this is bbc news, the headlines... moscow says it's pulling its troops out of the ukrainian city of kherson. it's the only provincial capital russia has managed to capture since the start of its invasion. but over the past weeks, ukraine has been conducting a counter—offensive to push the occupiers out of the area. presidentjoe biden has described tuesday's mid—term elections as a good day for democracy, and that voters had spoken clearly about their concerns. republicans are expected to take control of the house of representatives — but mr biden said "a giant red wave did not happen", as had been predicted. the iranian football authorities says they're planning disciplinary action after a beach soccer player made an apparent gesture of solidarity with ongoing anti—government protests during a game in dubai.

saeed piramoun was seen mimicking cutting his hair — a symbol of the demonstrations sparked by the death of mahsa amini. now on bbc news, click. this week, metaverse marc tells real marc how it is. you had help from the likes of me — the trimmer, younger—looking virtual version of you that has helped with all of these stories on the telly. it's true. seven decades on, facial recognition reunites one holocaust survivor with a photo from her past. yeah, that's me.

yeah, for sure. and spencer meets the robot doing improvised comedy. but unlike you humans, i can learn from my mistakes. ha—ha—ha. don't laugh, this is serious stuff. whether we know it or not, whether we feel it or not, we are all connected. we're all made from the same stuff. and the testing ground here in london is a brief reminder of that. this collaboration between artists and scientists at king's college london is an illustration of how our physical and digital environments come together in today's society, sometimes in seemingly unconnected ways. and the sim project makes art out of the small chips that have for some years been central to our communications, interactions,

and even our identity. ultimately, this technology is about people and our connection to each other. as we prepare to exist in more than one place at a time. if the hype�*s to be believed, we're about to enter a whole new virtual universe, but i think it's potentially misunderstood, misadvertised and pretty unknown right now. it's the metaverse. but what is it? yeah, who knows? is it the sd internet? is it a cluster of virtual spaces, or is itjust cyberspace from the 1990s? this whole thing has been muddled further by facebook, which liked the idea so much it renamed itself meta. possibly so whenever we talk about the metaverse, we think of them. so many questions, yet so few definitive answers. but marc cieslak is trying to enlighten us. in the last few years, we've heard lots about the metaverse and how it's going to change our lives online.

i've made several stories about it and the effect that it's going to have... yeah, but you had help. i beg your pardon? you had help from the likes of me — the trimmer, younger—looking virtual version of you that has helped with all of these stories on the telly. well, if you know so much about it, perhaps you'd like to explain what the metaverse actually is, then. my pleasure. if we think of the current internet as something that we look at, the metaverse is the next version of the net, that we're inside, experiencing as a 3d avatar like this one. that's the broad idea. it doesn't truly exist yet. but games like fortnite and roblox offer us glimpse of what the metaverse could be. virtual realms, which play host to pop concerts, fashion shows and sports... ah! ..as well as allowing us

to play games, and mashing up different activities across genres and industries. but why would we want to experience our online lives in this way? what advantages does it offer over the internet as we know it today? to get the answer to that question, we're back in the real world with craig donato. he's chief business officer at online platform roblox. craig, are we really going to conduct our lives online in this way? our position is that for younger users, people that grew up with interactive online gaming, the metaverse is already here. it's fascinating to look at it through their eyes. they actually view reality differently from people like you and i, marc. we see, you know, there's the physical world and then the digital world, and for us, the digital world is actually less than the physical world, but for them it's a totally different thing. but humanity won't be alone in these online virtual worlds. greg cross is co—founder and ceo of a company specialising in al called soul machines.

