All posts tagged: generative ai

Former Google and Apple Researchers Launch a Startup to Build AI’s Missing Feedback Loop

Former Google and Apple Researchers Launch a Startup to Build AI’s Missing Feedback Loop

Published by skeptic

A group of AI researchers who previously worked at Google DeepMind, Apple, OpenAI, and Meta Superintelligence Labs announced on Wednesday they’re launching a new startup called Trajectory, which aims to help companies regularly improve their AI products by training on real-world user interactions. Trajectory wants to build a platform for AI that can learn continuously, a capability that researchers have long held up as a major barrier to further AI progress. OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have found success training increasingly capable versions of AI models, especially for domains such as coding, math, and science. However, these systems stop getting smarter after their training is done. While there have been some recent breakthroughs in continual learning, tech companies have generally struggled to make AI products that learn from their errors in real time. In December 2025 at NeurIPS, one of the largest annual AI research conferences, Turing award winner Richard Sutton argued that continual learning is essential for building superintelligent agents. Trajectory has raised a $15 million seed round at a $115 million post-money valuation, led …

AI will not displace jobs, it will radically transform them, research finds

AI will not displace jobs, it will radically transform them, research finds

Published by Jenni Sidey

Generative AI is changing work faster than many employees can process it, but new research from Finland suggests the technology does not have to hollow out careers. Under the right conditions, it can deepen engagement, adaptability, and long-term resilience. The fear around generative AI is easy to recognize. A machine that writes, summarizes, designs, and answers questions can seem less like a tool than a quiet replacement waiting in the wings. But new research from the University of Vaasa argues that the picture is more complicated, and in some cases more hopeful. In his doctoral dissertation in information systems science, researcher Zhe Zhu examined how artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, is changing both organizational decision-making and employees’ day-to-day experience of work. His conclusion is not that the technology is harmless. It is that the effects depend heavily on how people and organizations approach it. Workers who see generative AI as a useful collaborator, and who trust it without surrendering their judgment, tend to be more engaged in their work and better prepared to adapt their …

4chan’s Misogynist ‘Wizards’ Are Nudifying Women by Request

4chan’s Misogynist ‘Wizards’ Are Nudifying Women by Request

Published by skeptic

“Summoning a wizard who can nudify her,” wrote an anonymous 4chan user last week, posting on the site’s /r/ board, a hub for “adult requests” of specific explicit imagery. Attached to the post was an image of a blonde woman in glasses, an open black jacket, white tank top, and ripped jeans, posing on a low wall with a sweeping view of an old-world city and a river behind her. It’s the kind of picture you’d see on a friend’s Instagram account during their vacation in Europe. On the left edge of the image, you can see that someone else has been cropped out of the photo. The 4chan anon explained what they wanted from a “wizard,” a site term for anyone skilled at manipulating pictures of women to render deepfakes in which they appear to be undressed, committing sexual acts, or fulfilling a given fetish: “big juggs and thick body,” the user specified. “Bonus praise if you can leave her jacket on.” A few hours later, someone else replied with the altered image, which …

Literary Prizewinners Are Facing AI Allegations. It Feels Like the New Normal

Literary Prizewinners Are Facing AI Allegations. It Feels Like the New Normal

Published by skeptic

At first, the winners of the prestigious Commonwealth Short Story Prize for 2026 enjoyed the envy of their peers. But since their works of fiction earned this distinction, these authors have found themselves facing harsh scrutiny from the literary community, with several accused of enlisting generative artificial intelligence to write for them. The allegations have come from numerous readers, many of them writers themselves, expressing bafflement and dismay that the prize jury could have overlooked potential signs of inauthentic authorship. Each year, the Commonwealth Foundation, a nongovernmental organization in London, awards its short story prize to one writer in each of five regions: Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. One overall winner is then selected from that shortlist. Regional winners take home £2,500 (about $3,350), while the top winner, to be announced next month, claims £5,000 (about $6,700). On May 12, the respected UK literary magazine Granta published the top five 2026 entries—all previously unpublished, per the rules of the contest—on its website. (It has hosted the winning submissions for the …

Everything Announced at Google I/O 2026: Gemini, Search, Smart Glasses

Everything Announced at Google I/O 2026: Gemini, Search, Smart Glasses

Published by skeptic

Much weirder is voice editing in Google Docs, in a new feature called Docs Live. By describing with your voice what you want to write, an agent will dictate your words, generate text, pull in citations from the web, and aim to turn your stream-of-consciousness wishes into a coherent document. (Reminder: All this stuff may eventually have ads.) For Gemini power users, Google is creating a new subscription tier, the AI Ultra plan, for $100 a month. It is also dropping the price of its top Gemini AI Ultra from $250 a month to $200. Gemini Omni Google announced Gemini Omni, an AI video generator akin to Sora 2. That was OpenAI’s generator that let you deepfake yourself but was eventually killed by the company. Google’s approach is building out a far more realistic video generator that can incorporate real video and extrapolate all manner of AI-powered weirdness on top of that. Google is eager for you to turn Omni’s eye on yourself, putting your face front and center. As such, selfie videos can be …

