artificial intelligence

Stories 1 - 20 |  Next >>

After Backlash on 'Disgusting' Images, Grok Hits Pause

Users had been deploying chatbot to 'undress' girls and women, creating sexually explicit deepfakes

(Newser) - Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok is preventing most users from generating or editing any images after a global backlash that erupted after it started spewing sexualized deepfakes of people. The chatbot, which is accessed through Musk's social media platform X, has in the past few weeks been granting...

AI Is Coming for Your Gmail
AI Is Coming
for Your Gmail
Jan 9, 2026 6:20 AM CST

AI Is Coming for Your Gmail

New tools bring natural-language inbox search, proofreading, smart summaries

(Newser) - Google is giving Gmail a new AI-powered command center meant to tell you what matters in your inbox before you go looking for it. The company on Thursday detailed a "personalized AI Inbox," natural-language search summaries, and a built-in proofreading assistant, while also making several existing AI tools...

AI Dominates 'Worst in Show' at CES Tech Fair

Judges also disliked a musical lollipop

(Newser) - The promise of artificial intelligence was front and center at this year's CES gadget show. But spicing up a simple machine like a refrigerator with unnecessary AI was also a surefire way to win the "Worst in Show."
  • The annual contest that no tech company wants to
...

AI Error Makes NWS Map Invent Towns

Post claimed there was a chance of high winds in 'Orangeotild'

(Newser) - Weather maps usually point you to places you can find on a real map. Over the weekend in Idaho's Camas Prairie, the National Weather Service shared one that highlighted winds over "Orangeotild" and "Whata Bod"—two towns that do not exist. "Hold on to your...

Data Center Backlash Upends Local Politics Nationwide

Residents fear secrecy, soaring utility costs, and loss of rural land

(Newser) - The push to build more data centers to rapidly boost America's AI capacity is meeting opposition in cities across the country. In Sand Springs, Oklahoma, residents packed meetings and built a Christmas parade float casting a proposed data center as a hulking villain looming over a tiny house, the...

Google to Settle Suit Alleging Chatbot Pushed Teen to Suicide

Company, together with maker of Character.AI, will settle cases filed in numerous states

(Newser) - Google and artificial intelligence chatbot maker Character Technologies have agreed to settle a lawsuit from a Florida mother who alleged a chatbot pushed her teenage son to kill himself , per the AP . Attorneys for the two tech companies have also agreed to settle several other lawsuits filed in Colorado, New...

Lego Unveils 'Most Revolutionary Innovation' in 50 Years

New sensor-packed 'Smart Bricks' are sparking debate over imagination vs. interactivity

(Newser) - Lego is rolling out a high-tech twist on its classic bricks, though not everyone is thrilled about it. At CES 2026 in Las Vegas, the Danish company introduced "Smart Bricks," sensor-packed tiny blocks that light up, make sounds, and respond to movement, launching in March with a Star ...

Grok Is Undressing Girls, Women on X

Bot's sexually explicit deepfakes are drawing global scrutiny

(Newser) - The X platform's homegrown chatbot is fueling a new wave of deepfake abuse, and regulators worldwide are taking notice. Users of Grok, the AI image tool available on Elon Musk's X, have been flooding the site with sexualized images of women and girls, including digitally "undressed" versions...

AI Police Report Claims Cop Turned Into Frog

Heber City tests AI report tools despite comical misfire

(Newser) - Artificial intelligence may be figuratively reshaping police work, but in one Utah city it briefly tried to reshape an officer into a fairy-tale amphibian. Heber City police say an AI report-writing tool recently produced a document claiming an officer had transformed into a frog—courtesy not of sorcery, but of...

Famous TV Bros Try to Sell $70M Estate With an AI Video

Fantasy trailer by Altmans for California mansion aims to emulate Game of Thrones vibe

(Newser) - Selling a $70 million estate apparently now comes with dragons. In a bid to move a 20-acre Santa Barbara County mansion that's lingered on and off the market since 2019, owner and real-estate developer Patrick Nesbitt turned to artificial intelligence—first to pick his agents, then to market the...

