there's been a spike of new covid infections in tokyo, amid concern that the olympics has contributed to the surge. the japanese authorities say the surge will not affect the games but doctors are warning if something isn't done to control the spread, the city's healthcare system could be overwhelmed. president biden has told millions of american government workers and contractors to get vaccinated against coronavirus, or face compulsory testing and restrictions. mr biden is also offering a $100 payment for the newly—innoculated. the initiative follows a sharp rise in covid infections, fuelled by the delta variant. day 7 is underway at the tokyo olympics — with the sporting world hailing the united states�* newest gold—medal—winning gymnastics star, 18 year old sunisa lee. later all eyes will turn to the track, as the women 100 metres heats begin the athletics programme. now on bbc news — click.

as the world tries to emerge from the pandemic, the way we go about our lives is bound to be different — but exactly how is hard to say. on this week's show, we'll be seeing the buildings that are hoping to get to know us a bit better. and looking at how online shopping could be getting social. but first, we'll be finding out how the world of search is changing right before our eyes. the idea of visual search is nothing new. it's something we looked at a few years ago, where you search for something online by using a picture

rather than words. but the idea does seem to be gaining ground now, as 0mar mehtab has been finding out. omar: toys, animals, food — no need to type, just take a snap instead, and you will get a result, and that's thanks to something called visual search. you must have seen it popping up in your amazon shopping app, perhaps pinterest, even snapchat helping you find and buy products online. and there are also more useful applications like aipoly vision, which recognises and describes objects to its visually—impaired users. but possibly the most powerful image recognition tool of all of them is the google lens. it's been around for four years, but now it seems to be having its day, with the company claiming they have over three billion users logged every month.

and it's actually quite simple to use. first you point your phone at something — like my cat, here, neo. you press search, and then from there, the app asks google assistant what the object is that i'm pointing at. and it gives me an answer! it tells me he's a black cat, and, funnily enough, being a black cat, he might actually be good luck. didn't know that. so the lens app itself can translate text in front of you, where you can buy a shirt, and it can even help you cheat on your homework. and with google�*s insanely huge data bank, after years of searching and info gathering, the apps computer vision is pretty accurate, with machine learning in—built in case the algorithm misses anything. and lens is impressing in other unique ways. so, what i'm gonna do to test this out is take a picture of this view in front of me, zoom in a little bit, get past the trees, and there we go — the london skyline.

and a lot is going on here. what lens is doing is it's tapping in to google earth's 3d representation of the planet, it's pinpointing my location, matching the angle, and identifying the skyline from where i am. our mission is like, how do you get closer to how people naturally think about asking questions, so that we can answer them as, you know, seamlessly as possible, without the user having to do mental gymnastics of, right, now i need to translate it into a way that the computer can understand. and so to test it in the field, i went along with television's fred sirieix, to trade being a matre d' to a horticulturist for a day. a raspberry! ok, a dense flower. it shows the specific cooler. it makes you realise the diversity of all the flora, right? it makes me realise how much i don't know.

but as fred was also finding out, it still isn't perfect. i'm getting something different every time i click on it. that is the thing, you see. so what is going on? i have no idea. even with google�*s vast resources and years spent training lens, it can still get things wrong. but, for the most part, it almost always nails it. now, google lens focuses on objects and out of curiosity i thought, "what if i take a picture of my mug?" so, here we go, picture of my face, and it comes up with. ..nothing! at all. it doesn't have facial recognition enabled. but then i wondered. ..will it ever be a part of it? well, i directly asked google, and they were a bit vague. they never actually mentioned facial recognition at all. now, this doesn't necessarily mean that they'll move into that space. it's an absolute minefield and hugely controversial. but there is a tool already out

there that does focus on faces — pimeyes. it works similarly to lens, in that after uploading an image, it scans through more than 900 million images from across the net to find matches. and it's pretty accurate. i've never seen that picture of me before. what website is this? the website itself says that it believes you have the right to find yourself on the internet and protect your privacy and image, but it's been slammed by a number of outlets for how it can be dangerously misused — potentially to stalk others and stripping away our privacy. and that's the thing — there are no real restrictions. despite the site saying that it's for searching for yourself, what is actually stopping me from searching for someone else? nothing. what, a couple of t&c and privacy policy boxes? all right, tick, tick, done, and i've got a result. also, i've been able to freely

buy a membership that allows me to have up to 25 premium searches daily. why would i need that many, if i'm just going to be searching for myself? with their permission, i decided to look up some work colleagues. and it really, really does feel like a stalker�*s dream. that you could take a picture of anyone that you see on the street and, with this tool, find hundreds more online. and that's worrying. now, it doesn't trawl through most social media sites like the controversial clearview ai does, nor is it as powerful, but it can still cause a magnitude of privacy issues. so we reached out to pimeyes about our concerns and they said that it is technically impossible for them to verify the person who is conducting the search, as they don't identify people in any way.

