"Right now,* if you ask Microsoft’s Bing chatbot if Google’s Bard chatbot has been shut down, it says yes, citing as evidence a news article that discusses a tweet in which a user asked Bard when it would be shut down and Bard said it already had, itself citing a comment from Hacker News in which someone joked about this happening, and someone else used ChatGPT to write fake news coverage about the event. "

The government is right to prohibit the use of Tiktok on work devices, but experts think that the ban should also apply to other apps. "I don't think it's as simple as TikTok - bad; American companies - good. I think they're all bad," Australian National University cybersecurity researcher Vanessa Teague says.

TikTok execs had doubled down on efforts to convince UK policy advisers that their data is safe, but the UK will join the EU, US, Canada and other countries in banning TikTok. The move comes after a UK security review.

"TikTok is a Chinese company that currently is mandated to cooperate with Chinese intelligence services,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said in a statement. The Belgian ban is based on a risk analysis by the country's intelligence services and recommendations by the national cybersecurity center.