AI

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Well, Patreon Has a Strange New Member

One Bob Dylan offers up a $5-a-month subscription page

(Newser) - Bob Dylan's latest side project isn't new music—it's a $5-a-month Patreon packed with ghostly letters and cowboy fiction that has fans scratching their heads. Over the weekend, his official Instagram and Twitter quietly pointed followers to "a living archive of lectures from the grave, letters...

'You Won't Be Able to AI Your Way Through' These Classes

College professors turn to oral exams to ensure students are actually learning, aren't relying on AI

(Newser) - The assignment involves no laptop, no chatbot, and no technology of any kind. In fact, there's no pen or paper, either. Instead, students in Chris Schaffer's biomedical engineering class at Cornell University have to speak directly to an instructor in what he calls an "oral defense."...

AI Planned Her Vacation, With Some Hits (and Big Misses)

Travel writer's AI-planned itinerary delivered some stunning views, but also some logistical hiccups

(Newser) - Artificial intelligence can get you to a postcard-ready English seaside town, yet still leave you shivering on a cliff while clutching your suitcase. Writing for the Wall Street Journal , travel reporter Dawn Gilbertson let Google's Gemini chatbot design a two-night March escape from London, vowing to follow its plan...

White House AI, Crypto Czar Says His Time Is Up

David Sacks shifts to advisory committee weeks after speaking out on Iran war

(Newser) - Venture capitalist David Sacks is trading his "AI and Crypto Czar" title for a broader tech advisory role in President Trump's White House. Sacks told Bloomberg on Thursday that he has exhausted the 130 days he was allowed to serve as a special government employee and will now...

OpenAI Drops Plan to Release Erotic Chatbot

Company has shelved another 'side quest'

(Newser) - OpenAI's experiment with a sexually explicit chatbot has been shoved to the back burner—and there's no date for when, or if, it might resurface. The company has halted its "adult mode" project indefinitely, saying it wants to conduct long-term research on how intimate chats with AI...

AI Conference Balks at Nearly 500 Papers for Improper AI Use

ICML used hidden prompts to expose AI-written peer reviews

(Newser) - A top AI conference just turned the tables on artificial intelligence, by using it to catch reviewers secretly relying on AI. Per Nature , the International Conference on Machine Learning, set for July in the South Korean capital of Seoul, turned away 497 papers—about 2% of all entries—after determining...

Melania Trump Welcomes 'Humanoid Guest'

'Figure 3' robot delivered remarks at 'Fostering the Future' White House meeting

(Newser) - The White House East Room has seen a lot over the years, but not many guests have walked in on metal feet and thanked the first lady in 11 languages. At a White House summit on artificial intelligence and children's safety on Wednesday, Melania Trump introduced "Figure 3,...

Disney Drops $1B Deal as OpenAI Pulls Plug on Sora
OpenAI Is Pulling
the Plug on Sora
Mar 24, 2026 6:41 PM CDT

OpenAI Is Pulling the Plug on Sora

Disney says $1B deal is off

(Newser) - OpenAI's splashy AI video experiment is heading for the cutting-room floor—and it's taking a big Disney deal with it. The company says it is shutting down Sora, the standalone video-generation app it rolled out just months ago. CEO Sam Altman told staff Tuesday that video models are...

Could This Man Be Tim Cook's Heir Apparent?

Hardware chief John Ternus oversees a huge portfolio at Apple

(Newser) - One of Apple's most powerful executives is stepping further into the spotlight, and many inside the company think they know why. Bloomberg reports that John Ternus, the 50-year-old hardware chief who oversees devices generating about 80% of Apple's revenue, is widely viewed as the leading internal candidate to...

Desperate Workers on AI: We're Digging Our 'Own Grave'

Highly educated gig workers are powering the training data behind big artificial-intelligence models

(Newser) - Some white-collar workers who lost out to AI are now being paid to help perfect the tech that sidelined them, often in ways that feel just as precarious. That's the uneasy reality documented by the Verge's Josh Dzieza, who follows lawyers, writers, designers, coders, and scientists now piecing...

