the prime minister has announced more than £1 billion of cash for towns the government says have been "overlooked". rishi sunak made the pledge before the conservative party conference starts in manchester later today. the money will go towards regenerating high streets and tackling anti—social behaviour in 55 towns. with counting almost complete in slovakia's general election, the party of a disgraced former prime minister looks set to win the most votes. robert fico promised to end military aid to ukraine in a campaign that was marked by high volumes of online disinformation. now on bbc news, click.

this week, paul heads to florence to see how tech is revealing a 17th century artwork. this is the first frontal nude ever painted by a woman artist, so she was a groundbreaker. zoe talks ai, apple, and podcast with the founder of spotify. your session has begun. lara is trying to fix herself. my back�*s being scanned to start with. and spencer has a bit too much fun testing out a new ai visual effects tool. "who is this devilishly handsome machine?" i hear you ask. well, it's me! how do you like your street art?

if the answer is big, beautiful and glowing, then you're in luck, because more than half of the colors festival in london is bathed in a sea of ultraviolet. this huge exhibition space showcases works from more than 30 well—known and emerging artists. and i have to say, the uv light and paints really make these pieces pop. it's as if they have an inner light all of their own. these artists are hoping to make a name for themselves today. but next we have a very modern story about an artist from history. artemisia gentileschi was the most celebrated female artist of the 17th century. in 1615, she was commissioned to paint an historic portrait. it was a nude of a woman. but the thing is, it didn't stay nude for very long. a few decades later, it was altered to make it more modest and a few bits

covered up, if you like. but now new technology has enabled restorers to digitally remove that censorship so we can see what the painting was originally intended to look like. and paul carter has been to florence to see it for himself. casa buonarroti displays the art collections of the buonarroti family, including the works of its most famous member, michelangelo. it's also home to allegory of inclination painted by the pioneering 17th century female artist artemisia gentileschi. and there's more to her than meets the eye. she wasn't always covered by a veil. this is the first frontal nude ever painted by a woman artist, so she was a groundbreaker. however, michelangelo the younger�*s nephew, who inherited the home, about 50 years later, felt that the painting was too naughty to be seen.

and so he called in a famous baroque artist and he covered up the naughty bits with the drapery. last year, the portrait came down from its position in the ceiling so that it could be restored. but this is no ordinary restoration project. now, centuries after the painting was censored, technology can reveal how the artist always intended it to be seen. to remove these layers could pose a risk to the original that no—one is willing to take. the challenge was to unveil the work, not physically removing the veils, but digitally. a range of photography and scanning techniques were used to read underneath the layers of paint. images from the most significant scans were then collated in modus explorer, a tool created specifically for the project.

we did 32 different reflectographs that went deeper and deeper into the structure of the painting. since we were studying what lies beneath the veils, we were interested in seeing if any of the cracks actually follow the original paint of artemisia. and we found this crack here goes along the edge of her right arm. what we're seeing in... outlined in white is what we can see through the reflectograph image. so, we could see the arms very well. it did penetrate through this lighter veil on the upper part of the body, but they couldn't read the very, very thick applications of oil paint, which the veils consist of. to go and see what is underneath the veils we had to use x—ray. everything is very cloudy looking, but you can definitely see the anatomy of her legs. yeah. you can also see her belly button that, at the start

of our project, was not visible. the team also used the generative fill ai tool in photoshop beta to help reconstruct textures and colours on some of the areas covered by veils. it was able to take the information from all of the diagnostics and apply paint where it needed to be applied and create the image. but you have to use it wisely. you wouldn't want it to get too creative. revealing the original nude image wasn't the only aim of the restoration. two tiny micro samples were taken from the painting so that the restorers could find out what pigments artemisia used and where exactly they�* re located. this enabled the restorers to choose the right materials and methods to use in the restoration. the samples were analysed under a powerful microscope using a technique called ftir spectroscopy. this is one of the samples that the restorer had taken from the painting. it's less than half

a millimetre. it's very, very tiny. the microscope reads the sample by firing radiation through it. some is absorbed by the material, and the rest, which passes through or reflects back, is recorded. this produces what's known as a spectrum. different molecules produce different spectra, which researchers can use to identify what the samples are made of. the technology has produced cutting—edge instruments that are able to collect more than 1,000 spectra in a single shot, in one second, and with very high resolution. here we can see the paint layers that compose the sample. what is very important is to try to take as small samples as we can because, you know, we have to preserve the work of art as much as possible. i'm finally about to see a version of the image

as artemisia painted it in the 17th century. this is not quite finalised yet because we still... you see, we still have some veil. i'm really curious to know, what was your reaction when you first saw this image? oh, i was very happy. people will be able to access this through a qr code that will be here at casa buonarroti and it will also be online. how do you feel artemisia would feel about this project? i think she would be very happy to know that people are interested in seeing what her original work looked like and that we're doing our best to reveal that without damaging any of her precious paint. she would not have been happy with the censorship. i think she would feel a bit vindicated. now, every so often a company comes along, which ends up representing a complete change in the way we do things.

