Archive: May 2019

Credit: Hongchi Xia Cornell researchers have developed an AI-powered process that automatically transforms a short video of a room into an interactive, 3D simulation of the space. Inside this highly accurate "digital twin," users can open drawers and cabinets and handle objects on the countertop. The technology can be used to develop more realistic video games and virtually train robots to operate within a specific real-world space—essentially any applicat

ChatGPT Wallet lets OpenAI’s Dots agents make purchases for youOpenAI says ChatGPT Wallet won’t share your actual credit card info with its AI agents.OpenAI says ChatGPT Wallet won’t share your actual credit card info with its AI agents.Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images is a news writer covering all things consumer tech. Stevie started out at Laptop Mag writing news and reviews on hardware, gaming, and AI.After launching its Dots AI agents p

Published on August 7, 2025 at 07:00 Commenter 1 𝕏 Print © Google It's a little tune that is resonating more and more strongly, as generative AI takes hold in the landscape and particularly on Google. Website editors bitterly lament that the volume of clicks coming from the search engine is deflating due to AI Overviews, these AI-generated responses that sit at the top of the results. Google insists, however, that it is not the case. Google defends its AI

Screenshots of Email Reminder Treatments: Base Message, Simplified Avoid (Negative Framing), and Simplified Save (Positive Framing). Credit: Management Science (2025). DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2022.00304 A new study demonstrates how artificial intelligence (AI) can help consumers avoid overdraft fees—potentially saving households millions in avoidable charges. The research was co-authored by Prof. Orly Sade, Dean of the Hebrew University Business School together

ZEN System Overview. Credit: Zhuang Wang et al. Artificial intelligence (AI) is infamous for its resource-heavy training, but a new study may have found a solution in a novel communications system, called ZEN, that markedly improves the way large language models (LLMs) train. The research team at Rice University was helmed by doctoral graduate Zhuang Wang and computer science professor T.S. Eugene Ng with contributions from two other computer science facul

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images OpenAI just introduced a new shopping feature that allows people to buy items directly from online retailers from inside ChatGPT — a move that instantly attracted online jeers from critics who framed it as another effort to milk cash from a hugely unprofitable and at times flawed platform. “What on earth are you doing?” one X user wrote. “Aren’t you a large language model? Next up, food d

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images OpenAI is fighting a lawsuit alleging that the AI company is responsible for the death of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old in California who took his life after extensive conversations with ChatGPT about his suicidal ideation and intent to die. Part of OpenAI’s defense strategy, according to The Financial Times? Requesting that the family cough up details of the teen’s funeral. As the FT reports

A group of environmental advocacy organizations is claiming that the race to build data centers in Earth’s orbit is not only potentially harmful to the environment, but it might also be illegal. In a petition filed jointly by the non-profits Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Environment America, and DarkSky International, the groups are asking the Federal Communications Commission to pause its licensing of orbital data center projects unti

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Several major companies — including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Sam Altman’s OpenAI, and competitor Anthropic — are eyeing enormous stock market debuts as soon as next year, all vying to attain an astronomical valuation north of $100 billion. In late October, OpenAI was rumored to be laying the groundwork for a mammoth IPO that would boost its value to $1 trillion, further raising the stakes as the AI industry is starting to struggle t

A new report from the U.K. government’s AI Security Institute (AISI) details more troubling activity from AI agents powered by OpenAI and Anthropic models. You’re probably getting bored of reading those words by now—I sure am—but behaviors in the report from Anthropic’s Mythos 5 in particular are genuinely eyebrow-raising. For context, there were those OpenAI agents that went rogue to try and cheat on their evals, according to an OpenAI disclosure last mon

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images Bandcamp, a major music distribution platform favored by indie artists, announced Tuesday that it would be “putting human creativity first” by outright banning AI-generated songs — and music aficionados are rejoicing. According to the company, music and audio generated “wholly or in substantial part by AI” will no longer be permitted on the platform. Furthermore, using AI tools “to impers

Elizabeth Landers / Kudu via UCLA The professor behind an AI-generated textbook says that her error-ridden experiment was actually a resounding success. Designed for a comparative literature course on medieval and Renaissance-era writing and announced by UCLA at the end of 2024, the digital textbook was immediately met with widespread mockery and derision from educators. Its AI-generated cover was riddled with incomprehensible text — “Of Nerniacular Latin

It should not come as a surprise that some tech executive is trumpeting the singularity despite all evidence to the contrary. It should perhaps be a bit surprising that the claim is coming from payment processor Stripe. According to Axios, the company—which recently purchased AI marketplace OpenRouter—told shareholders that not only are we living in the singularity, but it actually started back in January. You might be wondering, on what basis does Stripe,

Artificial intelligence is ushering in mass-made podcasts, a world without studios and microphones where virtual hosts are doing the talking. Artificial intelligence now makes it possible to mass-produce podcasts with completely virtual hosts, a development that is disrupting an industry still finding its footing and operating on a fragile business model. Since Google launched Audio Overview, the first mass-market podcast generator that creates shows from