Fake online identities are common. The ability to easily create them has been a boon for social media platforms—more “users”—and a scourge, as they spread conspiracy theories, distorted discourse, and other social ills. ChatGPT shows that Twitter bots are nothing compared to what’s coming. In a few years, it will …

DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine, launched DuckAssist, an AI-powered summarization feature, in beta today. DuckAssist can directly answer simple search queries. DDG says it uses ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Anthropic, an AI startup founded by ex-OpenAI employees, to power its natural language summarization capability, along with its own active indexing …

Google announced that I/O will return to Mountain View’s Shoreline Amphitheater on May 10. The company will stream the keynotes for free, but the in-person event will be small, like last year’s. Pre-pandemic I/O was a multi-day event with keynotes and workshops. This scaled-down event appears to focus on public-facing …

According to a person with knowledge of the situation, the Japanese marketing technology company Geniee, a member of the SoftBank Group, paid about $70 million in cash to acquire the revenue optimization platform Zelto (previously known as AdPushup), providing investors in the startup that started out in India with a …

A government watchdog found that the Secret Service and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) section often broke the law when they spied on people’s cell phones in a snoopy way. Last week, the inspector general for Homeland Security, who is in charge of keeping an eye on the U.S. government …

More than 20 new nations in Europe are now able to use Twitter’s paid service, Twitter Blue. These countries are the Czech Republic, Finland, Denmark, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Estonia, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta, and Cyprus.They also include the Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Romania, and …

The Royal ransomware operation is getting a lot of attention. The U.S. government says that it targeted a number of important infrastructure sectors across the country. In a joint statement on Thursday, the FBI and the US cybersecurity agency CISA said that the Royal ransomware has affected businesses in the …

Co-founder and CEO Paul Eremenko called it the start of a “new golden age of aviation” as a Universal Hydrogen-branded jet made its first test flight in eastern Washington using the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever used to power an aircraft. Even though the 15-minute test flight of the modified …

Roofing isn’t glamorous. It meets the three Ds of automation—dull, dirty, and dangerous—with ease. Some smart roboticists could transform it. It’s always one of the most dangerous construction jobs, but there are a lot of roofs in the world, so everyone who wants one should have one. At launch, Renovate …

Humanoid robots are a timeless concept, but their popularity fluctuates over time. Tesla’s Optimus prototype has reignited the debate over general-purpose robot form, efficacy, and viability. In an interview this week, Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert said, “I thought that they’d gotten a lot more done than I expected, and …