Genetic sharing site openSNP to shut down, citing concerns of data privacy and ‘rise in authoritarian governments’

OpenSNP, a large open source repository for user-uploaded genetic data, will shut down and delete all of its data at the end of April, co-founder Bastian Greshake Tzovaras has confirmed. In a blog post, openSNP’s Greshake Tzovaras attributed the decision to shutter the site due to concerns o

Someone is trying to recruit security researchers in bizarre hacking campaign 

Are you willing to hack and take control of Chinese websites for a random person for up to $100,000 a month?  Someone is making precisely that tantalizing, bizarre, and clearly sketchy job offer. The person is using what looks like a series of fake accounts with avatars displaying photos of a

Sam Altman says that OpenAI’s capacity issues will cause product delays

In a series of posts on X on Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the popularity of the company’s new image-generation tool in ChatGPT will cause unspecified product delays. “We are getting things under control, but you should expect new releases from OpenAI to be delayed, stuff to

NaNoWriMo shut down after AI, content moderation scandals

NaNoWriMo, a 25-year-old online writing community-turned-nonprofit, announced on Monday evening that it is shutting down. NaNoWriMo — an abbreviation of National Novel Writing Month — is an annual challenge for writers to complete a rough draft of a novel during the month of November.

Qualcomm acquires generative AI division of Vietnamese startup VinAI

Qualcomm has acquired the generative AI division of VinAI, an AI research company headquartered in Hanoi, for an undisclosed amount, the companies announced on Monday. The move marks Qualcomm’s continued expansion into the AI tooling sector. VinAI, which was founded by former DeepMind resear

Meet Ponte Labor, a startup matching Hispanic immigrants to jobs using WhatsApp

While working on their MBAs at Harvard Business School, Colombian immigrants Stephanie Murra and Lorenza Vélez noticed that most of the workers in the cafeteria were Hispanic. In conversations with them, a common theme kept coming up: how difficult it was for people who legally moved to the U.S. f

Beagle has a new long-range drone with more than one application

When there are damages to energy infrastructure, such as electricity pylons or gas pipelines, expensive helicopters are frequently used to inspect them. Drones have begun to replace some of those inspections, but the flight-time for these can be limited. Now a new company has produced a drone with

Tinder's new AI-powered game assesses your flirting skills

You know the online dating scene is bad when dating giants like Tinder are now introducing AI personas for users to flirt with. On Tuesday, the company announced a new game powered by OpenAI, allowing users to interact with an AI bot to practice flirting, reenact meet-cute scenarios, and receive s

ChatGPT isn’t the only chatbot that’s gaining users

OpenAI’s ChatGPT may be the world’s most popular chatbot app. But rival services are gaining, according to data from analytics firms Similarweb and Sensor Tower. Similarweb, which estimates traffic to websites, including chatbot web apps, has recorded healthy recent upticks in usage ac

Ente wants to take on Google Photos with its privacy-first photo storage service

Despite Google’s intentions for its default image viewing and editing app for Android, the Photos app has, over the years, become one of the most popular photo backup services around. In fact, it was one of the most attractive offerings for years until it stopped offering unlimited storage in

OpenAI’s new image generator is now available to all users

OpenAI’s new image generator, powered by its GPT-4o model, is now available to all users, CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X. The feature was until now available only to paying users of ChatGPT. While it is not clear how many images users on the free tier can generate, Altman last week had m

ChatGPT’s new image generator is really good at faking receipts

This month, ChatGPT unveiled a new image generator as part of its 4o model that is a lot better at generating text inside images.  People are already using it to generate fake restaurant receipts, potentially adding another tool to the already-extensive toolkit of AI deepfakes used by fraudst

Hillary Clinton joins Bluesky

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has joined Bluesky, following in the footsteps of former president Barack Obama, who made his first post on the platform last week. Clinton confirmed her Bluesky account’s legitimacy in an Instagram story and a post on X. In her introductory post, Cl

OpenAI plans to release a new ‘open’ AI language model in the coming months

OpenAI says that it intends to release its first “open” language model since GPT?2 “in the coming months.” That’s according to a feedback form the company published on its website Monday. The form, which OpenAI is inviting “developers, researchers, and [membe