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this is bbc news. the headlines. the uk government is expected to announce changes to immigration laws - making it tougher for those seeking asylum- with policies modelled on the danish system. home secretary, shabana mahmood sent officials to the country last month to study its policies. an attack on ukraine has killed at least six people after russian missiles and drones struck energy and residential targets across the country. three people were killed in the city of dnipro after a russian drone struck a high-rise residential building. sudan’s ambassador to the us has called for “concrete steps” against countries that back the paramilitary rapid support

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forces, following widespread reports of atrocities carried out by its fighters in the city of el fasher. ok, meta, what am i looking at? you are looking at the brandenburg gate in berlin, germany. it’s a little bit smelly in here! do you get used to it eventually? actually, you do, because i don’t think it’s smelly. these guys are here to see their favourite vtubers -

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virtual content creators and streamers. it’s this amazing marriage of technology and art, which i think is awesome. this is one of the world’s biggest consumer tech shows. let’s get inside. music: take me away by temmpo # i need to escape # i’ll go anywhere # take me away... # this is ifa 2025, a huge showcase of all the latest things in technology. there’s big robots, little robots, robots to clean the house, the garden and your pool - if you’ve got one. there’s even... ..a robot playing tennis. and a robot to get your robot vacuum up and down the stairs. but this isn’t all robots.

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ifa’s tag line is “innovation for all”, and there’s product announcements here for everyone. this is our new launch, the miracle pro, and this is the world’s first hairdryer that could release a hair mist to make your hair more shiny and smooth. perhaps my hair is too short for it. it’s also suitable for your hair. laughter yeah. and there’s the newest speakers, devices and screens. i promise i’ll put it back. this is our new three-in-one wireless charger. it has active cool technologies, so it basically draws the heat away from your phone, which is obviously really good for speeding up the charging. but ifa has also traditionally been a place for home appliances. hey, bixby, open washing machine. it’s thinking about it.

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it took a while but it got there. all the big manufacturers have one thing on the mind - how ai is going to take smart home tech to the next level. ai will lead to a much more conversational and context-aware experience with your appliances. you will be really having a conversation with your washing machine to find out what’s the best program to remove the stubborn stains in your favourite sweater, while your coffee machine is brewing your favourite coffee because it’s the time for it and it knows that you prefer your coffee in the afternoon. your home appliances is your best friend, knowing what you want better than you know it yourself. so all of our tech, from fridges to washing machines, will understand our lives and operate without us having to press any buttons. but how many of us really have just one brand

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for all our appliances? step in matter. this is a standard being adopted by hundreds of companies, which means their tech will be able to work with each other. ai assistant: the refrigerator filter has less than 5% remaining. i think we assume that we live in a really competitive world, and we assume these companies wouldn’t want to work together. what’s the benefit to them to being part of this? a lot of reasons. there are a lot of technical benefits to working together, because when you pool all the resources and the engineers from all these companies, you’re getting the best security team on the planet, you’re getting the best build in terms of really lightweight devices. so on the technology side, it can’t be beat. today, you know, people are being pushed to manage too much in their own home, and the whole idea of technology is it should make you, you know, have kind of an easier life, a more efficient life, potentially, but not turn you into a network administrator or somebody that all you’re doing is managing all the different devices. each company has a slightly different vision for how we’ll interact with the ai-connected home.

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we believe there should be a robot at home. it has cute, you know, eyes and gestures, and it has a camera here. it’s still just a concept, but the robot would move around the house gathering data to inform the smart home. and it could even automatically take pictures or video when it hears laughter to capture fun moments in the house. i think people that are sceptical of having this much ai in the home will be suspicious that it’s aimed at children. people are very protective of the data that’s out around their children. surely they’re not going to buy the product? advancements in ai, even in just the past few months, have been rapid. that’s giving these manufacturers confidence the tech is ready. the sticking point is whether consumers are willing

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to accept it into their lives, and that might take some time. these are not concepts. these are products that are ready to go. that’s samsung’s won-jin li, and we’ll hear more from him later in the programme. adrienne: plastic waste, lots of it. it ends up in landfill and in our oceans. more than 430 million tonnes of plastic are made every year, yet two-thirds are single use. and though some plastics can be reused, very little actually is. only 10% gets recycled. and if you’ve ever wondered what happens to the plastics you separate in bins, i’m about to show you. we’re in motala in sweden,

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at the world’s biggest sorting plant for plastic packaging. dubbed site zero, it’s on a mission to boost recycling rates. we sort out 12 different types of plastics. that’s also a world record. if we are able to sort every plastic separately, we can then recycle them separately and thereby saving a lot of emissions from incineration and at the same time from virgin material. this is where it all starts. packaging is sent here from households across sweden, as well as norway and finland. we receive two trucks every hour, so that’s about 40 tonnes. it’s a little bit smelly in here. do you get used to it eventually? actually, you do because i don’t think it’s smelly. crisp packets, chocolate wrappers and food containers fly along a maze of crisscrossing

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conveyor belts - 6.5km of them - and go through dozens of these machines, sorting 1,000 packages every second. the sound of these machines is pretty deafening in here, but they are separating a dozen different types of plastic. and that’s important because it means that more packaging can be recovered and recycled, ready to be put to use again. the waste is sorted mechanically. inside this drum, packages are first sorted by size. it’s a bit like the inside of a giant tumble dryer. then inside 60 machines like this one, infrared readers, cameras, lasers and sensors identify the different plastic polymers.