Google Makes It Easy to Deepfake Yourself

Google Makes It Easy to Deepfake Yourself

Published by skeptic

One of the most immediately noticeable changes to Flow is the new video-generation model powering the experience: Omni Flash, succeeding Veo. Similar to how Google’s Nano Banana model brought more context about the world into the AI image-creation process, the Omni Flash model overhauls video generation with richer detail throughout clips. Flow users can generate characters in AI videos with more consistency via the Omni Flash model. Roman says this is a major improvement over the weakness in past versions of Flow, where created characters could warp during successive video generations. Also, a key character that Flow users can now generate in an AI scene after an AI scene? Themselves. Users set up an “avatar” of themselves by going into the settings of their Flow account and scanning a QR code on their phone. Then, Google asks users to record themselves saying a string of numbers aloud and move their head around to capture every angle. This selfie-capture style will feel familiar to anyone who signed up for the Sora app, which OpenAI launched last …

Amazon’s new Alexa+ powered feature can generate podcast episodes

Amazon’s new Alexa+ powered feature can generate podcast episodes

Published by skeptic

Amazon announced the latest update to Alexa+ on Monday: the ability to generate podcast episodes on demand. The new feature, called “Alexa Podcasts,” is rolling out to customers in the U.S. today. Amazon describes the capability as a way to “turn any topic you’re curious about into a podcast episode, ready in minutes.” To use the feature, all users have to do is ask Alexa+ to create a podcast about a topic they’re interested in. Users don’t need to upload documents, write scripts, or plan anything ahead of time. Instead, Alexa+ researches the request, gathers information, and generates a quick overview of what the episode will cover. From there, users can tweak things like the length, tone, and focus of the episode. Once finalized, Alexa+ uses AI-generated host voices to narrate the podcast. When the episode is ready, users get a notification through their Echo Show device and inside the Alexa app. Episodes are also saved in the app’s “Music” and “More” sections so they can be replayed later. The feature is another example of …

ChatGPT Has ‘Goblin’ Mania in the US. In China It Will ‘Catch You Steadily’

ChatGPT Has ‘Goblin’ Mania in the US. In China It Will ‘Catch You Steadily’

Published by skeptic

Are you even online in 2026 if you haven’t experienced the verbal tics of ChatGPT? It loves goblins, em dashes, and “it’s not A; it’s B” sentence constructions. But what you might not know is that the chatbot also has plenty of strange phrases it loves to say in Chinese, and they are driving Chinese users crazy. ChatGPT does a decent job answering questions in Chinese, which is why it’s widely used in China despite being blocked by the government. But when users make a request, be it a math problem or an image-generation prompt, the chatbot loves to answer: 我会稳稳地接住你, which literally translates to “I will catch you steadily [when you fall].” Catch … what? A more generous translation could be, “I’ll hold you steadily through whatever comes.” But to any native Chinese speaker, the expression is annoyingly affectionate and out of place. Sometimes, the model gets more effusive and says in Chinese: “I’m right here: not hiding, not withdrawing, not deflecting, not running. I’ll be steady enough to catch you.” Yes, the sound …

Sanctioned Chinese AI Firm SenseTime Releases Image Model Built for Speed

Sanctioned Chinese AI Firm SenseTime Releases Image Model Built for Speed

Published by skeptic

SenseTime, a Chinese AI company best known for its facial recognition technology, released a new open source model on Tuesday that it claims can both generate and interpret images far faster than top models developed by US competitors. SenseNova U1 could help the company reclaim lost ground after it slipped from its place among the leading players in China’s AI development race. The model’s secret sauce is its ability to “read” images without translating them to text first, speeding up the process and reducing the amount of computing power required. “The model’s entire reasoning process is no longer limited to text. It can reason with images as well,” Dahua Lin, cofounder and chief scientist at SenseTime, said in an interview with WIRED. Lin, who is also a professor of information engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, says that models capable of processing images directly will enable robots to better understand the physical world in the future. Like DeepSeek’s latest flagship model, SenseTime says U1 can be powered by Chinese-made chips. “Several Chinese domestic …

Generative AI increases risks of cyberattacks and data leaks

Generative AI increases risks of cyberattacks and data leaks

Published by Jenni Sidey

Machine-learning systems already shape ordinary parts of life, from spam filters to product recommendations and social media feeds. Now a newer push is underway. It is folding generative AI into those systems to write code, label data, explain decisions, and even help make them. That may sound efficient. Micheal Lones is not convinced it is wise. In a paper published in the journal Cell Press Patterns, the Heriot-Watt University computer scientist argues that plugging large language models into machine-learning workflows can make those systems harder to understand, harder to audit, and more vulnerable to security failures, legal trouble, bias, and bad decisions. His central point is not that generative AI has no use in machine learning. Instead, it is that the tradeoffs are being underestimated. “Machine-learning developers need to be aware of the risks of using GenAI in machine learning and find a sensible balance between improvements in capability and the risks that might come with that,” Lones says. “Given the current limitations of generative AI, I’d say this is a clear example of just …