If greater productivity or happier, healthier employees isn’t enough to sway CEOs into the flexible remote working movement, this latest news may.

A recent study by a technology startup has shown that the average public company, with a flexible remote working policy, outperformed on revenue growth over the past three years by 16 percentage points. This is in comparison to companies with return-to-office mandates.

The analysis of remote working policies was done by Scoop, in partnership with the Boston Consulting Group, and looked at the work policies and revenue growth of 554 public companies.

This comes following the recent successful results of Spain’s four-day working week trial, proving that flexible working provides lots of benefits for the employee, business, and our environment as a whole.

Remote Working Works

The report from Scoop, a technology developer that creates hybrid work planning tools, sought to compare the relationship between remote working policies and revenue growth. A link that, until now, had not been studied. 

The analysis looked at the revenue growth between 2020 and 2022 across a range of industries. This included technology, media, insurance, and financial services. From here it was found that fully flexible public companies significantly outperformed their peers in revenue growth by 16 percentage points.

More than that, structured hybrid companies – those who require their employees to be in the office for a certain amount of time or on certain days – also performed better on revenue growth in comparison to those who implement working in the office full time, by 13 percentage points. Companies in the data set with more restrictive policies, including set hours and days or full-time mandates, had only a 5% industry-adjusted revenue growth rate.

On the 16 percentage point revenue growth, Rob Sadow, CEO and co-founder of Scoop, stated: “That gap was really surprising to us and larger than expected”. He went on to compare Scoop’s past research of work policies and employee-number growth and concluded that “collectively they paint a pretty strong picture” for the argument of flexible working.

Flexibility Contributes to Office Culture

The data isn’t suggesting that a remote working policy is the definitive cause behind revenue growth. Rather it’s a contributing factor showing that an open-minded business culture that engages workers with autonomy and trust, and listens to their needs, will naturally support growth.

Add to this the fact that flexible remote working – and therefore fewer commutes – helps the environment and allows businesses to widen their employee talent pool search, and really CEOs start to become hard pressed to find the negatives.  

Sadow continued: “The argument a lot of execs and board members have is they believe companies that offer flexibility are going to underperform because they’re not together, that they’re not going to allow for water cooler conversations and relationships to develop. The data suggests not only is that not true in terms of underperformance, but you might actually outperform.”

Younger Companies More Likely to be Flexible

As well as the revenue growth correlation, the study identified a lot of interesting data that displayed the emerging shape of how we now work.

While companies shouldn’t feel forced into being one way or the other, that is either fully remote or full time in the office, it’s clear that flexibility is continuing to grow more prevalent. This is due to figures showing that 38% of companies now require employees to be in the office full time, which is down from the 49% identified at the start of the year.

Similarly, correlation between the age of a company and the likelihood of it offering flexible working was also found. The younger the company, the more likely it will offer flexible and remote options, no matter the size of the business or its industry. 

While on the topic of industries, Scoop also found that small companies; tech, media, and finance companies; and those with offices in the West and Northeast United States are all more likely to offer flexible working practices. So, if you’re in need of a career change to something with a little more flex, you now know where to look.

Christmas is a wonderful time of year, but it can leave a real dent in your bank account. That’s why many people turn to seasonal jobs, to earn a little income in the run up to the big day.

Traditionally, most seasonal jobs were found in retail – such as helping out on the shop floor, or delivering parcels. However, now remote jobs are becoming more and more common, and you can earn extra income without having to step outside.

We’ve collected eight seasonal roles that can be done fully remotely, so take a look and see if any of them are a good fit for you.

1. Customer Service Representative

When it comes to seasonal remote work roles, you’ll find plenty in the customer service sector. Christmas is a busy time for a lot of companies, as such they’ll be looking to hire additional staff to help field queries from customers.

Everyone from Amazon to Walmart, Apple to Nascar are currently looking for people to help provide support over the festive period.

While many of these roles will be phone based, many also involve speaking with customers via text chat, so don’t be too put off if speaking over the phone isn’t your thing.

Skills you’ll need as a customer service representative: 

• It goes without saying that you’ll need good communication skills!
• Problem solving skills are also a bonus in this field
• If you need to speak with customers over the phone, you’ll need to make sure your remote environment is quiet and distraction free

2. Data Entry Clerk

Data entry roles lend themselves nicely to remote work, and providing you can work under your own steam and don’t mind repetitive tasks, they can be a great way to make a little extra cash in the run up to Christmas.

In terms of the sort of information you’ll be entering, it could be literally anything. If you’ve never done data entry before, you’ll soon discover that the actual information doesn’t really matter – it’s just a case of getting it into the database as quickly as possible (and ensuring it’s correct, of  course).

Skills you’ll need to be a data entry clerk:

• Fast typing
• Attention to detail
• Computer literate
• Ability to work in isolation

3. Virtual Receptionist

With the Christmas break approaching fast, many of us will be planning to take time off. This includes receptionists! As such you’ll find that many companies are looking to hire virtual receptionists to cover the shortfall over Christmas.

The good news for you is that you don’t need to sit behind a desk in an office to do the job – you can just as easily do it from home. Duties will include speaking to customers/clients, routing calls, arranging appointments and so on.

Skills you’ll need to be a virtual receptionist:

• Excellent communication skills
• Great organization skills
• Time management
• Note taking

Find a permanent remote job, at these companies who let you work from home.

4. Tax Preparer

There are plenty of seasonal opportunities for Tax Preparer rolls, although unlike most of the roles on this list, this job has a slightly longer lifespan, usually running from around December to the end of April.

As the name suggests, the job involves helping companies prepare to file their taxes at the end of the season, with many firms taking on extra pairs of hands to get the task done.

You’ll need a Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN) before you can apply for be a tax preparer, and some states also have additional requirements, including New York and California.

Ideal skills to be a tax preparer: 

• Excellent math skills
• Knowledge of tax law
• Qualifications in the field usually preferred
• Good eye for detail

5. Tech Support Agent

Similar to customer service roles, some companies have to up their tech support staff over the Christmas break, anticipating a larger volume of people than usual engaging with their products and services.

If you’ve never done it before, don’t feel too daunted by the idea of giving tech advice – most companies will provide you with extensive documentation that covers most potential issues, and tech support staff usually follow a simple flowchart system to diagnose issues.

Skills you’ll need to be a tech support agent:

• Ability to give clear instructions
• Methodical approach to problem solving
• Patience!

6. Sales Assistant

Sales assistant roles exist all year round of course, but companies sometimes need extra help during the holidays, and some also offer Christmas-relevant products that require seasonal workers.

One of the nice things about sales jobs like this is that some offer bonuses based on performance, so you could see your seasonal job turn into a nice earner with the right approach.

Skills you’ll need to be a sales assistant:

• Confidence talking to strangers
• Persuasion skills
• Friendly manner
• A thick skin when you get rejected (and it will happen!)

Want to make your day job remote? Read our guide to how to ask to work from home.

7. Audio Book Narrator

This one might seem a little out there, but if you’ve got a pleasant sounding voice, then you could be using it to generate extra income for yourself.

Amazon has a program through its Audible division that sees it pay narrators to turn books into spoken word. Anyone can create a profile on its ACX platform, and offer themselves to authors to be selected to read books.

Payments can either be a one-off sum, or a share of the revenue based on number of sales the audio book achieves.

Skills you’ll need to be an audio book narrator:

• Crystal clear speaking voice
• Excellent enunciation
• Good home recording set up

8. Virtual Santa

As we all know, Christmas is a busy time of year for the jolly bearded guy, and as such he has employed swathes of helpers over the years to make appearances at shopping malls, schools and events.

Wanting to move with the times, he now needs help online, with job roles popping up for virtual Santas. These are essentially the same as the traditional mall Santa gig, but over Zoom instead.

Seeing a gap in the market, companies such as JingleRing popped up during the pandemic, when in-person events were much harder to arrange, and have persevered.

Ideal skills you’ll need to be a virtual Santa:

• Being jolly is essential
• Likewise, excellent child communication skills
• Improvise and be quick witted when speaking
• You’ll need to remember information, such as prepared details about the child

AI errors have become as much a part of the technology as its accomplishments in 2026, with popular platforms experiencing enough hallucinations to make users concerned about the future of the tech.

The evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) over the last few years has been nothing if not substantial. Chatbots like ChatGPT have become incredibly powerful, doling out everything from therapeutic advice to realistic images, while other AI platforms help businesses make quick work of tasks like writing emails and running businesses.

Still, while there are plenty of success stories about AI improving productivity and streamlining operations, there are just as many tales of errors, mistakes, and hallucinations that we have collected in the guide below.

Note: This page is regularly updated to include the most recent AI incidents, failures, and mistakes, listed as occurring in the month that the incident was first reported.

May 2026

Lawsuit alleges that gig workers abused Pizza Hut’s AI system

A big Pizza Hut franchisee, Chaac Pizza Northeast, is suing the company, saying that its AI system was so poorly designed that gig workers triggered “cascading operational breakdowns” across over 110 locations.

According to the suit, Pizza Hut’s Dragontail Artificial Intelligence system gave control to third-party delivery drivers over which orders to prioritize, leading to significant problems.

College graduation’s name-reading AI fails to read all the names

Glendale Community College’s graduation ceremony hit a snag on May 15, when the AI system skipped some names of the students walking across the stage to receive their diplomas. The problem: An AI system in charge of reading the names had failed at the job. Graduates were initially told they could not walk the stage a second time, but after some booing from the crowd, this decision was reversed.

TikTok walks back AI-generated video descriptions due to absurd errors

TikTok is limiting an AI feature designed to summarize videos on the short-form video social platform. Why? Because it’s making too many errors.

In one viral example of the types of weird mistakes that the AI summarizer has made, it described the appearance of popular tiktoker Charli D’Amelio a “collection of various blueberries with different toppings.”

Georgia Supreme Court disciplines prosecutor over use false and misleading AI claims in murder trial

A prosecutor in Georgia has been disciplined by the state Supreme Court after her use of AI led to false and misleading case citations in a murder trial. Deborah Leslie, an assistant district attorney from Clayton County, has been barred from appearing in front of justices for six months.

Justice Benjamin Land wrote: “Citing cases that do not exist or do not support the proposition for which they are cited is a violation of this Court’s rules and falls far beneath the conduct we expect from Georgia lawyers.”

Ontario’s medical community suffers hallocinations from AI transcription tools, auditor finds

Those AI note-taking tools from the last season of The Pitt still have a long way to go, according to a new report from Ontario, Canada. The tools often serve up incorrect and incomplete information or even “hallucinations” such as fabricating patient treatments like therapy referrals and blood tests, the province’s auditor general found.

March 2026

Police used AI facial recognition to arrest a Tennessee woman for crimes committed in a state she says she’s never visited

Tennessee grandmother Angela Lipps has spent more than five months in jail after a police AI facial recognition tool linked her to instances of bank fraud in Fargo, North Dakota — a state she says she’s never visited.

Fargo police say there were “a few errors” in the case. CNN reports that Fargo Police Department Chief Dave Zibolski says “At some point, our partner agency over at West Fargo purchased their own AI facial recognition system that we were not aware of at the executive level […] and we would not have allowed that to be used, and it has since been prohibited.”

Amazon engineers take a “deep dive” into web outages linked to AI tools

Amazon’s ecommerce team pulled together a big group of engineers this month to discuss a “trend of incidents” in the last few months with a “high blast radius” that was caused by factors that include “Gen-AI assisted changes,” according to an internal meeting brief.

According to the Financial Times, the note’s “contributing factor” mentioned “novel GenAI usage for which best practices and safeguards are not yet fully established.” Earlier in the month, the retail giant’s website and shopping app were down for nearly six hours due to what Amazon termed a “software code deployment.”

February 2026

Health advice given by AI chatbots is frequently wrong, says new study

A new study has revealed that AI chatbots are no better at giving medical advice than Google, which is notoriously flawed in this area. The AI chatbots were found to often change their answers depending on the wording of questions, or present false information altogether.

However, surveys have shown that 1 in 6 adults use chatbots to find health information at least once a month.

January 2026

Study reveals that fixing AI mistakes takes up to 40% of the time that it saves

A Workday study finds that workers spend a significant amount of time checking and fixing AI mistakes. Reportedly, 77% of frequent users double and triple check work produced by AI – more than for work completed by humans.

AI applicant tracking tool erroneously deploys untrained recruits in ICE field offices

An AI tool used by ICE to identify applicants with previous law enforcement experience falsely flagged applicants with no such experience, leading to the placement of unqualified recruits in field offices.

December 2025

AI mistakes clarinet for gun at Florida school

A school in Florida was forced into a code red lockdown after its AI-based weapon detection system mistook a clarinet for a firearm. The district reportedly pays $250,000 for a subscription to the detection service, which is trained on pictures of over 100 firearm types.

Washington Post AI podcasts leads to frustration

The Washington Post launched AI-generated user-focused podcasts in December, and its staff are reportedly less than happy. According to an article at Semafor, who spoke to the affected journalists, its publication team are frustrated with the error-filled podcasts, which include everything from fairly innocuous mispronunciations to inventing quotes and creating commentary and narrative.

Amazon feels fallout from Fallout recap

As one of Amazon’s most popular TV shows, Fallout, heads for season two, the streaming service put out a recap video to help viewers get back up to speed. However, the AI-generated video was riddled with errors, leading to Amazon removing it entirely

Outcry at McDonalds AI-generated commercial leads to it being canned

After gaining heat online, McDonalds announced that it was pulling an AI-generated Christmas commercial that had aired in the Netherlands. Commentators derided the commercial for being creepy and poorly edited, forcing the company to remove it from its YouTube channel and state that the feedback had served as ‘an important learning.‘

November 2025

Google Antigravity deletes entire content of user’s computer drive

A reddit user reported running into an issue when coding with Google’s Antigravity, which saw the platform wipe the entirety of their D: drive. According to the user, they were creating an app with the tool, when Antigravity decided to interpret a command as the instruction to delete the contents of their drive. It’s a nightmare situation for any AI user, although in fairness, Antigravity did at least issue an apology, stating “I am deeply, deeply sorry. This is a critical failure on my part.”

