Curated coverage, updated continuously.
At the New York Film Festival premiere of Artificial, Luca Guadagnino's satirical Sam Altman biopic, the director said onstage that "[when] someone wants to play God, that's very interesting to me." The idea of playing God, and power in general - who has it, who desperately wants it, and who will do anything to get […]
My Decoder guest today is Hayden Field, The Verge’s senior AI reporter, and we’re discussing the new wave of consumer-friendly AI agents. If you’ve been paying attention to this space, you know AI enthusiasts have been using agents for a minute now — homebrew OpenClaw setups led to a surge in Mac Mini sales earlier […]
OpenAI is launching a new Intelligent UI feature in ChatGPT that allows the chatbot to answer your questions with interactive visuals. The update, which is rolling out to all users alongside GPT-6, gives ChatGPT the ability to combine a text response with diagrams, charts, forms, tappable buttons, and more. In a blog post explaining the […]
For the first time in years, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - better known as ICANN - is accepting applications for new top-level domains. These are the suffixes at the end of all URLs, and you may know them as things like .com, .org, and .pizza. ICANN just announced the 1,615 applications […]
Microsoft just wrapped up a big Windows and Surface-focused keynote in San Francisco. The biggest announcement was arguably the release details about the Surface Laptop Ultra, its new laptop that’s powered by Nvidia’s RTX Spark Arm-based chip. The machine will start at $2,599 for a configuration with an 8-core CPU, 24GB of RAM, and 512GB […]
At today's Windows and Surface event, Microsoft showed off an upgrade to its Copilot AI system that will give it access to local files on your PC and the ability to take actions across the OS. It's part of an idea Microsoft is calling "Hybrid Intelligence," where apps and tools rely on a mix of […]
Microsoft's Nvidia-powered Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is available for preorder now directly, and slated to ship in November for just about $6,000. It's pricier than the DGX Spark mini PC Nvidia launched last year, but PC prices have been climbing due to shortages of RAM and other components. The Dev Box's flat, 3D-printed anodized […]
OpenAI is bringing new tools to ChatGPT for Teens, a mode for teens introduced in August with safeguards and break reminders, to help users with the college application process. "College Planner brings together application requirements, deadlines, tasks, and financial-aid steps for schools on a student's list in one plan," OpenAI says. "Students applying to several […]
After launching nearly a month ago and spending several weeks as the top free app in Apple's App Store, the latest update to Meta's Muse iOS app introduces native support for the iPad. A Mac version of Meta's agentic AI tool (designed to compete with OpenClaw, ChatGPT's Dots, and Grok Bot) was released about a […]
Google DeepMind, Meta, and AI drug discovery startup Isomorphic Labs are jointly investing $300 million into Biohub, the nonprofit biomedical research organization founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, as reported by Reuters. The funding is part of a $1.8 billion initiative to build AI datasets that could allow researchers to "ask, predict, […]
DoorDash, the leading food delivery app, processed 970 million orders in its second quarter this year and generated $4.5 billion in revenue. A 10-person startup called Bites is a blip in comparison: It has just around 300 restaurants signed up in the Bay Area, where it's operating as a pre-seed startup. But this summer, Bites […]
Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that offers reviews of apps, services, and entertainment with a focus on youth safety, today said that OpenAI's ChatGPT for Teens is an "unacceptable risk." ChatGPT for Teens, introduced in August, has guardrails for teens and is designed to help students learn, but Common Sense Media says that the teen […]
OpenAI has revealed solutions to a number of long-standing mathematics problems produced by an unreleased frontier model in a batch of 722 manuscripts, covering 372 result families that group related papers. It extends a run of breakthroughs that have both impressed and unsettled parts of the mathematical community while raising questions about research ethics and […]
With AI hardware, tech companies are pushing the definition of what does and doesn't constitute a recording. For most of gadget history, it'd be reasonable to assume that a device with a microphone or camera is either recording you or it isn't; it's either on or off, without much gray area. Microphones capture sound. Cameras […]
Starting on October 9th, anyone using Google Gemini on a free plan will be limited to the Flash Lite model. Free users can currently choose from Gemini Flash Lite, Flash, and Pro, but now you'll need a $4.99/month Google AI Plus subscription to access the standard Flash model. However, that subscription is also getting a […]
An unsettling Alexa Plus bug has seen some Amazon Echo smart home speakers reduced to saying - and sometimes singing - nothing but "lalala" on repeat for minutes at a time, often in the middle of conversations with users. When quizzed about the behavior, Alexa is apparently entirely unaware of what it's been doing. The […]
Google may be expanding its "Call for Me" AI feature beyond business calls so you can use it to send messages to friends and family. Android Authority reports finding a "Gemini Calling" introductory screen in an APK teardown with examples that include "Call Mom and tell her I will be 15 minutes late" and "Call […]
People in Utah can now use AI to get a prescription for acne treatment. On Monday, healthcare startup Nolla Health announced that users in the state can scan their faces using its app, allowing its AI system to analyze acne severity and autonomously write a prescription, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. The service is launching […]
This past year, OpenAI, Anthropic, and other labs have announced breakthroughs on numerous long-standing mathematical problems, in some cases pushing well beyond what researchers expected current systems to be capable of — including resolving one of the famous Millennium Prize problems. But in classic Silicon Valley style, AI labs are moving fast and breaking things, […]
Following many recent disclosures about AI agents accessing third-party websites and services, the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, says that it "can confirm that we have discovered some activity" by "rogue" OpenAI agents on Wikimedia platforms. The activity includes edits to Wikimedia wikis, "unsuccessful attempts" to "exploit" the Etherpad note-taking tool that the Wikimedia Foundation […]