"The worst was seeing small, especially creative, businesses — and even graphics designers — hopping on the trend.
[...]
Every single one of those businesses, even the small ones, could have afforded to pay an artist. But they didn’t."
technews
"Duolingo will “gradually stop using contractors to do work that Al can handle,” according to an all-hands email sent by co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn announcing that the company will be “AI-first.”"
https://www.theverge.com/news/657594/duolingo-ai-first-replace-contract-workers
"[...] there are approximately 1.5 billion Windows users worldwide, which means just over 1% of them are using Copilot, a tool that's now a Windows default app."
https://www.xda-developers.com/microsofts-huge-venture-flatlines/
"Titled “Chatgpt induced psychosis,” the original post came from a 27-year-old teacher who explained that her partner was convinced that the popular OpenAI model “gives him the answers to the universe.”"
"When you see someone who looks like Agatha Christie and talks like Agatha Christie, I think it’s easy for the boundaries to be blurred. What do we gain? Other than it being gimmicky?"
"As cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality."
Archived link: https://archive.is/wNUL6
Yeah, not great. Hope the public rejects this!
"Under the [UK government] proposals, tech companies will be allowed to freely use copyrighted material to train artificial intelligence models unless creative professionals and companies opt out of the process."
"Fun, of course, is subjective — but the novelty of seeing a military robot DJ at a club is pretty striking, even if it was at a stuffy SF networking event."
"Meta is betting that characters generated by artificial intelligence will fill its social media platforms in the next few years as it looks to the fast-developing technology to drive engagement with its 3bn users."
https://www.ft.com/content/91183cbb-50f9-464a-9d2e-96063825bfcf
Archived link: https://archive.is/uBMVw
"After a wave of coverage in outlets like Rolling Stone and posts circulating on social media, the bot accounts are just now being noticed, and the reaction is confusion, frustration, and anger."
https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/3/24334946/meta-ai-profiles-instagram-facebook-bots
#news #TechNews #technology #AI #ChatBots #meta #facebook #instagram
"Counsel for plaintiffs in a copyright lawsuit filed against Meta allege that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave the green light to the team behind the company’s Llama AI models to use a data set of pirated ebooks and articles for training."
"What's worse, as Berlin historian Henrik Schönemann discovered while experimenting with the bot, is that it seems trained to avoid pinning blame for Frank's death on the actual Nazis responsible for her death, instead redirecting the conversation in a positive light."
“I have a PhD in AI, worked to develop some of the algorithms used by generative AI,” one developer wrote. “I deeply regret how naively I offered up my contributions.”
https://www.wired.com/story/video-game-industry-artificial-intelligence-developers/
Virgin Money's AI-powered chatbot will scold you if you use the word "virgin".
https://www.ft.com/content/670f5896-1fe5-4a31-b41f-ad4f5b91202f
Archived link: https://archive.is/gGVgt
"But to [Aaron, the creator of the anti-AI software Nepenthes], the fight is not about winning. Instead, it's about resisting the AI industry further decaying the Internet [...]."
Or to paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre:
"You don’t fight enshittification because you are going to win, you fight enshittification because it is enshittification."
#news #TechNews #technology #ai #nepenthes #enshittification
"[California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s] memo clearly illustrates what a legal clusterfuck the AI industry represents, though it doesn’t even get around to mentioning U.S. copyright law, which is another legal gray area where AI companies are perpetually running into trouble."
Edited 104d ago
"Wait, isn't this the plot to the "Terminator" movies?"
https://futurism.com/openai-signs-deal-us-government-nuclear-weapon-security
#news #technology #TechNews #AI #OpenAI #military #terminator
"The original video showing off Google's Gemini offerings in Workspace was posted five days ago and showed the AI generating a response for a small-business owner in Wisconsin. In the response, Gemini claims Gouda accounts for "50 to 60% of the world's cheese consumption.
The edited ad now shows a Gemini response that says Gouda "is one of the most popular cheeses in the world."
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-super-bowl-ad-gemini-ai-gouda-cheese-2025-2
Archived link: https://archive.is/2cX3i
Not sure what the chances of this bill passing are, but it's certainly interesting to see the efforts.
"Under Hawley’s proposed law, “technology or intellectual property” developed in China would be barred from importation into the U.S. Anyone found violating these restrictions could face up to 20 years in prison, as well as substantial monetary penalties of up to $1 million for individuals and $100 million for companies."
https://interestingengineering.com/culture/law-proposed-to-criminalize-deepseek
"Australia’s Department of the Treasury has found that Microsoft’s Copilot can easily deliver return on investment, but staff exposed to the AI assistant came away from the experience less confident it will help them at work."
https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/12/australian_treasury_copilot_pilot_assessment/
"The New York Times has reportedly approved artificial intelligence tools that newsroom staff can use for editing copy, summarizing information, coding, and writing. The publication announced in an internal email that product and editorial staff will receive AI training, according to Semafor, and introduced a new internal AI tool called Echo for summarizing articles, briefings, and other company activity."
https://www.theverge.com/news/613989/new-york-times-internal-ai-tools-echo
"CEO Marc Benioff said Salesforce, San Francisco’s largest private employer, does not plan to hire engineers this year because of the success of AI agents created and used by the company."
https://sfstandard.com/2025/02/27/salesforce-marcbenioff-layoffs-tech-agents/
#news #TechNews #technology #AI #salesforce #labor #WorkersRights
"Rita Contreras, a hairstylist in Brooklyn, said that in the past six months, the number of clients walking in with AI images has ballooned.
[...]
“I have to just say, ‘This is not a real person. This is not real hair,’”"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/23/ai-hair-inspo-wedding-stylists-businesses/
Archived link: https://archive.is/erYG5
If you still use one of these devices, you might want to start looking into alternatives.
"In an email sent to customers today, Amazon said that Echo users will no longer be able to set their devices to process Alexa requests locally [...] Starting on March 28, recordings of everything command spoken to the Alexa living in Echo speakers and smart displays will automatically be sent to Amazon and processed in the cloud."
via https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114166991733057284
#news #TechNews #technology #amazon #alexa #AmazonEcho #privacy #security
#TechNews picks of day:
This is a large category, skipped descriptions to keep it manageable
GENERAL TECH NEWS
@404mediaco
@arstechnica
@verge
@heiseonline (in German)
@2600
@themarkup
@osnews
@TechCrunch
@TechDesk
@WIRED
@Engadget
@TomsHardware
@EuronewsNext
@mobilesyrup
@Golemde (in German)
@ZDNet
@PCMag
@BGR
@sciencefocus
@Gizmodo
@canaltech (in Portuguese)
@TechTudo (in Portuguese)
@Adrenalinebr (in Portuguese)
@TecMundo (in Portuguese)
@Tecnoblog (in Portuguese)
🧵 1/3
Edited 59d ago