9 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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James Vincent

James Vincent

Former Senior Reporter

Former Senior Reporter

    More From James Vincent

    A data scientist cloned his best friends’ group chat using AI

    The group chat is sacred, but AI can fake it

    James Vincent
    James Vincent
    James Vincent
    The US military leaker was trying to impress his Discord.

    The Washington Post has an incredible report identifying the leaker of classified Pentagon documents as “OG” — leader of an invite-only Discord dedicated to “guns, military gear and God.”

    According to another member of the Discord, OG had a “dark view of the government” and worried about overreach, but didn’t see himself as a whistleblower. Instead, he simply shared military secrets to impress his friends.

    James Vincent
    James Vincent
    Alibaba has its own ChatGPT competitor.

    It’s called Tongyi Qianwen, which The Financial Times translates as “truth from a thousand questions.” It’s going to be integrated into the Chinese tech giant’s productivity software, similar to Microsoft’s plans for its Copilot assistant. And ... that’s about all we can say right now.

    Access to Tongyi is limited and it’s not clear how Chinese chatbots will compete with their Western rivals (or vice versa). But talking to computers continues to be the biggest thing in tech — for now.

    James Vincent
    James Vincent
    Google’s Sundar Pichai makes vague noises about AI — again.

    The Wall Street Journal has a brief interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai in which he makes more vague statements about the company’s plans to add conversational AI features to search.

    “Will people be able to ask questions to Google and engage with LLMs in the context of search? Absolutely,” Mr. Pichai said.

    But what does that mean? And how is it different to Google’s current work? The story isn’t clear and neither is Pichai. Presumably because Google is making things up as it goes. There’s a lot at stake for the company but no clear path forward.

    James Vincent
    James Vincent
    Try out this cool AI image segmentation tool from Meta.

    Yes, there’s a lot of interesting research that has gone into this, but check out this free image segmentation tool from Meta. Just upload any image and you can cut out objects in a few clicks.

    No, it’s not as accurate as pro tools in Photoshop, but it’s free, fast, and has cool features like automatically selecting every object in a picture. Try it out yourself!

    James Vincent
    James Vincent
    Another deepfake tell: count those stars and stripes.

    Yesterday, Eric Trump tweeted an AI-generated image supposedly showing daddy Donald in front of a jubilant crowd.

    There’s a lot of these fakes going around right now, and it’s getting harder to spot them. Though, in this case, if the plasticine faces didn’t tip you off, try counting the number of stars and stripes in the US flags.

    Seems AI will be deep in the cold, cold ground before it recognizes Missouri.