This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Introducing: the new conspiracy age Everything is a conspiracy theory now. Conspiracists are all over the White House, turning fringe ideas into dangerous policy. America’s institutions are crumbling under the weight of deep…
After facing lawsuits and public outcry following the suicides of two teenagers, Character.AI says it’s making changes to its platform to protect children, changes that could affect the startup’s bottom line.
Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve created the AI Hype Index—a simple, at-a-glance summary of everything you need to know about the state of the industry. Just about all businesses these days seem to be pivoting to AI, even when they don’t seem to know exactly why they’re investing…
An AI model released by Chinese AI company DeepSeek uses new techniques that could significantly improve AI’s ability to “remember.” Released last week, the optical character recognition (OCR) model works by extracting text from an image and turning it into machine-readable words. This is the same technology that powers scanner apps, translation of text in…
Security researchers found a government hacking campaign that relies on Windows spyware developed by surveillance tech maker Memento Labs. When reached by TechCrunch, the spyware maker’s chief executive blamed a government customer for getting caught.