On tracks throughout europe, the cars competed in disciplines including autocross, racing through formula 1—like twists and turns as fast as possible. . . . . An endurance trial through more than 20km of track to push the limits of battery management. . . . . A test of grip and downforce by. . . Basically going round in a circle as fast as possible — and then there's acceleration. It's a drag race, basically, and it's this last challenge that one team, amz racing, absolutely blasted last year, going from 0 to 100km an hour in. . . Well, i'll let you know a bit later. Amz includes students from lucerne university of applied sciences and arts and eth zurich, and i dropped in on the team's swiss hq. And up here is the electronics department at amz racing. We're going to meet lara. Not that lara. For one car to excel at all of these events, it not only has to have a powerful motor, but also computers have to control the traction and fine tune the speed of each wheel individually, and somehow it has to stick to the ground to give the tyres more grip. Amz achieved this with powerful fans that actually sucked the ultralight vehicle to the tarmac. Are you building on last year's design, or have you completely reinvented anything? every year we design a completely new race car. I mean, of course we orient ourselves on the design from last year. As you might have seen on the car, the downforce with the fans we had, we improved. . . . . Not the same concept, but kind of is based on the same. . . . . On the same physics behind it. Is this something you want to do in the future? do you want to work on, like, racing cars? i mean, it'd definitely be fun and really interesting, but i'm not sure yet. We'll see. It depends how it goes this year, right? yeah! and, yeah, the point of this competition is less about the winning and more about the learning. Getting to work on such a project during your studies is an incredible knowledge gain. I mean, if i compare myself three years ago, before ijoined the organisation, i know very little about engineering compared to what i do now. There are some things that might get adopted in industry. However, i think the main thing is just to really get those engineers already to have some practical experience during their studies. So, about that acceleration challenge. . . Now, after last year's formula student competition, the team decided to specifically re—engineer the car to try and break the world acceleration record and go from 0 to iookm an hour in the shortest time for an electric car. This was the vehicle, and the target time. . . Well, that was already astonishing. So, in 2016, eth held the record — 0 to iookm hour in. . . ? 1. 513 seconds. 0k,1. 5 seconds. 1. 5 seconds. 0k — and then, in 2022, stuttgart came along and did it in. . . ? 1. 46. So, about five hundredths of a second. And then last year you came along and did 0 to 100km an hour in — how much? a bit less than a second. 0. 956. Applause 0 to 60 in less than a second. What does that feel like? it feels insane. So, you just feel this — this push, and you can't even blink. It's already over. Do you have time to do any steering, or do you have to hope it's pointing in the right direction? you have to hope that points into the right direction — but this we control before every start, and there is maybe a little bit of steering, but it's just intuitive. Now, when i visited amz a few weeks before this summer's competition, i got to witness the very first day of testing this year's brand—new car. Expectations were high. All our cameras were set to catch the high speed action — and. . . Was that close to the world record? i'm not an expert, but. . . 0k, look, this was actually just a test to see if all the computers and sensors were talking to each other. The fact that the car moved at all was considered a success. But come the formula student tournament itself, amz did brilliantly, winning events in switzerland, hungary and the biggest one, in germany — and, equally importantly, the next generation of engineers has done its qualifying lap. With short summers and a cold climate and a landscape of lava fields and glaciers, iceland's not the first place you'd think of for farming. . . . . But pioneering entrepreneurs are growing some surprising crops — and doing it sustainably. Inside this warehouse on the outskirts of reykjavik is a verticalfarm. Vaxa means grow in icelandic, and they're cultivating leafy greens. More like a lab than a typical farm, this is what's known as controlled environment agriculture. Here we have whole head lettuce, baby leaf, a lot of herbs, and these mini microgreens. Almost every detail is precisely fine tuned. We can optimise everything. Humidity, water, light hours, nutrition. We do not have to depend on sunlight here in the farm. The plants have high quality led lights where we can use the green energy of iceland to grow the plants. That means they can produce salad year round, even in the darkest winters — and there's no soil here, just water. This is like a hydroponic system. We actually can circulate, re—use the water again. So we need, like, 90% less water than in an open field farm. Outside of reykjavik, this is the country's most powerful geothermal plant. While iceland's northerly location and climate may seem a disadvantage when it comes to farming, it's the limitless supply of clean energy that's also helped it to innovate. The glowing lights take a little getting used to — and, inside, it's like