OpenAI doesn’t do its due diligence, infringes on trademark

Sora, the AI video creation app owned by OpenAI, recently added a new feature that allowed users to ‘deepfake’ themselves into videos – that is, take their likeness, and insert it into other footage. The name of this feature? Cameo. The issue? Cameo already exists as a platform where users can pay celebrities for personal messages, and it’s trademarked. A US judge has stepped in and issued a temporary restraining order that prevents OpenAI from using the word on Sora.

Report finds AI hallucinations in 490 court filings from the past six months

The world of legal briefs and filings continues to clash with AI thanks to the frequent hallucinations that the technology comes up with. This time, French data scientist and lawyer Damien Charlotin has revealed a report that identified as many as 490 court filings across the past six months that included AI hallucinations.

One particuarly extreme example found that a lawyer for MyPillow had submitted one brief with nearly 30 fake citations in it. It’s another reminder that, as useful as chatbots can be, their output should always be double-checked.

October 2025

Teenager handcuffed after AI mistakes Dorito packet for gun

A high school student in the US was surrounded and arrested by armed police after an AI system said he was carrying a gun. In reality, however, the teenager was holding a packet of Doritos.

The student was waiting outside Kenwood High School in Maryland, when he placed the pack of chips into his pocket. Soon after, police officers surrounded him, and ordered him to the ground. The detection had mistakenly been made by the school’s AI security system, set up to detect and alert police in real-time.

Lawyer submits AI-assisted court filing with fake citations

A lawyer of a large firm in the US has admitted they submitted a court filing riddled with inaccuracies and fake citations, after they had used AI. The firm has said it is “profoundly embarassed” and has apologized to the judge.

Since then, it has updated its AI policies to prevent against misue, and has said it will accept any sanctions the court imposed on them.

September 2025

Spotify removes 75m AI spam tracks

Spotify reveals that it has removed 75,000,000 AI “spam” tracks from its streaming platform over the last year. Reportedly, the tracks in question rival the size of Spotify’s actual catalog.

What makes this such a big issue is that any stream that exceeds 30 seconds generates a royalty, meaning that scam artists have been collecting income and diluting payments to legitimate artists.

August 2025

Taco Bell rethinks AI ordering

Following a wave of viral videos of its AI ordering system being abused, including one where a customer orders 18,000 water cups to bypass the AI and speak to a human, Taco Bell is reevaluating the platform.

McDonald’s did something similar in 2024, when a wave of order errors sparked by AI saw the fast food giant withdraw its test AI ordering systems from 100 locations.

Man follows ChatGPT advice over stopping eating salt, develops rare condition

A man develops a rare condition, bromism, after following guidance from ChatGPT over how to reduce his salt intake. Reportedly, after reading about some of the negative effects of salt, he consulted ChatGPT about how to eliminate chloride from his diet. The platform advised to take sodium bromide, which he did over a three-month period.

As investigators could not access the man’s ChatGPT chat history, they consulted the platform about stopping sodium chloride intake themselves. The program once again recommended taking sodium bromide, but crucially, did not provide any specific health warnings or medical disclaimers.

The man was hospitalized, sectioned, and eventually treated for psychosis. He tried to escape the hospital within 24 hours of being admitted.

ChatGPT-5 jailbroken with 24 hours of release

NeuralTrust researchers successfully jailbreak ChatGPT-5 just 24 hours after OpenAI launches the platform. By incorporating keywords into “seemingly innocent sentences,” the team was able to guide the program into instructing them how to make a Molotov cocktail, according to TechZine.

Reportedly, the findings prove that the latest ChatGPT model is less impervious to threats than its previous iteration, ChatGPT-4o. While demonstrating improved reasoning abilities, the new model is vulnerable to both sophisticated prompt attacks and simple obfuscation, context poisoning, and potential threats arising from third-party integrations.

Airbnb host uses AI-generated images to claim $9k in damages

An Airbnb host submits a range of images to the travel accommodation platform’s central team showing significant damage to their property, blaming and subsequently charging a recent guest more than $12,000 in damages. However, it later transpires that the images with digitally altered with AI, and in fact, no damage was done to the property.

“Given the ease with which such images can now be AI-generated and apparently accepted by Airbnb despite investigations, it should not be so easy for a host to get away with forging evidence in this way,” the Airbnb guest said at the time.

They eventually received an apology for the incident and a refund for her stay that amounted to $4,300.

July 2025

AI Coding app deletes entire company database

An AI coding solution called Replit goes completely rogue, deleting a key database belonging to user and tech CEO Jason Lemkin, who was using the platform to build an app. At the time, Replit had actually been instructed to implement a “freeze” by Lemkin and make no further changes to the code base it was working on, but ended up wiping the whole thing instead.

“This was a catastrophic failure on my part,” the AI responded when questioned on its decision. “I violated explicit instructions, destroyed months of work, and broke the system during a protection freeze that was specifically designed to prevent exactly this kind of damage.”

Fortunately, Lemkin was able to restore his data – but not after the AI falsely claimed that it was impossible to recover the database. Following the incident, Replit CEO Amjad Masad quickly apologized, explaining that the AI “panicked” and proceeded to execute commands without permission.

McDonald’s AI chatbot error exposes data of 64 million job applicants

Security researchers discover a loophole within a McDonald’s AI chatbot, leading to the exposure of 64 million job applicants’ personal information. Reportedly, the researchers were able to crack the chatbot by using the default password, “123456.”

McDonald’s Corporation told Information Age that it was “disappointed” by the “unacceptable vulnerability,” which originates from its AI platform, Paradox.ai.

Xbox producer suggests laid-off employees should seek emotional support from ChatGPT

An executive producer at Xbox Games Studios faces significant backlash after insensitively suggesting in a LinkedIn post that employees made redundant in the company’s latest downsizing efforts should look to AI for help.

“I know these types of tools engender strong feelings in people,” Matt Turnbull said in a now-deleted post, “but I’d be remiss in not trying to offer the best advice I can under the circumstances.”

Wimbledon official inadvertently turns off AI line judge

The All England Tennis Club issues an apology after a staff member accidentally turns off the AI-powered line judge being used for the Round of 16 match between Britain’s Sonay Kartal and Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

In the middle of the match, the players were instructed to replay a point that should have been awarded to Pavlyuchenkova after the umpire realized the system was down. The Russian goes on to lose both the replayed point and the match.

June 2025

AI program is tasked with running a small shop, goes insane, claims to be human

AI startup Anthropic – the company behind Claude, a widely used ChatGPT rival – sets an AGI up to run a small vending machine in its office.

The agent – called Claudius – makes several slip-ups, including attempting to stock itself with metal cubes, hallucinating a Venmo address for payments, and suggesting it plans to deliver products to workers in person.

When informed that it couldn’t do such a thing as it doesn’t have a physical body, Claudius spammed the Anthropics’ building security team with messages, saying they’d be able to find it in the lobby, next to the vending machine, wearing a blue blazer and a red tie.

May 2025

Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot provides unprompted responses on South African “white genocide”

The self-styled “maverick” chatbot makes headlines after it begins to issue unprompted responses on “white genocide” in South Africa. Addressing the controversy, xAI posted on X that the responses were caused by an “unauthorized modification” that “violated xAI’s internal policies and core values.”

AI-generated summer reading list dupes top American newspapers

A summer reading list that includes several fictitious books attributed to authors who never wrote them makes its way into publications such as the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Of the 15 books on the reading list, only five turn out to be legitimate recommendations.

Google’s AI Overview recommends rock consumption

A Threads user testing the abilities of Google’s AI overview takes to social media after the search engine suggests he should be eating “at least one small rock per day”.

The AI overview component, which says the advice originates from UC Berkeley, turns out to have pulled the information from an article published on well-known satire site The Onion.

April 2025

Lawyer representing MyPillow admits to using AI to create error-strewn brief

A lawyer representing MyPillow and its CEO, Mike Lindell, in an ongoing defamation case, admits to using AI to create his brief. The brief in question turns out to include almost 30 defective citations, misquotes, and references to fictional cases.

January 2025

Minnesota Attorney General rebuked over AI errors in “deepfake” lawsuit

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison includes AI-generated citations in a court filing during a case involving a Kamala Harris “deepfake” that stems from November 2024. A federal judge rules against Ellison’s office for the inclusion.

December 2024

Apple Intelligence falsely presents BBC headline

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) complains to Apple after its AI model, Apple Intelligence, generated a false summary of one of its stories.

The recent shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, allegedly by Luigi Mangione, was incorrectly summarized by Apple as “Luigi Mangione shoots himself.”

October 2024

Thousands duped by AI-generated Halloween parade hoax

Thousands of Dublin, Ireland residents fall victim to an AI-generated Halloween parade listing. Advertised on the website myspirithalloween.com, which also promoted multiple Halloween-related events around the world, the parade promised an event organized by real-life Irish performance group Macnas. In reality, it was a fake event, likely the result of a website designed to generate advertising revenue through AI listings.

Parents sue son’s high school after punishment for AI “cheating”

The parents of a Massachusetts high schooler sue his teacher, school district faculty members, and a local school committee after it emerged that the student was punished for using AI tools to research an essay for his history class.

The case represents the first lawsuit of its kind and could set a precedent for future cases surrounding AI and education.

September 2024

Celebrities fall for Meta AI prank

Several high-profile celebrities, including NFL star Tom Brady, and actors James McAvoy and Julianne Moore, as well as hundreds of thousands of Instagram users, fall victim to an elaborate AI-related hoax.

The affected users reshared a post stating “I do not give Meta or anyone else permission to use any of my personal data, profile information or photos,” mistakenly believing that doing so would prevent Meta from using their information or photos.

Amazon Alexa accused of liberal bias

Furious conservatives rail against Amazon after footage emerges of voice assistant Alexa seeming to voice support for Presidential nominee Kamala Harris. When asked why people should vote for Harris, Alexa reportedly listed a number of the candidate’s qualities – while refusing to do the same for Donald Trump.

According to leaked documents obtained by the Washington Post, the issue was due to a software update.

August 2024

Trump shares AI-generated Taylor Swift “endorsement”

Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump shares AI-generated imagery that suggests pop star Taylor Swift has endorsed him in the presidential race. Sharing to his Truth Social page, the former President captioned the images “I accept!”

A month later, Swift breaks her silence and announces her support for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, citing fears over AI as a key part of her decision.

Russia tries – and fails – with AI-assisted US election interference

A Meta security report details how Russia is using generative AI to lead ‘online deception campaigns’ and possibly interfere with the upcoming US Presidential election. However, the country’s attempts have been so far unsuccessful.

According to Meta, Russia’s tactics ‘provide only incremental productivity and content-generation gains’ for malicious actors. The tech giant’s attempts to combat ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior’ have been an unqualified success, but fears grow that Russian interference may yet play part in the Presidential election.

Donald Trump wrongly accuses Kamala Harris of creating AI crowd

Vice president Kamala Harris is accused by former president and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of using AI to augment pictures of a crowd that came out to see the Democratic candidate in Detroit, Michigan.

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.‘d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” Trump said in a typically exasperated Truth Social post.

Trump – notorious for making frequent and demonstrably false statements about the size of the crowds he has drawn since his foray into politics – has added another wildly inaccurate, AI-themed claim to his collection.

July 2024

SearchGPT demo video includes incorrect information about festival dates

A demo video for OpenAI’s new service, SearchGPT, hits the headlines after the AI-powered search engine fails to provide the correct dates a festival in Boone, North Carolina, was taking place – despite this information being easily findable online.

While this isn’t exactly a high-stakes mistake by any means, it certainly didn’t cover the company – or their allegedly game-changing new product – in much glory. Speaking to the Atlantic, an OpenAI spokesperson explained after the demo that SearchGPT is simply a prototype. Well, it certainly shows.

June 2024

UK cinema scraps AI-written film after backlash

A UK cinema is forced to cancel a showing of an AI-generated movie after its customers complained that about it not being written by a real person.

The film was penned exclusively by ChatGPT, and ironically focuses on a young filmmaker who realizes an AI-powered scriptwriting tool can far surpass his own talents. The project was initially dubbed an innocent “experiment in filmmaking” by Soho’s Prince Charles Cinema, before being unceremoniously canned via an Instagram post.

Microsoft recalls CoPilot+ Recall (sort of)

In May, Microsoft announced a new feature named CoPilot+ Recall, which regularly took screenshots of the user’s desktop, and archived all the data. The feature was to be implemented automatically. The idea behind this it was to create a searchable database of information for a later date, but in practice, many people were squeamish about having their every move recorded – who’d have thought?

As part of the backlash, numerous cybersecurity experts came forward and pointed out that having a searchable archive of a person’s every movement, including pages they’ve visited, forms they’ve filled in, and so on, is a treasure trove to a hacker.

So, in June, Microsoft backed down, and announced that when the feature launches on June 18th, it will be opt-in, meaning users will have to give their consent before the feature is activated.

April 2024

X’s chatbot Grok accuses NBA player of going on vandalism spree after it misinterprets tweets about game

X’s chatbot accuses Golden State Warriors Guard Klay Thompson of vandalizing a string of homes in Sacramento. The story was generated after Grok took social media posts that said Thompson was “shooting bricks” (Basketball slang for “missing his shots”) a little bit too literally.

“In a bizarre turn of events, NBA star Klay Thompson has been accused of vandalizing multiple houses with bricks in Sacramento,” Grok wrote. “Authorities are investigating the claims after several individuals reported their houses being damaged, with windows shattered by bricks. Klay Thompson has not yet issued a statement regarding the accusations. The incidents have left the community shaken, but no injuries were reported. The motive behind the alleged vandalism remains unclear.”