AI Tool in China Catching Early Pancreatic Cancer

PANDA system analyzes routine CT scans, though the risk of false alarms is real

(Newser) - An artificial-intelligence system in China is quietly spotting one of the most lethal cancers before patients—or their doctors—even know something is wrong. The New York Times reports on promising early results from a clinical trial being run at a hospital in the eastern city of Ningbo, where the...

DeSantis Emerges as Leading AI Skeptic

On data centers, Florida governor is in agreement with Bernie Sanders

(Newser) - Ron DeSantis is spending his final year as Florida governor trying to slam the brakes on artificial intelligence while much of rest of his party steps on the gas. As President Trump and GOP leaders in Washington promote AI as an economic and strategic priority, DeSantis is positioning himself as...

OpenAI Showers Workers With Record $1.5M Stock Packages

Awards are said to make up nearly half of company's 2025 revenue

(Newser) - OpenAI isn't just racing ahead in AI—it's rewriting the playbook on Silicon Valley pay. Internal financial data seen by investors indicates the company is handing out an average of $1.5 million in stock-based compensation per employee, for a workforce of about 4,000, according to a...

Meta Snaps Up Asian AI Startup
Meta Makes
a Big AI Acquisition
Dec 30, 2025 9:40 PM CST

Meta Makes a Big AI Acquisition

Insiders say company paid more than $2B for Singapore-based Manus

(Newser) - Meta is buying artificial intelligence startup Manus, as the owner of Facebook and Instagram continues an aggressive push to amp up AI offerings across its platforms. The California tech giant declined to disclose financial details of the acquisition, but sources tell the Wall Street Journal that Meta closed the deal...

World Markets Have Outrun Wall Street by a Decent Margin

Performance gap is the biggest since 2009

(Newser) - The stock market has treated US investors well this year, with the benchmark S&P 500 up about 17%. But the Financial Times reports something of a surprise: World markets have done significantly better. The MSCI ex-US index, which excludes American companies from its basket of international stocks, is up...

Something Else AI Is Creating: Young Billionaires

Forbes adds more than 50 to the ranks thanks to the boom in artificial intelligence

(Newser) - Artificial intelligence didn't just dominate headlines in 2025—it quietly turned more than 50 people into billionaires, reports Forbes . An unprecedented surge of investment into AI models, infrastructure, and workplace tools reshaped the global wealth rankings, with founders of data-labeling firms, chip suppliers, cloud providers, and coding assistants joining...

Betty Boop, More Mickey Cartoons to Enter Public Domain

Classic films, novels, and songs from 1925 and 1930 also go free

(Newser) - Betty Boop, the saucy cartoon flapper who debuted nearly a century ago, is about to lose her copyright protection—at least in her earliest form. On Jan. 1, 2026, a new batch of 1930 works will roll into the US public domain, clearing the way for anyone to reuse or...

Why AI Couldn't Crack an 11th-Century Italian Mystery

Historian's experiment shows chatbots can't match human historical insight

(Newser) - An art historian in Florence decided to see if AI could crack the mystery he'd just spent years solving—and it couldn't. Elon Danziger's finding was this: that Florence's Baptistery of San Giovanni was not a homegrown project but a papal-led initiative under Pope Gregory VII...

AI Pioneer Has Advice for Young Grandson

'Work on the beautiful human being that you can become,' says Yoshua Bengio

(Newser) - If the machines end up doing most of the work, Yoshua Bengio wants his grandson ready for what they can't replace. On Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast , the deep-learning pioneer—often grouped with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun as "godfathers of AI"—was asked...

Among Travel Influencers, an 'Uproar' Over AI

Brands are deploying digital avatars as cheaper, more controllable marketing personalities

(Newser) - Radhika posts about the tang of spicy chutneys and her lunchtime meals of saffron noodles, although she can't taste either. That's because Radhika is one of a growing number of AI-generated travel influencers quietly populating social media as tourism boards and travel firms look to cut costs, speed...

Stories 1 - 20 |  Next >>
Most Read on Newser