“Civil society has had a complicated relationship with Telegram over the years,” says Natalia Krapiva, a lawyer at the digital rights group Access Now. “We have defended Telegram against attempts by authoritarian regimes to block and coerce the platform into providing encryption keys, but we have also been raising alarms about Telegram’s lack of human…
What’s undisputed is that, starting in the mid-1940s, powerful social forces transformed Los Angeles so that commuters had only two choices: drive or take a public bus. As a result, LA became so choked with traffic that it often took hours to cross the city. In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that people were…
If you’ve rented an apartment in the US in the past several years, you may have had the sense that the game was rigged: Prices creep up not only at your building but at others throughout the city, seemingly in lockstep. A new civil lawsuit brought by the US Department of Justice today alleges that…
The backlash against image and video synthesis is not solely focused on creative app developers. Hardware manufacturer Wacom and game publisher Wizards of the Coast have faced criticism and issued apologies after using AI-generated content in their marketing materials. Toys “R” Us also faced a negative reaction after debuting an AI-generated commercial. Companies are still…
Thousands of people lined up outside Citi Field in Queens, New York, on Wednesday to watch the Mets face off with the Orioles. But outside the ticketing booth, a handful of protesters handed out flyers. They were there to protest a recent Major League Baseball program, one that’s increasingly common in professional sports: using facial…
At first glance, a recent batch of research papers produced by a prominent artificial intelligence lab at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver might not seem that notable. Featuring incremental improvements on existing algorithms and ideas, they read like the contents of a middling AI conference or journal. But the research is, in fact,…
Condé Nast and OpenAI have struck a multi-year deal that will allow the AI giant to use content from the media giant’s roster of properties—which includes the New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appetit, and, yes, WIRED. The deal will allow OpenAI to surface stories from these outlets in both ChatGPT and the new SearchGPT…
Former president Donald Trump has shared AI-generated images that falsely claim Taylor Swift fans are supporting his campaign. In a post on Truth Social, Trump shared screenshots of four posts on X that purport to show a number of young women all wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts in a variety of styles. One of the…
Later in the year, Google will imbue Gemini Live with Project Astra, the computer vision tech it teased at its developer conference in May. This will allow you to use your phone’s camera app and, in real time, ask Gemini about the objects you are looking at in the real world. Imagine walking past a…
WIRED has been writing about Elon Musk—he of the electric cars, space rockets, tunnel-boring machines, implantable brain interfaces, Mars mission, and internet shitposting—for a long time. He’s always been unpredictable. And yet the most shocking part of his two-hour interview with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, broadcast live on X earlier this week, may just…