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Was this article written by an AI language model? Is it true or were the facts fabricated? How would you even know? What about that video you just viewed of a politician? Was it really her? Did she really say that?
For all its potential Generate AI can be misused for disinformation, deepfakes, and other manipulated content, provoking serious social, political, and economic repercussions at scale, such as influencing elections, perverting public discourse, spreading conspiracy theories and other disinformation, distorting markets, and inciting violence. As the tech improves it will be harder to determine truth, undermining trust.
To combat misuse the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is spearheading an open Global Challenge to Build Trust in the Age of Generative AI that will be conducted by a unique coalition of multilateral organizations, governments, companies, academic institutions, and civil society organizations.

Read on to learn more about this story and the week's most important technology news impacting business.

E-fuel, a clean fuel source made from hydrogen and CO2 that can be used in traditional combustion engines and distributed using networks that already exist, has the potential to revolutionize the global energy supply, replacing fossil-based fuels in ships, airplanes as well as trucks and cars, with as much as 90% lower emissions.

Building the global infrastructure to support mass uptake of green hydrogen – a type of e-fuel which the International Renewable Energy Agency estimates could account for as much as 12% of global energy use by 2050 -is a systems-level challenge. It will require young technology companies, governments, and large corporates in traditional businesses to cooperate in new ways. German Power-to-X scaleup Ineratec is at the center of a growing number of these collaborations.

On July 4 Ineratec announced that it had formed a public-private collaboration with Germany's GIZ, arm of the German government, to promote the production of green hydrogen in Chile. Under the International Hydrogen Ramp-Up program, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, the partnership, which also includes global iindustrial services group Ferristaal, plans to demonstrate a technically feasible and commercially viable e-fuels plant using modular synthesis units. Ineratec’s approach is to place its modular plants next to sources of renewable energy, such as off-shore wind farms, and then convert the energy into green fuels that can be easily stored and transported for use by different sectors.

The German scale-up, which has raised a total of €55 million from government grants and investors that include the corporate venture arm of Japanese car maker Honda, French aviation firm Safran, French global energy company Engie and Münchmeyer Petersen & Co. (MPC) Group, a German family-owned, global group active in shipping, shipbuilding and industrial services and project development in the field of renewables, plans to target each of these areas. It already has partnerships in place with energy companies across Europe and has opened 13 demonstration facilities. It is building a commercial-scale plant in Frankfurt -currently the largest of its kind in the world – which will, among other off-takes, supply sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) directly to the city’s international airport. It has additionally signed an agreement to build a Power-to-Liquid plant in the port of Amsterdam with the goal of producing up to 35,000 tonnes of e-fuels per year.

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Trade finance, the financial instruments and products that are used by companies to facilitate international trade and commerce generates an estimated 28 billion pieces of paper globally every year. Enigio, a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer, is out to change that by providing freely transferable digital documents that are legally compliant in applications such as bills of of lading, promissory notes, bank guarantees and warehouse receipts. The Swedish scale-up uses blockchain and cryptographic key pairs to ensure the consistency, integrity and traceability of the digital data and protect it from manipulation. Clients include Lloyds Bank and Mercore, a global trade focused fintech group, as well as large corporates and logistics providers.

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At its virtual Inspire conference on July 18 Microsoft said customers would pay $30 per user, per month for its AI copilot in Microsoft 365, which promises to draft emails in Outlook, pen documents in Word and make virtually all an employee's data accessible via the prompt of a chatbot.

The voluntary upgrade is on top of publicly listed, monthly plans ranging from $12.50 per user to $57, meaning the copilot could triple costs for some Microsoft customers, according to a Reuters report.