apple came to represent the move to music downloads and smartphones. youtube came to represent the move to video streaming. and for music streaming, of course, it was spotify. zoe kleinman caught up with its founder, daniel ek, to find out how they're planning to stay ahead of the game. you have so called deep fake als where someone's impersonating some famous artist, etc. and our view is, obviously, that is not positive and we believe that, er, say, something in the drake—weeknd case, that drake and weeknd should be able to decide what kind of content they want to put out in the world, what they stand for. so, you have no immediate plans to ban ai—generated content from the platform ? no, we have no immediate plans. and, in fact, it wouldn't even surprise me that if we look at the top chart of spotify today, that there's a legitimate use of ai done by artists and we would

allow for them. and then there's the one where it's clearly someone trying to steal someone's name or likeness or even infringe on someone's ip. at which point we would say, "that is not ok, that is not "what we stand for," and we would take that down. you've been very critical of apple's practices, haven't you, in the past and...and you still are... yeah. ..a critical voice? 0ur beef is really round, um, allowing for a fair playing field. all we're asking for is they can charge whatever fee they would like, so long as it was possible for us to not be in their store and download the app onto the iphone anyway. apple would say that what you're paying for is the security that it provides and this enormous audience of iphone users that it has. it's giving you access to a marketplace that nobody else can...can access and...and would argue that it's worth it. what would you say to that? 4 billion consumers around

the world and probably 80% of uk consumers, the primary way they're accessing the internet is through their smartphones. and the primary way they're accessing the internet is through apps on smartphones. and so this is the internet at this point. and that's why, from a principle standpoint, it's really important for me, it's an important business issue for spotify. but i believe it will be very important for the future innovation and for other developers. spotify�*s invested a lot in podcasting. you had some big names. you had the obamas. you had the duke and duchess of sussex. they released 12 podcasts in two and a half years. was that worth £18 million? we thought new innovation was needed to happen here. we thought we can come in and offer a great experience that both makes consumers very happy and allows new creators new avenues. and the truth of the matter is, some of it has worked. some of it hasn't. we're learning from those and we're moving on and we wish

all of the ones we didn't renew with the best of success that they can have going forward. that was very diplomatic. i'm getting better and better at it, so they would tell me. i mean, there are artists, aren't there, who say they earn a fraction of a penny per stream of their tune on spotify? is it... is it difficult to make a living on your platform? well, it's difficult overall. i can safely say there are more artists than ever that's being successful on spotify than ever before in the history of music. however, i'm also empathetic because there's also more people trying to make it in music than ever before in history, too. and you need something extraordinary to break through and be heard. and we're doing our part to expose more music to more people.

chatterjee pt has had a refresh. new features will allow the chat to have voice conversations with users. samples from the surface of an asteroid have been brought to earth. they were scope up by a nasa aircraft. when the capsule opens for the first time to see this material that no other human has seen before, we thought about it for seven years and it will be very exciting but there will also be a lot of work to do. x, formerly known as twitter, has the biggest proportion of disinformation of six networks. that is what one eu commission study suggests. examine

thousands of across facebook, instagram, x and u—tube with three countries deemed at risk of disinformation. it, three countries deemed at risk of disinformation.— of disinformation. x has not et of disinformation. x has not yet commented _ of disinformation. x has not yet commented on - of disinformation. x has not yet commented on the - of disinformation. x has not i yet commented on the study. of disinformation. x has not - yet commented on the study. and later has announced it is scrapping plans to make bricks from recycled bottles. the toy giant into thousand one stated aim to produce recs that did not contain crude oil found that using the new material did not reduce carbon emissions and is testing a range of alternative sustainable options. you know how it is — you're filming a standard street scene, there are people milling about, it's a lovely day. and then a robot wanders past your camera. "who is this devilishly handsome machine?" i hear you ask. well... ..it�*s me! and what i find really impressive is how easy this shot was to accomplish, because it pretty much is done

with just one click. i'm using something called wonder studio, which allows you to upload video footage to the cloud where it uses high—end computing to identify different people in the shot and then replace them with 3d bodies. there were a selection of characters to choose from. so, naturally, i've used them all! and, trust me, to be able to do this out on the street with a normal, wobbly tv camera is a real step forward. in the past, actors, and occasionally yours truly, have had to film their scenes in dedicated spaces, performing something called motion capture. always in super tight lycra, never leaving much to the imagination. see, the only way a computer could work out what your various bits were doing was to track your various reflective balls and build a new body from the framework. we spent eight weeks shooting in motion capture on that film,