nothing i've seen before. This tech firm has invented what it calls an energy to food platform. Now, this place is not your typicalfarm. It's super high—tech, and growing inside these units is microalgae. Algae is not something that many of us eat today, but it could well be a food of the future. It's rich in protein, iron and fatty acids, and vaxa technologies, unrelated to the salad producer, hopes to make this algae an everyday part of our diet. It's a new way of thinking about food production. I this system uses a fraction of the land, a fraction of the water needed. It's carbon negative. Energy, c02 and water — that's all that's needed for this aquatic organism to grow. It photosynthesises. The algae is eating c02, or it's turning the c02. Into biomass. It's all tightly controlled using artificial intelligence to find the perfect conditions. This pink—purple glow comes from the tiny red and blue lights. Instead of spending our electricity and making i wavelengths that they don't i use, we are only giving them the light that they use to photosynthesise. . This system gets clean electricity from the neighbouring geothermal plant, as well as water for heating and cooling — and even the c02 that the algae take in. Algae, they are extremely efficient in changing light into biomass. We can use 100% of this biomass for food. It also grows very fast, and once harvested it looks like this. . . . . Which to be frank, doesn't seem hugely appetising. So, time to give it a try. This is hummus. . . Blue hummus!. . And it's blue. It's not supposed i to be a punishment. It's not a bad thing. I suggest you try this here. 0k. It doesn't taste unusual at all. But then there's a surprise. I'm not sure how i feel about this! but, er. . . Try it. It doesn't taste of much. I think it's more the texture. I think it's going to take a bit more to wrap my head around this one. Maybe it will catch on — but i'm not sure i'm ready for blue food just yet. A tech company stole our voices, made clones of them it will include a smarter feature that contains a summary of news articles. Access will require a paid subscription. The us energy firm says it has made a major through in producing powerfrom nuclear fusion which replicates the same processes found within the sun. The biggest obstacles have been getting plasma to a high enough density level and containing it within the reactor for long containing it within the reactorfor long enough containing it within the reactor for long enough for it to be useful. General topics says it successfully used magnets and gas to contain superhot plasma a 20% above the current plasma density limits without it escaping forjust over two seconds. And finally, the barbie phone has landed. The pink handset, joint come —— has no application store and is limited to basic texting and phone calls but the flip phone does come with a range of crystals. The manufacturer says it is made the phone in response to parents wanting to reduce the digital impact on their kids' lives. A tech company stole our voices, made clones of them as ai clones, and sold them possibly hundreds of thousands of times. This is paul and linnea — voice—over actors based in new york city. Last summer, they were in the car listening to a podcast about the hollywood writers' strike and how it might affect v0 artists like them when something strange happened. The specific episode, the host was going to interview an ai entity about the potential harm that al will have on the entertainment industry, and he is interviewing my voice. How disturbing and terrifying that moment was is hard to articulate. I spent six hours on the internet that night searching as many text to speech products that i could find, and listening to all of the voices that they offered until i stumbled upon lovo. Lovo are this company, a berkeley—based text to speech platform. Just type what you want to hear. . . . . But once she started poking around the company site, linnea said she found an a! voice that sounded just like paul. I mean, i was stunned. I couldn't believe it — and out of pure curiosity, ijust started listening to the other voices thinking, maybe i'll recognise someone i know, a colleague from the voiceover world, and that's when i stumbled upon my voice. So, in may, pauland linnea filed a class action lawsuit against lovo, saying the company illegally stole their voices and identities without permission or proper compensation. The company has not yet filed a response. So how did this even happen? so in october of 2019, a freelancing site that i'm on where i regularly procure voiceover work reached out to me asking if i would record some scripts for them. The couple say the scripts were generic radio ads, ones the user said would never be broadcast, so they didn't need expensive usage rights. They were quite generic — you know, do you need a dry cleaner in idaho? we're here right around the corner. Your. . . Your neighbourhood dry cleaner. Paul says about six months later, he got a similar request to record dozens of generic sounding radio scripts. In messages the couple shared with the bbc, you can see the user appears to say the audio will be used for research into speech synthesis. Paul follows up to clarify whether the audio will be used for anything other than their specific research. In the next message, the user then appears to confirm the audio will not be used for anything else. And then i asked, will you be changing the order of my audio or using it in