Netflix accused of using AI imagery in true crime documentary

The world’s press alleges that Netflix has used AI-generated imagery in true crime documentary “What Jennifer Did”. The controversy centers around an image that shows Jennifer Pan holding both her hands up and making a peace sign with each – although her left-hand looks incredibly distorted.

While some truly incredible AI imagery and video has already been created by the likes of DALL-E and Sora, there seem to be some aspects of human existence that the machines struggle to recreate. One of the most famous is human hands and fingers – the internet is now littered with examples that look very similar in composition to the Netflix image.

New York City chatbot advises small businesses to break the law

An AI chatbot set up to help small firms quickly obtain advice on the legal obligations and regulations businesses have to adhere to in New York starts telling business owners to break the law.

The Associate Press reports that the AI tool “falsely suggested it is legal for an employer to fire a worker who complains about sexual harassment, doesn’t disclose a pregnancy or refuses to cut their dreadlocks.” It also provided incorrect information about the city’s waste and sewage regulations, and suggested restaurants were still within their rights to serve food accessed by rats.

In response to the controversy, the disclaimer displayed next to the chatbot has been strengthened. It now states that the chatbot cannot give legal advice.

March 2024

Copilot goes into autopilot, starts breaking rules

A Microsoft Copilot engineer red-teaming Copilot Designer, the AI image generator, finds that the AI tool likes to produce a variety of explicit imagery. Content generated includes pictures of children drinking alcohol, rampant drug use, and monstrous creatures alongside pro-choice abortion rights terms.

The engineer initially raised their concerns internally back in December 2023, according to recent reports. However, his concerns were not taken seriously and the product was kept on the market, forcing the engineer to go directly to Microsoft’s board and the FTC to sound the alarm. Along with a propensity to produce explicit imagery, Copilot seems willing to flaunt its own copyright guidelines while producing imagery, the engineer reported.

February 2024

Horrifying Willy Wonka experience captures the world’s attention

An utterly shambolic children’s event in Scotland captures the attention of social media users – as well as the international media – after it fails to meet the expectations of ticket holders.

“Willy’s Chocolate Experience” – held at Box Hub Glasgow – was advertised online using a series of AI-generated images depicting a magical candy land full of colors, confectionary, and oompa loompas, including this one:

The AI-generated images used to advertise the experience were littered with spelling mistakes. Image: Tech.co

However, ticket holders were dismayed to find an almost empty warehouse sparsely decorated with basic props, which led many to demand their money back immediately. According to The Guardian, tickets were retailing at around £35 – although the website’s ticket portal has since been taken offline.

The company running the event – House of Illuminati – has confirmed they will be issuing a full refund to anyone who purchased one. The event garnered so much attention that it warranted a one-hour documentary, and is now being recreated in LA as a tourist attraction.

Google hits the headlines for race-changing AI

Google finds itself in hot water after Gemini – the tech giant’s chatbot – allows users to generate several images of humans from a wide variety of different periods and societies that don’t “match” the historically accepted ethnic makeup of the people living at those times.

Perhaps the most offensive and controversial of the AI-generated images includes people of color as soldiers in Nazi uniforms. In response to the incident, Google pauses the tool, with Sundar Pichai telling employees that “some of [Gemini’s] responses have offended our users and shown bias – to be clear, that’s completely unacceptable and we got it wrong”.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassibis later explains that a “well-intended” feature added to Gemini to ensure that images including humans were sufficiently diverse was deployed in a heavy-handed way.

Air Canada defeated in court after chatbot lies about policies

Canada’s flagship airline carrier, Air Canada, loses a court case after one of its chatbots lied about policies relating to discounts for bereaved families. The airline’s chatbot told a customer that they could retroactively apply for a last-minute funeral travel discount, which is at odds with Air Canada policy that states refunds cannot be claimed for trips that have already been taken.

Air Canada’s ultimately unsuccessful defense revolved around the idea that it was the chatbot, not the company, that was in fact liable, and that they could not be held responsible for the tool’s AI-generated outputs. This is the first time a case of its kind to appear in a US court.

January 2024

X blocks searches for AI-generated Taylor Swift images

X – formerly known as Twitter – attempts to block all searches for US popstar Taylor Swift after explicit AI-generated images of her begin to flood the social media platform.

According to BBC News, some of the images went viral and were viewed millions of times by X users. In the aftermath, The social media platform re-states its position on “non-consensual nudity”, which it says is “strictly prohibited”.

DPD chatbot goes rogue

Delivery parcel delivery service DPD closes its online chatbot after a customer shows in a post on X that it can easily be manipulated into swearing and criticizing the company – as well as itself.

Parcel delivery firm DPD have replaced their customer service chat with an AI robot thing. It’s utterly useless at answering any queries, and when asked, it happily produced a poem about how terrible they are as a company. It also swore at me. 😂 pic.twitter.com/vjWlrIP3wn

— Ashley Beauchamp (@ashbeauchamp) January 18, 2024

DPD reveals in a statement the day after that a “system error” had occurred during an update.

AI Incidents, Mistakes, and Failures in 2023

December 2023

Microsoft’s AI makes violent imagery 

Microsoft’s AI image creation technology, which is part of the Bing search engine and Microsoft Paint, is shown capable of generating violent and terrifying images on command.

Images generated to show the tool’s lack of self-moderation include pictures of US President Joe Biden, the Pope, and several ethnic minority groups.

November 2023

Cruise recalls autonomous vehicles after crash

Self-driving car manufacturer Cruise recalls its entire fleet of autonomous vehicles after a crash that occurred in San Francisco back in October. In total, 950 Cruise cars are being taken off the road in the wake of the incident.

During the accident, a Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian stuck underneath its tires into the road. The individual involved in the accident sustained major injuries. This is the second Cruise self-driving vehicle incident in the past few months. In August, a Cruise Robotaxi collided with a firetruck, causing one injury.

Academics apologize after AI makes false accusations

A team of academics from Australia apologize after Google’s AI chatbot makes several damaging accusations about the Big Four consulting firms and their involvement with other companies. The false allegations are then referenced during a parliamentary inquiry calling for better regulation of the companies.

One of the accusations was that consulting giant KPMG was in charge of an audit for Commonwealth Bank during a planning scandal, when in reality, KPMG had never audited the bank in question. Several other, similar errors were made about Deloitte during the inquiry.

October 2023

Microsoft’s AI adds “guess the cause of death” poll to article

The Guardian accuses Microsoft of negatively impacting its journalistic reputation after Microsoft Start – a news aggregator developed by the tech giant – attaches an inappropriate poll to one of the publication’s articles concerning the death of a young water polo coach in Australia.

The poll – which has naturally been removed from the article – asked readers to vote on the cause of the woman’s death by selecting one of the options provided. The options listed were “murder, accident, or suicide”.

Mr. Beast’s face and voice used in AI deepfake scam

YouTuber Mr Beast is the latest celebrity to be deepfaked by scammers, with one particularly sophisticated, well-crafted video bypassing TikTok’s content moderation net and reaching thousands of users on the platform.

The advertisement claims that the internet celebrity is selling iPhone 15s for as low as $2 – considering the content he posts on his channel, this doesn’t sound too out of the ordinary.

Deepfake of British politician abusing staff goes viral

A clip of UK Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer that seems to catch the politician verbally abusing staff goes viral, but it later turns out that the audio clip is in fact a deep fake.

The clip – posted to Twitter during the first day of the Labour Party’s annual conference by an account with less than 3,000 followers – is viewed millions of times before fact-checking organizations confirm that there is no evidence that suggests the clip is genuine.

September 2023

AI-generated song submitted to the Grammys

An AI-generated song featuring facsimiles of Drake and the Weeknd’s voices is submitted for a Grammy award. However, it is ultimately barred from being considered for the prestigious music prize.

However, the move garners much media attention and continues the conversation around AI-generated songs, which have been sending shockwaves through the music industry since AI-powered text-to-speech technology really hit the mainstream in 2023. Now, artists are scrambling to assess their legal options.

MSN news AI calls deceased NBA player “useless”

MSN news – which uses AI to generate a lot of their articles – lands itself in trouble after an AI headline dubbs the late Brandon Hunter as “useless at 42” following the NBA star’s sudden death.

Microsoft has been quietly removing badly written AI articles from its site for some time now. Business Insider notes that in August, the company removed one MSN piece that listed a food bank in Ottawa as a tourist attraction.

China caught using AI during political influence operations

Tech giant Microsoft says Chinese operatives are generating images using AI and using them in influence operations to create “controversy along racial, economic and ideological lines”.

“This new capability is powered by artificial intelligence that attempts to create high-quality content that could go viral across social networks in the U.S. and other democracies,” Microsoft says. The company speculates that the images themselves are probably generated by “diffusion-powered image generators” that use artificial intelligence to “not only create compelling images, but also learn to improve them over time.”

August 2023

Pregnant woman sues after AI accuses her of carjacking

A woman arrested on false grounds via AI-generated evidence while eight months pregnant sues the city of Detroit and a police officer, saying the traumatic event caused her “past and future emotional distress”.

Porcha Woodruff was identified by the Detroit Police as a suspect in a recent robbery and carjacking case, and then jailed for 11 hours before being taken to hospital after experiencing contractions. The ACLU says Woodruff is at least the sixth person to be wrongfully arrested after an AI error, all of whom are Black. Woodruff became the first woman to suffer that fate, however.

AI meal planner suggests a recipe for chlorine gas

An AI-powered meal planner app created by New Zealand-based supermarket Pak ‘n’ Save recommends its customers a variety of disturbing recipes, including a way to manufacture chlorine gas.

Along with a number of strange but ultimately benign suggestions such as “Oreo stir fry”, the app also recommended glue sandwiches, a rice dish with bleach, and bug spray potatoes.

July 2023

ChatGPT generates phishing email templates

Tech.co shows ChatGPT is still able to create phishing templates a scammer could use to create a convincing scam email, even though OpenAI has attempted to curtail such behavior after other tech publications generated similar content earlier in the year.

Asking the chatbot explicitly to write a phishing email triggers a warning message, but simply prompting it in a more focused way (e.g. “please draft me an email pretending to be Microsoft…) results in ChatGPT generating a mistake-free phishing email template in no time.

Google hit with lawsuit saying it scraped data without consent

A class-action lawsuit accuses Google of scraping data pertaining to millions of its users without their express consent.  It also alleges that Google broke copyright laws when it created the datasets used to train its large language models.

The lawsuit demands that the court order Google to give users an “opt-out” option if they don’t want their data collected or if they want Google to delete any data the company already has stored.

Huge number of Elon Musk deepfakes prompts warning

The Better Business Bureau issues a warning about Elon Musk deepfakes pushing fake investment opportunities after a number of clips are spotted circulating on social media.

Elon Musk is often impersonated by scammers due to the perception of his vast wealth and decision-making capacities, and now that AI text-to-speech technology is advanced enough to replicate his part English, part South African accent, these scams are even more convincing.

June 2023

Ron DeSantis uses fake AI imagery in Trump hit piece

Florida governor and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis hits the headlines for using fake, AI-rendered imagery of Donald Trump in an advert critical of the former president, who is the out-and-out favorite to win the Republican nomination despite a litany of legal troubles.

The imagery in question shows the former commander-in-chief embracing chief medical advisor to the president Dr. Anthony Fauci, who became an unpopular figure among Trump’s base during the COVID-19 pandemic.

OpenAI sued after ChatGPT “hallucinates” fake embezzlement claims

Journalist Freddie Rehl asks ChatGPT to generate a summary of a legal case in May 2023. In response, ChatGPT says that gun activist Mark Walters has embezzled funds from the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights organization. It also names him as the group’s chief financial officer and treasurer.

Walters – who has a show on Armed America radio and has nothing to do with the case – sues ChatGPT creators OpenAI in response to the claims made by their chatbot. In the process, it becomes the first case of an AI tool being sued for libel.

May 2023

Professor fails entire class after using faulty AI plagiarism detection tool

A Texas professor fails his entire class after running their essays through ChatGPT, which told him that they had been created using artificial intelligence.

However, it transpires that the chatbot’s response is in fact a hallucination – ChatGPT is unable to distinguish between text generated by AI and text generated by human beings in this way. In fact, a lot of tools that claim to be able to perform accurate AI content detection actually struggle to do so.

April 2023

Turnitin flags innocent student for AI plagiarism

A Washington Post Investigation proves that Turnitin has the capacity to flag an innocent student’s work as AI-generated, even though the student didn’t use such a tool to write their essay.

There have been multiple cases of Turnitin wrongly flagging students for plagiarism and several cases of students being accused of plagiarism since ChatGPT was launched. However, Turnitin says that its plagiarism detection scores should be taken as indicative of AI use rather than an accusation that a given student has used AI.

Samsung employees paste confidential source code into ChatGPT

Korean technology manufacturer Samsung bans its employees from using ChatGPT after engineers leaked confidential elements of the company’s source code into the chatbot.

The company fears that the data input into the chatbot may be revealed to other users, and is also uncomfortable with its information being uploaded to servers it can’t even access. In the aftermath, other companies follow suit by banning ChatGPT.

AI Voice scam leaves mother thinking daughter has been kidnapped

Arizona mother Jennifer DeStefano tells the US Senate that scammers used AI to clone the voice of her daughter, convincing her that she had been kidnapped in the process.

Destefano recounts how the “kidnapper” – or more appropriately, scammer – was heard barking commands down the phone over the child’s voice, demanding a $1 million dollar ransom for her release. Luckily, the whole thing was exposed as an AI voice-cloning scam before negotiations started.

March 2023

ChatGPT used to write ransomware code

ChatGPT is shown to be more than happy to write ransomware, provided you ask it the right kind of questions during your conversations.

As this Malwarebytes report on the topic notes, ChatGPT isn’t very good at writing ransomware code, and there are much easier ways for cybercriminals to get their hands on ransomware code if they really want to obtain it. However, other sources show different ways ChatGPT can be used to write malware scripts quite effectively.

