AI News

The latest news and reviews on artificial intelligence software, hardware and AI research.

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ChatGPT is easily exploited for political messaging despite OpenAI's policies
ChatGPT was supposed to be inoculated against political misinformation in March. Doesn't look like that actually happened.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise service encrypts corporate conversations
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Enterprise today, the business-focused subscription it teased in April. The company says it won’t train its AI models on any business data or conversations. “Our models don’t learn from your usage,” the company wrote in an announcement blog post about the enterprise features. In addition, the new plan encrypts business chats (in transit and at rest) and is SOC 2 compliant. OpenAI says companies including Block, Canva, Carlyle, The Estée Lauder Companies, PwC and Zapier have already tested ChatGPT Enterprise.
Hitting the Books: Why AI needs regulation and how we can do it
AI is one genie we're never getting back in its bottle so we'd better start working on regulating it, argues Tom Kemp, in his new book, Containing Big Tech
University of California BCI study enables paralyzed woman to 'speak' through a digital avatar
A stroke-paralyzed patient has regained the ability to speak thanks to a BCI implant, albeit she now talks through a digital avatar.
Meta's new multimodal translator uses a single model to speak 100 languages
Meta has unveiled SeamlessM4T, its newest AI, "a foundational multilingual and multitask model that seamlessly translates and transcribes across speech and text."
YouTube wants to benefit from AI-generated music without the copyright headaches
YouTube's new principles for AI-generated music welcome the technology, but also play nicely with labels protecting their copyrights.
Microsoft retracts AI-written article advising tourists to visit a food bank on an empty stomach
Microsoft reportedly published — and retracted — an AI-generated article that recommended people visit a Canadian food bank as a tourist attraction. The article “Headed to Ottawa? Here’s what you shouldn’t miss!” included recommendations for catching a baseball game, honoring fallen soldiers at a war museum and… swinging by the Ottawa Food Bank. Paris Marx first called out the story on X (formerly Twitter). “People who come to us have jobs and families to support, as well as expenses to pay,” the AI-written section about the food bank section read. “Life is already difficult enough. Consider going into it on an empty stomach.”
New AP guidelines lay the groundwork for AI-assisted newsrooms
The Associated Press published standards today for generative AI use in its newsroom. The organization, which has a licensing agreement with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, listed a fairly restrictive and common-sense list of measures around the burgeoning tech while cautioning its staff not to use AI to make publishable content. Although nothing in the new guidelines is particularly controversial, less scrupulous outlets could view the AP’s blessing as a license to use generative AI more excessively or underhandedly.
Snapchat's My AI chatbot glitched so hard it started posting Stories
A technical issue temporarily gave Snapchat's My AI posting powers and people are freaking out.
Opera’s AI browser assistant is now available in its iOS app
Opera announced today that its Aria AI assistant has made its way to iOS. The feature launched on desktop in June and stems from a partnership with ChatGPT creator OpenAI. Opera says Aria, now available on all major desktop and mobile platforms, has tallied over a million users on desktop and Android.
NCSoft's new AI suite is trained to streamline game production
Korean MMORPG publisher NCSoft has developed four new AI large language models, dubbed VARCO, to help streamline future game development.
Google Photos update improves Memories view with generative AI
Google Photos just got a major update that adds generative AI to its popular Memories view. This toolset already creates scrapbook montages using your photos and videos, but now these montages will be highly personalized, with collections that make sense according to your life. AI-enhanced algorithms now collect the images into relevant categories, a recent vacation as an example, and create a catchy title to accompany the montage.
WhatsApp is testing AI-generated stickers
WhatsApp is testing the ability to create stickers using generative AI. According to WABetaInfo, the feature is available to a small number of testers through the Google Play Beta Program, but Meta is seemingly preparing to roll it out more broadly in the coming weeks.
An Iowa school district is using AI to ban books
Mason City Iowa's school district is scrambling to ensure its library collection is ideologically pure enough for the state's new content restrictions ahead of the new school year and has turned to AI for help.
Amazon begins rolling out AI-generated review summaries
Amazon announced a new generative AI feature today that summarizes product reviews. Available initially to “a subset of mobile shoppers in the U.S. across a broad selection of products,” the artificial intelligence tool creates a recap paragraph highlighting common themes from customer feedback. The company first confirmed in June it was testing an AI-powered summarization tool, but it now begins its official rollout. CEO Andy Jassy said earlier this month that AI is “at the heart of what we do.”
California deploys AI to detect wildfires before they start spreading
AI and climate change represent two ways humans may ravage life as we know it on Earth, but the former can also help with the consequences of the latter. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) revealed a new program today that uses AI to detect wildfires. Created in partnership with the University of California San Diego, the Alert California AI program takes feeds from 1,032 360-degree rotating cameras and uses AI to “identify abnormalities within the camera feeds.” It then notifies emergency services and other authorities to check if a potential blaze warrants a response.
Zoom now says it won’t use any customer content for AI training
Zoom has reversed course (again) and updated its terms of service after a backlash earlier this week. Following consumer blowback about an update to its terms which appeared to grant the platform the unlimited ability to use customer data to train AI models, it now says it will not use any consumer data to train AI models from Zoom or third parties. The previous wording said it wouldn’t do so “without customer consent,” which raised eyebrows since “consent” was (at best) a gray area for people joining a call (and acknowledging a pop-up) in which the meeting organizer enabled the feature and already agreed to the terms.
The White House's 'AI Cyber Challenge' aims to crowdsource national security solutions
The White House revealed plans Wednesday to defend critical digital infrastructure by launching a DARPA-led challenge competition to build AI systems capable of proactively identifying and fixing software vulnerabilities.
Why humans can't use natural language processing to speak with the animals
We’ve already got machine-learning and NLP that can translate speech into any number of languages. Surely adapting that process to animal calls shouldn't be that big of a stretch?
Zoom reverses policy that allowed it to train AI on customer data
Zoom has made changes to its terms of service after online blowback over recent updates to the company’s fine print allowing AI training on customer data. A report from StackDiary over the weekend highlighted how the changes, which rolled out in March without fanfare, appeared to grant the company sweeping control over customer data for AI training purposes. In response, Zoom published a blog post today claiming it wouldn’t do what its terms said it could do; the company then updated its terms. It now says it doesn’t train AI models on consumer video, audio or chats “without customer consent.”

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