Chatbots Are Entering the Stone Age

Chatbots Are Entering the Stone Age

For all the bluster about generative artificial intelligence upending the world, the technology has yet to meaningfully transform white-collar work. Workers are dabbling with chatbots for tasks such as drafting emails, and companies are launching countless experiments, but office work hasn’t undergone a major AI reboot. Perhaps that’s only because we haven’t given chatbots like … Read more

Pocket-Sized AI Models Could Unlock a New Era of Computing

Pocket-Sized AI Models Could Unlock a New Era of Computing

When ChatGPT was released in November 2023, it could only be accessed through the cloud because the model behind it was downright enormous. Today I am running a similarly capable AI program on a Macbook Air, and it isn’t even warm. The shrinkage shows how rapidly researchers are refining AI models to make them leaner … Read more

What Scarlett Johansson v. OpenAI Could Look Like in Court

What Scarlett Johansson v. OpenAI Could Look Like in Court

It doesn’t matter whether a person’s actual voice is used in an imitation or not, Rothman says, only whether that audio confuses listeners. In the legal system, there is a big difference between imitation and simply recording something “in the style” of someone else. “No one owns a style,” she says. Other legal experts don’t … Read more

Google Search’s New AI Overviews Will Soon Have Ads

Google Search’s New AI Overviews Will Soon Have Ads

Last week Google introduced a radical shake-up of search that presents users with AI-generated answers to their queries. Now the company says it will soon start including ads inside those AI Overviews, as the automatic answers are called. Google on Tuesday announced plans to test search and shopping ads in the AI summaries, a move … Read more

Google Taps AI to Show Shoppers How Clothes Fit Different Bodies

Google Taps AI to Show Shoppers How Clothes Fit Different Bodies

One of the new ad formats Google announced today will allow brands to link short-form videos they made—or ones they hired creators to film—to their advertisements in Google’s search engine. AI-generated text summaries of the clips will be included below. “I’ve got three Gen Z-ers at home, and watching them shop, it’s very video-based,” said … Read more

The US Is Forming a Global AI Safety Network With Key Allies

The US Is Forming a Global AI Safety Network With Key Allies

The US is widely seen as the global leader in artificial intelligence, thanks to companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta. But the US government says it needs help from other nations to manage the risks posed by AI technology. At an international summit on AI Safety in Seoul on Tuesday, the US delivered a message … Read more

Scarlett Johansson Says OpenAI Ripped Off Her Voice for ChatGPT

Scarlett Johansson Says OpenAI Ripped Off Her Voice for ChatGPT

Last week OpenAI revealed a new conversational interface for ChatGPT with an expressive synthetic voice strikingly similar to that of the AI assistant played by Scarlett Johansson in the sci-fi movie Her—only to suddenly disable the new voice over the weekend. On Monday, Johansson issued a statement claiming to have forced that reversal, after her … Read more

OpenAI’s Long-Term AI Risk Team Has Disbanded

OpenAI’s Long-Term AI Risk Team Has Disbanded

In July last year, OpenAI announced the formation of a new research team that would prepare for the advent of supersmart artificial intelligence capable of outwitting and overpowering its creators. Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist and one of the company’s cofounders, was named as the colead of this new team. OpenAI said the team would … Read more

It’s Time to Believe the AI Hype

It’s Time to Believe the AI Hype

Folks, when dogs talk, we’re talking Biblical disruption. Do you think that future models will do worse on the law exams? If nothing else, this week proves that the rate of AI progress isn’t slowing at all. Just ask the people building these models. “A lot of things have happened—internet, mobile,” says Demis Hassabis, cofounder … Read more

Maven Is a New Social Network That Eliminates Followers—and Hopefully Stress

Maven Is a New Social Network That Eliminates Followers—and Hopefully Stress

“It’s really radical,” Stanley told me of Maven, “We got rid of likes and follows. That’s like insanity.” Some early adopters seem to be on board. “I quit all social media about three years ago because of the hostility, disinformation, brain rot, and advertising,” Benjamin Scott, a philosophy student, says. “A lot of this I believe … Read more