Kids Are Watching AI Misinfo 'at an Industrial Scale'

Experts warn that AI-generated clips are hijacking kids' brains online

(Newser) - A cartoon car-ride song that's been making the rounds looks like any other toddler time-killer—until the kids float outside a moving vehicle, ride on the hood going backward, and chirp that "red means stop, and green means right." Children's media experts say clips like "...

Now We're Using AI to Outsmart the Wine List

Chatbots guide intimidated diners, but sommeliers say human touch still prevails

(Newser) - Ordering wine now comes with a new kind of cheat sheet: an AI chatbot. As the New York Times reports, diners anxious about picking a bottle are snapping photos of wine lists and feeding them to tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, asking for pairings and value picks. Tech workers...

American Airlines Now Using AI to Keep Climate Honest

By using tech from Google, airline says it can reduce contrails, mitigate planes' impact on climate

(Newser) - American Airlines and Google said on Thursday that they've significantly reduced the climate impact of some of the airline's flights using an AI-based forecasting tool to help prevent contrails. When airplanes fly through cold and humid areas, ice crystals can form around the soot particles emitted from the...

Maybe They Shouldn't Have Named Meta After Metaverse

Social media giant is quietly winding down its virtual reality world, pivoting to artificial intelligence instead

(Newser) - Mark Zuckerberg's once-grand virtual kingdom is looking more like a cul-de-sac these days. Five years after he rechristened Facebook as Meta and declared the "metaverse" as the company's future, Meta is sharply scaling back its virtual reality ambitions and shifting its weight to artificial intelligence. The New ...

Bezos Wants $100B for a 'Manufacturing Transformation'

Amazon founder targets global companies to deploy Project Prometheus' AI-driven tech

(Newser) - Jeff Bezos is reportedly trying to assemble one of the biggest buyout funds in history. The Amazon founder is in early discussions to raise around $100 billion for a new investment vehicle that would scoop up industrial companies and then use advanced AI to speed up their automation, people familiar...

Mental Health Staffs Walk Out Over AI Policies

One-day strike in California involves psychologists, therapists

(Newser) - Mental health clinicians at Kaiser Permanente staged a one-day strike in California on Wednesday, protesting Kaiser Permanente's growing use of artificial intelligence tools and warning of risks to patient safety and their own jobs. The walkout involved up to 2,400 psychologists, social workers, and other therapists, with nurses...

Altman's Thank-You Note to Coders Does Not Go Over Well

Critics see irony in his applauding of their 'effort' as AI leads to job loss

(Newser) - Sam Altman's thank-you note to programmers landed like a pink slip. Amid sweeping tech layoffs and mounting anxiety over artificial intelligence, the OpenAI CEO on Tuesday posted on X that he feels "so much gratitude to people who wrote extremely complex software character-by-character," adding that it's already hard to recall...

AI Companies Make Move to Prevent 'Catastrophic Misuse'

Anthropic, OpenAI seek chemical experts to strengthen safety guardrails

(Newser) - An AI company that says it doesn't want its tools used for certain weapons is now hiring someone who knows weapons inside out. Anthropic is seeking a specialist in chemical weapons and high-yield explosives to help keep its chatbot Claude from assisting others in the making of chemical, radiological, or...

Communities Push Back on High-Voltage Lines for AI

Across the US, locals are miffed at power lines erected to support massive data centers

(Newser) - For John Zola, his 40 acres of property in northern Pennsylvania were once a paradise, complete with apple orchards, a barn, meadows, and more than enough land for four houses. He says it's been "hell," however, since a contractor hired by the local power utility knocked on...

Lighten Our Load? AI Is Doing the Opposite

Our freed-up capacity 'immediately gets repurposed,' analysis finds

(Newser) - Workers hoping that AI will clear their plates may instead be getting a second helping. A large new analysis of on-the-job computer activity suggests artificial intelligence is intensifying work, not dialing it down. Productivity-tracking firm ActivTrak studied 443 million hours of activity from 164,000 workers at 1,111 employers...

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