By Jonathan Stempel A U.S. judge rejected Google's bid to dismiss a lawsuit claiming it invaded the privacy

Facebook owner Meta is working on a ChatGPT-style chatbot with the personality of Abraham Lincoln, according to reports. The new AI bot is part of a series of prototypes under development at the tech giant, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, with each one featuring a different human-like persona. The new chatbots form part of the company’s attempts to boost its engagement with its social media platforms, according to the report, citing people with knowledge of the plans. Beyond the chatbot based on the former US president, the California-based social media giant is also exploring a chatbot that advises on travel options in the style of a surfer. The purpose of these chatbots, which Meta employees have dubbed ‘personas’, will be to provide a new search function as well as offer recommendations. The report comes as Meta executives are focusing on boosting retention on its new text-based app Threads, after the app lost more than half of its users in the weeks following its launch on 5 July. The Facebook parent reported a strong rise in advertising revenue in its earnings last week, forecasting third-quarter revenue above market expectations. The company has been climbing back from a bruising 2022, buoyed by hype around emerging AI technology and an austerity drive in which it has shed around 21,000 employees since last fall. Meta launched a new version of its open-source artificial intelligence model in July called Llama 2 for commercial use, which will be distributed by Microsoft through its Azure cloud service and will run on the Windows operating system. Bloomberg News reported in July that Apple is working on AI offerings similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, adding that it has built its own framework, known as ‘Ajax’, to create large language models and is also testing a chatbot that some engineers call ‘Apple GPT’. Reports of a ‘Chat with an AI’ feature first emerged in June, when app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi shared screenshots of a new tool that offers users the option to ask questions and seek advice from up to 30 different AI chatbots on Instagram. Meta reportedly plans to launch the new AI chatbots in September. The Independent has reached out to Instagram for comment, though the company typically does not speak about unreleased products. Additional reporting from agencies Read More ‘I’ve got Elon Musk dying’: Voice clone baffles tech billionaire

MELVILLE, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 12, 2023--

By David Kirton SHENZHEN, China For the ambitious Chinese tech entrepreneur, expanding into the U.S. just keeps getting

Black Mirror is returning to our screens for a new series in June - get hyped. It has been four years since fans of the dystopian drama were last treated to a taste of the anthology TV series and 12 since it first aired in the UK so safe to say, its return has been long awaited. But since it first graced our screens in 2011, a lot has changed in the world. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Life has often imitated art and Black Mirror now seems less of a dystopia and more of a documentary. Especially in these seven instances where the show was just a bit too on the nose... 1. PM has sex with a pig In season one of the show, a kidnapper demands that the prime minister, Michael Callow, has sex with a pig on live television to secure the safe return of a British royal family member. While this certainly did not happen in real life, it sounded a bit like Piggate - a claim that surfaced in 2015 that, during his university years, former prime minister David Cameron inserted his penis into a dead pig's mouth at a party. 2. People ride bikes for tokens In another season two classic, Black Mirror writer Charlie Brooker imagines a world where people ride stationary bikes for a virtual currency used to buy essentials. Today in Paris's station Gare Du Nord, people can ride bikes to generate power to charge their phones while they wait for their trains. 3. AI versions of deceased loved ones In season two episode Be Right Back, a woman brings her dead boyfriend back to life (kind of) by getting an android version of him, which learns his speech patterns by using his social media posts and online communications Last year Amazon revealed an experimental Alexa feature that allows the app to mimic the voices of users' dead relatives. 4. Joke politicians go viral The Waldo Moment sees a satirical computer-animated bear become a politician. Now we could resort to some rubbish satire of our own and say all the politicians we have in the House of Commons are no better than cartoon bears but that would be cheap. What is the case is that joke candidates like Count Binface and other representatives from the Monster Raving Loony Party frequently outperform fringe candidates in by-elections that take place in the UK nowadays. 5. People rate their social interactions In season three, an episode called Nosedive sees people rate all of their social interactions on a five-star scale which then go on to form a person's socioeconomic status. This is quite similar to people rating each other on Uber and swiping across each other on dating apps like Hinge and Bumble if you ask us. Black Mirror | Nosedive Featurette [HD] | Netflix www.youtube.com 6. Tracking health through tablets In Arkangel, a season four episode, Marie implants her three-year-old daughter with an Arkangel system which monitors her health, vision and hearing via a tablet computer. It is not too dissimilar to the rise of Apple Watches and FitBits which people use to obsess over their resting heart rate, sleep score and step count. 7. The rise of dating apps In Hang the DJ, people use an electronic device called "Coach" which chooses their partners and the duration of their relationship. Nowadays there is always a new dating app every other week promising to find people love and happiness in different ways. So it is safe to say Black Mirror really had its finger on the pulse when envisioning a not-too-distant future. We can't wait to see what phenomena the next few episodes will predict. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Hazardous smoke from wildfires has become a near-annual occurrence on the West Coast since 2017. But the hazy

Smoke from Canadian wildfires will obscure the skies in New York and across the Mid-Atlantic starting Wednesday, just

Leaks suggest players will be able to get Yuji Itadori for free in Fortnite by unlocking the skin in a special Jujutsu Kaisen Battle Pass.

The crash sites of unidentified flying objects (or UFOs) are often mysterious in themselves, but even more so when you reportedly find what is simply described as “tiny spheres” akin to “cosmic sperm” in the area in question. Well, that’s what journalist George Knapp found when he obtained documents – some classified – from the Russian military into UFOs, something the Soviet government at the time had batted aside based on the view it was nothing but “Western propaganda”. Referring to a discovery from biologist Yuri Simakov of small balls discovered from the soil of landing sites, Knapp told the Weaponised podcast: “The impressions they made of the soil were pretty dramatic and it doesn’t look like anything that we fly, and he shared that with us. “He gave us all that information and then he found these little orbs. These tiny little perfect spheres … they were opaque. “They were sort of reddish orangish colour and he called them ‘cosmic sperm’. He thought they were some kind of a biological mechanism – some kind of seeds – and he gave me half of the world’s known supply of cosmic sperm and I brought them back.” We can’t believe we had to write that, and you probably can’t believe you just read that, but here we are. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Though if you’re wondering where the not-safe-for-work (NSFW) spheres are now, it turns out he sent them to Dr Thomas Hartmann at the University of Nevada, who confirmed there was nothing biological about the ‘spheres’. Knapp never got the spheres back though, so they’re likely still over there somewhere, yet to be retrieved. We think that’s probably for the best though, George, if we’re being perfectly honest. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

By Elizabeth Howcroft LONDON (Reuters) -Mastercard and crypto exchange Binance will end their four crypto card programmes in Argentina, Brazil,

Nvidia Corp. led declines in tech stocks after a report Washington could close loopholes in the sale to

As of now, MrBeast has over 184 million subscribers on YouTube, making him the most followed individual creator on the platform