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It only took them three and a half years, but the powers that be at OpenAI have apparently directed ChatGPT to start refusing requests to copy a specific author’s style, Ars Technica reports. And it’s causing an absolute meltdown among “writers” who had grown accustomed to using the chatbot to churn out stories.Word spread quickly on the r/WritingWithAI subreddit, where one person using ChatGPT to write an entire novel made a post fuming that the chatbot is “not letting you emulate specific authors anymore.”“Now Ms. GPT says she can’t generate content in the style of specific authors,” the user complained,…

For only the second time in its history, the American Red Cross has declared a “national blood supply crisis,” after donations fell to a four-year summer low.The hotter summer months conventionally trigger blood shortages because people are more likely to injure themselves while spending time outdoors.And this summer has been particularly extreme. According to the Red Cross, extreme heat, poor air quality, and widespread foodborne illnesses have compounded into blood donations dropping precipitously, causing supply levels to plummet to a historic low.The news comes amidst record-breaking temperatures this summer, devastating heatwaves that have killed at least 25 people in the…

Last month, NASA announced that it was launching an unprecedented and risky mission to rescue its aging Swift observatory.The telescope, which has spent over two decades in orbit studying the most powerful explosions in the universe, has seen its orbit decay over time. With the help of a specialized space tug developed by contractor Katalyst Space Technologies, the space agency was hoping to give Swift a much-needed push to a more stable orbit, prolonging its life.But as it turns out, it’s not the observatory that ended up needing help. After launching its robotic spacecraft, dubbed LINK, on July 3, Katalyst…

The business world has quickly learned that there’s such a thing as using too much AI, as they get slammed with outrageous token bills.Now, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is warning of another way that embracing AI could doom a business.In an interview Sunday, Nadella cautioned against sharing too much information, ranging from proprietary data to the prompts entered, with a third-party AI model. Instead, he recommended that businesses should make sure they retain all the data on how employees use AI tools so they can eventually train or fine-tune their own open-weight model. This can be accomplished by using AI gateways,…

Despite certain improvements in accuracy, large language models still hallucinate a lot. So much so, in fact, that cybersecurity researchers warn that criminals can easily weaponize delusional AI outputs to spread malware throughout the internet.According to SecurityWeek, the attack works by exploiting a persistent flaw in AI coding assistants. Basically, when these tools recommend third-party software packages, there’s a strong possibility that they include names of ones that don’t actually exist.Astonishingly, cybersecurity researchers at Tel Aviv University and Intuit found that this scenario can be exploited in common AI coding tools ranging from Cursor to Microsoft’s Copilot, at rates of…

As dozens of cities across the US are forced to scrap their plans to build power-hungry data centers, some civic leaders are no longer asking.According to new reporting by Fortune, the state of Georgia’s for-profit utility company, Georgia Power, is looking to demolish and pave over some 30 homes — and 330 parcels of land — that currently block the route of a 1,000 mile transmission line.When it goes live, the line will distribute nearly 10,000 megawatts of energy from a newly constructed power plant, “approximately 80 percent of which is expected to power data centers,” according to a fact…

Things just keep getting worse for BuzzFeed.On Monday, the struggling media company announced the layoffs of 180 employees, or about a third of its entire workforce, in the latest sign of its decline since its unexpected pivot to AI.The cuts, according to the New York Times, affect employees at its news site HuffPost, BuzzFeed’s film and TV studio, and the recipe publisher Tasty.“We’ve been actively managing costs for some time, working through scenarios to save as many jobs as possible,” an internal memo given to staff reads per the NYT. “Unfortunately, the elimination of certain roles is still required. Today’s…

Last week, we came across a cleverly subversive advertisement for Meta’s controversial smart glasses, which overlaid socialite Kylie Jenner’s face with one of the terrifying bug-eyed monsters from John Carpenter’s “They Live” and a bold type caption that reads “We’re always watching” when viewed from a specific angle.The billboard, created by activist group Everyone Hates Elon, called attention to how Meta’s camera-adorned and AI-enabled spectacles have quickly turned into a privacy-invading nightmare. The optics of the problem is so bad that Meta is now trying to ban “manfluencers” and juvenile pranksters who use the glasses to record members of the…

If you were looking for even more ways to give Elon Musk your hard-earned cash, you’re in luck!His social media platform X has officially rolled out a new banking service, uninspiredly called X Money, to its Premium and Premium Plus users — who are already shelling out up to $40 a month for a blue checkmark and more prominent tweet replies.The service allows users to store their money in a deposit account and withdraw cash via ATMs using a physical Visa debit card. The microblogging platform is also enticing users with three percent cash-back and six percent annual percentage yield (APY).But…

The West Pacific has swung back into an El Niño phase, bringing nearly unprecedented heat to vast swaths of the globe.Some of El Niño’s impacts are immediately apparent, or will be in the months to come: blistering high temps, of course, but also major amounts of rainfall for some, and extreme drought for others. Unfortunately, those weather patterns don’t just come and go. They also have a major impact on agricultural production, from the plains of the American Midwest to the rice paddies of Southeast Asia — and, as a result, a huge influence on the global economy.As Reuters observes,…