Author: GT

With holiday shopping on the horizon, OpenAI and Perplexity both announced AI shopping features this week, which integrate into their existing chatbots to help users research potential purchases. The tools are markedly similar to one another. OpenAI suggests that users could ask ChatGPT for help finding a “new laptop suitable for gaming under $1000 with a screen that’s over 15 inches,” or they can share photos of a high-end garment and ask for something similar at a lower price point. Perplexity, meanwhile, is playing up how its chatbot’s memory can augment shopping-related searches for its users, suggesting that someone could…

Amazon’s new MK30 Prime Air drone is displayed during Amazon’s “Delivering the Future” event at the company’s BFI1 Fulfillment Center, Robotics Research and Development Hub in Sumner, Washington on Oct. 18, 2023.Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty ImagesAmazon is facing a federal probe after one of its delivery drones downed an internet cable in central Texas last week. The probe comes as Amazon vies to expand drone deliveries to more pockets of the U.S., more than a decade after it first conceived the aerial distribution program, and faces stiffer competition from Walmart, which has also begun drone deliveries. The incident…

Warner Music Group (WMG) announced on Tuesday that it has reached a deal with Suno, settling its copyright lawsuit against the AI music startup. WMG said in a press release that the deal with Suno will “open new frontiers in music creation, interaction, and discovery, while both compensating and protecting artists, songwriters, and the wider creative community.” WMG also announced that it has sold Songkick, a live music and concert-discovery platform, to Suno for an undisclosed amount. WMG had acquired Songkick’s app and brand in 2017, while Live Nation later acquired Songkick’s ticketing business. WMG says Songkick will continue as a…

ChatGPT’s voice mode is getting more usable. OpenAI announced on Tuesday it is updating the user interface to its popular AI chatbot so users can access ChatGPT Voice right inside their chat, instead of having to switch to a separate mode. That means you’ll be able to converse with the chatbot and view its responses, including things like shared images, as you talk. Before, you’d be taken to a separate screen where you’d interact with an animated blue circle that represented the interface for ChatGPT’s voice. That screen also had a mute button and an option to record live video,…

Character.AI announced on Tuesday that it’s launching “Stories,” a new format that allows users to create interactive fiction that features their favorite characters. The feature comes as an alternative to the company’s chatbots, which are no longer accessible to users under 18 as of this week. The change follows growing concerns about the mental health risks of AI chatbots that are available 24/7 and can initiate conversations with users. Several lawsuits have been filed against companies like OpenAI and Character.AI over their alleged role in users’ suicides. Over the past month, Character.AI has been slowly phasing out access for minors,…

The ability to execute adversarial learning for real-time AI security offers a decisive advantage over static defence mechanisms.The emergence of AI-driven attacks – utilising reinforcement learning (RL) and Large Language Model (LLM) capabilities – has created a class of “vibe hacking” and adaptive threats that mutate faster than human teams can respond. This represents a governance and operational risk for enterprise leaders that policy alone cannot mitigate.Attackers now employ multi-step reasoning and automated code generation to bypass established defences. Consequently, the industry is observing a necessary migration toward “autonomic defence” (i.e. systems capable of learning, anticipating, and responding intelligently without…

Landlords could no longer rely on rent-pricing software to quietly track each other’s moves and push rents higher using confidential data, under a settlement between RealPage Inc. and federal prosecutors to end what critics said was illegal “algorithmic collusion.”The deal announced Monday by the Department of Justice follows a yearlong federal antitrust lawsuit, launched during the Biden administration, against the Texas-based software company. RealPage would not have to pay any damages or admit any wrongdoing. The settlement must still be approved by a judge.RealPage software provides daily recommendations to help landlords and their employees nationwide price their available apartments. The…

Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company Pony.ai said Tuesday it plans to triple the size of its robotaxi fleet by the end of next year as its pace of growth — and aspirations — accelerates. The company, which has about 961 robotaxis in the fleet today, announced the goal during its third-quarter earnings. Pony.ai is targeting a 1,000-robotaxi vehicle fleet by the end of this year. Its goal is to “surpass” 3,000 vehicles by the end of 2026, the company said in its third-quarter earnings report. Pony.ai, which is publicly traded on the Nasdaq Exchange and Stock Exchange of Hong Kong,…

Microsoft’s AI chatbot Copilot will no longer be available on WhatsApp after January 15, the company has shared. After that date, users on WhatsApp won’t be able to chat with the AI unless they switch to Microsoft’s own Copilot mobile apps or use the chatbot via the web. The company explained it’s removing Copilot from the popular messaging app to comply with WhatsApp’s revised platform policies, which were announced last month. At the time, the Meta-owned messenger said it would no longer support general-purpose AI chatbots from using its WhatsApp Business API to serve their customers. Instead, it wanted to…

They go by names like @TRUMP_ARMY— or @MAGANationX, and their verified accounts proudly display portraits of President Donald Trump, voter rallies and American flags. And they’re constantly posting about U.S. politics to their followers, sounding like diehard fans of the president.But after a weekend update to the social media platform X, it’s now clear that the owners of these accounts, and many others, are located in regions such as South Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.Elon Musk’s X unveiled a feature Saturday that lets users see where an account is based. Online sleuths and experts quickly found that many popular accounts,…