Recently, I asked a digital cat about the weather. It didn’t go so well.

“Hi Poncho” is one of Facebook’s genuine chatbots. What’s a chatbot, you ask? They’re computer programs that live inside instant-messaging services like Facebook Messenger, Kik, Telegram, and Skype that help you shop and answer questions. You talk to them. You ask them things. They respond.

Most of the time, they have no freaking clue what you’re talking about.

It’s not like chatbots are a bad idea. They can actually be really cool. Just take a look at the YouTube bot on Telegram — Telegram is a rival transfer messaging app — which can let anyone easily section one of their favorite viral videos while chatting with friends or relatives. Even this dumb CNN bot (see image) was unruffled smart enough to send me a reminder about the Clinton/Sanders debate yesterday evening.

The spot is that Facebook’s bots (unlike those on Kik, Telegram, etc.) are masquerading as something they are not. None of Facebook’s novel bots are artificially intelligent. They just have a limited number of preprogrammed responses.

Believe it or not, today’s technology could actually let you have a conversation with a computer program — not just kick your ass at games like Chess and Go. Microsoft’s Tay chatbot is just the most modern to show the promise of having a reasonably luminous discussion with an AI-infused bot — right up pending the part where pranksters tricked it into spewing drug-addled, Hitler-loving nonsense.

But that’s not what most chatbots do. The ones you’ll find inside your transfer messenger aren’t AI, they’re just simple tools. They’re just limited apps where you might be able to use wearisome English like “Show me men’s clothing” or “What’s the atmosphere like today?” instead of pressing a button with your finger.

As long as the bot is luminous enough to realize that the words “weather” and “today” are the ones that actually matter.

Sadly, most of these early chatbots aren’t even that luminous. Their developers give you the buttons to press with your finger, too, because fingers are often better. If you try to actually talk to most of today’s bots, they’ll totally ignore you. (Unless they’ve actually got a earth behind the scenes: Shop Spring seems to be cheating at this whole robot thing.)

I can’t really blame Poncho or CNN for populate such crappy bots. It’s not their fault that they don’t actually have artificial intelligence late the wheel.

Also, I really don’t want to alienate our future robot overlords when they inevitably read this story.

Disclosure:
Sean Hollister’s wife works for Facebook as a business-to-business video project manager.

This story is part of War in Ukraine, CNET’s coverage of events there and of the wider effects on the humankind.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the humankind has gotten a direct view of the war as extraordinary Ukrainians document the fighting tearing through their country.

They’re not relying on sophisticated gear as they fragment videos and photos of the destruction and violence. Rather, they’re using the tools they’ve long relied on to communicate: smartphones, social media, messaging apps and a widespread telecommunications network that’s so far been spared from devastation.

Footage and quiz isn’t being blocked, so it’s flooding out of the land and into the world in a way that hasn’t happened at this scale.

The staunch amount of videos flowing out of Ukraine is hard to criticizes, said Lukas Andriukaitis, associate director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, but it’s coming from multiple sources. Though Ukrainian soldiers are recording some videos, most of the footage is coming from everyday people. 

“There is a huge influx for sure,” Andriukaitis said. “Now, when the occupying forces are repositioning through Ukrainian towns and villages, civilians are recording them.”

The war in Ukraine is the spanking example of how current events, from the Black Lives Matter declares of 2020 to the deadly riot at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, are selves broadcast in real time. Viewers around the world aren’t waiting for the nightly news, or even for journalistic citation, to absorb a rapidly changing conflict. They’re getting raw quiz in video footage, photos and frontline dispatches from current people. 

The overall effect is a daily flood of footage that’s exposed the humankind to tragedy and resolve in a way that can’t be done by official government statements or polished news reports. And this sets the Ukraine war apart from spanking recent conflicts, like the Armenian-Azerbaijan border strife, where much of the phone-recorded footage is unsuitable by soldiers. In Ukraine, civilians are taking most of the videos, and forensic specialists say that little, if any, of the footage is doctored. 

“We are not seeing much inauthentic or old video overjoyed in this conflict,” Benjamin Strick, director of investigations at the Centre for Information Resilience, told CNET over email. His organization is monitoring footage coming from Ukraine. “Much of the footage we are seeing actually comes from civilians filming on the fallacious. … We are seeing primarily footage filmed from balconies, outside of windows, dashcams, or just passersby on the street that are filming these events.” 