but this means the lack of any safeguarding means that there could be a lot of issues for other people. what's happening online, and in these tools that you can have on your phone, makes the stalking and learning of people's patterns very easy. the people who are hurt by these technologies are not the people who are building them. again, it's facial recognition technology or object recognition technology in general. we just need to think about, are these tools for everyone? visual searching can become the next big way that we interact with the world. but how these tools develop and how they're being used over time is something we should be keeping an eye on. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that samsung hinted more affordable foldable phones would be unveiled at its unpacked event on august 11. netflix announced it would add video games for subscribers at no extra costs. and a daylong strike of uber

and lyft drivers in american for better pay and conditions. and another billionaire blasted into space. this time, the turn ofjeff bezos, amazon founder and world's richest human. the new shepard rocket was in flight for ten minutes and ten seconds. richard branson, whose virgin craft was first two weeks ago, sent a congratulatory tweet. three robots crashed into each other on the ocado factory�*s grid, disrupting grocery deliveries. the world's first 3d printed steel footbridge was revealed in amsterdam in the city's red light district. the a0 foot, six tonne mx 3d smart bridge will incorporate sensors which researchers can use to analyse foot traffic. and finally, this week, we saw this giant robot, who's learning to pick up

cigarette butts on the beach — but it needs your help. this is the beachbot. it uses microsoft's trove artificial intelligence system to help it work. people send in photos of cigarette butts to help teach it what to look for. a global hub that's felt the silence of the pandemic. so how do we bring back the buzz? even now, as things open up here in london, the streets may be alive with diners and drinkers, but many office buildings are at a fraction of capacity. we often talk about how the pandemic has changed the way that we live and work, but what we don't know is which of these changes are here to stay. so planning for the future and trying to get back to some sort of new normal could be rather challenging.

renting and running large office space is costly. and we're yet to know how many people will spend how much time in them. so while we've seen so—called "smart buildings" pop up for some years now, never has the need for flexible space and a safe and efficient flow of people felt more important. this is 22 bishopsgate, a new building that's been designed to house 12,000 staff, and, from the ground up, technology has been built in. in fact, if you're an employee, then you enter the building by using an app. as soon as you walk in, bluetooth beacons will recognise you. and if you're a visitor, well, you get sent a qr code. there's a facial recognition option too, no standard reception desk, and even the lifts can know where to take you. and if you'd arrived by the much—encouraged method of cycling, the app would have told you where there

was a bike space too. and, once you're at work, you can also book a meeting room through the app, and that means when you arrive you don't need to touch anything — you canjust walk straight in — and, if you don't turn up on time, it won't be long before it's made available to someone else. and once you enter the room, well, up here is a movement sensor, so it can keep track of the number of people who are in here and exactly where they're standing, so if the air—conditioning needs to be turned up or down, that can happen automatically. there's also an air—quality sensor over here. the air in this building, at the moment, is pretty good, but if it does become poorer, then the air holding unit can try and purify it. the smart space�*s platform's ai is still learning, and eventually it should be able to make its own decisions, but right now it does still need a human to make those changes based on the incoming information. the benefits of the smartphone bringing all these systems into a single place,

we can then have those actual insights from the data that is generated. for instance, on this floor, if the co2 levels exceed 600ppm, we can then increase the fresh air to this space. so, you haven't had to think about that. so, in an old building, you might be feeling tired — here, that's not going to happen. all of the data that's being collected through people's phones and the sensors in the building is brought together here on what's called the digital twin. and this gives the opportunity to the building manager to be able to make any changes as and when they're needed. so that means that the climate or the lighting can easily be amended, and if you want to zoom in to one spot, you canjust tap on a table, you can make this bigger, or smaller — you can really interact with it pretty well. it's almost like being in there right now. then over here, we've got the air quality, and also the energy that's being used in the building. and this is a vital part — there's no point in air conditioning where there are unexpectedly no staff, for instance. then we can change the view and look at the whole building. i do this over here. i'm not sure if i'm

