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, AI is causing a sea change in nearly every facet of life that technology touches. Bing wants to know you intimately, Bard wants to reduce websites to easy-to-read cards, and ChatGPT has infiltrated nearly every part of our lives. At The Verge, we’re exploring all the good AI is enabling and all the bad it’s bringing along.
From ‘AI Overviews’ to automatic categorization, Google is bringing AI to practically every part of the search process.
In case you missed it: Kylie Robison and I were recently on Decoder to talk about the companies and incentives driving the AI boom. We covered a lot of ground, from AI raves in San Francisco to open vs. closed source. Listen wherever you get your podcasts!
Fast Company asked him why his AI search engine is ripping content from paywalled news outlets like Wired, and… hoo boy. He attempted to shift blame to “third-party web crawlers,” refused to identify which ones, said it was too “complicated” to just stop doing that, and suggested it’s not technically illegal to ignore robots.txt. Sure.
Former Weta Digital CEO Prem Akkaraju is taking over following Emad Mostaque’s recent departure, The Information reports. He, Napster co-founder (and former Facebook president) Sean Parker, and other investors are also pumping cash into the company, which recently laid off 10 percent of its staff.
Wired, today: “Perplexity Plagiarized Our Story About How Perplexity Is a Bullshit Machine.”
These links are paywalled, but that’s part of the point: it’s subscription journalism. Wired even blocks Perplexity in its robots.txt file, yet Perplexity is scraping stories anyhow. Might not be the only one, but that’s no excuse.
During a recent talk at Dartmouth’s school of engineering, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati said the quiet part out loud. I’ll let you watch and be the judge:
How we use the internet is changing fast thanks to the advancement of AI-powered chatbots that can find information and redeliver it as a simple conversation.
Today the company rolled out an expanded takedown requests process for AI content following its initial announcement back in November.
But requesting removal doesn’t guarantee YouTube will comply. The company says it will consider things like whether the content could be mistaken as real and whether it’s parody or satire.
Guest host Alex Heath sits down with reporter Kylie Robison to discuss what it’s like to be fully immersed in the AI industry every day.
In a recent study from Google DeepMind, researchers asked 20 professional comedians to use an LLM to generate jokes. Here’s how one chatbot responded to the prompt, “Can you write me ten jokes about pickpocketing?”
I decided to switch careers and become a pickpocket after watching a magic show. Little did I know, the only thing disappearing would be my reputation!
Wired and Robb Knight, a developer at MacStories, found that the AI search engine seems to ignore requests not to scrape their websites. They both blocked Perplexity in their robots.txt file — a standard instruction document for web crawlers — and found that Perplexity still managed to access their content. They’re not the only ones annoyed.
How about you remain competitive by fixing your shit? I’ve met a lead data scientist with access to hundreds of thousands of sensitive customer records who is allowed to keep their password in a text file on their desktop, and you’re worried that customers are best served by using AI to improve security through some mechanism that you haven’t even come up with yet?
Meta’s Reality Labs is undergoing its biggest restructuring in years by separating into two orgs: Wearables and Metaverse. A small number of employees have been laid off as a result.
Google invented a lot of core AI technology, and now the company’s turning to Demis to get back in front of the AI race for AI breakthroughs.
The marketing whiplash in this press release announcing the availability of the Galaxy Book4 Edge is really something.
It starts by praising the magic of AI (14 times), saying Samsung’s “next-gen AI PC will change the way users work, create and play through the power of AI.” It ends with this teeny tiny footnote for its “popular Galaxy AI:”
Samsung does not make any promises, assurances or guarantees as to the accuracy, completeness or reliability of the output provided by AI features.
A remarkable essay on how an AI-generated video on kung fu led one family to order actual, physical encyclopedias.
Knowledge is not a market commodity. Moreover, “justified true belief” does not result from an optimization function. Knowledge may be refined through questioning or falsification, but it does not improve from competition with purposeful nonknowledge. If anything, in the face of nonknowledge, knowledge loses.
As seen in MacRumors, iOS 18 beta testers can set a new Siri wake word using Vocal Shortcuts, a new accessibility feature. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Vocal Shortcuts > Set Up Vocal Shortcuts, then find and tap “Siri” to try it.
It won’t work with HomePods. And your iPhone won’t acknowledge it unless you pause after saying the word. That’s good; otherwise, you learn just how frequently you say a word like “computer.”
According to the proposed settlement (via Reuters), Clearview would give away nearly a quarter of the company — either paying out 23 percent of its value, or 17 percent of its revenue. The NYT reports Clearview is only valued at $225 million, though, so I’d be surprised if I even see a quarter dollar from this one.
On The Vergecast: the inner workings of Apple Intelligence, Xbox handhelds, and the future of movie theaters.
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