Technology

How to use Sora, OpenAI’s new video generating tool

December 9, 2024
Today, OpenAI released its video generation model Sora to the public. The announcement comes on the fifth day of the company’s “shipmas” event, a twelve-day long marathon of tech releases and demos. Here’s what you should know—and how you can use the video model right now. What is Sora? Sora is a powerful AI video…

December 9, 2024
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The Download: satellites’ climate impact, and OpenAI’s frantic release schedule

December 9, 2024
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. The world’s next big environmental problem could come from space In September, a unique chase took place in the skies above Easter Island. From a rented jet, a team of researchers captured a…

OpenAI’s “12 days of shipmas” tell us a lot about the AI arms race

December 9, 2024
This week, OpenAI announced what it calls the 12 days of OpenAI, or 12 days of shipmas. On December 4, CEO Sam Altman took to X to announce that the company would be “doing 12 days of openai. each weekday, we will have a livestream with a launch or demo, some big ones and some…

The world’s next big environmental problem could come from space

December 9, 2024
Early on a Sunday morning in September, a team of 12 sleep-deprived, jet-lagged researchers assembled at the world’s most remote airport. There, on Easter Island, some 2,330 miles off the coast of Chile, they were preparing for a unique chase: a race to catch a satellite’s last moments as it fell out of space and blazed…

The Download: China’s mineral ban, and three technologies to watch

December 6, 2024
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. What China’s critical mineral ban means for the US This week, China banned exports of several critical minerals to the US, marking the latest move in an escalating series of tit-for-tat trade restrictions…

3 things that didn’t make the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2025 list

December 6, 2024
Next month, MIT Technology Review will unveil the 2025 list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies. Every year, our newsroom looks across the fields we cover for technologies that are having a true breakthrough moment. This annual package highlights the technologies that we think matter most right now.  We define ‘breakthrough’ in a few ways—perhaps there’s been…

Donating embryos for research is surprisingly complex

December 6, 2024
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. There’s a new film about IVF out on Netflix. And “everyone in the field [of reproductive medicine] has watched it,” according to one embryologist I spoke to recently.…

What China’s critical mineral ban means for the US

December 6, 2024
MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. This week, China banned exports of several critical minerals to the US, marking the latest move in an escalating series of tit-for-tat trade restrictions between the…