WASHINGTON (ANP/RTR) - Een AI-gegenereerde afbeelding van Donald Trump als Jezus is de Amerikaanse president op veel kritiek komen te staan. De afbeelding die Trump zondag op zijn Truth Social-account plaatste, is inmiddels verwijderd.

Op de afbeelding was te zien hoe Trump, gehuld in rood-wit gewaad, een ogenschijnlijk zieke man helend een hand op het hoofd legt. Om hem heen zijn militairen, een biddende burger en een arts te zien. Boven hem de Amerikaanse vlag, een adelaar en enkele gevechtsvliegtuigen. Met in de lucht iets wat lijkt op dolende zielen, waarvan er een de kroon van het Vrijheidsbeeld lijkt te dragen.

In verschillende media klonk kritiek op de afbeelding. Onder meer door podcastpresentator Riley Gaines, van het doorgaans Trumpgezinde Fox News. "Denkt hij dit echt?" vraagt ze zich af. Isabel Brown van The Daily Wire schrijft op X dat "niets er meer toe doet dan Jezus", om de afbeelding vervolgens "eerlijk gezegd walgelijk en onaanvaardbaar" te noemen.

Paus

Trump plaatste de afbeelding kort nadat hij was uitgevallen tegen paus Leo. Die noemde hij tijdens Orthodox Pasen op zondag "zwak wat betreft misdaad" en "verschrikkelijk voor buitenlands beleid". Een dag eerder had de paus opgeroepen tot een einde aan oorlogen.

Ook die uitingen kwamen Trump op kritiek te staan. Zo noemde de Italiaanse premier Giorgia Meloni Trumps "woorden over de Heilige Vader onaanvaardbaar. De paus is het hoofd van de katholieke kerk, en het is normaal en zijn recht om op te roepen tot vrede en alle vormen van oorlog te veroordelen".

Na de dood van paus Franciscus in 2025 plaatste Trump ook al een religieus getinte AI-afbeelding van zichzelf, toen als paus.

TEHERAN (ANP/RTR) - Volgens het Iraanse ministerie van Defensie dreigt de energiecrisis in de wereld te escaleren door de Amerikaanse blokkade van de zeeën rond Iran. Een woordvoerder stelt dat de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump de energiemarkten nog minder stabiel maakt dan die al waren.

Iran laat al wekenlang zeer weinig schepen door de Straat van Hormuz, waar een groot deel van de wereldwijd geproduceerde olie doorheen moet. Trump eiste een volledige heropening, maar toen die uitbleef, besloot hij zelf ook de wateren bij Iran te blokkeren.

De Amerikaanse nieuwszender CBS News bericht dat sinds het instellen van de blokkade zeker twee schepen bij de Straat van Hormuz zijn omgedraaid. Het is niet duidelijk of die zijn weggestuurd door de Amerikanen of dat ze uit eigen beweging wegvaren.

De Voedsel- en Landbouworganisatie van de Verenigde Naties (FAO) stelt ook dat een verlenging of uitbreiding van de crisis in de Straat van Hormuz kan leiden tot een voedselramp. Voedselproducenten zijn niet alleen afhankelijk van brandstoffen om hun machines te laten werken, maar ook van kunstmest. Veel van dat middel komt ook uit de landen rond de Perzische Golf.

Northern Irishman moves the needle like no one else in his sport, even more so after his thrilling Masters defence

Levels of greatness need not always be defined by numbers. Nick Faldo’s six majors to Rory McIlroy’s five prior to events at Augusta National on Sunday gave the Englishman the edge in the eyes of many in respect of Europe’s finest ever golfer. That McIlroy had already won the career grand slam of majors, therefore passing every test his sport has to offer, meant he was more worthy of the crown. Those who want to add Harry Vardon and a bygone age to the conversation should check the Jersey man’s scoring for his septet of major wins.

It is the nature of McIlroy’s achievement that sets him apart. Retaining the Masters for major No 6 places McIlroy in lofty company – Faldo, Phil Mickelson and Lee Trevino. He is suddenly one shy of Arnold Palmer. Gary Player and the non-US record of nine is a legitimate goal. Yet watching McIlroy right until the final hole at Augusta National served as a reminder that it is the addictive, thrilling style of his output that is worthy of the highest praise. The Northern Irishman was half a hole from Masters glory, shunting galleries back 50 yards so he could visualise a recovery shot from a forest. Love or loathe McIlroy, you simply cannot take eyes off him.

