Latest AI News

Android phones will soon be able to detect spoofed calls and impersonation scams - Ars Technica

November 27, 2019 | Ars Technica AI
Android phones will soon be able to detect spoofed calls and impersonation scams - Ars Technica
We’re expecting Android 17 to begin rolling out later this month, but first, Google has a batch of updates for the wider Android device ecosystem. As usual, some of the new features are limited to specific devices, and others require using Google’s apps. But if you don’t mind the latter, you can get automated protection from the growing threat of deepfake phone scams. According to Google, “impersonation fraud” is one of the most common types of financial s

Mathematicians warn of AI threats to profession as industry encroaches - Ars Technica

March 3, 2016 | Ars Technica AI
Mathematicians warn of AI threats to profession as industry encroaches - Ars Technica
Mathematicians warned against rising tech industry influence in a declaration describing the many challenges that AI poses to mathematics research. The timing of the declaration comes two weeks after OpenAI publicized one of its AI models as having disproved an 80-year-old mathematical conjecture in geometry. The declaration was developed by a working group of 16 researchers over eight months following a conference held at Leiden University in the Netherla

Microsoft's Project Solara is an Android OS designed for agents instead of apps - Ars Technica

August 13, 2018 | Ars Technica AI
Microsoft's Project Solara is an Android OS designed for agents instead of apps - Ars Technica
Project Solara is not something you’ll have to worry about killing your apps anytime soon. It’s limited to a few pieces of concept hardware and software that are awaiting the magical agents of the future. The vision is for Solara to run on myriad specialized devices with interfaces generated on the spot, and it’s all powered by the explosive intelligence of models that Microsoft and others insist will soon exist. According to Microsoft, Solara is a chip-to

Trump plan to test AI models has a problem—US security teams were gutted by DOGE - Ars Technica

November 13, 2022 | Ars Technica AI
Trump plan to test AI models has a problem—US security teams were gutted by DOGE - Ars Technica
On Tuesday, Donald Trump finally signed his executive order expanding the government’s efforts to conduct voluntary safety testing of frontier AI models. Now, critics are warning that the order may be short-sighted, offering only performative reassurances that the government is actively monitoring for AI risks, while changing very little about how and when models are deployed. Last month, Trump abruptly canceled a signing event, where he had hoped to launc

Google's new Gemma 4 12B model is designed to run on any laptop with 16GB of RAM - Ars Technica

March 12, 2024 | Ars Technica AI
Google's new Gemma 4 12B model is designed to run on any laptop with 16GB of RAM - Ars Technica
In April, Google released four models in the Gemma 4 family, which also marked the shift to a more open Apache 2.0 license. The initial models included two mobile-optimized options (E2B and E4B) along with a pair of models for more serious work (26B Mixture of Experts and 31B Dense). That left a rather large unserved space in the middle, which is right where the new model falls. Gemma 4 12B is considerably more capable than the mobile versions, but it won’

Elon Musk tries again to escape FTC audits of X data handling - Ars Technica

May 14, 2017 | Ars Technica AI
Elon Musk tries again to escape FTC audits of X data handling - Ars Technica
Critics hope to keep Elon Musk from escaping a strict data-privacy order imposed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) shortly before he took over Twitter. The FTC order placed restrictions on X’s data use for 20 years, while requiring regular independent audits and granting the agency authority to request documents as needed to ensure compliance. The FTC’s action came after Twitter voluntarily disclosed that between May 2013 and September 2019, a coding e

The Fitbit Air is a good wearable weighed down by a chatty AI "coach" - Ars Technica

August 3, 2019 | Ars Technica AI
The Fitbit Air is a good wearable weighed down by a chatty AI "coach" - Ars Technica
Smartwatches can track your health stats, but they also do a lot of other things you might not always want or need. The $100 Fitbit Air tracker ditches the screens that have become common on people’s wrists, leaving behind a tiny puck of health sensors you can often forget you’re wearing. You will not, however, forget that Google’s new health platform is built around AI. The Air has no speaker, and there’s only one LED on the side to indicate battery level

"We pissed off a lot of people": Giant data center plan cut 50% amid protests - Ars Technica

October 3, 2021 | Ars Technica AI
"We pissed off a lot of people": Giant data center plan cut 50% amid protests - Ars Technica
One of the world’s biggest data center projects was designed to be nearly three times the size of Manhattan, stretching across multiple Utah sites. But intense local backlash in Box Elder County has now pushed the developer to cut the project plans in half before construction starts. Residents’ top concern was the Stratos data center project draining local waters, and they were willing to pay to protect them, most especially the vulnerable Great Salt Lake.

S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic - Ars Technica

July 20, 2019 | Ars Technica AI
S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic - Ars Technica
SpaceX has requested unusually swift entry into several leading stock market indexes as a condition of its historic stock market debut. But the S&P 500 stock market index representing many of the largest profitable US companies has surprised market analysts by refusing to bend the rules for Elon Musk’s space and AI company. The June 4 decision by S&P Dow Jones Indices—the company that creates and manages stock market indexes such as the S&P 500—means that

Google's latest DiffusionGemma open AI model comes with a 4x speed boost - Ars Technica

April 28, 2020 | Ars Technica AI
Google's latest DiffusionGemma open AI model comes with a 4x speed boost - Ars Technica
Another day, another AI model from Google. This time, Google DeepMind has released a new member of the Gemma 4 open model family, but it’s fundamentally different from the rest of the lineup. DiffusionGemma doesn’t generate outputs linearly like most AI models. Instead, it can produce an entire block of text in parallel. Google says this makes it faster and more efficient when running on local hardware like an Nvidia DGX or a humble gaming GPU. Most AI mod

Pokémon Go players unwittingly contributed to tech with military drone uses - Ars Technica

