Amazon poured more than $1 billion into its streaming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, only for it to get a pretty tepid reception. So Amazon appears to be going for a new approach to streaming content: If you think you can do better, prove it. According to a report from […]
Amazon Preps Employees for Layoffs by Talking Up the Power of AI Agents
Amazon appears to be soft-launching its next round of layoffs. In a message to employees shared Tuesday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy talked highly of the company’s embrace of artificial intelligence tools across its company, and said that it will ultimately “reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains” over time. That is only […]
Google’s Veo 3 Has People Crashing Out Over AI Slop
Depending on who you ask, generative AI is either a thrilling tech revolution or an existential threat, and there’s little in-between. It’s hard to blame anyone for an extreme reaction, too, given the magnitude of capital investment, hyperbolic marketing, and rapid progress of generative AI in such a short amount of time. But it’s not […]
Report: Meta’s AI Chatbots Can Have Sexual Conversations with Underage Users
Over the last couple years, Meta has started polluting its platforms with AI content, including AI-generated “companions” and chatbots that can replicate the voices of celebrities. The Wall Street Journal took a dip into the sludge of the AI pipeline and found that it’s more toxic than you might have imagined. According to a report […]
An AI-Powered Alternate Universe Where MAGA Figures Own Libs Is Thriving on YouTube
If it feels like people are living in their own universes sometimes, it’s not that far from the truth. A new report from Mother Jones digs up the surprisingly populated world of pro-MAGA, AI-generated slop videos that have carved out a niche on YouTube by turning the most r/thatHappened-ass stories into content that Boomers and […]
Pro Tip: Don’t Send Your AI Avatar to Testify for You in Court
Generally speaking, it is not considered a good idea to represent yourself in court. But there is another, potentially worse route: you can say that you are going to represent yourself, then pass the task on to an AI avatar in order to show off the capabilities of your startup. That appears to be the […]
Meta Says Its Latest AI Model Is Less Woke, More Like Elon’s Grok
Meta says that its latest AI model, Llama 4, is less politically biased than its predecessors. The company says it has accomplished this in part by permitting the model to answer more politically divisive questions, and added that Llama 4 now compares favorably to the lack of political lean present in Grok, the “non-woke” chatbot […]
OpenAI Says Disciplining Chatbots for Lying Just Makes Them Worse
As many people know, chatbots have a proclivity for lying. They are perhaps one of the worst use cases for AI, trained to produce sentences that sound authoritative but could be presenting completely fabricated information; models are biased towards providing an answer even when they are not confident. Now, researchers at OpenAI say that supervising […]
Elon Musk Is Joining Microsoft in $30 Billion Data Center Project
Elon Musk somehow manages to win again. Microsoft, along with BlackRock and UAE-based MGX, have announced they are partnering with his artificial intelligence startup xAI on a $30 billion project to develop data centers and other infrastructure. Microsoft, being the largest backer of OpenAI, is essentially teaming up with one of its rivals. That relationship […]
Google’s New AI Model Can Remove Watermarks From Images
Google’s new Gemini Flash 2.0 image generation tool is capable of removing watermarks from copyrighted images, users on social media have found. The model is currently in its “experimental” phase, and only available to developers. A slew of apps that are capable of removing objects from photos and filling in the gaps are already available. […]