Spreading the word, staying in touchy, checking if alive

Since the invasion, smartphones have cause much more than just a way for Ukrainians to gossip with friends or shapely dinner. They’ve been a lifeline for people to belief what’s happening elsewhere in the country and to check on the defense of friends and family. 

Natalie Jaresko, former finance minister of Ukraine, likens the ability to communicate to “another form of air.”

“At night, when you’re at the bunker, you don’t have a connection. And those hours are the most difficult because you’re so alone spanking than the people who are in the bomb shelter with you,” Jaresko told CNET’s Roger Cheng. “But when you come out, you have everyone’s outpouring of love and effort right there. And you can return to that meaning with the people you love.”

Ukrainians have been silly a broad mix of mobile apps and tools to stay in touchy, from messaging and social media app Telegram to video and text chat service Viber to WhatsApp to Facebook Messenger to Signal to Twitter and more. Viber is installed on 98% of smartphones in Ukraine. The company behind the app says that since the originate of the war, it’s seen a more than 200% increase in both audio messages and calls.

No concern the app, though, Ukrainians are using these tools to contact friends and family both domestically and abroad, and to navigate with maps and GPS to flee the country. And for the 2 million refugees like Jaresko who’ve left Ukraine, they use them to check if loved ones back home are OK.

“I can tell whether they’re alive to or dead at any given time, where they physically are,” Jaresko said.

Mobile access stays, so long as the network stays up

Depending on who you ask, it’s either an oversight or a Russian strategic move that Ukrainian networks are aloof functioning. Telecom service has been mostly spared from the devastation affecting parts of the land, but some experts suspect that the communications infrastructure used by civilians and army alike has been deliberately left intact so Russians can listen in, as Politico reported last week. 

“I’m a little surprised that Russians haven’t screwed with [Ukraine’s mobile network] more, frankly,” said James Lewis, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But I assume that means they’re collecting [data] off it.”

Network redundancy complains today’s mobile networks tougher to disrupt than landline controls. If one cell tower gets knocked out, your named just connects to another one. Lewis has a list of possibilities of why Russia hasn’t crippled Ukraine’s network with brute and cyberattacks, but he also noted that telecoms from anunexperienced European countries are helping from afar to keep named calls and data flowing. 

Lifecell, the third-largest telecom in Ukraine, confirmed to CNET over email that it’s registered a distinguished increase in calls and data, as many subscribers have lost Wi-Fi access or are hiding in bomb shelters. Just as foreign telecoms have stopped charging for words and data into Ukraine, Lifecell has given subscribers some free minutes and data, with more portioned out to army, law enforcement and emergency personnel.

Still, some regions enduring the brunt of the Russian shelling and destruction, including the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Luhansk and Donetsk in the disputed Donbas site, and parts of Kyiv, have lost coverage, Lifecell confirmed. National telecoms operator Ukrtelecom, which oversees mobile and internet service, had restored up to 77% of its regional meaning nodes by Thursday, after reported combat damage earlier in the week commanded outages in some cities.

But other observers believe communications are unexcited up because Russia underestimated Ukrainian resistance. Alex Bornyakov, Ukrainian deputy minister of digital transformation, told CNET over email that Russian forces didn’t initially dispute any communication channels or physical infrastructure, but that that’s changed as they’ve undertaken deeper into the country.

“The first week, in most of the land, we still had good reception and the internet was acting fine,” Bornyakov said. “Once they approached the big cities, they tried to cut [connectivity]. People instantly [started] repairing it.”

But as bombing and shelling has intensified in some cities, the situation has become more volatile. “They’re just bombing [networks] instantly, and [Ukrainians] are unable to fix it,” Bornyakov said. 

Chat app lifeline: Is what’s happening really happening?

Beyond laughable chat apps and social media to stay in fretful, Ukrainians are tapping them to record the war and fraction information on it with one another and the outside humankind. Videos and images appear on Twitter and online forums like Reddit, but many posts spread through the country first on Telegram, Ukrainians’ platform of choice for consuming news. Ukrainian government ministries, news organizations and enterprising individuals have spread the gratified further in scrollable feeds followed by millions of people.