The group named ShinyHunters have accessed a third party server and have given the company a deadline of 14 April to enter ransom negotiations

Rockstar Games, the studio behind Grand Theft Auto, has been the target of a cyberattack for the second time in three years. A hacker group called ShinyHunters said it would release data stolen from the company if ransom demands were not met.

ShinyHunters initially gave Rockstar a 14 April deadline to enter negotiations, having gained access to company servers operated by a third party.

US bank has the Claude model and is working closely with the tech firm to improve cyber protection

Goldman Sachs’s chief executive, David Solomon, has said he is “hyper-aware” of the capabilities of Anthropic’s Mythos AI model and is working “closely” with the tech firm after it issued warnings about the cybersecurity risk it poses.

The US bank had been monitoring the rapid advances in artificial intelligence, including large language models (LLMs), as part of wider efforts to protect itself from hackers.

TMTG drops defamation claim over report that prosecutors were investigating payments received as possible money laundering

Donald Trump’s media corporation has dropped a defamation claim against the Guardian and two other defendants over a report that federal prosecutors were investigating $8m in payments the company received from entities with ties to Vladimir Putin as possible money laundering.

A filing in the 12th judicial circuit in Sarasota county, Florida, on Friday confirmed that Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), the parent company of the president’s Truth Social platform, was withdrawing its claims without prejudice, meaning it could refile the lawsuit at a later date.

The cybersecurity industry is obsessing over Anthropic’s new model, Claude Mythos Preview, and its effects on cybersecurity. Anthropic said that it is not releasing it to the general public because of its cyberattack capabilities, and has launched Project Glasswing to run the model against a whole slew of public domain and proprietary software, with the aim of finding and patching all the vulnerabilities before hackers get their hands on the model and exploit them.

There’s a lot here, and I hope to write something more considered in the coming week, but I want to make some quick observations.

One: This is very much a PR play by Anthropic—and it worked. Lots of reporters are breathlessly repeating Anthropic’s talking points, without engaging with them critically. OpenAI, presumably pissed that Anthropic’s new model has gotten so much positive press and wanting to grab some of the spotlight for itself, announced its model is just as scary, and won’t be released to the general public, either.

Two: These models do demonstrate an increased sophistication in their cyberattack capabilities. They write effective exploits—taking the vulnerabilities they find and operationalizing them—without human involvement. They can find more complex vulnerabilities: chaining together several memory corruption bugs, for example. And they can do more with one-shot prompting, without requiring orchestration and agent configuration infrastructure.

Three: Anthropic might have a good PR team, but the problem isn’t with Mythos Preview. The security company Aisle was able to replicate the vulnerabilities that Anthropic found, using older, cheaper, public models. But there is a difference between finding a vulnerability and turning it into an attack. This points to a current advantage to the defender. Finding for the purposes of fixing is easier for an AI than finding plus exploiting. This advantage is likely to shrink, as ever more powerful models become available to the general public.

Four: Everyone who is panicking about the ramifications of this is correct about the problem, even if we can’t predict the exact timeline. Maybe the sea change just happened, with the new models from Anthropic and OpenAI. Maybe it happened six months ago. Maybe it’ll happen in six months. It will happen—I have no doubt about it—and sooner than we are ready for. We can’t predict how much more these models will improve in general, but software seems to be a specialized language that is optimal for AIs.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about security in what I called “the age of instant software,” where AIs are superhumanly good at finding, exploiting, and patching vulnerabilities. I stand by everything I wrote there. The urgency is now greater than ever.

I was also part of a large team that wrote a “what to do now” report. The guidance is largely correct: We need to prepare for a world where zero-day exploits are dime-a-dozen, and lots of attackers suddenly have offensive capabilities that far outstrip their skills.

Van een fysiek tekort aan kerosine is nog geen sprake. Wel zorgt de oorlog in Iran en de sluiting van de Straat van Hormuz voor grote onzekerheid op luchthavens. De passagier betaalt al de prijs.