As the speeches dragged on, eyes drifted to screens. Teenagers scrolled Instagram. One man texted his girlfriend. And men crowded around a phone streaming a soccer match while the group’s first female leader spoke. Just about anywhere, a scene like this would be mundane. But this was happening in a remote Indigenous village in one…
When Frank Pine searched Google for a link to a news article two months ago, he encountered paragraphs generated by artificial intelligence about the topic at the top of his results. To see what he wanted, he had to scroll past them. That experience annoyed Mr. Pine, the executive editor of Media News Group and…
When Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, introduced a generative artificial intelligence feature for the company’s search engine last month, he and his colleagues demonstrated the new capability with six text-based queries that the public could try out. The questions included “how do you clean a fabric sofa” and “what should I use to get a…
Several major networks cut away from former President Donald J. Trump on Friday during an appearance that had been promoted as a news conference at Trump Tower devolved into a rambling and misleading speech. It was the latest example of television journalists having to weigh the news value of a major political moment — in…
Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, offered a personal tour of the electric carmaker’s factory in Austin, Texas, to select shareholders this week. “Please let us know if you have any questions about voting your Tesla shares!” Mr. Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns. It was just one of at least a…
When OpenAI unveiled the latest version of its immensely popular ChatGPT chatbot this month, it had a new voice possessing humanlike inflections and emotions. The online demonstration also featured the bot tutoring a child on solving a geometry problem. To my chagrin, the demo turned out to be essentially a bait and switch. The new…
X, the social media service owned by Elon Musk, will host live video town halls with former President Donald J. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election, a major push into politics, according to a person familiar with the plans. The town halls, which will be produced in…
The website calling itself Man Stuff News caters to a certain sensibility, with categories like “Backyard Grilling,” “TV Shows for Guys” and “Beard Grooming.” A recent article headlined “Tips for Dads During Labor” offered this nugget of advice: “Just remember to spend some time together before deciding whether or not to give birth.” Get to…
At a sprawling complex in Warren, Mich., General Motors’ hopes for its driverless car future play out in a virtual reality headset offered to visitors. In a video, the electric and autonomous car drives itself. Wirelessly connected to traffic lights and the surrounding streets, the car avoids collisions and reduces congestion, part of what G.M….
A dozen years ago, John Mark Dougan, a former deputy sheriff in Palm Beach County, Fla., sent voters an email posing as a county commissioner, urging them to oppose the re-election of the county’s sheriff. He later masqueraded online as a Russian tech worker with a pseudonym, BadVolf, to leak confidential information in violation of…