any separate way? and they said no. As for linnea, she says the users she spoke with deleted part of the conversation, but in the communications that remain, it appears the user presents the scripts as test radio ads, ones that will not be disclosed externally. The couple said there was no formal contract, just these messages they've shared with us. We can't, however, verify if these are the complete conversations. In both cases, though, the couple recorded the audio, sent the files and moved on. The voice you're hearing is tom lee, co—founder of lovo, speaking on a business podcast about how their voice cloning technology works. We reached out to lovo on multiple occasions to request an interview with mr lee. We also asked for any correspondence or conversations they may have with paul and linnea. They did not respond to any of our messages. So what's going on in the voice actor cases are a field of law. Known as rights of publicity. The thing that's being copied is not a piece of copyrightedl work, but a piece of someone's personality, right? _ and so then we get these l personality rights, or rights of publicity, where l the allegation is not, you copied my song, or, you copied my drawing,| but rather, _ you copied my voice. Professor garcia also says the licences the couple granted the user who contacted them may have also been violated. Licences are permission for a very specific and narrow use, right? i might give you a licence that| you can swim in my swimming pool one afternoon, but that doesn't mean you can comel whenever you want and havel a party in my swimming pool, right? that would exceed the terms of the licence, and i think that would be the argument for these voice actors here. | the voices have since been removed from the company's website, but an ad still exists online where paul's supposed voice clone can be heard. So, i sat down with the couple to take a listen myself. Video: introducing genny, by lovo artificial intelligence that makes it fast and easy to create voiceovers for marketing, e—learning, documentaries, animations, games, audiobooks, and more. Introducing genny, by lovo — artificial intelligence that makes it fast and easy to create voiceovers for marketing, e—learning, documentaries, animations, games, audiobooks, and more. When we all thought of ai in the future, we thought ai is going to be folding our laundry and making us dinner. We didn't think ai is going to replace human beings' creative endeavours. This case is just one of many being brought against a! companies by artists who don't want to lose control over their work and livelihoods and more are likely to come. We really have no other choice but to stand up and give our energy to this, because when companies develop technology that way, it's not innovation any more, it's just exploitation. Imagine if you could recreate any smell that you wanted, so you could take yourself back to your youth, or you could even go back hundreds of years in time. Well, that's just what they're doing here in this lab. Hi, i'm lara. Hi, i'm cecilia. Nice to meet you, cecilia. The smells that we all experience are a mixture of chemical compounds and our perception and memories. In this lab, they're trying to bring those things together. Here on your computer we've got a whole lot of types of reaction you could have to the smell, i guess. Does everybody react in the same way, or do you think people have different ideas of what smells of ammonia? that is a very good question. We're not trained to talk about smells in the same way we are about visual arts, for example, or music — and therefore we have to develop these vocabularies and train ourselves to know that when we say a word describing a smell, we mean the same thing. If only there was a nose machine to do all that hard work. So, i guess ijust put my nose in here. Yes. Slightly sweet. Delicate and sweet. There's almost something soothing about it. This is actually frankincense, a tree resin that's been used for thousands of years in religious ceremonies in the form of incense and in traditional medicine. I think my description was terrible. What do you think? i think you did very well. How about recreating smells from the past — ones that no longer exist, or may never have existed — just from the words used to describe them? one of the things we're really interested in is bringing back the smells of the past and presenting them to people, communicating these smells. Using ai, they're mining 60,000 historic texts and 13,000 images for references to smells — with some astonishing results. I have one more smell for you to experience today. Thank you. Oh, that's quite fierce. It's also quite bad. It smells of burning mixed with poo. Ugh. . . Absolutely revolting. Quite frankly, now, that's awful. What is it? so, this is the smell of hell. It's the smell of hell? yes. We don't have a recipe for this, obviously, so it was inspired by a painting — and in this painting we see christ descending into limbo to save the souls that have gone to hell, and as he descends, we see a dragon blowing smoke and fire in his face, and there's the smokiness. There's also notes of sulphurous smells. Ok, that's the bad bit. Yes. Ifeel quite sick. Then you'll have to make sure you go to heaven! this is very true! lovely. Thank you. Well, all i can say is you've done an amazing job of creating this scent, because it's absolutely horrendous. Yep, it's been made using synthetic versions of compounds from faeces and rotten lilies. They've used it at museum ulm in germany, where the picture is on display, and this can enhance the visitor experience. Yuck. The petrie museum of egyptology in london is also working with smells. As an archaeologist, how important is it to you that lots of museums would embrace this sort of technology to enhance the experience? well, that's a very good question. Obviously, places like these, they are important resources. Traditionally in a museum you can see the objects. You can be provided with information. