Category: Technology

BBC Studios is using AI to recreate the voice and likeness of late detective story author Agatha Christie for the purpose of featuring it in digital classes that teaches prospective writers “how to craft the perfect crime novel.” A real life actor, Vivien Keene, is standing in for Christie, with her appearance augmented by AI…

TikTok is back in a Washington, DC courthouse discussing the US law that – at least on paper – effectively banned the app. But this time, it’s serving as a witness for the government, not fighting against it. On Wednesday, TikTok’s head of operations and trust and safety Adam Presser testified in the Federal Trade…

A small number of YouTube viewers will now see blurred thumbnails for certain search query results. | Screenshot: YouTube YouTube has announced a new experimental feature that’s “aimed at providing safer search experiences for all users.” The service will begin blurring the thumbnails in search results for some queries “that frequently include sexual themes.” According…

The Google Play Store shed 1.8 million apps since the beginning of last year, according to an analysis from Appfigures and reported earlier by TechCrunch. That makes up around 47 percent of the 3.4 million apps it started 2024 with — a decline that Google spokesperson Dan Jackson says reflects the company’s focus on “delivering…

Duolingo is “more than doubling” the number of courses it has available, a feat it says was only possible because it used generative AI to help create them in “less than a year.” The company said today that it’s launching 148 new language courses. “This launch makes Duolingo’s seven most popular non-English languages – Spanish,…

Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, took the stand on Wednesday during the remedies phase of the company’s search antitrust trial, and offered a simple message. The US government’s plan to rectify Google’s search monopoly, he said, would be so crushing to Google Search that it might be hard to justify continuing to build a search engine…

OpenAI rolled back a GPT-4o update for ChatGPT that caused the chatbot’s default personality to be “overly flattering or agreeable – often described as sycophantic” and that “sycophantic interactions can be uncomfortable, unsettling, and cause distress,” the company says in a blog post. The company introduced a GPT-4o update last week that included adjustments “aimed…

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wants to know whether Amazon founder Jeff Bezos received any “promises or favors” from President Donald Trump in exchange for his “subservience” after dropping all plans to show customers the cost of tariffs. In a letter sent on Wednesday, Warren questions Bezos about the details of his conversation with Trump and…

Meta announced a new WhatsApp feature it says is a private way to interact with Meta AI. Called “Private Processing,” the feature is totally optional, launches in the “coming weeks,” and neither Meta, WhatsApp, nor third-party companies will be able to see interactions that use it, according to the release. Meta says users can “direct…

Google is close to striking a deal with Apple to integrate Gemini into the iPhone. During the search monopoly trial on Wednesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed the company expects to strike a Gemini deal with Apple by the middle of this year and suggested it would roll out by the end of 2025. The…