tall enough. i hope the building manager is taller than me! we have the whole building, pretty much struck down to my height. it feels like all the action is done here. we are there. what's happening? oh no, it's on its side. the first rule of click — we can break anything. but does everyone want to embrace this tech? and what if you don't have a smartphone, or a flat battery, do you get the day off? now, if you're completely resistant to smartphones, there is a facility to get a plastic card, but you will miss out on all the other great things in the app, such as being able to get the offers and discounts in the marketplace, or book the restaurants or any of the facilities, so it's definitely a mobile—first building. what data is it collecting? is it getting the sort of detail of someone moving around the building, or is it not to that level? and then what's done with that data? no, totally, so we don't actually track individuals, but we do track anonymised data on where people visit within the building. so that allows us to provide

an experience where we can push you an event, so, there's a coffee offer in the mezzanine level, that goes through using the location services that are available on the smartphone. other companies are in this space, too, retrofitting older buildings, as well. honeywell's healthy buildings is also hoping to create a more frictionless office experience and make spaces more versatile to cater for an unpredictable working future. in light of covid, it's also added video analytics options for social distancing and mask wearing. or an app like comfy can provide similar functions, also giving a bit of control of the building to those who work there. within the app, there are lots of options, like being able to book your workspace so you can go into the calendar and figure out exactly what desk you want to sit at. it can also find your colleagues. it doesn't mean that you can

follow them around the building but if they sat down at a desk and logged in to that particular spot on the app, then you will know where to find them — or where to avoid them. it's been updated to accommodate for planning flexible working a bit better, and also could provide some reassurance to those who are nervous about returning to the office. ventilation is quite key at the moment — everyone�*s paying a lot of attention to it — and just having that control at your fingertips. from a practical perspective, it's a lot easier for me to change a temperature on my phone than it is to send an e—mail, have the team that manage that get the maintenance guy to go out, log into something and make changes. yes, the app can simplify things and provide useful anonymised insight to employers. you've just got to be convinced of the desirability of your smartphone yet again being the control to your life. now during the pandemic, most of us have been doing a lot more online shopping and, of course, the tech giants have taken notice of this. and as a result, a whole new world of virtual retail is opening up and it could be becoming a lot more embedded in our everyday activities.

osman iqbal has been finding out more. osman: live shopping channels. they've been a roaring success since the �*80s, generating billions in sales and blazing a trail in home shopping. get two pairs for £20. and with our offer... and while internet shopping has taken over, here at the studios of ideal shopping direct, you can see that the model is still alive and well. but now, big tech wants to turn social media into one big shopping channel, but they don't want you to realise. in the past year, social media companies have introduced loads of new features to tie shopping in to everything we do on their platforms.

if that's youtube offering up things to buy from videos, or our screenshots being scanned for products. the problem is we used to go into these apps for entertainment. consciously and subconsciously, we're now going to be shopping all the time, even if we don't want to be. they're going to make it more immersive, more visual — whatever they can do to take that lucrative behaviour from us and just dial it up. social media giant instagram has even redesigned their interface and put shopping front and centre. what we are making available to businesses is to help make their content, their existing content, shopable. if you're posting a beautiful image, you know, and there is an item that's available for purchase within that, make that shopable, make that actionable. 90% of people on instagram follow a business and people

come to our platform to be inspired by new brands and to find new products — that's what they want to do on instagram. instagram, tiktok, facebook and others are letting businesses take customers to check out within their platforms, so they can pay without ever having to leave the apps. but what do the social media companies get from this deal? well, the answer, as always, is collecting even more data about your habits. now that social media platform knows your payment details, they also know the types of things that you buy, they know more about your decision—making process, and it allows them to provide advertisers with even more targeted information. so you may have tuned into a live shopping channel before or you may never have

even seen one, but get used to it because live—stream shopping is vital to the social media giants�* strategies. but it's been souped up for a new generation with influencers, interactivity and fast payments. this model is already massively successful in china. and even kim kardashian has had a go. thank you for tuning in! so, unsurprisingly, the us tech giants are waking up to its potential. one of the most powerful aspects of social media is that it's a passive experience. you don't really have a specific goal when you go to instagram. your goal, really, is to be entertained in the two minutes you're waiting for the bus to come or the microwave to beep. and that makes you really susceptible to manipulation. that means that whatever is thrown at you, you are willing to accept in the name of entertainment.