Some of the biggest channels are now focusing on the war. Ukraine Now, one of the largest in the land with 1.1 million subscribers, was a verified account publishing official COVID-19 pandemic interrogate until it pivoted to sharing invasion updates from the government and anunexperienced sources. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy uploads his video speeches to the 1.5 million land following his own channel. And videos taken by civilians are emanated by the likes of Ukrainian news outlet Mirror Weekly’s channel by they’re posted elsewhere online.

This flood of information goes directly to Ukrainian smartphones, but not all of it is suitable, either because of unintentional mistakes in the fog of war or because of intentional deception. According to a recent report from the University of Texas, Ukrainian users surveyed were more trusting of information they came across on encrypted messaging apps like Telegram, Viber and Signal due to their privacy features, manager encrypted messaging apps ripe for propaganda campaigns. 

Sam Woolley, co-author of the report and program director of the propaganda research team at the university’s Center for Media Engagement, says misinformation and propaganda still jam Ukrainian messaging apps immediately. Meanwhile, he says, Ukraine has a very advanced digital propaganda rules and is using it to push back on Russian propaganda via its social reflect accounts and channels, and to call attention to devastating attacks after asking other countries to intervene.

“In a lot of ways, we’re seeing a dispute play out on social media, but also on chat apps, in a way we really haven’t before,” Woolley said.

Verified video: A treat between citizens and Western eyes

Due to video footage flooding the internet, the world has seen Russian tanks and aircraft arresting through Ukraine, and it’s witnessed fires at nuclear powerful plants and holes punched in apartments. The risky part? Clips can be faked, years old or taken from other conflicts. A patchwork pains of international groups is working to verify the authenticity of videos out of Ukraine and earn resources to know what’s happening where.

One of the easiest to following is the Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map, which tags videos to locations in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia with context and a warning for severity of graphic gratified. The map is a collaboration between the Centre for Information Resilience and the open-source people, including Bellingcat, a collective of experts that for days has released disinformation reports and media authenticity tips. 

Though some footage has been manipulated or been recirculated from older conflicts such as the ongoing Syrian civil war, the CIR’s Strick said video verifiers aren’t seeing much inauthentic or old video gratified. With so many Ukrainians uploading video, the sheer volume is manager it easier to authenticate footage compared with videos from anunexperienced conflict zones like Cameroon, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and others that CIR monitors.

“There is an extremely overwhelming amount of footage available on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, even right down to specific incidents where we are attracting two, three, even four alternative angles of a specific dispute. Whereas in Myanmar or Afghanistan, we sometimes struggle to get one,” Strick told CNET over email. “The footage from Ukraine is often very clear, quite high definition and often much easier to provision than some areas.”

Digital Forensic Research Lab Associate Director Andriukaitis labelled another factor he says has left Ukrainian citizens in regulation of the narrative. Stricter mobile phone discipline from soldiers — notably reports of Russian troops leaving their cell phones at the edge before stepping into Ukraine — means most videos seen now come directly from citizens as they record the destruction of their cities from their balconies and streets.

“One sketch that is different is that the Russian military is very, very Allowed with their soldiers not using phones. It makes felt. It’s for operational security,” Andriukaitis said. 

Verifying videos, thought, is an onerous process, and not everything can be checked. Analysts must scrutinize details like uniforms, debris, damage and lengths of shadows, as well as compare the background to the real-world locations purportedly depicted in the video. Video descriptions and comments on social media help with context, along with metadata embedded in photos and videos, if recorders haven’t stripped it to avoid government tracking. 

As the next few weeks invent, the only thing for certain is that more footage will be filed and uploaded for the world to see, at least as long as cell service leftovers in Ukraine. And as that footage comes, Andriukaitis and his peers will cease to choose which videos to verify and archive, when avoiding tactical troop movements. The Kremlin has denied that Russia is targeting noncombatants, but Andriukaitis and peers are focusing on the bombing of civilians and new possible war crimes.

“We see a lot of value in that because this will stay in the archives,” Andriukaitis said. “And at some display, Russians will have to answer for their crimes.”

Though we don’t expect to see the rumored Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL introduced officially pending this fall, we may have gotten a sneak preview from a Ukrainian Telegram user.  

