Author: Lauren Goode

  • I Used AI to Do All of My Holiday Shopping

    I Used AI to Do All of My Holiday Shopping

    One of the promises of the next era of generative AI is that the technology will be agentic, or have the ability to perform tasks autonomously on behalf of us chaotic humans. That means AI agents will theoretically be able to “reason” about the next steps they should take, allowing them to execute multiple actions

  • Nvidia Says Its Blackwell Chip Is Fine, Nothing to See Here

    Nvidia Says Its Blackwell Chip Is Fine, Nothing to See Here

    Chip giant Nvidia reported its third-quarter earnings earlier today, and all ears—and presumably some watch parties—were tuned in to try to determine what the company’s performance might mean for the near future of the artificial intelligence industry as a whole. The fate of the company’s newest AI chip, Blackwell, was a major focus after production

  • Sam Altmans Eye-Scanning Orb Has a New Lookand Will Come Right to Your Door

    Sam Altmans Eye-Scanning Orb Has a New Lookand Will Come Right to Your Door

    While the biometric-scanning Orb and the World network have their roots in crypto tokens, “crypto” wasn’t an oft-mentioned word during the event. Instead, Altman and Blania emphasized World’s blockchain service, digital asset management, and virtual communication tools. Blania claimed during the press briefing that, in the future, World hopes to build the “largest finance network”

  • OpenAIs GPT Store Has Left Some Developers in the Lurch

    OpenAIs GPT Store Has Left Some Developers in the Lurch

    When OpenAI launched its platform for custom GPTs, Josh Brent Villocido was stoked to learn that one of his creations would be featured. The ascendant AI company announced at its November 2023 developer day that it would launch a store that would host GPTs, custom skins that run on top of its proprietary ChatGPT technology.

  • Googles Visual Search Can Now Answer Even More Complex Questions

    Googles Visual Search Can Now Answer Even More Complex Questions

    When Google Lens was introduced in 2017, the search feature accomplished a feat that not too long ago would have seemed like the stuff of science fiction: Point your phone’s camera at an object and Google Lens can identify it, show some context, maybe even let you buy it. It was a new way of

  • I Stared Into the AI Void With the SocialAI App

    I Stared Into the AI Void With the SocialAI App

    The first time I used SocialAI, I was sure the app was performance art. That was the only logical explanation for why I would willingly sign up to have AI bots named Blaze Fury and Trollington Nefarious, well, troll me. Even the app’s creator, Michael Sayman, admits that the premise of SocialAI may confuse people.

  • This iPhone Supercycle May Not Be So Super

    This iPhone Supercycle May Not Be So Super

    Apple’s just-announced iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro will likely go down in the books as the “AI” iPhone, the one that’s supposed to power all kinds of new generative artificially intelligent features, and in a very Apple-y way. But some analysts are predicting that these new phones will catalyze an even more important phenomenon

  • Open Source AI Has Foundersand the FTCBuzzing

    Open Source AI Has Foundersand the FTCBuzzing

    Many of yesterday’s talks were littered with the acronyms you’d expect from this assemblage of high-minded panelists: YC, FTC, AI, LLMs. But threaded throughout the conversations—foundational to them, you might say—was boosterism for open source AI. It was a stark left turn (or return, if you’re a Linux head) from the app-obsessed 2010s, when developers