what is ai generative tools

Getty / Futurism It’s no secret that AI models have come a long way, from tools that can complete high school students’ homework to “vibe coding” assistants that can build entire apps in a fraction of the time it would take for human developers. But besides cheating at school and terrifying employees who fear they’re about to be laid off, AI can also be used for evil. “Vibe hacking,” the evil twin of “vibe coding,” has quickly turned into a cybersecurity n

Proponents of generative AI say the tech has greatly lowered the barriers of entry in the art world, allowing practically anybody with internet access to dream up competently-executed landscapes, portraits, sketches and comics — all without any talent whatsoever. Critics say it’s the lowest common denominator of human expression, outsourcing to bloated algorithms that feasted on copyrighted materials while exploiting human artists who have yet to be fairly

Conceptual figure illustrating the ecological interpretation of a toy Gromov–Wasserstein optimal transport plan. Credit: Methods in Ecology and Evolution (2025). DOI: 10.1111/2041-210x.70130 Artificial intelligence (AI) is opening new ground in ecology. At Rice University, César A. Uribe is developing computational tools to help scientists better understand ecosystems with recent studies using AI to glean new insights from different kinds of ecological dat

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images Businesses are learning the hard way that rapidly deploying AI tools — and forcing or strongly encouraging their employees to use them — can backfire severely. The latest appears to be Amazon — though one can debate whether it’s taking away the right lessons. On Tuesday, the Financial Times reports, the ecommerce giant summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting addressing recent out

Getty / Futurism The use of AI in Hollywood has turned into a lightning rod, especially as ongoing contract negotiations between major studios and the Writers Guild of America drag on. Earlier this week, the union released a list of contract demands, including expanded protections over the use and abuse of AI. On-screen performers and voice actors have also spent many months at the bargaining table with studios over concerns that their likeness and voices

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Harun Ozalp / Anadolu via Getty Images As xAI reels from a mass exodus of cofounders, remains mired in numerous controversies, and loses ground to competitors like Anthropic, CEO Elon Musk has quietly made a small but significant change to how its flagship chatbot Grok functions. Starting last week, Grok stopped taking questions that free users asked in posts on Musk’s social media site, X, where the

New York City is cracking down on the use of AI by roughly two-thirds of its students when schools open next week. The City’s public school system is planning to impose a one-year blanket ban on the use of generative AI to teach students through eighth grade. Companion chatbots that claim to offer emotional and mental support will be banned for all students. “Children need teachers and human connection in order to learn and grow. They need to develop skill

Published on March 26, 2026 at 17:20 Comment 1 𝕏 Print © Wikipedia It's official, Wikipedia does not want articles generated by AI. The online encyclopedia has decided to ban the use of large language models to create or rewrite articles. The use of AI technology is not entirely prohibited. Generative AI has disrupted Wikipedia. AI models extensively draw from the encyclopedia's content to generate answers for users, who no longer need to visit the site. C

Chain Cyberattack: How a Virus Tricked Thousands of Developers Published on March 29, 2026 at 11:57 𝕏 Print © 01net with Gemini A massive cyberattack has just hit the world of artificial intelligence. Hackers have indeed managed to compromise a software brick used by many developers. The hack triggered a chain reaction resulting in an enormous data theft. LiteLLM, one of the most widely used Python libraries in the generative AI ecosystem, has just been at

AI Compliance Practice Guide Law Firm Hwa Woo AI Center | Legal Publishing Company July 30, 2026 Recommendation Reasons Comprehensively presents the legal risks and response strategies that enterprises need to know in order to safely develop and operate AI. The author compares regulations in Korea, the EU, and the US, analyzes industry-specific issues in healthcare, finance, autonomous driving, and provides immediately usable guidelines and checklists. Vie

Rather than giving consumers yet another photo-editing tool, Phota Labs aims to use advances in AI to automate the editing process so it’s easier for anyone to get access to better photos. The a16z-backed startup was founded by Cecilia Zhang and Zach Xia, who met at Adobe while working on computational photography products, including Project Indigo, Lightroom, and Photoshop. The duo saw a gap in the editing tools on the market and believed that although ed

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images The New York Times faced scrutiny online this week after netizens speculated that a personal essay featured in its storied “Modern Love” column was generated using AI and published without disclosure. Nothing is proven; the AI allegations remain exactly that. The AI paranoia among readers, though, is very real. The controversy kicked off over the weekend, when Becky Tuch of Lit Mag News t

Facebook The advent of powerful generative AI tools has supercharged the proliferation of disinformation, with viral and fictional stories making the lives of public figures a living hell. Facebook, in particular, has been overrun with misleading news stories, often featuring AI-generated images, that attract huge engagement. Now William Shatner, the 95-year-old actor of “Star Trek” fame, has become the latest victim of the trend. “My daughter came over to

Reuters recently published a joint experiment with Harvard, where they asked popular AI chatbots like Grok, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and others to craft the “perfect phishing email.” The generated emails were then sent to 108 volunteers, of whom 11% clicked on the malicious links.With one simple prompt, the researchers were armed with highly persuasive messages capable of fooling real people. The experiment should serve as a stern reality check. As disruptive as

Guest author: Or Hillel, Green LampAI systems aren’t experimental anymore, they’re embedded in everyday decisions that affect millions. Yet as these models stretch into important spaces like real-time supply chain routing, medical diagnostics, and financial markets, something as simple as a stealthy data shift or an undetected anomaly can flip confident automation into costly breakdown or public embarrassment.This isn’t just a problem for data scientists o

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images If you were arrested after an AI facial recognition camera wrongly flagged you as a trespasser, how far would you go to get justice? Jason Killinger is looking to go all the way. The Nevada man recently filed a lawsuit against the city of Reno, after a police officer named Richard Jager placed him under arrest for 12 hours on the guidance of an AI surveillance system. The filing naming th

In the space of a historical heartbeat, the world has been inundated with AI slop. Granted, the internet was never a beacon of integrity and trustworthiness. But before ChatGPT launched nearly four years ago, you could at least read an article, watch a video, or listen to a song online and be almost certain a human created it. Not so anymore. We’re living in the era of uncertainty, when half the published text on the internet was written by bots, Trump’s a

As AI gets better at outputting photorealistic images, tech companies have been rolling out tools to identify when an image was generated by AI. Now, Apple is taking a different approach, with a new feature designed to prove when a photo is real. The tech giant announced Apple Reference Image on Wednesday at its event unveiling a slate of new products, including the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo. “Users can

The circle with the chip symbolizes SpectroGen, with the connecting threads depicting the process of generating a material’s spectrum. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Manufacturing better batteries, faster electronics, and more effective pharmaceuticals depends on the discovery of new materials and the verification of their quality. Artificial intelligence is helping with the former, with tools that comb through catalogs of materials to quick