he thinks we'll be sharing these spaces with digital people. if we're going to have to spend more and more of our time, i even on the internet,| you know, transacting and interacting digitally, - how do we provide that human connection? and we do that by providing . a digital workforce for a whole wide range of industries. what should we start with? one of the most interesting things we've learned - about deploying digital people in health care and education . is people often prefer- to interact with digital people because it removes the fear of humanjudgment from it. you know, a digital person. doesn't care whether you do the same lesson ten times. soul machines is already building digital celebrities such as jack nicklaus, de—aged from 82 to 35, and nba star carmelo anthony... i can't wait to see what we do next. as always, peace, and stay mellow. ..ai—powered avatars designed to interact with fans online.

but do you have any questions for me? imagine a world where maybe you're going shopping - in the metaverse. you could get served by one of our regular digital people... i hi, there. ..or you could have a digital version of marilyn monroe. i so these are some of the things that we imagine in the future. l but perhaps it's not digital people that we have to worry about, but the behaviour of real ones. i think it's about writing a whole new rule book, basically, to this way of interacting. this is not something we're used to. so i guess it's up to the stakeholders involved, like, you have the tech companies, you have governments and just even us as a society, and how we treat each other in these spaces. very little behaviour in the real world is i guided by what's law. most of our behaviour is really guided by social norms - and social constructs, | and it's important that those are represented in the metaverse. - and we're spending a lot of time working on that. | perhaps it's best to consider

steps to improve online safety and safety in the metaverse as a work in progress. the jury's still out when it comes to determining if the metaverse is ever going to be realised in the way mark zuckerberg thinks it will. meta's sunk $15 billion into its reality labs since the start of 2021. whichever way you cut it, that's a hell of a big bet. so i think that leaves us with plenty to think about and discuss. back to you now in the real world. that was marc, marc, and the other mark! yeah! how many spare marcs do we have? enough, i'm told. right. meanwhile, there seems to be a bit of a land grab going on for metaverse territory. yeah. multinational companies like nike, gucci, adidas and walmart are investing millions. but seeing as we're a way off it becoming a reality... virtual reality.

..does building it mean that users are going to follow? well, joe tidy has been trying to find out. there's a land grab taking place online. people and companies are racing to plant theirflags in virtual worlds. big brands with prime real estate in the real world are expanding fast into these crypto metaverses. but the true land grab is taking place in virtual worlds powered by bitcoin—style cryptocurrency technology. in these virtual worlds, everything's for sale. you can buy land as non—fungible tokens or nfts. this is like virtual real estate. in the same way that you own the deeds to a house when you buy it, if you own the nft of the land, the plot is yours. and there's been an explosion in interest. according to metaverse platform analysts at dappradar, nearly $2 billion has been spent in the past year on metaverse land. but it's notjust big corporations. i bought my first metaverse

parcel in july 2020. it was about 1,500 that i paid. i bought it really for exhibiting my own work, but also for running events, metaverse events, that would promote my art, but also other people's art. angie taylor is an artist who's been creating, selling and buying digital art for years. she owns plots in a platform called voxels, previously known as cryptovoxels. this is my gallery. it's called the london gallery, and i built it myself. as well as expressing herself through her gallery, angie also makes clothing for avatars. when i first entered cryptovoxels, i thought, i need an outfit. so i started making my own outfit and i decided to base it on myself at the age of about 18. at the time i had a huge red mohican and i used to wear seditionary t—shirts. you'll find little places like this gallery here where —

so you could come in here and buy a hat for your avatar. the fabricant in amsterdam is going all in. they only make digital clothes here. what's your favourite? this, i think, the one i'm wearing is my favourite. that sort of feels to me like it's elizabethan, maybe. yeah. amberjae slooten is the co—founder and lead designer for the fabricant. when we started, everybody called us crazy because they were like, "why would you need this?" but we very strongly believed in the idea that in the future people would wear the digital items. what we wanted to do is take the two things that clothing is apart. so on the one hand, you have clothing that is functional which keeps you warm and, you know, protects you. on the other hand, clothing is a form of self—expression that basically lets you share the message of who you are and with everybody around you, let's say. so to take those two apart is basically what we did, and that we can do