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the first step in our process is the mechanical sorting, and the next phase is the optical sorting, where we actually find out which type of plastics are going through the line. light bars hit the package and bounce the spectrum back to this orange box. then precision air jets push out specific types of plastic, while ai helps co-ordinate cameras and lasers to locate hard-to-detect black packaging. in less than half an hour, those bundles of plastic waste are separated. it’s then shipped off to specialist recycling plants around europe. for instance, if you take this detergent bottle, we send them to a recycler, and once they receive it they shred it in flakes like this. you can make a granulate out of it, and a granulate means you melt it down and out of those granulates you can make a new detergent bottle. but not all the plastic can be recycled.

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there isn’t a market, or the technology yet, to re-use it all. at the moment we recycle about 50% of the plastic packaging that we are receiving. this plant is big enough to take all the plastic packaging from every swedish household. but there is a challenge because it’s not actually getting all of that. and in order to sort it, households need to separate out their plastics in the first place and put it in the recycling bin. if we don’t collect the packaging, there’s no chance we will ever be able to recycle it. here in scandinavia, the rubbish that isn’t recycled is often burned to generate heat and electricity for homes instead. however, plastic recycling also has its critics. now, there are environmental groups who would argue that this recycling is a distraction from

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the root cause of the problem, that we just need to use less plastic in the first place. in some cases, we could definitely use less plastics, and i totally support that. but we will never, in the short or maybe long term, get rid of all plastics. to boost recycling rates, other countries are building new sorting plants and using site zero as a blueprint.

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hype’s building here for tonight’s headliners. oh, my god! i’ve never been before, so this is my first time.

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how excited are you for this event? so excited. i’m quite excited, but i didn’t expect it would be this packed. but tonight’s show is a little different from concerts you might have been to before. these guys are here to see their favourite vtubers - virtual content creators and streamers. it’s really nice to meet other people who like vtubers because it can be a bit weird to bring it up with people who don’t know what they’re about. it just seems to get bigger and bigger. i’ve never seen the queues like this! it’s very much like a concert and gig, like all kind of others. it’s just got its own vtuber spin on it, so... dance music crowd chants cheering this is the opening night for vexpo in birmingham. it stands for vtuber expo, and phoebe chan is getting it all started on the main stage. i am a 2.5d idol, singer-songwriter and voice actor who writes songs and performs them on both the real-life and the virtual stage. # so grab a pen # together we’ll write up a song... #

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i love it so much, being able to bridge dimensions, basically. and now... now something like this! most vtubers are real people, controlling animated characters from home through motion-capture tech - a bit like digital puppets. they then stream live on platforms like twitch and youtube, usually anonymously. that means they can appear anywhere in the world, including one-to-one in these meet-and-greet booths being set up next door. depending on who you’re explaining it to, you get some interesting looks. i’ll be like, “oh, yeah, so i stream video games.” and they’re like, “oh, that’s cool. how do you feel about “being on camera all the time?” and it’s like, “well, i’m not on camera.” “wait, you don’t use a camera?” it’s like, “well, no... like, you know anime?” and you can see the look in their eyes and you’re like, “yeah, yeah, anime.” i pilot a virtual anime girl that mirrors my movements, and then depending on the age group that i’m talking to you can just see the confusion setting in.

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she laughs and they’re like, “oh, ok.” it’s like this amazing marriage of technology and art, which i think is awesome. it’s really nice to be able to actually have that character because, you know, when i turn off this camera and go outside, i have complete privacy. vtubers have been huge in parts of asia for a while now. hololive concerts in japan have drawn in tens of thousands of fans. now they’re becoming much more popular in the west too, and they’re bringing in-person irl events with them. i only really got into it about... ..like a lot of people, 2020, when lockdown happened. so, i mean, i had a lot of time at home, so just on youtube a lot. i discovered them on tiktok first. and i was like, “wow, these are quite interesting people.” so i just... i decided to start watching them, and it’s been like this since...2022 now. events just for vtubers are still pretty new in europe, but vexpo has seen big growth since it started last year.