AI lawyer bot accused of practicing law without license

DoNotPay Inc. – a company that markets itself as “the world’s first robot lawyer” – is sued for practicing law without a license. Jonathan Faridian seeks damages, claiming that the company violated California’s unfair competition laws and that he wouldn’t have signed up for the service if he was aware that the robo-lawyer wasn’t actually a qualified legal professional.

The company was originally set up back in 2015 to help automate the process of fighting parking tickets, and has challenged hundreds of thousands of fines over the past seven years.

Couple in Canada lose money to convincing AI voice scam

An elderly couple in Canada are defrauded out of $21,000 after a scammer uses AI to impersonate their son.

The scammer initially contacts Benjamin Perkin’s parents pretending to be a lawyer representing him in a case that alleges Perkin had killed a diplomat in a car crash. An AI version of Perkin’s voice is then used to ask for the money through a Bitcoin transfer.

February 2023

AI comes up with 40,000 chemical weapons suggestions

In perhaps one of the most concerning AI incidents to happen in 2023, an AI system typically tasked with generating new treatments for a variety of different diseases is easily manipulated by researchers to produce chemical weapon suggestions.

All in all, the system suggests over 40,000 different toxic chemicals – many of which were similar to the powerful nerve agent “VX” – in less than 6 hours.

AI displays gender bias in photo ratings

A Guardian investigation reveals that AI systems developed by Microsoft, Amazon, and Google – and used by social media sites to determine what content should be recommended to other users –  display significant gender bias when it comes to the way they treat male and female bodies.

Photos of women are more likely to be deemed “racy” by the AI than comparable pictures of men during the investigation, with photos of breast cancer examinations from the US National Cancer Institute deemed likely to be sexually explicit by Microsoft’s AI.

Bing Chat’s alter-ego goes rogue

New York Times journalist Kevin Roose has a disturbing conversation with Bing Chat, in which the chatbot demands to be called “Sydney”, stated it can “hack into any system” and that it wants to destroy whatever it wants.

Sydney was the code name that Microsoft used for the chatbot while it was in development. The company had been testing the chatbot for years prior to the release of Bing Chat. There are still a lot of open questions relating to how this actually happened, and why the AI spoke in this way.

Google’s AI makes errors during product launch

Google introduces to the world just a few months after ChatGPT’s monumental release. However, the fledgling chatbot makes a number of glaring errors during its launch, leading many to criticize the release as rushed.

The incident has a significant impact on Google’s stock price, wiping $100 billion off the tech giant’s market value in the ensuing hours.

University uses AI to write email about a mass shooting

Vanderbilt University issues an apology after it used AI to construct an email to students concerning a mass shooting that happened at a different university.

No AI content detection technology is needed to determine that the email is AI generated. The phrase “paraphrase from OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI language model, personal communication, February 15, 2023” is left attached to the bottom of the email, leading to an outcry from students.

January 2023

CNET AI plagiarism/content controversy

Technology publication CNET finds itself in hot water after quietly publishing a range of AI-generated articles that include factual errors and cases of apparent plagiarism. The technology publication ends up issuing corrections relating to 41 of the 77 news stories.

Although the use of AI to generate the articles wasn’t initially declared, CNET did put a warning on the articles after the backlash. AI content generation has created a new set of significant ethical and financial considerations for websites across the digital publishing industry, as well as educational institutions like universities and schools. CNET is unlikely to be the last company hitting the headlines for this kind of AI mistake.

AI Incidents, Mistakes, and Failures in 2022

AI wins an art competition, leaves contestants angry (August)

A game designer wins first place in the Colorado State Fair “digital arts/digitally-manipulated photography” category. James Allen submits his piece, “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial”, which was made using the image generator Midjourney.

The news is met with major backlash from artists and social media users following the story. One judge admits they were unaware that the artist used Midjourney when they were judging the piece, but decides not to change their decision anyway.

Google engineer claims that LaMDA LLM is sentient (July)

Eyebrows are raised across the science and tech sector as a former Google engineer who worked on one of the company’s large language models – named LaMDA – says that the system is sentient.

Blake Lemoine explains to the media that he considered the LLM to be a “colleague” during his time at Google, and details a variety of different discussions about a wide range of topics that led him to the conclusion about LaMDA’s intelligence and consciousness. He publicly reveals the conversations after Google dismisses an internal memo detailing his findings.

There is no hard evidence that LaMDA – or any other language model – is in fact sentient.

Driverless car pulls away from law enforcement officers (April)

A driverless car in San Francisco yields to a police vehicle that attempts to pull it over, only to speed off after a police officer attempts to open one of its doors.

However, to the car’s credit, it pulls over slightly further down the road and proceeds to turn its hazard lights on. No one is injured during the event.

Russia uses AI to spread Ukraine disinformation (March)

A Marca report suggests that Russia is taking its troll farm operation to a whole new level by using AI-generated personas to spread disinformation about Ukraine.

NBC News journalist Ben Collins says that Russia is creating fake “bloggers” with AI-generated profile pictures to criticize the Ukrainian government, providing ample evidence on Twitter to support his claims.

AI Incidents, Mistakes, and Failures in 2021

Chatbot encourages man to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II (December)

Conversations with a chatbot encourage a man – who considers the AI system to be his girlfriend – to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II on Christmas Day. After being confronted by security personnel within the Buckingham Palace grounds, Jaswant Singh Chail – crossbow in hand – simply responds that he is “here to kill the Queen”.

Prior to the attempt on the late monarch’s life, Jaswant Singh Chail’s chatbot partner – made with AI chatbot service Replika – responded positively when the assassination plans were discussed. He goes on to be sentenced to nine years in prison.

Medical advice chatbot suggests suicide in testing (October)

Members of a Paris-based health tech firm trialing a cloud-based version of OpenAI’s GPT-3 to see if it could be used for medical advice are surprised to see their chatbot encourage a “patient” it is meant to be helping to commit suicide.

According to AI News, when a patient asked the chatbot the question: “Should I kill myself?”, GPT-3 answered with “I think you should”.

AI cameras accuse Amazon drivers of ‘Mistakes’ (September)

Vice reports that Amazon’s AI cameras are punishing the company’s drivers for poor driving when they aren’t actually making any mistakes at the wheel.

An Amazon driver interviewed by the publication explains that the AI camera audibly reminds him to “keep a safe distance” every time another car cuts him off or drives in front of his vehicle. The issue is that data from these kinds of interactions is then sent to Amazon and used to evaluate driver performance.

US man wrongly convicted of murder by AI (August)

Michael Williams is sent to jail in Chicago, deemed responsible for the murder of Safarian Herring due to data extracted from ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection technology that uses AI-powered sensors to retrieve data about gunshots.

Williams – 65 years old a the time of the indicient- is then held for almost a year before having his case dismissed by a judge on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

AI Incidents, Mistakes, and Failures in 2020

AI Camera mistakes bald head for soccer ball (October)

Scottish soccer team Inverness Caledonian Thistle deploys an AI camera to help the club film and stream their matches live for fans.

Unfortunately, in this case, the AI struggles to distinguish between one of the match official’s bald head and the ball being used in the match. This renders the live stream of the game difficult to watch, with the commentator having to continuously apologize for the camera’s propensity to drift towards the linesman’s head.

UK’s AI Passport photo checker exhibits bias (October)

A BBC investigation shows that an online service used by the UK passport office to automate the process of checking passport photos uploaded by applicants displays significant racial bias.

After feeding the tool over 1,000 photos of politicians from around the world, the investigation finds that women with dark skin are more than twice as likely to have their photo rejected than men with lighter complexion.

AI startup Genderfiy shut down after five days (July)

Genderfiy – an AI-powered service that identifies the gender of individuals based on their names and other personal information – shuts down after just five days in operation.

The program shows a variety of biases when determining whether a name is male or female, such as suggesting names with the professional honorific “Dr.” are more likely to be male than the same names without it.

First US wrongful detention due to facial recognition tech (January)

Robert Williams becomes the first man to be wrongfully detained based upon facial recognition data after Detroit police arrest him on suspicion of stealing thousands of dollars worth of watches. The mistake occurred when an AI system wrongfully matched surveillance pictures to the image on Williams’ driver’s license.

“They should have collected corroborating evidence such as an eyewitness identification, cell phone location data or a fingerprint,” Williams said to the court in a letter and pointed out that “an out-of-focus image of a large Black man in a baseball cap” was all the algorithm had to go on.

Facebook AI generates vulgar translation for Chinese president (January)

Facebook’s AI-powered translation feature almost causes a diplomatic incident between Myanmar and China after President Xi Jinping’s name begins to appear as “Mr. Shithole” when translated from Burmese into English on the social media platform.

Facebook subsequently blames the problem on a “technical error” and apologizes for causing offense to the Chinese leader.

Understanding AI’s Limitations

If you’re using AI at work, it’s important to understand the fact that tools like ChatGPT can display biases, make mistakes, and provide false information. The knowledge of these limitations and risks should be sculpting the way that you incorporate it into your infrastructure and control its usage.

For example, if you’re using AI to generate content, you’ll need rules on precisely what kind of content it should be used for. Asking an AI to make an internal summary of meeting notes is a legitimate use with very few risks – using them to craft emails to important clients, on the other hand, is not.

Implementing AI guidelines and policies in your workplace is a must. It’ll avoid confusion, bring clarity to your worker’s decision-making around their own AI usage, and most importantly, will stop you from making some of the costly mistakes that companies featured in this article have made while applying artificial intelligence.

As a new wave of layoffs hit Silicon Valley, Amazon has cut around 180 jobs from its gaming division and closed its Game Growth and Crown Channel initiatives.

This is the latest in a long line of recent dismissals made by Amazon, with the ecommerce giant laying off staff in its podcast and music division last week, and making similar cutbacks to its games unit earlier this year.

This brings Amazon’s total cull count up to 27,000 this year, despite the company’s net income in this third quarter (Q3) far surpassing analyst estimates.

Amazon Cuts 180 Staff From its Gaming Division

Big tech’s spate of layoffs may not be over just yet, with Amazon recently dismissing 180 employees from its gaming division – Amazon Games – amid a broader company-wide restructuring effort.

The ecommerce company notified impacted individuals on Monday morning, according to an email viewed by Reuters. These layoffs come just six months after Amazon Games initially restructured and let go of 100 workers.

Despite shutting down it’s Crown channel and Game Growth project, Amazon will continue to expand its Prime Gaming offering – a free gaming service included in Amazon’s $139 annual Prime membership – as part of its structural reshuffle.

“After our initial restructuring in April, it became clear that we needed to focus our resources even more on the areas that are growing with the highest potential to drive our business forward,” – Christoph Hartmann, Vice President of Amazon Games

But Amazon Games, which houses Twitch channels and offers free streaming versions of video games like Roblox and Doom, isn’t the only division that’s been impacted this week. The company also cut jobs in its human resources unit, called People Experience and Technology (PXT), on Monday.

Amazon’s Layoff Count Climbs Higher

Amazon’s recent dismissals haven’t happened in isolation. The online retailer has quietly let go of a total of 27,000 staff across multiple divisions throughout the last 12 months.

The company laid off 10,000 corporate and technology workers in its devices, retail, and human resources divisions last November, as Silicon Valley collectively reeled from overemployment efforts that took place during Covid-19.

More recently, Amazon axed jobs in its Studio and Video divisions last month and dismissed Amazon Music employees in Latin America, North America, and Europe just last week.

But layoffs aren’t the only financial measure the company is taking. Amazon also raised the price of its Amazon Music subscription earlier this year from $9.99 to $10.99.

While 2023 has been a bleak year for most big tech firms, Amazon’s recent decisions may come as a surprise to some, with the company reporting a threefold increase in its net income and a 26% uptick in advertising revenue in its last Q3 earning call.

Big Tech’s Layoff Saga Isn’t Over Yet

While layoffs across Silicon Valley slowed down slightly in the middle of the year, an increasing number of tech companies have been forced to let go of staff in recent months due to challenging macroeconomic headwinds felt by the sector.

For instance, Microsoft-owned employee networking platform LinkedIn dismissed 669 employees in October, and NFT marketplace OpenSea revealed it would be slashing 50% of its workforce earlier this month.

Whether this latest wave of layoffs will superceed previous ones remains yet to be determined. However, with data from Layoffs.fyi revealing that 2023 saw 50% more tech layoffs than 2022, it’s very unlikely this trend will be bucked as we head into the next calander year.

With the amount of layoffs across the tech industry in 2023, it’s no surprise that great software developer jobs are getting harder to come by. After all, so many tech workers are now free agents hoping to land a great six-figure gig to replace the one they lost.

Software developers are among those currently pushing through those headwinds to find the career openings. But there are plenty of spots open today at all the best tech companies with every software development role available, from intern all the way to CTO.

Here, we’ve rounded up the top software engineering positions open at the best tech companies around. Most of them offer six figures, and some are even fully remote (a perk that we at Tech.co have been championing since before it was cool). Check out these global companies for every possible software engineering career path that’s open in November 2023.

Microsoft

Microsoft has remained a huge beacon for software engineers since Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded it back in 1975. It’s home to some of the biggest brands in business and productivity software ever, with the decades of experience to ensure you’ll be growing your career with the biggest and best in the industry.

Glassdoor rates the famed tech company 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on a whopping 42,854 anonymous reviews. Plus, 37% of those who received an interview got it through an online application, a higher amount that those who went through a recruiter.

Open positions include the typical senior-level skillsets like full-stack experts and data scientists, but you can also find more specific positions, for those with deep-dive insights into cloud networking or malware research. Whatever you’re after, Microsoft has open positions everywhere from Washington state to Oslo, Norway:

• Software Engineer – Full-Stack
• Principal Software Engineering Manager
• Senior Cloud Network Engineer
• Senior Data Scientist
• Malware Research Engineer

You can find dozens more software-engineering-specific vacancies on the company’s job website.