with technology only. we don't need anything else. the company is selling digital garments to customers for anywhere between $100 to thousands. their record sale was for a digital dress that someone spent $17,000 on. the company's just raised $14 million in funding and is hoping to grow as the metaverse materialises. like a lot of the people and companies we're talking to, you're investing in the metaverse. are you hopeful that you're early and the masses will come? yeah, i think there will be, for sure, like, a mass market in this, because if you think about the younger generation already, they already play games. like, for them there's no distinction between virtual and real. it's a natural evolution that we will be able to communicate from anywhere in the world any time with each other. but it still needs to be built. mateen is a successful metaverse land owner and nft collector.

i don't think people truly realise, or companies, truly realise how much money, capital resources, passion it takes to build out this metaverse, or parts of the metaverse. there'sjust so much momentum you need to be something that can stand the test over the next five years. the big tech vision of the metaverse is well on its way to achieving mainstream adoption. roblox, fortnite and minecraft have hundreds of millions of users and are developing more metaverse—style utility all the time. the crypto metaverses, despite being more true to the fully open vision of the metaverse, are clearly not drawing in the crowds yet. where is everybody? as you're moving through, you'll notice there's a lot of big white boxes. so these are the spaces that people buy up and then don't do anything with. it makes the area feel dead. in horizon worlds, meta's flagship virtual world, leaked internal reports also suggest that people are not being engaged for very long.

some analysts predict that these worlds will explode in the next ten years, with people spending six hours a day plugged in. but which version and which land these people will choose to populate is very much unknown. that wasjoe tidy, and now it's time for a look at this week's tech news. there's been a lot of speculation this week about what twitter look like under its new owner, elon musk. for one, he's suggested it will cost verified accounts $8 a month to keep their blue tick. what will he think of next? no idea! for the latest on this moving story, check out the bbc news website. some of the world's biggest venues are using weapon scanners that can't detect some knives. the company making them says they can spot all weapons, but the bbc�*s seen documents showing that they may fail to spot some blades and parts of bombs. evolv says it told venues of — quote — "all capabilities "and limitations". there needs to be more public

information and evaluation of these systems before they are rolled out. production of the iphone 1a may be impacted by a fresh covid lockdown in china's henan province. the measures will last seven days in the industrial area that houses apple's largest assembly line. don't forget, china still has very strict covid measures. and this is india's first 24/7 solar—powered village. more than 1,000 panels are keeping the lights on in madera in the west of the country, at a cost of nearly $10 million to install. the project has been hailed by the un for giving locals electricity at next to no cost, and helping to tackle climate change and poverty. as soon as my aunt heard the boots, she knew that she has to hide me. blanche fixler was a child in poland when the nazis came looking for her. she put me in a bed

and the germans came and they looked every little place. they looked in every corner. they even tapped on the bed. so i felt them tapping on the bed and i said, "you better not breathe or sneeze or anything or you'll be dead." blanche's mother and her siblings were murdered, but thanks to her aunt rose, who hid her, blanche incredibly, miraculously survived the holocaust. today, she has few photos from her childhood. many pictures from the 1930s and 1940s do survive, though, and hundreds are on display here in the museum ofjewish heritage in new york city. butjust like many other museums devoted tojewish heritage, a lot of the people in the photos here are unnamed. here, three men are being deported to a concentration camp. perhaps they don't know where they're going. we don't know. the museum says they don't

know who they are or what happened to them. it's a common story. we don't have the names for everybody. that's, you know, part of the problem. and i can't stress enough how important these photos are of individuals. we all know the figure — you know, six million, six million jews who were killed. but it's really one person six million times. every person has a name, every person has a face. but as members of that community have died, so too has the ability to directly identify others in archival photos. software engineer daniel pat has been working to help solve this problem using artificial intelligence. he calls the project from numbers to names. the way it works is that, let's say, for example, i you're looking for a photo of your family member, l you have a picture of them - from before, and you upload it. and we scan through hundreds of thousands of photos, - millions of faces in seconds to find the photos that - have the most likely i chance of being of your

