This week, laras sniffing around the scientists who are bringing historic smells back to life. So, i guess ijust put my nose in here. Yes. Hmm. Delightful. Were on the high Tech Farm in iceland where theyre Turning Algae into something more appetising. This is hummus, and its blue. Its not a bad thing. But it is blue. Anyway, well also meet the actors who say their voices have been manipulated by ai. This is Formula Student, a World Series of events that took place this summer, featuring Electric Cars Built by teams of students from 100 universities across the globe. 0n 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 theres acceleration. Its a drag race, basically, and its this last challenge that one team, amz racing, absolutely blasted last year, going from 0 to 100km an hour in. Well, ill 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 teams swiss hq. And up here is the Electronics Department at amz racing. Were 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 years 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, itd definitely be fun and really interesting, but im not sure yet. Well 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 years 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 100km 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 100km 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 cant even blink. Its already over. Do you have time to do any steering, or do you have to hope its 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 its just intuitive. Now, when i visited amz a few weeks before this summers competition, i got to witness the very first day of testing this Years 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 . Im 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, icelands not the first place youd 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 theyre cultivating leafy greens. More like a lab than a typical farm, this is whats 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 theres 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 countrys most powerful geothermal plant. While icelands northerly location and climate may seem a disadvantage when it comes to farming, its the limitless supply of clean energy thats also helped it to innovate. The glowing lights take a little getting used to and, inside, its like nothing ive seen before. This Tech Firm has invented what it calls an energy to food platform. Now, this place is not your typicalfarm. Its 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. Its 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. Its a new way of thinking about food production. I this system uses a fraction of the land, a fraction of the water needed. Its carbon negative. Energy, C02 And Water thats all thats needed for this aquatic organism to grow. It photosynthesises. The algae is eating j c02, or its turning the c02 into biomass. Its 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 dont 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, doesnt seem hugely appetising. So, time to give it a try. This is hummus. Blue hummus . And its blue. Its not supposed i to be a punishment. Its not a bad thing. I suggest you try this here. 0k. It doesnt taste unusual at all. But then theres a surprise. Im not sure how i feel about this but, er. Try it. It doesnt taste of much. I think its more the texture. I think its going to take a bit more to wrap my head around this one. Maybe it will catch on but im not sure im ready for blue food just yet. Documents leaked to the Washington Post revealed the extent of amazons planned rebate of its virtual assistant alexa. The release will include a new smart Briefing Feature and a chatbot aimed at children. Access to the upgraded version of the system will require a page description. A us Energy Firm says it has made a major breakthrough in producing power from Nuclearfusion Breakthrough in producing power from Nuclear Fusion which replicates the same natural processes found within the sun, the biggest obstacle so far have been getting plasma to a high enough Density Level and then containing it within the reactor long enough rate to be useful. Generalatomic reactor long enough rate to be useful. General atomic say it has successfully used magnets and Deuterium Gas to contain superhot plasma at 20 above the current Plasma Density limit without it escaping for just over two seconds. Finally, the Barbie Phone has landed. The pay handset, a joint project from the company behind nokia and the Toy Maker Mattel has no App Store and is limited to basic Texting And Phone calls. The Flip Phone does come with a range of stick on crystals. Manufacturers says it has 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 LinneaVoice 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 ai 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 couldnt believe it and out of pure curiosity, ijust started listening to the other voices thinking, maybe ill recognise someone i know, a colleague from the voiceover world, and thats 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 im 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 didnt need expensive usage rights. They were quite generic you know, do you need a dry cleaner in idaho . Were 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 theyve shared with us. We cant, 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 youre 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 whats going on in the Voice Actor cases are a field of law. Known as rights of publicity. The thing thats being copied is not a piece i of copyrighted work, but a piece of someones personality, right . And so then we get these personality rights, or rights of publicity, where 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 doesnt mean you can come whenever you want and have 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 companys website, but an ad still exists online where pauls 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 didnt 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 dont 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, its not innovation any more, its 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, thats just what theyre doing here in this lab. Hi, im lara. Hi, im 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, theyre trying to bring those things together. Here on your Computer Weve 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. Were 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. Theres almost something soothing about it. This is actually frankincense, a Tree Resin thats been used for thousands of years in religious ceremonies in the form of incense and in traditional medicine. I think my description was terrible. Wha