so that was 2016. i was 19 years old at the time. it was like a dream job. now, if you recognise tye sheridan, it's probably because he starred in the steven spielberg film ready player one, which involved a whole lot of motion capture and cgi. you know, you're wearing the suit and the head cam and you've got the dots all over yourface and, you know, it's a lot of fun. but unless you have hundreds of millions of dollars to go and shoot a film like that and afford the capture system, it's really challenging to break into. it was around the time of shooting the film that tye got together with visual effects supervisor nikola todorovic to set up wonder dynamics with a view to creating a system which would allow anyone to motion capture anything anywhere. with motion capture, the set—up is a big problem. you always have to constrain yourself and then if you want to shoot something else or move to a different location, you have to transfer all that, take your time to set up

and do it. what we noticed, and, you know, tye and i worked together with some film—makers that are very super artistically free... they'll shoot something, they'll see a different location in a distance, they're like, "let's go there." and sometimes this technology stops us from that. in order to replace an actor with a computer—generated character, this software needs to do two things that have traditionally needed specialist kits and specialist skills. first, you have to motion track the performer, that's what all the balls were about earlier, and second, you have to paint out the human and paint back in the background. and doing that on anything more than a very simple static shot gets really complicated really quickly. 0h! wonder studio uses machine learning that's been trained specifically on the types of shots used in movies to find and track the people in the scene. and, i have to say, it really doesn't do a bad job of it. even when the protagonist is pushing the limits of respectable human motion.

contrast this one—click software to the relatively huge post—production teams needed for a movie—grade shot. you have to have, like, - a quite large team of artists. you have to have a modeller, you have to have a rigger, . which makes the skeleton of the cg character. - you have to have a lighter, you have to have a texture| artist. then you must also have to have a composter, - then you have to have - a colourist to finish the shot and put it all together. we're talking about a simple shot of one cg character- could be, on a small team, five or six people and on a large - team for a big production, j like a film, it could be 20, 30 people just for that shot. and yet, could some of this work now be automated? these days, ai can recognise human bodies in a piece of video, it's almost trivial. this system runwayml takes video footage, works out what the different elements in the shot are, and then re—themes the scene, meaning you can turn the whole shot into claymation or you can set up some books and turn

them into skyscrapers. and this app, simulon, which is still in development, uses an iphone's motion and depth sensors to provide more information about where the actor is and how the camera's moving. butjust think about that for a sec. this will be done... ..on your phone! the results from all of these systems aren't perfect, but for some they may be good enough. this software allows people that were not involved - in the visual effects. industry to try things that they probably never thought they could try . before, you know. it can really be used really easily on social media. - you can create a lot of videos for tiktok and a lot _ of it is for instagram, - a lot of it is for youtube. and there's a lot of really amazing creators out - there creating some astonishing things on those platforms. - so, i think these kind of tools will really help them. - but i think for production itself, for visual effects l production, i think we are very. far away from having something

that works on a . one—click solution. crowd: la is a union town! in early 2023, hollywood writers, followed by actors, went on strike, arguing that artificial intelligence poses a threat to creative professions, whether it's writing scripts or animating fake background actors. but i'm wondering if ai might also be coming for the animators themselves. i think it was really important for us not to say that al is going to do everything. that's why we built it the way we did. and that's why ai will not get you a perfect result. it will get you a base that you can then edit and manipulate. and that's something we worked really hard on. we're artists ourselves, so we're very cautious of building this in a way that really speeds up and amplifies the artist. nikola makes the point that wonder studio is meant to be just part of a movie visual effects pipeline, which is why, as well as a finished shot, the software spits out all of the separate elements too, so that a visual

effects team can tidy up, tweak, and change things after the scene has been shot. if, that is, you have a visual effects team. me? i don't even have a creative director... ..and it shows. you're doing it! even he's doing it! it was pretty cool, though. thank you very much. you've got to be careful pulling these kind of moves without warming up. i am not as nimble as i'd like to be, you know. but if you do do yourself a mischief, i might have just the thing. like many people, i've had years of back and shoulder problems. i try to strengthen and stretch, but sometimes, you just want a good massage. so i've been testing backhug. this bed maps your back before its 26 robotic fingers start doing their thing. first of all, you need to sync it up to the app. in there, you receive an automated physio appointment, so you can explain any problems that you've got

and what you're hoping to achieve. app: your session has begun. my back�*s being scanned to start with. ok, it's good on the middle and upper back and on the neck, but it's not getting into my shoulders. i'm just not feeling it enough on my shoulders. as well as choosing the strength you want before, you can choose how quickly you want it to reach that strength. so, you may want it to be gradual and it does feel particularly hard on the lower back. so, i've really had to turn that one down. the first time i used it, i was really impressed. but the more times i've used it, the less comfortable i found it on my lower back. but for anyone who's got an upper back, neck, or mid—back problem, then i guess it can really get to it. i've also been testing the therabody recoveryair boots pro. they aim to boost your circulation whilst also easing muscle soreness, swelling, stiffness and fatigue. the machine is charged so it doesn't need to be plugged in, which is easier for sitting somewhere with these on, as well.