own family member. his algorithm has scanned hundreds of thousands of pictures. using facial recognition technology, his programme links faces. a single picture of one person whose name we know can help identify that same person in another photo where we don't. so what we're looking i at here on the left, this is a photo of bronia bruenner, whose name now— is blanche fixler. so i uploaded this photoi on the left and it actually identifies all the faces in the photo. - but blanche is the one who's in the bottom left here. - and so now looking through i the search results, of course, this is the original, - but then there's this photo and if i click on it, _ it'll actually zoom in to where blanche might be. this is not a photo that, - to the best of our knowledge, blanche has ever seen before, and, to the best of our- knowledge, the museum is not aware that blanche is actually. here in this bottom row. but the algorithm only gives probabilities of matches. so today, dan is going to meet blanche to see

whether the picture he found taken in france is really her. hi. nice to meet you. so, here we go. this is a picture - that i found of you. this picture, i don't- know if you've seen this before, does this look... that's me, yeah. the one over here? this is... yes. you could tell? yeah, that's me. yeah, for sure. i'll zoom in so you can get a closer look. - oh, wow. some of these guys i remember, one was my boyfriend. they chuckle. and in the picture, her aunt rose, the aunt that saved her. and here is my aunt rose. oh, wow. wow. so i think, to the best- of my knowledge, there's only three people in this group that have been identified so far. i there are hundreds of thousands of people murdered by the nazis for which there are pictures but no names.

scott miller is not part of the numbers to names project, but says at least trying to identify victims, even 80 years later, is vital. it's so important to identify these photos because by focusing in on, you know, on photos and being able to even just to name somebody, to give somebody a name, you're restoring some semblance of dignity to them, some comfort to their family. and it's a form of memorial for the entirejewish community. for blanche, the pictures bring back memories — a song that she learnt in her brief time in france. # quand j�*etais mademoiselle. # mademoiselle, mademoiselle. # quand j�*etais mademoiselle. # mademoisellej�*etais. # et comme si et comme ca. # et comme si, et comme ca. # et comme si et comme ca.# that was james. and now...this. could you please put your hands together

and welcome improbotics? cheering and applause. welcome to the midlands arts centre in birmingham, where i'm taking in a spot of improv comedy. are you drunk? are you not drunk? are you drunk? in the troupe we have piotr, sarah, marwin, rule, boyd, paul and alex. robot speaks: but unlike you humans, i can learn i from my mistakes. ha—ha—ha. yeah, this is improbotics. alex is the artificial language experiment. and although the robot is the physical presence on stage, it's the ai chat bot on piotr�*s computer that's feeding it its lines. but you always evade... i'm not listening. essentially, you're improvising with this really rogue element, somebody who can't say yes to you and they can't really take your suggestions on board. so it's doing an extra—level thing in that you're trying so hard to make this

robot look good. sometimes that is harder than others. i have been searching for you, too, alex. i am afraid for the future. laughter. i have to say, yes, it's impressive that alex is doing what it's doing, but you guys are, i can see that you're working hard... we are working hard, yeah. ..to deal with what you're getting back from the robot. that's what i like. i like the challenge of that because it's an extra level of improv where it's like another muscle that you're working, and it's so much fun. the neighbours had to breakj the door down to get us out. yes. to avoid even more complications, they're not using speech recognition here. instead, piotr types in the words spoken by the cast and then manually selects the best response from a list of suggested next lines. the fire was started suddenly. laughter. alex is running the dialogue prediction programme called gpt—3, which has been trained on gigabytes of web pages, conversations, and movie scripts.

