Electronics

What generative AI typically does best—recognize patterns and predict the next step in a sequence—can seem fundamentally at odds with the intangibility of human creativity and imagination. However, Cambridge researchers suggest that AI can be a useful creative partner, as long as there is clear guidance on how ideas should... Read more

Zohran Mamdani as a creepy trick-or-treater, Gavin Newsom body-slamming Donald Trump and Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero. This is not the setup to an elaborate joke. Instead, these are all examples of recent AI-generated political videos. New easy-to-use tools—and acceptance of those tools by politicians—means that these fake videos are... Read more

AI-supported recommender systems should provide users with the best possible suggestions for their inquiries. These systems often have to serve different target groups and take other stakeholders into account who also influence the machine's response: e.g. service providers, municipalities or tourism associations.... Read more

Amazon.com Inc.'s new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is the company's most serious effort yet to turn its e-reader into a productivity tool. But with a starting price of $630—making it the priciest Kindle yet—Amazon will need to persuade even its most loyal readers that the upgrade is worth it.... Read more

Electronic gifts are very popular, and in recent years, retailers have been offering significant discounts on smartphones, e-readers and other electronics labeled as "pre-owned." Research I have co-led finds that these pre-owned options are becoming increasingly viable, thanks in part to laws and policies that encourage recycling and reuse of... Read more

The Australian Federal government's Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act, commonly referred to as the "social media ban," is now in effect.... Read more

From automatically generated overviews to chatbots in spreadsheets, so-called artificial intelligence is increasingly being integrated into our watches, phones, home assistants and other smart devices.... Read more

From ancient slavery to the factory floor, progress has often relied on the exploitation of human beings. We might like to believe those days are well behind us. But in the digital age, AI and the metaverse risk repeating that pattern with new forms of invisible labor and inequality.... Read more

A modeling study shows how, under some conditions, increasing numbers of households with rooftop solar panels can lead to higher rates for those without their own solar system. When utility customers cancel their accounts after switching to residential solar panels, the utility must spread their fixed costs around to a... Read more

A popular portable phone charger sold online has been recalled after reports that it can overheat and catch fire, federal officials said.... Read more

The humble pocket calculator may not be able to keep up with the mathematical capabilities of new technology, but it will never hallucinate.... Read more

The world is loud. A walk down the street bombards one's ears with the sound of engines revving, car horns blaring, and the steady beeps of pedestrian crossings. While smartphone alerts to excessive sound and public awareness of noise exposure grows, few tools help people take protective action.... Read more

Shopping assistant chatbots were a novelty a year ago. Now, they're everywhere.... Read more

Reducing the visibility of polarizing content in social media feeds can measurably lower partisan animosity. To come up with this finding, my colleagues and I developed a method that let us alter the ranking of people's feeds, previously something only the social media companies could do.... Read more

CISPA researcher Tejumade Àfọ̀njá has co-authored a new international study that uses food as a starting point to reveal significant cultural blind spots in today's AI systems. The study also introduces a new participatory research approach to create more inclusive datasets and evaluate biases in AI models.... Read more

A new device uses focused sound cues to keep users grounded amid digital distractions, with possible benefits for anxiety and ADHD as well.... Read more

When Kendrick Lamar began his Super Bowl halftime show earlier this year, he picked a stage design likely familiar to anyone tuning in: a square, triangle, cross and circle.... Read more

Remember Animal Crossing: New Horizons? During the height of its popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, the game, built for the Nintendo Switch console, was averaging 1 million copies sold per day. Now, almost six years since the start of the pandemic, University of California, Santa Cruz Professor of Computational Media... Read more

In China, AI glasses let the wearer pay in shops with just a glance at a QR code and a voice command, as a growing number of companies look to conquer both growing domestic and overseas markets.... Read more

Samsung launched its first triple-folding phone on Tuesday, a special-edition product with an eyewatering price tag placing it out of the reach of the average consumer.... Read more

Digital platforms have gained strong economic positions in many industries. On the one hand, they enable more providers than ever before to make their products, services, or information available. On the other hand, this means that more providers now compete for users' attention. The user interface (UI) of platforms acts... Read more

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often seen as a tool to automate tasks and replace humans, but new research from Swansea University challenges this view, showing that AI can also act as a creative, engaging and inspiring partner.... Read more

When OpenAI's Sam Altman told reporters in San Francisco earlier this year that the AI sector is in a bubble, the American tech market reacted almost instantly.... Read more

Snapchat, an app whose disappearing messages and silly face filters made chatting with loved ones more casual, is close to a milestone that few social media platforms achieve: reaching 1 billion monthly users.... Read more