you don't have to worry about your power socket. as the boots inflate, which is how they create the compression, they're also in sections, so you can do just part of your leg. you don't have to do everything at once. and you can also choose different pressure in different areas. i've got the pressure set at 80 out of 100 so i can really feel the squeeze. but what happens when i go higher? ok, i'm on 90 now. and at that level, you can feel the blood pumping through your veins. and then, when you're finished, gradually the air is let out and there is a kind of feeling of relief in my legs. but what's an elite athlete turned science writer make of them? i think they can be really relaxing, they feel good. and so what they do is they really increase circulation. but if you are someone who are using this product for recovery, you're probably pretty fit. you probably are not having problems with your circulation. but for a slightly different type of relaxation and recovery, i've been testing the higherdose sauna blanket. the idea is to increase your body's thermal energy to help you relax and improve

circulation. it's been about ten minutes now and i am starting to sweat. it tells you to start on level five to six and then if you're not sweating to turn it up to seven or eight, which i did need to do, but now i'm definitely hot enough. although i'm going to get hotter and sweat more... so, clearly, it does thejob of making you sweat, but how helpful is the concept overall? most of these things are just new ways to try and relax while you wait for your body to recover on its own. so, very few of these things really make a difference in terms of helping to speed recovery, but they give people a sense of agency. i don't know if briefly using these devices made any material difference to me or not, but i can see that a sense of feeling like you're trying to do something, especially when it's enjoyable, had some benefit, especially when you're doing it on thejob! oh, it is such a tough life

making a lara lewington film. are you ok after that? yeah, just about. 0k. well, that's it from us from the colors festival in london. thanks for watching and we'll see you soon. bye. hello. it's going to stay quite warm for the foreseeable future. the weather, though, a bit of a mixed bag. we had plenty of damp weather on saturday and we're also forecasting rain, at least for a time, on sunday but bright weather, i think, for the majority of us. now, here's the satellite picture. a conveyor belt of clouds stretching from the south—west, spreading across the uk. that's the weather front. to the south of it, we've got that warm and quite humid airstreaming in.

that means a lot of mist and murk around some south—western and western coasts through the early hours. and you can see where the rain is around parts of wales, into north—western england and across parts of northern england, too. but a lot of dry weather as well, though quite overcast. temperatures at 7:00 in the morning, 17 in the south, about 15 there in newcastle, so a really mild start to the day. now, here's the forecast for the morning. you can see where it's raining from wales through northern england. a lot of sunshine for scotland and northern ireland. a beautiful morning and afternoon with highs possibly even up to 20 degrees around the scottish borders and also newcastle, 23 or 2a degrees across east anglia and the south—east, so temperatures are going to be more like august, really. now into monday, the weather front�*s still here. it's trailing way out into the atlantic. it keeps spreading over us. so, again, a chance of some rain, i think in the form of quite heavy showers and even a crack of thunder is possible. there'll be a few showers around western parts of scotland but i think a little bit fresher

here with these atlantic winds. 15 in glasgow, still 22, 23, maybe 2a degrees celsius in london and the south—east. now, here's tuesday's weather map and you can see quite a few isobars there. that means a feral breeze blowing off the atlantic. it's going to be more or less a westerly. but high pressure is fairly close by. that high pressure will be building across the uk. so, here's tuesday, then. a few showers across many western and northern areas. i think it'll feel a little bit fresher around these western coasts — 16, 17 celsius. we may nudge to about 20 or so in london, but i think it's the teens for most of us on tuesday. and here's a snapshot of the week and you can see that the best of the weather across the south of the country but overall, actually, not too bad with a few showers here and there.

good morning. welcome to breakfast with rogerjohnson

and rachel burden. our headlines today: rishi sunak arrived in manchester for his first party conference as prime minister. she is facing pressure from across his party over tax cuts and hst. energy price comes into force, lowering gas and electricity bills but charities warn of a tough winter ahead for many households. the bosses of dozens of high street stores are calling for tougher action on shoplift in, including new laws in england and wales to deter attacks on their staff. the final day of the ryder cup gets under way later this morning in rome. despite a heated moment in boring judgement involving rory mcilroy, they are in control for points on the us. some of you today, when the sun is out, it will form particularly warm and humid for the first day of october. i will have your full forecast here on breakfast. good

morning. it's sunday october 1.