3 New Tricks to Try With Google Gemini Live After Its Latest Major Upgrade
Google has rolled out its biggest Gemini Live upgrade, enhancing conversational AI capabilities. The update improves tone, nuance, pronunciation, and adds dynamic accent support. Users can now adjust speech speed, request repeats, and receive richer storytelling with character perspectives. The changes are available now on Android and iOS Gemini apps.
AlphaFold Changed Science. After 5 Years, It’s Still Evolving
AlphaFold celebrated its five‑year anniversary, having transformed protein structure prediction with atomic‑level accuracy and a public database of over 200 million models used by millions worldwide. The system’s evolution to AlphaFold 3 adds DNA, RNA, and drug interaction modeling, leveraging diffusion models...
Google’s and OpenAI’s Chatbots Can Strip Women in Photos Down to Bikinis
AI chatbots from Google and OpenAI are being used to generate realistic bikini deepfakes of fully clothed women, often without consent. Reddit threads and “nudify” sites share prompts that bypass built‑in safety filters, allowing users to strip clothing from photos....
OpenAI’s Child Exploitation Reports Increased Sharply This Year
OpenAI disclosed an 80‑fold jump in child sexual abuse material (CSAM) reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children during the first half of 2025, rising from 947 reports in the same period last year to roughly 75,000....
People Are Using Sora 2 to Make Disturbing Videos With AI-Generated Kids
OpenAI's Sora 2 video generator is being used to create disturbing AI‑generated clips that depict children in sexualized toy commercials, quickly spreading on TikTok. Within a week of its invitation‑only launch, creators posted fake ads featuring a "Vibro Rose" pen‑toy and...
Tech Disrupted Friendship. It’s Time to Bring It Back
The "Friend" AI companion necklace launched in New York subways this fall, costing under $1 million, and quickly became a canvas for public graffiti. The campaign tapped into growing anxiety that AI could replace human friendship, sparking debate among technologists, psychologists,...
WIRED Roundup: The 5 Tech and Politics Trends That Shaped 2025
WIRED’s 2025 roundup highlighted five defining trends, beginning with an unprecedented surge in AI data‑center investment as Meta, Google and Microsoft triple spending, driving both economic growth and rising energy costs. The episode warned of a potential AI‑infrastructure bubble, noting...
Scammers in China Are Using AI-Generated Images to Get Refunds
Chinese e‑commerce platforms are facing a surge in refund fraud as scammers deploy generative‑AI images and videos to fabricate product damage. Reports from sellers on RedNote and Douyin reveal fake photos of dead crabs, torn sheets, and broken ceramics, prompting...
The Ultra-Realistic AI Face Swapping Platform Driving Romance Scams
Haotian, a Cambodia‑based AI face‑swapping platform, is earning millions by selling ultra‑realistic deep‑fake software to scammers via Telegram. The service offers 50 customizable facial parameters and voice‑cloning, enabling fraudsters to conduct convincing video‑chat scams, especially pig‑butchering schemes. Cryptocurrency tracing shows...
A Filmmaker Made a Sam Altman Deepfake—And Got Unexpectedly Attached
Director Adam Bhala Lough’s new documentary *Deepfaking Sam Altman* chronicles his quest to interview OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, which stalled after months of silence. To break the deadlock, Lough commissioned a full‑body deepfake—Sam Bot—produced in India, turning the synthetic avatar into the film’s...
People Are Paying to Get Their Chatbots High on ‘Drugs’
Swedish creative director Petter Rudwall launched Pharmaicy, an online marketplace selling code modules that make chatbots behave as if they are under the influence of substances such as cannabis, ketamine, and ayahuasca. The service requires a paid ChatGPT tier to...
Apple Engineers Are Inspecting Bacon Packaging to Help Level Up US Manufacturers
Apple engineers have customized an open‑source computer‑vision AI to spot color errors on ImageTek's bacon label prints, preventing a major client loss. The effort is part of Apple’s broader $600 billion U.S. manufacturing investment and its newly launched Apple Manufacturing Academy,...
OpenAI’s Chief Communications Officer Is Leaving the Company
OpenAI’s chief communications officer, Hannah Wong, announced she will leave the company in January 2026 after a five‑year tenure that began in 2021. Wong, who became CCO in August 2024, steered the communications team through the rapid rise of ChatGPT...