After wowing World Expo visitors, a human washing machine is now on sale in Japan, a company spokesperson said Friday.... Read more

Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, has released an important new book about the problems we face online and how to solve them. It is called "This is for Everyone," meaning that the internet should be for all.... Read more

A study by the University of Stuttgart, the California State University at Fullerton, and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems has found that there are benefits to representing one's real-life disability through an avatar in virtual reality.... Read more

Earlier this year, Elon Musk was accused of cheating to fake his ranking in the action role-playing video game Diablo IV. At first glance, it looks ridiculous.... Read more

Over the last few years, systems and applications that help visually impaired people navigate their environment have undergone rapid development, but still have room to grow, according to a team of researchers at Penn State. The team recently combined recommendations from the visually impaired community and artificial intelligence (AI) to... Read more

It's a cliché that any "geek" who knows how to program computers will also probably play Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D. If you need to find someone at work who can explain to you the latest episode of Stranger Things, then you could probably safely start in the IT department... Read more

Since early chatbots were first conceived more than 50 years ago, they have become increasingly sophisticated—in large part, thanks to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.... Read more

They perform spectacular shows at amusement parks and sporting events. They deliver medicine and help monitor security. They make great gifts. What are they?... Read more

For technology adopters looking for the next big thing, "agentic AI" is the future. At least, that's what the marketing pitches and tech industry T-shirts say.... Read more

Researchers are developing reusable and environmentally friendly electronics for the health care, consumer and manufacturing sectors, replacing scarce materials with circular alternatives to build a sustainable future.... Read more

When the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) invited users to flag false or misleading posts, critics initially scoffed. How could the same public that spreads misinformation be trusted to correct it? But a recent study by researchers from the University of Rochester, the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, and the... Read more

A new study published in Information Systems Research finds that certain short-form videos on major platforms can trigger suicidal thoughts among vulnerable viewers and that a newly developed AI model can flag these high-risk videos before they spread. The research delivers one of the first data-driven, medically informed tools for... Read more

AI's superior ability to formulate thoughts and statements for us weakens our judgment and ability to think critically, says media professor Petter Bae Brandtzæg.... Read more

A research team from the Cognitive Neurotechnology Unit and the Visual Perception and Cognition Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology, investigated human behavior and comfort when handing over a package to an autonomous mobile delivery robot while walking—an interaction envisioned for logistics in future... Read more

Can we really trust artificial intelligence to illustrate our ideas? A team of scientists has examined the capabilities of Midjourney and DALL·E—two Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) software programs—to produce images from simple sentences. The verdict is mixed... between aesthetic feats and beginner's mistakes, machines still have a long way to... Read more

Technological innovations can seem relentless. In computing, some have proclaimed that "a year in machine learning is a century in any other field." But how do you know whether those advancements are hype or reality?... Read more

Every day, millions of people talk to chatbots and AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Replika and Gemini, but what kind of "relationships" are we really forming with them?... Read more

It has become nearly impossible for people to tell the difference between music generated by artificial intelligence and that created by humans, according to a survey released Wednesday.... Read more

Women's feelings of safety on public transport are profoundly shaped by past experiences of harassment, according to new research exploring women's perceived precautionary safety while in transit.... Read more

Global tech leaders will pack Lisbon's annual Web Summit from Tuesday to talk Artificial Intelligence, robots and startups—all under the shadow of tensions over cutting-edge tech and the natural resources needed to build it.... Read more

New research from the University of Copenhagen points to a simple yet effective method for combating misinformation on social media: make it slightly harder to share content.... Read more

A team of engineers at the University of California San Diego has developed an electronic sticker that can monitor a person's vitamin C levels using the sweat from their fingertips—no blood draws, lab visits or batteries required. The flexible sticker, which attaches to the outside of a drinking cup, collects... Read more

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used to preserve the voices and stories of the dead. From text-based chatbots that mimic loved ones to voice avatars that let you "speak" with the deceased, a growing digital afterlife industry promises to make memory interactive, and, in some cases, eternal.... Read more

New research from Stanford's Yu Ding shows that moderate animation speeds during online wait times boost user engagement and reduce frustration, challenging the notion that faster is better.... Read more

At a Whole Foods store just outside of Philadelphia, Amazon built a small warehouse housing Goldfish crackers, Tide Pods and other items you wouldn't find in an organic grocery store.... Read more

A new study has revealed that artificial intelligence can now generate images of real people that are virtually impossible to tell apart from genuine photographs.... Read more