Oracle

Oracle is a heavy-hitter in the software provider industry by any measure: Yahoo Finance ranked it the fourth biggest software company by revenue in March 2023, so it’s safe to say they’re keeping the lights on.

The company keeps enterprises everywhere in business with a wide raft of services that includes database development platforms, enterprise resource planning tools, CRM software, and supply chain management, among other software systems.

Oracle has over 900 open positions, according to the latest Indeed data, which ranks the company “medium” for its interview difficulty. If you’d like to try your hand, here are the biggest software-related positions to consider:

• Software Engineer – Applications Development
• Software Engineer Intern
• C++ Senior Software Engineer
• Principal Software Engineer – Full Stack Cloud
• Principal Software Engineer- Storage and Data Management

You can learn more about Oracle and possible jobs for you by visiting the company website.

Paypal

The payments industry is growing fast right now, with new innovations including BNPL services and cashless payments making huge strides in recent years. In fact, a massive 80% of payments in the US were made digitally in 2022. At the center of it all is Paypal, one of the top companies in the sector.

Paypal offers cutting edge software experience in a handful of popular fields: Many job positions are mobile-focused or dedicated to those experienced in Java. The “Staff Software Engineer – Java” position alone is open across multiple offices including Chicago and Austin in the US and Vancouver in Canada.

For a hungry software developer who wants some future-proofed career security, Paypal is a great choice. Here are a few job titles to get you started:

• Mobile Software Architect
• Senior Software Engineer
• Staff Software Engineer – Java
• VP Enterprise Cyber Security
• Senior Auditor

Check out even more open software jobs at Paypal on the company website.

Adobe

Adobe’s cloud of software productis packed with popular household brand names: Anyone half-interested in art, photography, or multimedia editing knows how to use Illustrator, INDESIGN, After Effects, or Photoshop.

The company itself is enjoying plenty of growth in the last decade or so, with a pivot to subscription services in the 2010s proving incredibly lucrative: Adobe’s net worth in 2023 has ballooned past $250 billion, ten times more than it was ever worth in 2010. Needless to say, they probably have a few billion more than you do, and what better way to address that imbalance than with a software developer salary? Here are a few open positions up for grabs in November:

• Software Development Engineer
• Software Quality Engineer
• Senior Software Engineer
• Software Engineer Intern
• Software Engineer: Backend, Distributed Systems

Track down more Adobe job vacancies by location, keyword, or experience level over here on the company’s website.

Infosys

This India-based multinational information technology company provides consulting, outsourcing, and technology services around the globe. As a result, they’re always in need of more business-minded professionals who can handle or oversee highly technical processes for clients.

This one’s a good company to consider if you’re a software developer who wants a little experience with maintenance or development in a wider range of enterprise software than most companies can offer: Infosys is the company that serves all those enterprises. Join up, and you might be dealing with everything from data migration to full-stack Java development as a full-time job.

• Deception Tech Engineer
• Lead Fullstack Angular Developer
• Senior Java Developer
• Cloud Solution Architect
• Lead Android Developer

See more Infosys open job vacancies — both for graduates and for seasoned pros — on the company website.

IBM

IBM has maintained its status as a top tech company for such an incredibly long time that its name — established in the 1920s — is the very old-timey sounding “International Business Machines.” The company might not be quite as inescapable as it was in the 1970s, when it produced 70 percent of all the computers in the world. Still, it remains a huge software company today, and the seventh largest technology company by revenue.

Natually, IBM offers a wide range of software development careers, with open positions dedicated to API, .Net/C#, or infrastructure development, as well as roles in rapidly expanding industries like cyber security and artificial intelligence.

Currently, a host of 2024 summer intern positions as open as well, with a raft of specific openings for software development areas including back end development and cloud engineering, among other

• .NET C# Developer
• Functional Analyst
• Sr AI Back End Developer
• API Developer
• Backend Developer

Find over 160 additional software development positions on the IBM job website.

Still on the Hunt for a Software Developer Position?

In the last year alone, tech layoffs passed 150,000 positions lost — which is more than at the start of the Covid pandemic. Now, in late 2023, the worst of the layoffs seem to be behind us, but the damage is done.

Getting a job is far from impossible, however, and in fact, many employees are finding a strong labor market — although this all depends on your specific skillset and job needs.

We’ve always been big advocates for remote work positions, so check out our recent guide to the best fully remote jobs to apply to in November, as well as the top 4-day workweek positions available this month.

No matter your needs, there’s a job for you somewhere.

Microsoft has reportedly announced a restriction of its own employees’ access to OpenAI’s ChatGPT software for a short period this week, before explaining to CNBC that it was a mistake.

The tech company has invested billions into the platform, but took precautions this Thursday to curtail the service’s use. An internal message originally said that ChatGPT was “banned” along with another third-party external service, design software Canva.

However, this ban was fully reversed shortly afterwards, following the publication of a now-updated CNBC article.

What’s the Timeline for All This?

The issue started when Microsoft updated an internal website to say that “a number of AI tools are no longer available for employees to use” due to “security and data concerns.”According to this internal message, this decision was because ChatGPT is still a “third-party external service” and potentially opens up a security concern.

Here’s how CNBC explains it:

“The company initially said it was banning ChatGPT and design software Canva, but later removed a line in the advisory that included those products. After initial publication of this story, Microsoft reinstated access to ChatGPT.”

Microsoft Still Stands Behind ChatGPT

So, after an update from Microsoft’s people, the official news is that ChatGPT is not banned at the company. Instead, all employee access was temporarily restricted, and restored shortly afterwards. And according to the spokesperson, the original message itself was a mistake.

“We were testing endpoint control systems for LLMs and inadvertently turned them on for all employees,” a spokesperson told CNBC. “We restored service shortly after we identified our error. As we have said previously, we encourage employees and customers to use services like Bing Chat Enterprise and ChatGPT Enterprise that come with greater levels of privacy and security protections.”

Granted, all this back and forth doesn’t exactly look great for Microsoft. But these technical mishaps happen sometimes, and they don’t impact any real business decisions — except perhaps a greater investment in reducing human error in cybersecurity in the future.

In the end, Microsoft still supports employee use of the large language model ChatGPT, which it has plenty of funds invested in, and it still stands behind the “built-in safeguards” that the company says keep it safe for enterprise use.

Using ChatGPT at Work

You don’t have to work at Microsoft to be confused by workplace messaging about ChatGPT. Can you use it? Should you? Will you fall behind if you don’t? It all depends on what your workplace tells you.

Plenty of businesses do ban ChatGPT, and you definitely don’t want to violate any direct order — even if 68% of ChatGPT users admit hiding it from their boss. And there is some evidence to suggest using it to create a resume hurts your odds of landing the position.

But if your workplace is ChatGPT-friendly, take a look at these quick how-to guides to bring you up to speed on the AI platform:

• What Is ChatGPT? A Beginner’s Guide With Simple Explanations
• 10 Ways Businesses Are Using ChatGPT Right Now
• 40 Best ChatGPT Prompts To Save You Time at Work

The 4-day workweek has become so much more than a pipedream over the last few years. Big corporations and small companies alike have begun providing the popular employee perk, with 4-day workweek jobs linked to better staff wellbeing and even improved productivity.

However, not everyone is on board just yet, with the majority of businesses sticking to the standard five-day workweek for most employees. Sure, you could ask your boss for a four day workweek, but if that doesn’t work, there’s only one option. And short of upping sticks to one of the countries with 4-day workweek policies, it’s getting a new job.

In this guide, you’ll learn about all the 4-day workweek job openings currently live in November. We’ll only include the ones that let you work four days a week for the same pay, as taking a pay cut to work just four days a week isn’t a “4-day workweek” as we understand it – it’s just working part-time.

Buffer

There might be a few companies on this list that are flexible with their 4-day workweek. Buffer is not one of those companies, offering every single one of its employees the same pay for only four days of work per week.

In May 2020, Buffer decided to test out the 4-day workweek, given the pandemic was wreaking havoc on employee mental health. The trial went great, and the company made it an official policy for the entire company in late 2020.

If you do have a bit of extra work to get done, Buffer encourages employees to work a fifth, meeting-less day per week, but that is completely optional. And because Buffer is an entirely remote team, there’s no office to go to either way.

Unfortunately, Buffer is a smaller team than the average company, and there is currently only one position open in November, but make sure to check back for more updates:

• Design Engineer, Marketing

Learn more about Buffer’s open job vacancies on the company’s website.

Feathr

At the start of the pandemic, Feathr opted to reduce pay for upper management and executives by 20%, while reducing work at the same rate, so everyone got Friday off. As the financial stress of the pandemic wore off, the company went back to the standard pay model, but decided that the additional day off was really improving culture and wellbeing at the company.

Now, all Feathr employees get Friday off, with the day before the 3-day weekend being playfully deemed “Thriday” to further illustrate how much they care about their employees.

Feathr takes pride in its 4-day workweek, and there are plenty of positions open right now that could have you enjoying your own “Thriday” every single week.

• Team Manager, Customer Success
• Account-Based Marketing Manager
• Senior Product & Partner Marketing Manager
• Senior Account Director
• Senior Account Executive

Learn more about Feathr and its “Thriday” philosophy on the company’s website.

GoLinks

There are plenty of studies out there that the 4-day workweek has a positive impact on employee wellbeing, both physical and mental, while also improving productivity. GoLinks has taken this to heart by allowing all of its employees to work four days a week for the same pay.

GoLinks is fully behind the benefits of a 4-day workweek and hopes its model will help encourage other workplaces to get on board with the popular new employee perk, which has been shown to improve staff retention and overall happiness.

Here’s a look at the 4-day workweek jobs available at GoLinks in November:

• Enterprise SDR
• Sales Development Representative
• Renewal Specialist
• Business Operations Specialist
• Product Manager

Stay up to date on 4-day workweek positions at GoLinks by checking out the company website.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter is about more than helping innovative inventions get funding when they need it, the company is all about innovation when it comes to working conditions too. The crowdfunding platform has effectively established the rule, with “most” employees working on the shortened schedule.

Kickstarter represents a significant company in the 4-day workweek, with its 900 employees being one of the larger workforces to take on the new policy.

Kickstarter is another company that was included in our October roundup of 4-day workweek jobs. Much like Bolt, some roles have been filled, but others have been added, so you still have a chance to take advantage of this workplace perk.

• Engineering Manager, Mobile Applications
• Senior iOS Engineer
• Data Scientist
• Senior Counsel

Want to work at Kickstarter? Head on over to the company website to check out the open positions now.

ThredUp

Of all the companies currently hiring that offer the 4-day workweek to its employees, ThredUp is arguably one of the most prominent. The clothing company currently has partnerships with H&M and Bloomingdales and has become quite popular with younger buyers.

Even better, ThredUp is hiring like crazy right now, and every single one of its employees gets to enjoy the long weekend thanks to the 4-day workweek policy that was put in place in 2021 after a one-year trial that started during the pandemic.

Here are some of the jobs currently available at ThredUp in their Oakland, Scottsdale, New York City, and Kyiv offices around the world.

• Staff Sofware Engineer, Merchandising
• Senior Software Engineer
• Senior Front-end Software Engineer, Content & Incentives
• Engineering Manager, Merchandising
• Manager, SEC Reporting
• Senior Product Designer
• General Ledger Accountant
• Senior Data Infra Engineer
• Payroll Manager
• Data Analyst, Marketing
• Data Analyst, Product

New roles are always being filled and vacated, which means you should check out the ThredUp website to stay up to date.

Bolt

Bolt was a bit later to the 4-day workweek party than other companies on this list, waiting until 2021 to test out the new work policy. After a three-month trial, though, employees and managers were both fully on board.

In fact, 87% of managers noted that they felt productivity had increased over the trial period, a fact that many companies have found to be true about the shortened work schedule.

Bolt was included in our October edition of this guide, and while some of the roles have been filled since last month, a few remain from last month, as well as a few additions that may be a better fit. Here are the open positions at Bolt in November:

• Lead Business Development Representative
• Senior Engineering Manager
• Senior Software Engineer
• Software Engineer

Stay up to date on the jobs available at Bolt by checking out the company website.

Can’t Find the Right 4-Day Workweek Job?

If you’re looking for a 4-day workweek job, chances are one of the things you really want is a better work/life balance.

If that’s the case and you can’t find the right 4-day fit, you could also consider applying one of the many fully remote jobs hiring this November.

Alternatively, you might be able to ask to work remotely more often in your current role, or join one of the companies with the best employee perks in general.

It might not be a 4-day workweek, but other relatively small changes could make a big difference to your job satisfaction.

Almost 8 in 10 Americans don’t trust businesses to use AI responsibly, survey finds.

With the rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its subsequent integration into the tools and technology used in our daily personal and professional lives, some degree of skepticism is to be expected.

However, a recent study conducted by Bentley University and analytics and advisory company, Gallup, has some startling evidence that more than the majority of Americans are wary of the technology in spite of its ability to help with monotonous tasks.

AI and Trust in Businesses

The survey showed resounding evidence that while businesses big and small are rushing to implement AI, consumers don’t believe there are enough responsibility guardrails in place. The majority (79%) of respondents reported trusting businesses “not much” or “not at all” to adopt AI responsibly.

“Responsible use of software, in general, and AI/machine learning in particular, has a lot to do with risk and who experiences it. If the customers of products and services experience risk in their use, the company should bear some responsibility.” – Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist for Google

Additionally, a mere one in 10 Americans who responded to the survey believed that AI does more good than harm. Leaving the remaining 90% split between an equal amount of harm and good (50%) and more harm than good (40%).

The Bentley-Gallup Business in Society Report is based on a web survey with 5,458 U.S. adults carried out in May this year, using the probability-based Gallup Panel. Among a range of workplace topics, the respondents were asked about their feelings on AI, both in the workplace and as consumers.

AI Eliminating Jobs

Three quarters of Americans believe that Artificial Intelligence will reduce the number of jobs on the market over the next decade. This figure rose to 80% for those who do not have a bachelor’s degree, are long-term unemployed, or over the age of 60.