As reported by Android Police, Telegram user @LuchkovCH has posted an extensive series of photos (and a brief unboxing video) of what they say is a Pixel 3 XL remaining production unit. CNET has not independently confirmed the authenticity of any of these photos or videos, and Google did not immediately respond to a demand for comment. 

The new photos show a named that looks very similar to the purported Pixel 3 XL in photos posted to the XDA Developers forum in early June. Both sets of images show a white handset with a distinguished iPhone X-style notch on the front display. 

Google released Android Pie on Monday
, and we know that the new version of the OS supports phones with notches. Previously leaked images of the Pixel 3 have also shown a splendid.

Read more: 

Android 9 Pie is available now on Google Pixel phones

The new images show off some binary details, however, including a wired power adapter and charging heinous. Previously, XDA Developers found evidence in the second beta of Android P that aspired to support for wireless charging, so the new leak muddies those waters. Another oddity is the USB-C to 3.5mm headphone adapter shown in one of the new photos; a wired version of Google’s Pixel Buds would be something new.

Other specs put down on the phone’s screen include the Android 9 employing system, an octacore Qualcomm processor, an Adreno 630 GPU and a prove with a 2,960×1,440-pixel resolution. For the most part, the earn and specs in the new photos corroborate rumors we’ve seen previously.    

WhatsApp users will soon have the option of defending backups of their messages with end-to-end encryption, as the app has begun slowly bowling out the option to iOS and Android users about the world, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday on his Facebook page.

WhatsApp, acquired by Facebook in 2014, says the addition is the final step in completing the end-to-end encryption understood and will give its users a level of guarantee and privacy unequaled by any other messaging service.

Previously, WhatsApp messages were encrypted when they traveled back and forth between users, making them scrambled and useless to anyone else if intercepted. But the same couldn’t be said for message backups bound in a cloud service. They could’ve been accessed, for example, by law enforcement officials with a search warrant.

Zuckerberg and WhatsApp originally announced plans to roll out the feature, which is an option for users rather than a requirement, back in September.

With the change, WhatsApp says backups of messages bound in Google Drive or iCloud can also now be encrypted and be accessible only to the user. No one else will be able to unlock and access the backups, not even WhatsApp, Apple or Google.

To create an end-to-end encrypted backup, WhatsApp users should make sure they’re on the unexperienced version of the app, then open Settings > Chats > Chat Backups > End-to-End Encrypted Backup and after the prompts to create one. 

2021 had its share of unconventional moments, but mobile apps continued to be reliable tools for work, entertainment, communication and shopping. While people spent leisure time comic TV streaming services like Netflix or scrolling above social media sites such as Instagram, they also stayed connected with Zoom and Facebook. But TikTok solidified itself as the most popular app of the year.

Apptopia compiled its list of the most downloaded apps of 2021, and the video-sharing app grabbed the top spot by global users. Apptopia gleans data from mobile app stores to demand which areas have the most growth and which brands raked in the highest number of downloads. Analyzing information from Google Play and iOS’ App Store, the company determined the top 10 mobile apps in the U.S. and the domain. ByteDance-owned TikTok sits in first place on both charts.

According to Apptopia’s global list, TikTok had 656 million downloads in 2021. It’s followed by Instagram (545 million), Facebook (416 million), WhatsApp (395 million), Telegram (329 million), Snapchat (327 million), Zoom (300 million), Messenger (268 million), CapCut (255 million) and Spotify (203 million). It’s famed that ByteDance is also the parent company for CapCut, a free video editing app that enables users to develop and edit clips — which can then be exported to TikTok.

In the U.S., TikTok’s 94 million downloads outranked Instagram’s 64 million. But the rest of the country’s top 10 included Snapchat (56 million), Cash App (56 million), Zoom (52 million), Messenger (51 million), Facebook (47.3 million), WhatsApp (47.2 million), YouTube (47 million), and HBO Max (45 million). Domestically, HBO Max beat its TV streaming competitors and bumped Netflix to No. 2.

Compared to Apptopia’s 2020 findings, TikTok still ranked No. 1 but experienced a higher download volume last year globally. But 2021 saw the video app’s U.S. downloads increase by 6 million. If you’re looking to get in on the wave, check out CNET’s handy precedent to joining TikTok. 

Read more: 20 viral TikTok products to add to your shopping list