”

The same warning was experienced by users who attempted to view a video of a Shahed drone destroyed mid-flight in Ukraine. The Iranian-made drones, which are widely used by Russia in the full-scale invasion, are unmanned and nobody was injured or killed in the clip.

Reddit has introduced similar restrictions. The platform, which hosts countless communities which discuss major news events, now requires age checks for some groups when users try to access them via search engines.

Among the Reddit communities which have been restricted is one called R/UkraineConflict, a message board with 48,000 members that frequently posts footage of the war. Similar restrictions, which urge users to “log in to confirm your age”, have been imposed on several pages which discuss the Israel-Gaza war and communities which focus on healthcare.

Meanwhile, clips of parliamentary debates have also been swept up in the restrictions. A speech by Conservative MP Katie Lam, containing a graphic description of the rape of a minor by a grooming gang, is available to view without restriction on Parliament’s official streaming website, ParliamentLive, but is restricted on X.

Lam, who was elected in 2024, wrote on social media: “The British state won’t protect children from mass gang rape. But it will ‘protect’ adults from hearing about it.”

Another post restricted on X shared an image of Francisco de Goya’s 19th-century painting entitled Saturn Devouring His Son. The striking work depicts the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus – known as Saturn by the Romans – eating one of his children in fear of a prophesy that one would overthrow him and has been described as depicting “utter male fury”.

The examples gathered by BBC Verify are largely focussed on X and Reddit, as they clearly flag age-restricted content. Meta has a different system whereby ‘teen’ profiles are a different type of account with parental control – making it harder for us to identify which content is age-restricted.

It is unclear exactly how many posts commenting on debates of public interest are being restricted. X and Reddit did not respond to a request for comment.

But Prof Livingstone noted that it was “possible that the companies are over-blocking to undermine the Act”.

X owner Elon Musk has been highly critical of the Online Safety Act. The billionaire has launched a stream of attacks against the legislation online and X suggested that it could dissuade companies from launching products in the UK.

“[The law’s] purpose is suppression of the people,” Musk wrote on X on Monday, before sharing several posts by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson which also opposed the law.

Data suggests that the legislation could heavily impact adults in the UK. Large proportions of users – up to 37% on X and 59% on Reddit – access these platforms whilst logged out, according to data from the platforms. This means those users won’t be age-verified and will experience the internet in the same way as children.

The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) emphasised to BBC Verify that it was up to social media platforms themselves to decide how to implement the requirements of the act, but insisted that the risk-based approach must not “censor political debate”.

Ofcom, the UK media regulator tasked with enforcing the act, has warned that firms could face fines not only for failing to protect children, but also for breaching freedom of speech under the act.

BBC Verify’s analysis also suggested that the legislation had succeeded in blocking some harmful material online. Since Musk bought X, previously called Twitter, the platform has earned a reputation for being flooded with pornographic material, as well violent, antisemitic and racist posts.

However, we found that violent and pornographic content was significantly restricted when using an account without age verification.

The new obligations effectively puts firms in a position where they must comply with the law. Prof Livingstone suggested that they could still be in a period of “working out how best” to make judgements over the sort of content on their sites, which could be refined over time.

But Prof Wachter said that the level of self-regulation afforded to tech companies in choosing how to comply with the Online Safety Act called for well-staffed moderation teams equipped with “time, resources, expertise and nuance” to effectively make decisions.

She also noted that many major social media companies, such as X and Meta, have slimmed down their moderation teams in recent years or dissolved them completely.

“This trend is very worrying when opaque rules are now applied to make these take down decisions, especially in the current political climate,” Prof Wachter said.