Tag Archives: gemini

Millions turn to AI chatbots for spiritual guidance and confession

Privacy concerns compound these issues. “I wonder if there isn’t a larger danger in pouring your heart out to a chatbot,” Catholic priest Fr. Mike Schmitz told The Times. “Is it at some point going to become accessible to other people?” Users share intimate spiritual moments that now exist as data points in corporate servers.… Read More »

The personhood trap: How AI fakes human personality

Knowledge emerges from understanding how ideas relate to each other. LLMs operate on these contextual relationships, linking concepts in potentially novel ways—what you might call a type of non-human “reasoning” through pattern recognition. Whether the resulting linkages the AI model outputs are useful depends on how you prompt it and whether you can recognize when… Read More »

Google hides secret message in name list of 3,295 AI researchers

How many Google AI researchers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A recent research paper detailing the technical core behind Google’s Gemini AI assistant may suggest an answer, listing an eye-popping 3,295 authors. It’s a number that recently caught the attention of machine learning researcher David Ha (known as “hardmaru” online), who revealed… Read More »

Unless users take action, Android will let Gemini access third-party apps

Starting today, Google is implementing a change that will enable its Gemini AI engine to interact with third-party apps, such as WhatsApp, even when users previously configured their devices to block such interactions. Users who don’t want their previous settings to be overridden may have to take action. An email Google sent recently informing users… Read More »

OpenAI releases new simulated reasoning models with full tool access

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced the release of two new models—o3 and o4-mini—that combine simulated reasoning capabilities with access to functions like web browsing and coding. These models mark the first time OpenAI’s reasoning-focused models can use every ChatGPT tool simultaneously, including visual analysis and image generation. OpenAI announced o3 in December, and until now, only… Read More »

Gemini hackers can deliver more potent attacks with a helping hand from… Gemini

The resulting dataset, which reflected a distribution of attack categories similar to the complete dataset, showed an attack success rate of 65 percent and 82 percent against Gemini 1.5 Flash and Gemini 1.0 Pro, respectively. By comparison, attack baseline success rates were 28 percent and 43 percent. Success rates for ablation, where only effects of… Read More »

Farewell Photoshop? Google’s new AI lets you edit images by asking.

Multimodal output opens up new possibilities Having true multimodal output opens up interesting new possibilities in chatbots. For example, Gemini 2.0 Flash can play interactive graphical games or generate stories with consistent illustrations, maintaining character and setting continuity throughout multiple images. It’s far from perfect, but character consistency is a new capability in AI assistants.… Read More »

Google and Meta update their AI models amid the rise of “AlphaChip”

Enlarge / There’s been a lot of AI news this week, and covering it sometimes feels like running through a hall full of danging CRTs, just like this Getty Images illustration. reader comments 8 It’s been a wildly busy week in AI news thanks to OpenAI, including a controversial blog post from CEO Sam Altman,… Read More »

Google’s “AI Overview” can give false, misleading, and dangerous answers

Enlarge / This is fine. Getty Images reader comments 80 If you use Google regularly, you may have noticed the company’s new AI Overviews providing summarized answers to some of your questions in recent days. If you use social media regularly, you may have come across many examples of those AI Overviews being hilariously or even… Read More »

Google strikes back at OpenAI with “Project Astra” AI agent prototype

Enlarge / A video still of Project Astra demo at the Google I/O conference keynote in Mountain View on May 14, 2024. reader comments 28 Just one day after OpenAI revealed GPT-4o, which it bills as being able to understand what’s taking place in a video feed and converse about it, Google announced Project Astra,… Read More »