Can AI help me plan my honeymoon?
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. I’m getting married later this summer and am feverishly planning a honeymoon together with my fiancé. It has been at times overwhelming trying to research and decide between what seem like…
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How to use AI to plan your next vacation
MIT Technology Review’s How To series helps you get things done. Planning a vacation should, in theory, be fun. But drawing up a list of activities for a trip can also be time-consuming and stressful, particularly if you don’t know where to begin. Luckily tech companies have been competing to create tools that can help…
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AI lie detectors are better than humans at spotting lies
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. Can you spot a liar? It’s a question I imagine has been on a lot of minds lately, in the wake of various televised political debates. Research has…
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What are AI agents?
MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. When ChatGPT was first released, everyone in AI was talking about the new generation of AI assistants. But over the past year, that excitement has turned…
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A way to let robots learn by listening will make them more useful
Most AI-powered robots today use cameras to understand their surroundings and learn new tasks, but it’s becoming easier to train robots with sound too, helping them adapt to tasks and environments where visibility is limited. Though sight is important, for some of our daily tasks, sound is actually more helpful, like listening to onions sizzling…
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AI companies are finally being forced to cough up for training data
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The generative AI boom is built on scale. The more training data, the more powerful the model. But there’s a problem. AI companies have pillaged the internet for training data, and…
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Training AI music models is about to get very expensive
AI music is suddenly in a make-or-break moment. On June 24, Suno and Udio, two leading AI music startups that make tools to generate complete songs from a prompt in seconds, were sued by major record labels alleging widespread copyright infringement. Sony Music, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group claim the companies made use…
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My colleagues turned me into an AI-powered NPC. I hate him.
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. It feels weird, talking to yourself online. Especially when you’re pretty much the most unpleasant character you’ve ever met. The “me” I’ve been chatting to this week, called King Fiall of Nirth,…
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Synthesia’s hyperrealistic deepfakes will soon have full bodies
Startup Synthesia’s AI-generated avatars are getting an update to make them even more realistic: They will soon have bodies that can move, and hands that gesticulate. The new full-body avatars will be able to do things like sing and brandish a microphone while dancing, or move from behind a desk and walk across a room….
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How underwater drones could shape a potential Taiwan-China conflict
A potential future conflict between Taiwan and China would be shaped by novel methods of drone warfare involving advanced underwater drones and increased levels of autonomy, according to a new war-gaming experiment by the think tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS). The report comes as concerns about Beijing’s aggression toward Taiwan have been…
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