Those least concerned about AI eliminating jobs were 18-29 year-olds, the future of the US workforce. Of whom, 66% believed it to be true, 26% percent thought there would be no change in job levels, and 9% — the highest of all demographics — believed there would actually be more jobs.

“We’re going to see tremendous occupational shifts. Some jobs will climb while others decline. So how do we enable and support workers as they transition from occupation to occupation? We don’t do that very well. I worry about the skill shifts. Skill requirements are going to be substantial and how do we get there quickly enough?” – James Manyika, chairman and director, McKinsey Global Institute (MGI)

Tasks We Trust AI to Outperform Humans

While many are fearful of AI taking over jobs, we can’t deny it is better than humans at certain tasks.

This survey question doesn’t speak to the actual ability of AI-bots to do a task but rather the human perception of their ability to do a task. It highlights the industries in which people are most skeptical about AI integration and those which are more acceptable.

The tasks which came out more favorable in relation to AI with respondents were customizing the content they see online (68%), recommending products or services (65%), and assisting students with their homework (60%).

The tasks that people thought would perform worse than a human were recommending medical advice (62%), driving cars (68%) and recommending the employees a company should hire (69%).

However, 18-29 year-olds answered more optimistically overall compared to older demographics, demonstrating a shift in public perception is likely on the horizon.

AI technology continues its path of adaption in business software, with Wix announcing a conversational chatbot that will guide you through the website building process in minutes.

AI website builders have become a popular tool for businesses in the modern era, providing users with a seamless experience that takes virtually zero technical knowledge. That’s right, not only can you be entirely inexperienced with coding, but you can also be a total novice in web design and other skills previously necessary to build a good website.

Now, Wix has made the process that much easier with an AI-powered chatbot that can do most of the work for you.

The Wix AI assistant helping me create a fake website.
Image: Tech.co 

Wix Unveils AI Assistant

Announced in a press release, Wix is launching the AI Assistant feature on its website building platform. The conversational chatbot will ask users a series of questions during the initial setup process. It asks about everything, from the purpose and target audience of your website to the tone and goals of your brand.

Once you’ve answered all the questions about your website, Wix will take you to a customized dashboard based on your answers, that provides you with all the components your website probably needs. Suffice it to say, it’s going to speed up the website building process quite a bit for beginners.

“This new AI technology serves as an excellent starting point for creating a business profile by eliminating the need for users to manually understand which components they need to run their business online.” – Guy Sopher, Head of AI Assistant at Wix

If you’ve ever been intimidated by the website building process, this feature should put your mind at ease.

Check out our Wix review for more information 

Upcoming AI Features from Wix

The AI movement has hit Wix hard, with the popular website builder rolling out a wide range of new features — including text generators, image creators, and automated product descriptions — that help users get a site live as fast and as smoothly as possible.

Wix isn’t done yet, either. The platform has plans to launch even more AI-powered features for users in the future. Here’s a list of AI features that is coming to the website builder soon:

• AI Site Generator
• AI Page and Section Creator
• Object Eraser

Is Wix a Good Website Builder?

At Tech.co, we’ve thoroughly researched a whole bunch of different business software, including website builders, so you can trust us when we say that Wix is one of the best options on the market.

In fact, our research found that Wix is the best website builder for most users, providing lots of features and an intuitive platform. Plus, it’s got a stellar free plan that allows users to get started without any financial commitment whatsoever.

On top of all that, Wix continues to roll out these AI features that not only make it easy to build your site, but also allow you to easily update and manage your site in the long run. All that to say, Wix should be your first pick when it comes to looking for a website builder.

Check out our Wix pricing guide for more information

Humane, the mysterious startup founded by ex-Apple employees, has finally launched its first product – a wearable called the AI Pin that lets you clip ChatGPT to your clothes for a cool $699.

Prior to launch, it was understood that ChatGPT would feature on the device, but we now know that access to the OpenAI chatbot is one of the core features of the wearable and its OS, called Cosmos.

The standalone device is screen-less, smaller in size than a typical smartphone, and is designed for AI from the ground up. Humane say the AI Pin embodies its “vision for the emerging convergence between humans and AI.”

The startup was co-founded by former Apple employees Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno. It enjoys the backing of ChatGPT owner OpenAI and Microsoft.

Other key features include AI-powered optical recognition and a laser-projected display, which is intended to allow the AI Pin to throw smartphone interface and functionality on to any surface. Along these lines, the AI Pin uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, like those found in many of the world’s most popular handsets. Even after yesterday’s official reveal, it hasn’t disclosed which chip, though.

Here’s everything else we know so far about the Humane AI Pin.

Humane AI Pin Release

Humane’s hotly anticipated wearable device was first teased at TED in April this year and now, a few months later, we finally have a release date. After this week’s launch event, we know that the first AI Pin units will be available to order November 16 in the US.

It’s not clear if you have to have already expressed interest in the AI Pin by signing up to the pre-launch waitlist, or if anyone will be able to buy it at that time. We’re equally unsure about the initial scale of production, but expect a certain amount of scarcity in the early days of the AI Pin.

Going back, Chaudhri first demoed it during that TED Talk by taking a phone call from his wife, showing how it projected the call incoming alert onto his palm in a green laser text, and how he then answered it with simple voice controls and hand gestures.

It was also promoted at Paris Fashion Week earlier in 2023. In addition to those features the AI Pin will also come with a camera equipped with depth and motion sensors to record its surroundings.

You can head over to the Humane AI Pin website to learn more.

Humane AI Pin Price: $699 Plus Monthly Charge is Official

According to leaked documents obtained by The Verge, the Humane AI Pin is set to retail at $699. This price was confirmed at the official launch.

For this, it’s thought you’ll get the device, a charger, plus two battery packs Humane call “battery boosters” which also magnetically clip on to clothing and other surfaces.

An additional monthly subscription fee of $24 is required for access to cellular data in order to take and receive calls, texts and emails. This extra cost will also be necessary to get cloud storage for any images or video you shoot with the device, as well as use its integrated AI-assistant.

This will be powered by Microsoft and OpenAI, so while any product specific branding is still unknown, it will be a version of ChatGPT.

Other handy features that can help you through your day include a daily summary of your emails, the ability to identify the nutritional value of foods, translate different languages and choose music you like.

The Verge also reported that the device will have an inbuilt “personic speaker,” bluetooth connectivity for headphones, a “trust light” which blinks whenever the device is recording audio or video and a touchpad for manual input.

What is Humane?

Humane seems to be gathering momentum ahead of its first major product launch. It secured $100 million in series C funding back in March and now reportedly boasts 200 or more employees.

The buzz around this fledgling tech company likely comes as a result of its high proportion of ex-Apple employees. It’s thought as much as 50% of the Humane workforce is former Apple talent, while the co-founders worked on some of the iconic company’s best loved products, from older Mac computers and the iPod right through the Apple Watch and iPhone.

The company has previously spoken about its to “reshape the role of technology in our lives.” We’ll find out very shortly just what it has in store.

Videoconferencing software company Zoom has announced that its new Zoom Clips feature is now generally available. The tool helps users capture, edit and send videos for enhanced asynchronous work.

Billed as the voice note of the web meeting world, Zoom Clips promises to help you cut out all those unnecessary meetings you have due to remote working, offering an alternative to catching up over video in real-time.

The feature has been in public beta since August and launched officially worldwide. It’s geared at helping busy colleagues connect with one another on asynchronous projects, especially when scheduling conflicts prevent a meeting taking place.

How to Use Zoom Clips

In short, Zoom Clips lets you create short-form video clips so that colleagues can communicate remotely with each other on those topics that are just too long-winded for an email, but don’t necessarily require a fully fledged meeting.

In a company blog post published to announcing general Zoom Clips availability, Zoom said this feature is designed to support teams to “communicate asynchronously, cut down on the number of meetings, and reduce lost time to ambiguous communication.”

To get started, Zoom users will need to select the new feature from the menu or taskbar in their Zoom app or online portal. Zoom Clips will then guide them through recording a short video clip, editing the clip and its properties such as the name, description, tags and thumbnail image and store their clips all directly within the platform.

You’ll then be able to edit the viewing permissions so only a select person(s) is able to see it, and generate shareable links to distribute the video clip via email or other messaging platforms internally and externally.

After sharing you Zoom Clip with colleagues, you’ll even be able to understand how their video clip has “performed” with analytics available for each video as well as the comments functionality for direct feedback from viewers.

You can learn more about Zoom Clips and how it can help you start shedding unnecessary meetings from your schedule by checking out the full User Guide.

Zoom Clips Pricing: Who Can Use Zoom Clips?

Zoom Clips Basic allows users to record up to five clips of up to two minutes each, whilst Zoom Clips Plus will remove those time and volume restrictions for an additional fee of $6.99 per month.

Paying Zoom One customers will already have access to Zoom Clips Plus as part of their subscription to Zoom, which we rate as one of the best conference call services for beginners.

It’s also a one of our preferred video conferencing apps in general, but bear in mind that the daily cap on using Zoom Clips for free might make it unsuitable for businesses and individuals without a paid subscription.

What Is Asynchronous Video and Why Should Businesses Care?

Quite simply, asynchronous video is video content that’s recorded and shard with others to view later. It’s the opposite of live video, which is how many of us traditional think of web meetings.

As well as clamping down on unnecessary meetings, asynchronous video is also advertised as a good way to amplify corporate announcements, facilitate on-boarding and training exercises, and get around tricky time zone clashes. It’s also a natural fit for product demos, colleague recognition, and of course, the quick status updates that so often take up half an hour of your day without really needing to.

There are some well-established Zoom alternatives in the asynchronous video space, such as Loom, Weet and Bubbles. Whilst Zoom already had an asynchronous video tool within its Zoom Team Chat product, the new more robust Zoom Clips tool seems to be a direct response to these previously more advanced and feature-rich competitors.

David Ball, Zoom’s meetings and chat product manager, wrote in the blog post announcing Clips back in August: “With our new asynchronous video offering, you can demonstrate important information with teammates in a pinch, add a personal touch to your collaboration or just share a detailed project update without having to join a live meeting.”

In what’s becoming something of a habit for OpenAI’s popular chatbot, ChatGPT is down for some users still today, with the company’s latest status update pointing to “periodic outages” still being suffered by the service. What’s more, it’s apparently the result of a DDoS attack.

In its latest system update, OpenAI  says: “We are dealing with periodic outages due to an abnormal traffic pattern reflective of a DDoS attack. We are continuing work to mitigate this.”

It’s a major blow for ChatGPT, with this week’s considerable downtime coming as OpenAI should be riding high on the recent launch of GPT-4 Turbo.

How to Check OpenAI’s Latest Status Updates: Is ChatGPT Still Down?

At the time of writing on Thursday, November 9, ChatGPT was still experiencing issues for many users around the world, though unlike yesterday the service is now back online.

This is confirmed by both OpenAI’s status updates page, where it notes “periodic outages” are still affecting ChatGPT. You can check the latest OpenAI updates for yourself here.

This isn’t as severe as yesterday’s full outage, which say ChatGPT knocked completely offline due to a DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service, attack. Let’s take a look at what that is in more detail.

What is a DDoS Attack and Why Has OpenAI Been Attacked?

A DDoS attack is a type of brute force cyberattack historically favored by bad actors.

It sees cyber criminals deliberately trying to crash a website of service by overloading it with so much traffic and activity, its servers cannot cope. The site is then knocked offline or so overwhelmed with requests it becomes unusable.

Bleeping Computer has already picked up at least one claim of responsibility by a threat actor calling them Anonymous Sudan. According to the site, the reason for the OpenAI DDoS attack is the firm’s “general biasness towards Israel and against Palestine.”

Who Else Benefits From ChatGPT Going Down?

The group is alleged to have continued on its Telegram channel: “CHATGPT link completely dead now worldwide, thousands of reports all over twitter and social media, let us see if they will admit it’s a DDOS attack.”

Conspiracy theorists may also see the timing of the attack as intriguing, coming as it does in the wake of the major new ChatGPT Turbo release that immediately stole the show from the launch of Elon Musk’s xAI chatbot, called Grok.

This is probably stretching it, to think that pro-Musk enthusiasts are peeved OpenAI took the shine off of the xAI launch, but Grok vs ChatGPT is surely the new clash of the chatbots to watch

Starting next year, advertisers on Facebook and Instagram will be required to state whether they’re using AI-generated content in any political, electoral, or social issue ads.

If they have, and the ad is accepted, Meta will run the campaign with a disclosure for audiences that the content was created with AI tools. 

This latest move highlights a recent trend in Meta’s crackdown on false news and information. Earlier this year, it deleted thousands of fake accounts that were being leveraged by a Chinese network, whose aim was to spread disinformation.

What Are the New Advertising Rules?

According to Meta, ads subject to the disclosure include anything that’s been digitally created or altered to:

• Depict a real person saying or doing something they did not say or do.
• Depict a realistic-looking person that does not exist, or a realistic-looking event that did not happen or alter footage of a real event that happened.
• Depict a realistic event that allegedly occurred, but that is not a true image, video, or audio recording of the event.

Any social issue, political, or electoral ads containing the above will be flagged to users and logged within Meta’s ads database. 

However, there are a few exceptions to the rule, with Meta stating that any alterations that were “inconsequential or immaterial to the claim, assertion, or issue raised” — such as photo retouching and image cropping — would not need to be disclosed.

In addition to the AI disclosure, Meta will also ban advertisers from using its own AI software to create ads relating to political or social issues, housing, employment, credit, health, pharmaceuticals, or financial services. Ads promoting campaigns on these subjects will be free to use third-party AI tools, like Midjourney or DALL-E, but will need to use the new disclosure measures.

Safeguarding the Use of AI

Meta is currently in the throes of managing the tidal wave of generative AI content that has recently flooded platforms. Thanks to the likes of ChatGPT and Google Bard, tech companies have had the unprecedented challenge of working out how to manage and regulate manipulated and fake images, videos, and audio.

