AI can crack over 50% of passwords

Welcome back to The Daily Update — This week’s news has been dominated by AI-related cybersecurity concerns, and unfortunately today is no different. Here’s the full lineup:

🗞️ The Latest in AI: AI can crack over 50% of passwords

🤖 AI Tool of the Day: Work smarter with Google Workspace Labs

📸 Business Spotlight: Google and UMG negotiate AI music tool

🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits

Read time: 2 minutes

🗞️ The Latest in AI: AI can crack over 50% of passwords

Cybersecurity firm Home Security Heroes used an AI password cracker to run through 15,600,000 common passwords. PassGAN was able to crack 51% of these passwords in less than a minute.

Key Findings:

• 51% of common passwords can be cracked in under a minute.

• 65% can be cracked in less than an hour.

• 71% can be cracked in less than a day.

• 81% can be cracked in less than a month.

• It takes PassGAN less than six minutes to crack any kind of 7 character password, even if it includes symbols.

How to protect your passwords:

• Make them at least 15 characters long.

• Use a combination of uppercase characters, lowercase characters, numbers and symbols.

• Avoid obvious password patterns.

• Change passwords regularly and avoid using the same password on multiple sites/accounts.

The bottom line: Protecting your password has always been important, but AI is already presenting new threats to your sensitive information and accounts.

Click here to learn more.

🤖 AI Tool of the Day: Work smarter with Google Workspace Labs

Google Workspace Labs offers a variety of AI features that can help you work more efficiently across Google’s suite of free web applications. Users can sign up for free to test these generative AI tools powered by Duet AI.

Features available today:

• Write with AI in Google Docs.

• Create or refine emails in Gmail.

• Create images with AI in Google Slides.

• Organize with AI in Google Sheets.

• Create background images in Google Meet.

Click here to learn more.

📸 Business Spotlight: Google and UMG negotiate AI music tool

Google and Universal Music Group are deciding whether to license artists’ melodies and vocals for AI-generated music. UMG and Google are working to develop a tool for users to create AI-generated music using an artist’s voice, lyrics or sounds.

Key points:

• A deal would pay copyright holders for the right to create the music, while artists would have the choice to opt in.

• Universal Music represents high-profile artists like Drake, Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift.

• Warner Music Group is discussing a similar product with Google.

• Artists have split opinions on the potential use of AI in music.

Why it matters: This is a landmark moment for AI-generated music. If a deal is reached it will revolutionize the industry. If labels decide against the deal it will be a long time before we see high-quality AI music.

Click here to learn more.

🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits

• White House: DARPA launches two-year competition to build AI-powered cyber defenses. This is part of an ongoing White House initiative to make software more secure.

• Google: The redesigned Arts & Culture app includes an AI-generated poem postcards feature.

• Transparency: TikTok is making it easier to disclose if content was generated by AI.

• Gaming: Roblox aims to create a generative AI design tool that can create 3D models from text prompts.

Have questions or thoughts on today’s newsletter? Reply to this email and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks for reading The Daily Update!

Jack

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