An artist is using deep learning to create realistic portraits of historical figures like Napoleon Bonaparte, Vincent Van Gogh, and England’s first Queen Elizabeth.

A new model designed to sharpen images tends to turn some dark faces white, igniting fresh furor over bias in machine learning. Photo Upsampling via Latent Space Exploration (Pulse) generates high-resolution versions of low-resolution images.

A chatbot is providing companionship for the locked-down and lonely. Downloads of Replika, a chatbot designed to be a virtual friend, have spiked during the coronavirus pandemic, reports the New York Times.

Baidu backed out of a U.S.-led effort to promote ethics in AI, leaving the project without a Chinese presence. The Beijing-based search giant withdrew from the Partnership on AI, a consortium that promotes cooperation on issues like digital privacy and algorithmic bias.

Facebook uses automated systems to block hate speech, but hateful posts can slip through when seemingly benign words and pictures combine to create a nasty message. The social network is tackling this problem by enhancing AI’s ability to recognize context.

Vendors of face recognition are updating their tech as people don masks to protect against Covid-19. Police are bound to take notice. Companies that provide computer vision systems, including at least one that supplies law enforcement agencies, are training models to recognize obscured faces.

Machine learning researchers report better and better results, but some of that progress may be illusory. Some models that appear to set a new state of the art haven’t been compared properly to their predecessors, Science News reports based on several published surveys.

Facebook’s leadership has thwarted changes in its algorithms aimed at making the site less polarizing, according to the Wall Street Journal. The social network’s own researchers determined that its AI software promotes divisive content.

Generative adversarial networks don’t just produce pretty pictures. They can build world models, too. A GAN generated a fully functional replica of the classic video game Pac-Man.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are developing machine learning tools for the fossil fuel industry even as they pledge to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The pandemic has radically altered online shopping behavior, throwing a wrench into many AI systems. AI inventory trackers, recommendation algorithms, and fraud detection systems trained on pre-pandemic consumer behavior have been flummoxed by the different ways people now browse, binge, and buy.

Facebook’s AI can’t spot Covid-19 disinformation on its own. But with human help, it can slow the spread. Facebook uses a combination of humans and neural nets to crack down on messages that make false claims about Covid-19, which may have deadly consequences.

Researchers are drawing up blueprints for drugs to fight Covid-19. Machine learning is identifying those most likely to be effective. Covid Moonshot, an international group of scientists in academia and industry, is crowdsourcing designs for molecules with potential to thwart the coronavirus.

Music that features a “singing” koala bear took the prize in one of Europe’s highest-profile AI competitions yet. A team of Australian programmers, designers, and musicians won the inaugural AI Song Contest with a koala-tinged track called “Beautiful the World.”

Cameras that detect face masks are helping French authorities to evaluate citizens’ adherence to government mandates intended to fight Covid-19. Starting this week, everyone riding public transportation in France is required to wear a face mask.