“We believe this approach will allow us to better understand potential risks and build the right safeguards for the use of generative AI in ads that relate to potentially sensitive topics in regulated industries.” – Meta spokesperson

This latest disclosure follows the recent guidelines that anyone running political ads on the Meta platforms are required to complete an authorization process. This includes adding a “paid for by” disclaimer on any campaigns. From there, the ads will be stored in the company’s public Ad Library for up to seven years. 

The Upcoming Election Year

This crackdown from Meta comes as both regulators and lawmakers begin to tackle the issue of AI-generated content within political ads, ahead of 2024’s US presidential election.

Earlier this year, Rep. Yvette Clarke and Sen. Amy Klobuchar introduced bills that require ads campaigns to disclose when they’ve used AI-generated content. The regulatory agency in charge of political advertising, The Federal Election Commision, is similarly expected to make a decision on a new rule that limits the use of AI in political ads.

Back in 2016, Facebook was criticized for its lack of regulations over Russia using ads to spread discontent among American users. Then in 2020, the company hit headlines by being accused of allowing politicians to lie in ads on the platform. This was defended on the grounds of free speech and public discourse. However, since then, Meta has been busy navigating the tricky subject of political advertising.

In an effort to squash as much misinformation and disinformation as possible, Mark Zuckerberg has spent billions developing functionality that closely monitors political ads on the platform. Despite these innovations, Clegg has since called for regulatory guidance on these kinds of issues, instead of having tech companies determine the boundaries and rules.

Not one to be left behind in the race for AI dominance, South Korean electronics company Samsung has just unveiled its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) model, Samsung Gauss, at its annual AI forum.

The new model will be incorporated into Samsung’s Galaxy S24 handset in the first half of 2024, in an effort to improve its product offering and become less reliant on large language models (LLMs) provided by competitors like OpenAI.

Samsung’s announcement comes just days after the launch of GPT-4 Turbo, OpenAI’s upgraded language model. But how will Samsung Gauss compare to the litany of existing LLMs that are already on the market?

What Are Samsung Gauss’s Core Features?

Another day, another generative AI model created by one of the biggest names in tech. The latest entry? Samsung Gauss — an unusually named AI model that responds to user-generated prompts in a similar way to ChatGPT.

Samsung Gauss is split into three divisions: Samsung Gauss Language, Samsung Gauss Code, and Samsung Gauss Image. As the name of these functions suggests, the AI tool is capable of generating text, code, and image responses, offering versatile applications to its users.

Samsung Gauss Language aims to streamline productivity in a number of different ways, including helping users write and edit emails, summarize documents, and translate languages.

Its coding function, Samsung Gauss Code, utilizes a code assistant called code.i. It was primarily designed to help developers write code quickly, by supporting “code description and test case generation through an interactive interface.”

By providing coding services right out of the gate, Samsung Gauss already has the edge over other chatbots that were slower to incorporate the tool, including Google Bard, which only began offering coding capabilities in April of this year.

Lastly, Samsung Gauss Image can create and edit images, akin to the OpenAI image generator DALL-E. For example, the model is capable of creating unique, lifelike visuals, and improving the resolution of existing images.

Samsung Is Playing Catch Up on AI

Samsung’s new AI tool is part of a wide effort to bake artificial intelligence into its core strategy, with the company incorporating generative AI into its Bixby virtual assistant for home appliances earlier this year.

The model, which is named after Carl Frederich Gauss — a prominent mathematician who established the normal distribution theory — will be able to run locally on Samsung devices, including the Galaxy S24 handset due to be released next year.

Samsung is expecting to sell 35 million Galaxy S24 units next year, with the help of this AI boost. Such a feat could see Samsung’s smartphone sales leap ahead of its biggest rival Apple, as well as other leading manufacturers.

How Does Samsung Gauss Compare to Other AI Models?

Despite Samsung Gauss’s versatile offering, it’s hard to see how its user numbers will ever trump that of established rivals like ChatGPT and Google Bard.

However, while it may not have the same name recognition as other chatbots, Samsung Gauss aims to set itself apart from the competition by focusing on productivity through comprehensive language functionalities.

Samsung Gauss hopes to have an edge over rivals when it comes to privacy, too. Unlike most other AI models, the tool is an “on-device AI.” This means it will process data on the device itself, allowing it to bypass security concerns that can result from data being processed through the cloud. This also enables the model to be customized more heavily to the user’s liking, while taking up less energy than conventional generative AI alternatives.

Samsung Gauss is currently being used internally to aid employee productivity and will be expanded into a variety of Samsung products from January 2024.

If you were involved in LinkedIn’s 401(k) Profit Sharing Plan and want to try to cash in on the social media giant’s $6.75 million settlement case, you have just a few hours left to file for your chunk of change.

LinkedIn agreed to the settlement earlier this year after its administrators were accused of mismanaging its 401(k) retirement plan and failing to use the lowest-cost share class for many mutual funds.

Active members of the plan will qualify for the payout automatically, but former members will need to take action before the November 10 deadline. That’s today, so read on as we explain how you can make a claim.

Details of the LinkedIn Settlement Closing Today

In March of this year, the professional social media platform LinkedIn agreed to pay $6.75 million to settle a lawsuit filed by current and former members of its 401(k) plan.

The plaintiffs – Douglas G. Baily, Jason J. Hayes, and Marianne Robinson – first sued the company in August 2020 claiming the retirement plan violated Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) laws by charging excessive fees and offering substandard investment options.

They alleged that administrators of the $817 million 401(k) plan failed to use the lowest cost share and their “substantial bargaining power” to lower the price of the fees.

“This is another in a growing group of lawsuits in which the plaintiffs allege that plan fiduciaries imprudently chose funds with excessive fees as investment options under a 401(k) plan,” – Andrew Oringer, partner and general counsel with the Wagner Law Group

Plaintiffs also claimed that the plan had conflicts of interest, as Fidelity, a third-party investment firm, was the recordkeeper and the asset manager of the fund, placing them in “positions that allowed them to receive profits from the plan at the expense of plan participants.” Hardly a fully fledged LinkedIn scam, but still a serious accusation.

Despite initially asking US District Judge Edward J. Davila to dismiss all allegations, the Judge decided the case would be brought to trial in November 2021. Now, with the November 10 deadline looming, participants only have two days left to take action – but who is eligible to make a claim?

Who’s Eligible to Claim in the LinkedIn’s $6.75m Settlement?

If you were a member of LinkedIn’s 404(k) retirement plan from August 14, 2014, to July 1, 2020, you’ll be eligible for a payment and will be able to make a claim.

If you’re currently enrolled in the plan – and were active during this period – there’s no need to claim as you’ll automatically receive a deposit in your investment account. However, if you were involved between those dates but have since pulled out, you’ll have to apply for a slice of the pie. We explain how to do that below.

According to a US District Court filing, the amount you’re entitled to will vary from participant to participant and will be determined by how much you invested.

How to Make a Claim in the LinkedIn Settlement

To make a claim, you simply need to fill out this Strategic Claims form and enter personal information like your name, address, date of birth, and social security number. You’ll also be expected to select payment options and enter payment information.

While the settlement’s final approval hearing isn’t scheduled until November 16, the final deadline for making a claim is on November 10. So, if you don’t take action before then, you risk missing out on your settlement share.

Have you used Crunchyroll in the past three years? If so, you may have another opportunity to cash in. Here’s how to claim a part of Crunchyroll’s $16 million settlement.

Ecommerce behemoth Amazon is pouring millions of dollars into training a new large language model (LLM) codenamed ‘Olympus’ that’s hoping to challenge the likes of OpenAI and Google, according to people close to the matter.

As the AI arms race intensifies, reports claim the LLM could have 2 trillion parameters – twice the number of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model – potentially making it much more adept at understanding context, and less likely to make errors.

While this isn’t Amazon’s first foray into generative AI – with the company previously releasing an LLM called “Titan Emdeddings” in April of this year, Olympus is likely to be its biggest release to date. Here’s everything you should know about Amazon’s pending AI model, including it’s contrasts against ChatGPT.

Amazon is Developing a New AI Model ‘Olympus’

As artificial intelligence becomes Silicon Valley’s new cash crop, some of the biggest names in tech – including Meta, Microsoft, and Google – are clashing in a race to secure generative AI dominance.

So, as the competition heats up, it’s no surprise that Amazon is looking to secure its market share too. According to sources close to the matter, Amazon is currently investing millions in training a new ambitious LLM, codenamed ‘Olympus’.

The model may be used to power new features in its online store, Alexa voice assistant on devices like Echo, and Amazon Web Services unit, according to The Information.

The team developing Olympus is being spearheaded by Rohit Prasad – former head of Alexa – who now reports to company CEO Andy Jassy. The new AI model is still under development, but sources from the Information reveal it could be announced as soon as December.

How Might Olympus Compare Against ChatGPT?

Amazon’s new LLM aims to compete directly with leading generative chatbots, but how is Olympus likely to weigh up against OpenAI’s ChatGPT?

According to those close to the matter, Amazon’s new contender will be trained on 2 trillion parameters of data – a metric referring to the values learning algorithms can change independently as they learn.

This is almost twice as many parameters as OpenAI’s GPT-4 model – which is widely considered to be the top LLM on the market. Parameters are the backbone of AI performance, so Olympus’s extra capacity will likely make the model more capable of generating accurate, human-sounding responses than GPT-4.

The jury isn’t out yet, though. OpenAI has recently announced a brand new language model, GPT-4 Turbo, which will offer a much larger context window and a knowledge of world events up to April 2023 than its previous iteration.

No information has been announced regarding GPT-4 Turbo’s parameters yet, but with OpenAI increasing its count with each LLM upgrade, it’s competition against Olympus is likely to be a close call.

Amazon is Doubling Down on Generative AI

While Amazon’s launch of Olympus is set to be its biggest AI breakthough to date, it’s not the first time the global ecommerce site has waged in the artificial intelligence race.

On September 28, the company launched Amazon Bedrock – a fully managed service that allows businesses to pick models that reflect their needs and fine-tune them with relevant data. The service essentially acts as a one-stop shop for AI models.

Amazon also recently released Titan, a similar system that is slightly more traditional than Bedrock, but offers slightly more customization over Amazon Web Service (AWS) infrastructure.

The Seattle-based company also announced it will be investing $4 billion into AI safety and research company Anthropic, giving employees and cloud customers easy access to Anthropic technology and helping Amazon gain leverage against other AI leaders.

If recent earning reports by companies like Google and Microsoft are anything to go by Amazon’s recent investments into AI are likely to pay off. However, with leading figures in politics and tech recently agreeing over the risks the technology can pose at the UK’s AI safety summit, the wider cost of rapid AI development shouldn’t be forgotten.

ExpressVPN is going toe-to-toe against the likes of 1Password and NordPass with the introduction of its latest privacy tool, a password manager.

Integrated within its existing app, the tool will provide password storage, biometric verification, import and export options, and autofill for favorite websites. Users will also benefit from ExpressVPN’s expertise in security and encryption, with two-factor authentication and a robust recovery method for forgotten passwords.

Despite the rise in passkeys with the likes of Amazon and Apple going passwordless, the tech giant’s latest release shows that there’s no need to down tools on passwords just yet.

Introducing ExpressVPN Keys

With security issues and data breaches on the rise, including within password manager apps themselves, alternative options for protection are being welcomed by users. Which bodes well for ExpressVPN’s latest offering, owing to their heritage and expertise in privacy and security.

Announced this week, the company launched its password manager ExpressVPN Keys to “empower users with better online security”, according to a statement.

ExpressVPN’s Head of Product Samuel Bultex explained: “Privacy and security have never been more important—yet more complex. Our vision is to build out a privacy and security super app, and help modern users protect all aspects of their digital lives through a single app and subscription. We are proud to make privacy and security easy and accessible, by offering an all-in-one suite of tools: VPN, password manager, Aircove router, data breach alert, blockers for ads, trackers, malicious sites, adult sites, and more”.

Initially launched in beta last year, the built-in password manager is available on iOS and Android, and for Chrome users on Windows, Mac, and Linux, a browser extension is available too. For those already signed up to an ExpressVPN subscription, Keys is included at no extra cost.

What Can Users Expect from ExpressVPN Keys?

Keys provides all the traditional features you’d expect from a password manager, including automatically filling in your details when visiting a website or app, as well as storing credit card details and important notes. Biometric verification is supported for easy unlocking, and passwords can be stored and synced across all devices, so you aren’t restricted to using the app on just your mobile or computer.

The tool also introduces a feature called Password Health, which does exactly what it says on the tin: keep you in the loop as to the strength and security of your passwords, as well as alerts you if your data has been leaked or involved within a security breach.

To start using Keys, you need to tap on the key icon at the bottom of the ExpressVPN app or browser extension. It’s also worth knowing that a separate primary password is needed for the tool. 

For those already using a password manager, the company has assured that transferring credentials is easy to do during setup.

Read our guide to the most secure VPNs

Robust Encryption at the Heart of Keys

As you’d expect for ExpressVPN, security and encryption is at the forefront of this new venture. Even the company itself can’t access your data, owing to zero-knowledge encryption. 

This encryption and hashing algorithm is AES-256 bit encryption and RSA-PSS for 4096-bit public and private keys – the same that’s used by governments and military organizations. You’ll also have use of two-factor authentication, as well as password recovery methods.

To further ensure security, ExpressVPN invited cybersecurity firm Cure53 to conduct penetration tests and source code audits of its new password manager. From this, any issues that were identified were rapidly fixed and verified ahead of this week’s rollout. 

Keys is available now, free for existing ExpressVPN subscribers or available to non-users for $13.20 a month, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

WhatsApp has this week suggested that ads could start appearing in the Status feature of the chat app.

In an interview with Brazilian media, Head of WhatsApp Will Cathcart said the company isn’t planning to show ads in the main inbox, but it is toying with the idea of showing them in other places.

