Three weeks after the cyber attack on Marks & Spencer, company chief executive Stuart Machin has written to customers revealing that some personal customer data was stolen in the attack. The retail giant revealed that name, date of birth, phone number, and address details could have been stolen, along with household information and online order history. Usable payment or card details, or account passwords, were not stolen. The company confirmed that customers will be prompted to reset their accounts next time they log in. However, cybersecurity experts have warned affected customers to be vigilant, pointing to the increase in phishing scams that often accompany data breaches when order history and usernames are involved. Scams can appear more convincing with name, address, and phone number information. Elsewhere this week, luxury fashion brand Dior confirmed it has been attacked and that customer data has been accessed in the breach, although not financial information. In the US, crypto exchange Coinbase confirmed a data breach on a small subset of its customer base, which could cost the company up to $400m. The hackers paid external support workers and contractors to access information from internal systems, which were then exploited. The company refused to pay the $20m ransom, instead offering it as a reward for information about the hackers.
News also emerged this week that UK retailer Co-op, which was hacked by the same group as Marks & Spencer, managed to limit the scale of their attacks and recover more quickly than M&S. In ‘a long, offensive rant’ sent to the BBC, the cyber criminals said Co-op’s IT team took the company’s computer services offline during the attack, preventing further damage. Jen Ellis from the Ransomware Task Force said ‘Co-op seems to have opted for self-imposed immediate-term disruption as a means of avoiding criminal-imposed, longer-term disruption.’
A new amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill that would require AI firms to disclose their use of copyright-protected material was tabled by Baroness Kidron this week, after MPs voted to remove an earlier version. The new version states the government ‘may’ make enforcement provisions, rather than ‘must’, and gets round the financial privilege grounds on which the previous amendment was rejected. It will be debated in the House of Lords next week. Meanwhile, in the US, House Republicans have introduced measures in the latest budget reconciliation that would prohibit states and local governments from regulating AI for the next decade. This would enable AI companies to continue training their models on unlicensed content or profit from that work. The move would also apply to AI models used in decision making for hiring, housing and decisions about benefits.
We’ve got a great webinar coming up in our data-centric AI series. Join us on Thursday 12 June 16:00-17:00 to learn about local authorities, data and AI. Local and regional authorities in the UK are responsible for all kinds of public services, and hold masses of data about local economies and the people living within them. Our panel of experts will discuss this data in the context of govtech and AI, exploring how local and regional authorities could take advantage of their datasets to make public service delivery more efficient and effective. Get your tickets now. Also, our friends at Stream published a blog this week exploring citizen science data and how it can be used to clean up rivers, lakes, and seas in the UK, so check it out.
And finally…writers, translators and voice actors were left reeling this week by Audible’s announcement that it plans to use AI voices to narrate audiobooks. The Amazon-owned audiobook company will allow certain publishers to choose from more than 100 AI-generated voices in multiple languages to narrate their books. Kristin Atherton, who has more than 400 audiobooks under her belt, said human narrators ‘actively sell audio content by being good at their jobs’, while literary translator Frank Wynne said ‘In the search for a cheap simulacra to an actual human, we are prepared to burn down the planet and call it progress.’ Let’s hope there’s still a gig for Steven Toast.
Until next time
David and Jo