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you may have sessions where you can touch, handling objects, depending — but what about smells? maybe we can be transported to a city, a village, the workshop of a person who's working leather or wood, or the kitchen, food, what people ate, how they did food. Why is it so important to be able to recreate these smells? this is important because many of the smells that we focus on are at risk of disappearing, and when the aroma goes, it's not only the smell, but also the stories, the people, the places that are connected to them. So here we use different techniques to better understand and safeguard and preserve our cultural heritage. The world is changing, and there soon could be a day with some of the smells we take for granted no longer with us — but thanks to projects like this, we may be able to reconnect with our emotional memories with just a sniff. And that's all we've got time for. Thank you for watching — we shall be back next week. Bye— bye. Hello. This weekend will take us out of august and into september — technically speaking, the start of the meteorological autumn. But in spite of that, there is some warmth and some humidity on the way. Warm and humid conditions drove a lot of the showers and thunderstorms across the western side of continental europe during friday. That warm and humid air wafting its way northwards over the weekend. And while there will be some spells of sunshine, we also have the chance of some pretty intense thunderstorms, although there is still a lot of uncertainty about exactly how many of those there will be and where they might crop up. And actually, saturday will be a largely dry day. Quite a lot of sunshine around, more cloud spilling into southern parts of england, perhaps south wales, and the chance of one or two showers and perhaps the odd thunderstorm across the channel islands and perhaps south—east england later in the day. A breeze will keep things cool close to these north sea coasts — 17 for aberdeen and newcastle. More generally, though, 19 to 22 or 23 degrees, so quite a warm day. Quite warm and humid overnight, through saturday night into sunday, especially across the south, and we will see further, very well—scattered showers and thunderstorms pushing northwards, i think especially across some eastern counties of england. 16 degrees the overnight low in london, a cooler 9 degrees there for glasgow. As we go through sunday, well, that warm, humid air continues to push northwards. With it, quite a lot of cloud and the chance for one or two of those showers and thunderstorms. If they do crop up, they could bring a lot of rain, perhaps some squally winds, maybe some hail thrown in, especially across eastern england, but many spots will avoid the showers and stay dry. 19 to maybe 27 or 28 degrees down towards the south—east. Now, through sunday night, we will see further showers and thunderstorms, perhaps most especially across eastern england. But low pressure's swirling in from the west, and that means from monday, there will be a lot of cloud, there will be some outbreaks of rain. Some of that rain will be heavy, possibly thundery. It could really be quite misty and murky around some coasts out towards the west, but we will see some spells of sunshine as well. Still getting up to around 25 degrees across parts of east anglia, but out towards the west, things will be turning cooler and fresher. And that sets the theme, really, through the middle part of the week — some cooler conditions, some rain at times. It might warm up again, though, for some of us by the end of the week. Live from washington. This is bbc news. A russian strike on an apartment complex and a playground in ukraine's eastern city of kharkiv kills at least seven people. And ukraine's president fires the commander of the country's air force, days after a deadly fighterjet crash. Plus: another deadly strike on an aid convoy in gaza. Hello. I'm helena humphrey. We begin in ukraine, where a russian air strike killed at least seven people on friday in the city of kharkiv. Among those killed was a 14—year—old girl on a playground. The six others were killed when the strike hit an apartment buiding. Many others were wounded, including 20 who are in a severe condition according to the regional governor. Ukrainian officials said the area was hit by a guided bomb. Kharkiv has come under heavy russian attacks for months. Our correspondent abdujalil abdurasulov has the latest. The city of kharkiv is located 30 kilometres from the russian border so moscow targets the city on a regular basis using bombs, using drones and guided bombs as well, and for many people in kharkiv their life is basically russian roulette. Each day they can only guess who and what moscow will target next. Today, russian bombs killed people in an apartment block. They also killed a 14—year—old girl in a playground. The guided bombs that moscow used to attack kharkiv,