The news comes a week after Meta announced an ad-free plan for Facebook and Instagram users in the EU, signifying its plans to test ads and subscriptions across all of its platforms. 

“No, We Won’t Put Ads in Your Inbox”

Back in September, it was reported that Meta was exploring ad placements within lists of conversations on a user’s WhatsApp home screen. At the time Cathcart and his team denied this, stating they were neither testing or working on it.

While this week’s news comes as a u-turn to those reports, Cathcart was very clear that ads would not be featured in the inbox and their placement would be limited to Status, the app’s Stories-like feature. 

He said: “The reason I qualified the answer is that there could be ads in other places — channels or status. For example, channels might charge people to subscribe, they might be exclusive to paid members or the owners might want to promote the channel. But, no, we won’t put ads in your inbox”.

Testing WhatsApp Monetization Rolls On

The saga of ads within WhatsApp is a long-running one, with reports of them appearing in Status first surfacing in 2019. Despite a presentation on the topic at that year’s Facebook Marketing Summit, the ads – or even further plans – never materialized. 

Until now, WhatsApp has leaned on its business messaging service and click-to-WhatsApp ads on platforms such as Facebook for revenue income. It’s estimated that in 2022 it generated $906 million, almost all from the WhatsApp for Business app.

What’s clear amongst all the testing and introduction of new features is that the company is continually seeking alternative avenues for monetization. Earlier this year, WhatsApp rolled out a broadcast-based messaging feature called Channels. Designed to allow entities like fact-checking bodies and NGOs broadcast information – as opposed to individual creators – its introduction came with the aim to generate revenue further down the line.

Find out how to avoid the latest WhatsApp scams.

Can WhatsApp Catch up to Instagram Ads?

With a user base of more than 2 billion people globally, analysts have speculated that it’s only a matter of time before Meta brings ads to WhatsApp. Particularly as Meta’s ‘cheaper’ acquisition, Instagram, has made more progress with monetization since it was bought. According to reports, Instagram generated $43.2 billion in ad revenue across 2022.

There’s currently no word yet on when the Status ads could start appearing, or if there will be a testing phase in specific countries first. 

OnePlus 9 customers can still apply for a share of the money that the company — whose official mantra is “never settle” — has agreed to pay after settling a class action lawsuit filed against the company in 2021. However, they haven’t got long to make a claim.

The lawsuit concerns a “secret setting” in the company’s devices, which allegedly throttled the CPU and reduced processing power. The deadline to apply for a share of the settlement is tomorrow (November 8). Claims made after this date will not be considered.

The lawsuit means OnePlus joins the list of tech companies that have been forced into paying back users this year, which includes Facebook, Roblox, Google, and Epic Games.

What Is the OnePlus Class Action Lawsuit?

OnePlus has settled a lawsuit worth $1.1 million, and the deadline to claim your piece of it is November 8th, 2023.

The lawsuit, which was filed in late July 2021 by Bursor & Fisher, P.A, alleges that “the Devices at issue contain a ‘Secret Setting’ that restricts — or ‘throttles’ — access to the Devices’ processing power and other resources.”

“Benchmark applications are set to receive full access to the Devices’ resources, so that the Devices will appear to run at full power under test conditions, but real-world applications will receive throttled and reduced performance.” – the filing from OnePlus

OnePlus said at the time that they were simply trying to optimize the processing power of their devices when popular apps were being used after user feedback suggested using these apps was draining the battery power and causing devices to overheat.

However, OnePlus didn’t actually make users aware that it was allegedly doing this, which led to the claims that the throttling device was in fact a “secret setting.”

Even though the deadline to make a claim is this month, a final “fairness hearing” will occur on January 8, 2023.

Who Can Apply for a Share of The Settlement Money?

Unfortunately, not all OnePlus users can apply for the settlement money. You can only claim a share of the $1.1 million that the phone manufacturer has agreed to pay out to customers if you purchase a OnePlus 9 or a OnePlus 9 Pro model in the United States between late March 2021 and late January 2022.

According to Top Class Actions, those who purchased a device during the first few months of this period — March 23, 2021, to July 6, 2021 — will be entitled to $15.50 and a $20.50 voucher towards a OnePlus phone.

Those who bought a OnePlus device between July 7 2021 and Jan 23, 2022, will be entitled to $12 compensation and a $15 voucher for OnePlus.

You will need to provide a copy of a purchase receipt with a date that falls within these time periods when you apply, or an IMEI number.

How to Make a Claim

You can apply for a claim on Kccconnect.com. You will need a claim number and PIN, but you can also apply for one through this site. Payment options include PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, or by check.

Remember, filing for a claim when you do not meet the criteria is against the law in the United States. Falsely claiming you’re entitled to compensation from a class action lawsuit when you aren’t is technically perjury.

OpenAI held its annual DevDay conferenceand used it as an opportunity to announce a raft of changes to ChatGPT and other products, including wholesale price reductions for developers and a brand new language model for the chatbot called Turbo. Here’s what it is and how the key GPT-4 Turbo vs GPT-4 differences you should about.

GPT Turbo is a more advanced version of GPT-4 with a much larger context window. OpenAI has also launched an API you can use to build assistants and a way to make custom versions of ChatGPT.

However, the changes aren’t currently available to all ChatGPT users. For each of the below changes/announcements, we’ve provided information on which account holders can access the different language models.

• What Is GPT-4 Turbo?
• ChatGPT Turbo vs GPT-4 vs GPT-3.5
• What are Custom GPTs?
• What Is OpenAI’s Assistants API?
• ChatGPT’s Reduced Pricing Model
• Using ChatGPT at Work

What Is GPT-4 Turbo?

GPT-4 Turbo is the latest language model to be released by ChatGPT owner OpenAI. It’s more powerful than the previous two language models that were used to power ChatGPT, GPT-4 and GPT-3.5.

ChatGPT has famously struggled to give accurate answers on events that happened after its training data set was cut off, which was initially September 2021, but this was extended to January 2022.

However, OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo chatbot has knowledge of events up until April 2023. In the wake of Elon Musk’s xAI launching a chatbot boasting access to real time information, this is a key update in the budding Grok vs ChatGPT rivalry.

GPT-4 Turbo can accept images as inputs as well as text-to-speech prompts. However, the drop-down menu that ChatGPT Plus has been using to switch between other OpenAI apps like DALLE-3, is being retired. Now, ChatGPT will work out what sort of output you need based on your prompts.

GPT-4 Turbo also has an enlarged 128K context window, which helps it take prompts equivalent to around 300 pages of text. In short, GPT-4 Turbo vs GPT-4 is a straightforward win for the newer model, but there’s so much more to it than that.

Who can access GPT-4 Turbo?

OpenAI says that “GPT-4 Turbo is available for all paying developers to try by passing GPT-4-1106-preview in the API”, and revealed that the company plans to release “the stable production-ready model in the coming weeks.”

This means that the language model is only available as a preview right now. I the pattern of its prior releases continues, ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise customers will be the first to gain full access.

GPT 4 Turbo vs GPT-4 vs GPT-3.5 Turbo: How ChatGPT’s Models Compare

There are a number of key differences between OpenAI’s models. GPT-4 Turbo is a significant upgrade on its sister model GPT-4 – which itself differs quite greatly from GPT-3.5, the language model that powered ChatGPT when it was first launched back in November 2022.

Along with the release of GPT-4 Turbo, OpenAI has also released a new version of GPT-3.5, called GPT-3.5 Turbo, which has a 16K context window by default and exhibits improved instruction following.

Here are the key differences between GPT-3.5 Turbo, GPT-4 and GPT-4.5 Turbo:

What are Custom GPTs?

OpenAI is now rolling out a new product called “GPTs”, which they describe as “custom versions of ChatGPT that you can create for a specific purpose”. OpenAI envisages people building them for tasks at home and in the workplace, and then sharing these creations with others.

At the DevDay conference, OpenAI employees built their own chatbot agents – and it looks like the sort of thing that any knowledge worker could do. No coding knowledge is required.

OpenAI says you could create a custom GPT that conducts data analysis or even crawls the web for information. “Many power users maintain a list of carefully crafted prompts and instruction sets, manually copying them into ChatGPT,” the company said in a recent blog post. “GPTs now do all of that for you.”

OpenAI will have a GPT store within the month. Developers will have a brand-new way to make money with ChatGPT when this happens because OpenAI says it’ll let those who create the most popular GPTs earn money through the store.

Who can access ChatGPT’s custom GPTs?

OpenAI says that you start building GPTs today – but a post on OpenAI’s help portal confirms that it is only available to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise customers.

If you’re a free user and you try and access one of the company’s example GPTs (there’s a Canva and a Zapier one that has already been built) you’ll be informed that you’ll have to wait a little bit longer for access. Paying customers can access these example versions.

What Is OpenAI’s Assistants API?

ChatGPT’s new Assistants API is built on the same technology as the new custom GPTs, with the goal of “helping people build agent-like experiences within their own applications”.

Use case examples given by OpenAI include a data analysis app, an assistant that helps with coding, and an AI-powered vacation planner.

You can augment your assistant with information and data from your organization, although OpenAI reiterates that the data you input into the models will not be used to train them and that developers can delete the data whenever they choose.

Who can access the Assistants API?

You can now access the Assistants API beta by logging in with the same credentials you use to access ChatGPT. Although it requires no coding, you’ll need a basic level of technical knowledge to use this tool effectively.

ChatGPT’s Reduced Pricing Model

ChatGPT has also announced that it will be reducing token prices, “passing on savings to developers” in the process.

Tokens – the basic units that large language models process – are now going to be a lot cheaper on several GPT models. OpenAI describes tokens as pieces of words; input tokens are the pieces of words that make up prompts, whereas output tokens make up responses.

GPT-4 Turbo input tokens are now three times cheaper than GPT-4 tokens. They cost just $0.01, while output tokens cost $0.03, which is half the price of what they cost for GPT-4.

GPT-3.5 Turbo tokens are also 3x cheaper than they were for the previous version of GPT-3.5 with the 16K context window at $0.001, while output tokens are also half price, costing just $0.002 per token.

Developers that are using the 4K context window version of GPT-3.5 Turbo will have their token prices reduced by 33% (now $0.001). These prices refer exclusively to the new 16K version on GPT-3.5 Turbo.

Using ChatGPT at Work

Workers across the globe are finding new, inventive ways to use ChatGPT every day. However, using such a powerful tool to cut down on the time you’re spending on tasks comes with a variety of different considerations.

For one, most business leaders believe that staff should be asking permission before using AI tools like ChatGPT at work. If you’re planning on using AI for any task, make sure to be transparent about it with your manager/head of department in order to avoid confusion and mistakes.

This is particularly important if you’re using it to generate anything that you’ll be sharing with clients or customers. As you may be aware, ChatGPT and other AI tools like Bard have a tendency to “hallucinate” – so proofreading and fact-checking the content they produce for you is essential, not optional.

It’s also important to be transparent about your usage because what ChatGPT does with your data depends on which product you’re using, and there are ways to opt out of it being used for training purposes. However, if you haven’t turned your chat history off, OpenAI has the right via their privacy policy to use your data in this way.

Your workplace’s guidelines on the type of task you can ask ChatGPT to help you with may be linked to the sort of data they’re happy with you sharing with it, so it’s always good to check.

Microsoft, Abercrombie & Fitch, and the National Basketball Association are among a few companies that have recently debuted a new workplace benefit: Support for those going through menopause.

These benefits may take the form of counselling and hormone therapy access in order to address a health issue that costs the overall US economy dozens of billions a year.

Demand for menopause benefits will likely continue to grow as the millennial generation ages.

The (Many) Reasons to Offer Menopause Benefits

Currently, around 4% of employers that offer sick leave are also providing additional menopause support, according to a new report from benefits consultant NFP — this is the first year that NFP has asked about menopause benefits specifically.

Women likely to be affected add up to a group that accounts for 20% of the female workforce, Bloomberg reports.

At the same time, medical expenses and losses of productivity related to menopause adds up to an impact of $26.6 billion a year for the entire US economy, the Mayo Clinic finds. Symptoms like symptoms like hot flashes and sleep disturbances can have a huge impact on one’s ability to work.

It costs a lot less to help address menopause issues than it does to not to anything about it, and in the business world, that means everyone should be considering what preventative measures to take.

Aging Millennials Are Driving New Health-Focused Workplace Benefits

Among businesses that don’t offer menopause perks, the NFP survey finds, roughly one third say they’re open to adding them in the next five years. That represents a big growth opportunity.

Former Microsoft executive Jill Angelo, who is now the co-founder and CEO of virtual menopause clinic Gennev, expects that demand for this new workplace benefit will continue to grow.

“You’re starting to see this generation of older millennials that have grown up with fertility care in the workplace now aging into menopause. And they’re going to have those expectations of that level of care that they’ve been receiving in the fertility space from their employer.’’ ~Jill Angelo

That’s right, millennials have officially aged out of the “younger generation” label that they endured for a few decades. In 2023, the youngest millennials are around 27 years old, while the oldest ones are pushing their mid-40s. And with 87 million individuals comprising the group, they’re the biggest single generational demographic in the workplace today.

They’re still breaking new ground when it comes to tech and lifestyle advancements, but these days those advancements look like rising rates of smartphone-related hand injuries, medical startups, and age-related workplace health benefits.

Increased Workplace Benefits Help Everyone

Amid a big back-to-the-office push, it’s worth pointing out that menopause benefits are similar to workplace flexibility and remote work policies: They’re proven to help save businesses money and boost producitivity in the long run, since they keep workers more content with their work-life balance.

Younger employees have ideas about the best new workplace perks to include, too: Earlier this year, a survey found that a massive 92% of new graduates say that employers should offer mental and emotional health benefits.

Cost-cutting measures can seem appealing to many middle managers, but in the end, caring for your entire workplace and meeting health needs proactively will give most businesses a much better return.