Artificial intelligence is more a part of our lives than ever before. While some might call it hype and compare it to NFTs or 3D TVs, generative AI is causing a sea change in nearly every part of the technology industry. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is still the best-known AI chatbot around, but with Google pushing Gemini, Microsoft building Copilot, and Apple adding its Intelligence to Siri, AI is probably going to be in the spotlight for a very long time. At The Verge, we’re exploring what might be possible with AI — and a lot of the bad stuff AI does, too.
For the past year, the Times has been using LLMs to create what’s internally known as the “Manosphere Report,” according to Nieman Lab. The AI-generated reports include episode transcripts and summaries for around 80 primarily right-wing podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro Show, Red Scare, and The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show.
In an op-ed for The New York Times, Zoë Hitzig, a researcher who left OpenAI this week, expresses concerns about the company’s move to put ads in ChatGPT, while posing alternatives to a setup that could potentially harm users down the line:
So the real question is not ads or no ads. It is whether we can design structures that avoid both excluding people from using these tools, and potentially manipulating them as consumers. I think we can.
Ring’s Super Bowl ad focused on how its cameras could be networked to find a missing dog, but for a lot of people, it highlighted the surveillance power hiding in those devices. Now Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has sent a letter to Amazon saying, “Get this creepy technology away from our homes.”
You can read it in full here, but here’s a snippet:
Members of the team — which was tasked with ensuring AGI benefits all of humanity — have been transferred to other areas of the company, and former team lead Joshua Achiam will take on a new role as OpenAI’s “chief futurist,” Platformer reported.
[Platformer]
Across the industry, workers describe a ‘fear-based culture’ and pressure to ‘fall in line.‘
Ryan Beiermeister, previously vice president of the product policy team, was reportedly fired in early January over alleged sexual discrimination against a male colleague. Beiermeister, who called the allegation “absolutely false,” had opposed adding adult content, and worried safeguards weren’t strong enough. OpenAI said her firing was “not related to any issue she raised.”
The bipartisan “Copyright Labeling and Ethical AI Reporting Act,” introduced by Senators Adam Schiff (D-CA) and John Curtis (R-UT), would require a written notice detailing the use of copyrighted works for training new and currently-available AI models, Deadline reports. The bill follows numerous lawsuits against AI companies for alleged copyright infringement.
The new mandate is one of several changes to India’s 2021 IT rules announced on Tuesday, TechCrunch reports. The updates also include requirements for “synthetic audio and visual content” to be labeled and traceable, and a ban on “deceptive impersonations, non-consensual intimate imagery, and material linked to serious crimes.”
Similar to the Prompted Playlists that Spotify launched in December, YouTube Music premium subscribers on iOS and Android can now use voice or text descriptions to turn ideas, genres, or vibes into personalized playlists.
We’d heard its devices could arrive this year, but in a court filing OpenAI vice president Peter Welinder said they won’t reach customers before March 2027.
The case is a trademark infringement suit from audio startup iyO, which sued after OpenAI bought Jony Ive’s company io — Welinder confirmed OpenAI has no plans to use the io name for its hardware.
Presumably this tweet was timed before Elon Musk’s Grok posted an estimated 3 million sexualized images onto the platform, including 23,000 of children, averaging an estimated 190 images per minute over an 11-day sample period:
X supports #SaferInternetDay and remains committed to protecting children on the platform. We maintain zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation—including AI-generated content—and enforce strict policies to keep minors safe and ensure a positive experience for everyone.
Roland Busch on AI-powered factories, tariffs in the Trump era, trade, and the future of NATO.
As Waymo uses AI-generated 3D worlds to simulate driverless cars’ encounters with tornadoes, floods, and even elephants, one commenter wonders if they could try AI school buses next.
cowboyfromspace:
They got elephants down but forgot about school buses?
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
The European Commission has weighed in on the November decision to block the likes of ChatGPT and Copilot from WhatsApp, and thinks it violates EU antitrust laws. It’s surprisingly fast for the organization, which called the issue “urgent” because of the risk of “irreparable” damage to competition in the nascent AI industry.
Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet are planning to spend $670 billion on AI infrastructure this year, more than some of the biggest capital efforts in US history by percentage of gross domestic product. It’s dwarfed only by the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the US.
This 30-second Super Bowl ad dangled handles on the new AI.com platform with names like “Mark,” “Sam,” and “Elon.” If you’re not sure what it is, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek says he’s leading this platform also, and that it will “mainstream AI agents and AGI in the same way he led mass consumer adoption of cryptocurrency.”
Remember what happened after Crypto.com’s Super Bowl ad in 2022?
After so many people hated Coke’s AI holiday ad, Pepsi’s Taika Waititi-directed Super Bowl ad looks like standard CG, as a bear chooses Pepsi over Coke in a blind taste test.
Pepsi exec Gustavo Reyna told AdWeek that it focused on human touch because “f there’s something we care about and we believe in, it’s in the craft and the creativity of our people, our talent, and our partners.”
The round of Big Game ads Anthropic previewed earlier this week set Sam Altman off, as he called them “clearly dishonest.”
Now, while the original ad says, “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude,” nodding to OpenAI’s plans, the one that aired replaced it with a new tagline: “There is a time and place for ads. Your conversations with AI should not be one of them.”
As OpenAI and Anthropic feud over AI advertising, both companies are running Super Bowl ads for their AI products. After OpenAI boss Sam Altman said its ad would focus on “builders,” OpenAI debuted this ad about its AI coding agent, Codex.
ChatGPT is much more well-known, but enterprise use of tools like Codex is probably where OpenAI’s money is.
Researchers raised alarms when over 400 malicious skills were uploaded to ClawHub and GitHub in just one week. That prompted an outcry, so OpenClaw partnered with VirusTotal to scan third-party skills. The company acknowledges it’s not a “silver bullet,” but it should provide at least some reassurance to concerned users.