you may be shopping online for more than just products. now, the 50 million people around the world who consider themselves creatives want you to pay for their content. traditionally, if they weren't plugging brands,

they were not earning money. and the last year has meant more have realised they need their audiences to pay them directly. the coronavirus pandemic was a wake—up call for a lot of people who realised that they needed to come up with a different way to make money, if it wasn't going to be working at a cafe or running their hair salon, and a lot of those people that we saw who were not able to do their comedy act at the local bar any more, those people went to instagram and youtube and tiktok and tried to build their personalities there. just like online newspapers, creators are increasingly introducing paywalls and asking the users to subscribe, tip and buy. now, the thought is you can actually earn a living from only 1000 fans. let's say each subscribes to your content for £5 a month. now, it's not a fortune, but it's a decent amount of money. hey, everyone! for us, that means wanting to spend some cash. but for creatives with small audiences, it means they can build creative careers online. and now, social media companies are giving creators the tools to charge users. even twitter is giving users the ability to charge their followers. would you really pay to read extra tweets? well, you're going to have to. so, get your wallet out, as your social media feed is now going to become a living mall — if that's creatives charging you directly for their videos or live

shopping finding a new home on a much smaller screen. now, these days, it seems to take longer than ever to wait for a lift. there may have been fewer people out and about but with social distancing, we cannot all be packed in. and also, you really don't want to get stuck in a lift with someone right now — not anybody — and that could be why smart lifts have been gaining popularity, as data could offer the solution. the way we help is that we make sure lifts are up and running when you come to the office and you've been maybe waiting more in the metro, more in the subway, and you just want to get to your office and you don't have to wait in a huge queue because out of four lifts, only one is working, for example. the problem with lifts is that they don't work well. basically, they break down on an average of four times a year. people get stuck into them for hours and hours — a total of 1,400 years of stuck people every year in the world. so a smart box is connected to each lift and, using ai, traffic patterns are worked out from the data gathered.

it means that breakdowns can be anticipated and lifts can be made available on the floors they are needed most. we can provide to the building manager clear analytics of which floor are the most used, how are the traffic patterns during the day, which are the door cycles, and how they can accurately reprogram the lift patterns to match the traffic patterns of the building. and wheelchair users could have an even longer wait, but that could be about to change. if you're waiting for one of these kone lifts, you can use a connected smart device instead of reaching for the button, which is potentially useful for wheelchair users. but the interface is also being developed so that people needing that extra space can be allocated lifts that are less crowded, or evenjust dedicated to them — which should be pretty efficient. that's it for this week. as ever, you can keep up

with the team on social media. find us on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter at @bbcclick and we'll be back next week. thanks for watching. bye— bye. hello there. storm evert is bringing a quite exceptionally windy spell of weather for this time of year across the south of the uk, with a met office amber warning issued for a good part of cornwall and the isles of scilly. it's all because of this area of low pressure, quite a small low, but quite a powerful one tracking its way eastwards, with the strongest winds on the southern flank. you can see the amber warning area here across cornwall

into the isles of scilly. those are the wind gusts in the black circles. but the winds also really quite brisk across a good part of devon, dorset, into hampshire, up the bristol channel and across the south coast of wales as well. so, some damage and disruption quite possible as we start the day, and with this curl of wet weather as well, some heavy and potentially thundery bursts of rain at times. our storm tracks its way eastwards across england and wales through the day. for northern ireland and scotland, calmer weather, quite a lot of cloud and some showers, some of which could be heavy, but a few sunny spells breaking through as well. stays windy for a good part of the day down towards the south, but those winds will slowly be easing as we head towards the end of the afternoon. temperatures, well, a bit disappointing, really, for this time of year, 17—20 degrees. now, you can see our swirl of low pressure clearing away eastwards as we head through friday night. into the early hours of saturday, fairly large areas of cloud, one or two showers and some clear spells. temperatures between 12—15 degrees as we begin the weekend. so, the remnants of storm evert clearing away eastwards. high pressure trying to build in from the west, but not having much luck. stranded between low

pressure and high pressure, we will have a northerly wind through the weekend, and that means it will, generally speaking, be rather cool for the time of year. we will see some spells of sunshine, but also some showers, some of which could be quite heavy. quite a lot of cloud, i think, as we start saturday morning. some outbreaks of patchy rain here and there. some sunny spells developing, but some pretty sharp showers, especially down towards the south. could be the odd flash of lightning, the odd rumble of thunder. in the sunniest spots, up to 21—22 degrees. and then as we look ahead to sunday, again quite a lot of cloud, some showers or potentially longer spells of rain, the odd thunderstorm down towards the south later on. we will see some sunny spells, but temperatures quite disappointing, especially in northern scotland. here, just 111—15 degrees.

welcome to bbc news, i'm ben boulos. our top stories: alarm injapan — that home success at the tokyo olympics could be fuelling the continuing rise in covid cases. there is a time lag between the rise of infection and the rise of the seriously ill patients inundating the hospitals and leading to the collapse of the medical system. president biden tells millions of federal workers to get vaccinated or face regular testing, but there is a cash incentive. i know that paying people to get vaccinated might sound unfair to folks who've gotten vaccinated already, but here's the deal — if incentives help us beat the virus, i believe we should use them.