January 15, 2026 | Ars Technica AI
Pokémon Go players unwittingly contributed to tech with military drone uses - Ars Technica
A decade after the global craze for Pokémon Go peaked, an AI company has been using billions of real-world images captured by millions of players to develop navigation technologies for delivery robots and possibly military drones. That represents an intriguing but potentially discomfiting legacy for an augmented reality mobile game that has incentivized gamers to capture short smartphone videos of physical neighborhoods and landmarks. The AI company, Niant

Google sues Chinese cybercrime network that used Gemini to automate scams - Ars Technica

July 2, 2020 | Ars Technica AI
Google sues Chinese cybercrime network that used Gemini to automate scams - Ars Technica
Google loves telling us all the ways people are using its generative AI products to build new things, grow businesses, and save the world. Supposedly. Of course, people are also using AI for crime. Google has announced a new legal salvo aimed at a Chinese group called Outsider Enterprise, which is allegedly responsible for a massive AI-powered scam campaign. Google says it’s working with law enforcement and mobile carriers to fight back. According to Googl

$130 billion in data center projects blocked by protests so far this year - Ars Technica

May 10, 2016 | Ars Technica AI
$130 billion in data center projects blocked by protests so far this year - Ars Technica
It’s clear that communities now have an effective playbook to block data center construction. This week, researchers flagged the first quarter of 2026 as producing the “most blocked and delayed data center projects on record,” NBC News reported. Data Center Watch, a project from AI intelligence firm 10a Labs that tracks data center fights around the US, reported that protestors “blocked or delayed at least 75 projects nationwide worth about $130 billion fr

AI coding agents taught robots how to install GPUs and cut zip ties - Ars Technica

April 26, 2015 | Ars Technica AI
AI coding agents taught robots how to install GPUs and cut zip ties - Ars Technica
What happens when you give AI coding agents a lab full of robotic arms, some compute resources, and a “generous token budget” for teaching the robots various tasks? The agents can apparently figure out a training regimen that teaches the robots to successfully cut zip ties and even insert GPUs into thin sockets on motherboards. That glimpse into how AI can act in a fully autonomous way to automate robot training was made possible by a new agent harness fra

IBM claims world’s first sub-1 nanometer chip technology - Ars Technica

February 2, 2020 | Ars Technica AI
IBM claims world’s first sub-1 nanometer chip technology - Ars Technica
“It’s not just an incremental step, it’s a meaningful leap forward,” said Jay Gambetta, director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow, in an advance media briefing. He described the new chip technology as “pointing to a future where computing becomes significantly more powerful without a corresponding increase in energy.” It’s worth unpacking what the “world’s first sub-1 nanometer chip technology” means, because it is impractical to build reliably functional ch

Anthropic says Alibaba must be punished for largest Claude cloning attack - Ars Technica

January 24, 2022 | Ars Technica AI
Anthropic says Alibaba must be punished for largest Claude cloning attack - Ars Technica
Anthropic has accused the Chinese firm Alibaba of launching the largest attack yet attempting to clone Claude, as China races to match the capabilities of Anthropic’s leading model following Mythos’ release and subsequent restriction from foreign markets. Ars obtained a June 10 letter sent to Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) one day ahead of a Senate committee hearing on “AI and the American Dream.” In the letter, Anthropic shared “

NYT slams Microsoft for building copyright-infringing supercomputer for OpenAI - Ars Technica

August 16, 2026 | Ars Technica AI
NYT slams Microsoft for building copyright-infringing supercomputer for OpenAI - Ars Technica
In a heavily redacted court filing Thursday, The New York Times proposed to amend its copyright complaint against OpenAI and Microsoft to clarify a claim and allege that Microsoft actively encouraged OpenAI to steal NYT works by building a bespoke supercomputing system ranked among the most powerful in the world. NYT’s motion comes after the Supreme Court sided with Cox Communications in a case where Sony tried and failed to claim that Cox was contributing

SpaceX may donate stock to Trump’s savings accounts for kids, report says - Ars Technica

May 26, 2016 | Ars Technica AI
SpaceX may donate stock to Trump’s savings accounts for kids, report says - Ars Technica
One way Donald Trump plans to celebrate July 4th is by rolling out children’s savings accounts, known as Trump Accounts, and apparently, he’s been angling to get a big donation from SpaceX as part of that push. A person familiar with talks involving the Trump administration told Semafor that SpaceX has spoken with US officials about donating stock to Trump Accounts. At this stage, however, it remains unclear if a donation will be made or what impact a Spac

Trump's plan to redesign every .gov website leads to AI-designed horrors - Ars Technica

January 23, 2017 | Ars Technica AI
Trump's plan to redesign every .gov website leads to AI-designed horrors - Ars Technica
President Donald Trump’s plan to “fill the digital potholes” and use AI to quickly redesign every government website isn’t going very well. Last August, Trump created the National Design Studio, or NDS, by executive order. A temporary DOGE-like entity that answers only to the president, NDS was tasked with creating new standards to update the US Web Design System (USWDS) and overhaul 27,000 dot-gov websites in just three years. At the end of this so-called

Google's new Nano Banana 2 Lite image model is its fastest and cheapest yet - Ars Technica

April 3, 2025 | Ars Technica AI
Google's new Nano Banana 2 Lite image model is its fastest and cheapest yet - Ars Technica
A comparison of Nano Banana 2 Lite with the non-Lite version. Credit: Google A comparison of Nano Banana 2 Lite with the non-Lite version. Credit: Google In addition to the examples, Google also has Elo scores from Arena.ai ready to go, showing that users rate Nano Banana 2 Lite outputs almost as highly as the non-Lite versions. However, vibemarking doesn’t always focus on the details that can make AI images look silly upon closer inspection. Google notes