so, in theory, if you give it a topic and a line of dialogue, it should be able to give you something reasonable to say next. six years ago, i realised there was a strange connection between those statistical machine learning models that were trying to do the most obvious thing and improv comedy, which was about us humans trying to give the simplest answer and stop thinking, and ratherjust follow our intuition. partway through the show, the robot body is ditched and instead the chat bot feeds lines through an earpiece directly to one of the actors who can then add some human flair to the unusual dialogue. i think that i can trust everything in capable hands of this young man. i am really under control. laughter. i believe him. laughter. let's do it. if al was better at improv, do

you think it would be as funny? i actually don't, because another key thing about improv, we talk a lot about celebrating failure, so the idea, those kind of tangential things and those odd things that we as humans then have to kind of overcome, that's where a lot of the comedy is for us, i think. so if it was already smooth and perfect, the audience are listening, but they're not necessarily reacting. so, yeah, i think the odd stuff is what we enjoy. after the show, and with the audience at a safe distance, it's my turn to be the voice of alex. the only problem is the past lives in the body of the fiance. what? the whole performance is, of course, worthy of an award. and if you'd like to see it before anyone else, i'm putting it on my twitter feed — details on screen now. please try not to injure yourself laughing. then he jumped out of the cake into a clinking wine glass. all right, now you're just being ridiculous. what's going on?

0k. it's fine. how did it feel to be fed words by a machine? well, in some ways, it took the pressure off cos i didn't have to think of my own words. the problem was, those lines took quite a while to arrive in my ear, which meant i had to look busy and physically perform while i was waiting for them, which was a bit awkward. please be kind. it was my debut performance. anyway, that's it from us. thanks for watching. we'll see you soon. bye— bye. hello, there. many areas across the country desperate for rain, including the south—east of england. that has been addressed a little over the last few days — it's been the wettest start to november on record in the south—east. some areas have seen a month's worth of rain injust the space of a few days.

however, mist and fog's likely to be a problem across south—east england over the next few days. the rain stays into the far north—west. elsewhere it will be largely dry, and it will be mild for all of us. so, over the next few hours, then, there's that rain across the far north of scotland. the south—westerly wind feeding in a lot of low cloud. mist and drizzle around, as well. it will be a mild start to thursday morning — temperatures sitting between nine and 12 degrees. so the cloud thick enough for a spot of drizzle first thing, and it will be pretty misty with it, as well. but high pressure is dominating the story and keeping things largely dry. it's also keeping these weather fronts out to the far north—west. around that high, we've got this southerly wind, and that's feeding in this mild air, and it's extending as far north as scotland. so, yes, cloudy, with some light drizzle first thing. a misty, murky start for all. the rain quite heavy and persistent to the north—west of the great glen. the winds a feature

for the highlands and islands and across the irish sea. we are likely to see gale—force gusts here. blustery elsewhere, but mild with it, so a bit of a peculiar afternoon. there will be some brighter spells into the afternoon, with highs of 16 degrees — 61 fahrenheit. that is then going to lead into a very mild night indeed, thursday into the early hours of friday. we're likely to be greeted with temperatures not falling very far at all — 15 or 16 celsius. look how much cloud we've got, though, for many, first thing — that should tend to break up across central and eastern england into the afternoon. the rain stays to the north—west, but the talking point on friday will be temperatures — as high as 18 or 19 celsius. now, as we move into the weekend, it starts off dry, but there's a threat of another front pushing in from the west as we go through the latter stages of sunday. so, all in all, not a bad weekend in prospect — dry and mild for most — certainly better than last weekend.

this is bbc news. i'm nuala mcgovern. our top stories? a major set back for russia in ukraine — it announces a retreat from kherson — the only major city its captured since the invasion. we have to try to piece together what is happening in the city that is, to all intents and purposes, cut off from the outside world. midterm mystery — control of the us congress remains in the balance — with votes still being counted. is there going to be a crypto—crisis? one of the world's largest crypto—currency exchanges pulls out of a deal to acquire its struggling rival. and — high speed sale — a record price for the legendary car that had an even more legendary driver.