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a lot of my friends would look abroad to america. for example, there was a big convention called offkai. or they would look to japan and see all of these big 3d lives and they wanted it to come to the uk. i also wanted it to come to the uk too. and one day i just thought, “i’m going to do it. i’m going to try.” this weekend we are expecting... our ticket sales, unique, is 2,200. and foot traffic across the weekend is going to be 6,600. this is such a large increase compared to last year. and they’re getting more popular online too. we spoke to livestreaming platform twitch, which told us people here in the uk are spending three times as many hours watching vtuber streams, all totalled, compared to a year ago. if it’s like this now, chances are we can take this into the future and it’ll get bigger and bigger. so as even more new fans in the west jump on board, this event could be getting even busier

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and louder next year. cheering back to ifa in berlin now, where i’m catching up with one of the biggest firms in consumer electronics. like most of the companies on show here, the ai smart home is a big theme in samsung’s new products. what we’re witnessing with ai is that it’s happening at a much, much faster pace. and the reason is, not only that development and distribution of the technology is happening at a faster pace, but the learning curve for ai is much, much shorter than what we had witnessed with mobile internet or the web. one of the buzz terms is “ambient ai”,

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the idea that tech works in the background to learn about our lives, and then control the many different devices in the home. even simple bits of data like the volume of the television can paint a picture about us. that’s a piece of information that’s somewhat irrelevant, right? but if you add that data to how you use your smartphone, and if you’re using a lot more voice versus data, and then your volume on tv is set to 25, there is a good chance that you’re a senior person, right? with that information, now i can suggest services that are more relevant for senior citizens, right? and you didn’t have to give me that information. we were able to knead that information together. that is the sort of thing, though, that scares customers, right? you’re going to learn a lot about us, even information we’re not directly telling you like how old we are, how we live our lives. how is that data going to be used? people will be concerned about this.

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it’s all about your choice, right? so if you opt into these services we could actually provide those suggestions. if you opt not to participate, we will not use your data. but if someone does opt to participate, how else are you using their data? are you going to give them adverts, for example? are you going to sell that data on to other companies? no. so we do not offer our data to anybody else. it’s strictly managed within the four walls of samsung. like i said, i think people will open up to ai home much more naturally than all the other technologies they have faced in the past.

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well, martin, we’ve seen all of ifa. we really have. do you want to see berlin? yes. and i’ve got some tech which i think could help us along the way. let’s go, then. let’s go. this is probably one of the most photographed landmarks in berlin. but while everyone else is using their phone cameras, alasdair has these... the meta ai glasses have been on the market for some time now, but this year they’ve been adding ai features in even more countries, including germany. and that means, as a tourist here, you can do this. ok, meta, what am i looking at? you are looking at the brandenburg gate in berlin, germany. can you tell me more about it? the brandenburg gate is an iconic landmark in berlin and one of the most recognisable symbols of the city. the gate has played a significant role in berlin’s history. it makes exploring feel a lot more seamless, almost like you’ve got a local walking alongside you.

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berlin street crossing signs, known as the ampelmann. ok, meta, translate this sign. state library of berlin. hey, meta, take a picture. cheers. occasionally while using them, they have given me out-of-date information. but i think that’s now to be anticipated when using any ai tool. the meta ai glasses are audio-based, so they have little speakers in the frames just around the ears. but this pair of smart glasses is different, projecting information onto the lenses. the even g1 smart glasses are capable of transcribing conversations, displaying your calendar and keeping you up to date with notifications from your phone.

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but the function we’re interested in is the live translation. hello. hallo. schon dass sie da sind. mochten sie eine der kostenfreien ausstellung besuchen? of course, for us to have a conversation, we would both need to be wearing a pair of glasses. but in this situation the little bit of german i can remember from school should be enough. ja. danke. one thing to note about both these glasses is they need to be connected to a phone, and they need data - and that’s something that’s not always cheap when you’re travelling abroad. summers in berlin can get surprisingly hot. so time to cool off as we put this next gadget to the test. this is a wearable thermal device. it feels a bit like i’ve got an ice pack on my neck, but without any drips or water running down from it. it’s only about 25 degrees celsius here in berlin today, so it’s not an extremely hot temperature,

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but i do feel a little bit cooler. so far we’ve done ok getting around. but if you need a bit of help with navigation, there’s tech for that too. smartwatches are now well-established wearable tech, but we’re trying out the latest from garmin, who have a history in navigation. the venu x1 has built in gps and downloadable offline maps, in theory making exploring new places a lot easier. ok, we have deviated from the route a little bit and it didn’t necessarily warn me of that. however, i do think we’re getting the hang of it now and we’re back on track. unlike other devices, the venu x1 has a big battery life, lasting more than a week.

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well, alasdair, we’ve made it to the end of the challenge. we did it. what are your thoughts? we’ve had a lot of fun. i think we’ve learned a lot with these gadgets. in the case of the glasses, they’re maybe still a little bit of a gimmick. yeah. but we’ve had fun and i would certainly use them as a tourist somewhere else. we’ve made some memories. we’ve taken some photographs. we’ve done it.

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live from london. this is bbc news. as flights in the us remain grounded, us senators meet for a rare saturday session as they scramble to find an end to the government shutdown. hundreds of russian missile and drone attacks on ukraine have killed at least six people. they struck energy and residential targets across the country. a lot of the targets were energy infrastructure. this is a a clear attempt by russia to make make a living in ukraine very, very very hard. the uk government is expected to announce changes to immigration laws, making it tougher for those seeking asylum.

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Uploaded by TV Archive on November 8, 2025