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ChatGPT to carry adverts for some users

BBC News

Adverts will soon appear at the top of the AI tool ChatGPT for some users, the company OpenAI has announced. The trial will initially take place in the US, and will affect some ChatGPT users on the free service and a new subscription tier, called ChatGPT Go. This cheaper option will be available for all users worldwide, and will cost $8 a month, or the equivalent pricing in other currencies. OpenAI says during the trial, relevant ads will appear after a prompt - for example, asking ChatGPT for places to visit in Mexico could result in holiday ads appearing. In example screenshots shared by the firm, the ads look like banners.


X to block Grok AI's undressing feature

Al Jazeera

X to block Grok AI's undressing feature | Digital Dilemma Digital Dilemma X to block Grok AI's undressing feature Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok will no longer be able to undress people on X after criticisms that it was creating nonconsensual sexualised images - and in some cases, of children.


The Download: cut through AI coding hype, and biotech trends to watch

MIT Technology Review

AI coding is now everywhere. But not everyone is convinced. Depending who you ask, AI-powered coding is either giving software developers an unprecedented productivity boost or churning out masses of poorly designed code that saps their attention and sets software projects up for serious long term-maintenance problems. The problem is right now, it's not easy to know which is true. As tech giants pour billions into large language models (LLMs), coding has been touted as the technology's killer app. Executives enamored with the potential are pushing engineers to lean into an AI-powered future.


A leading use for quantum computers might not need them after all

New Scientist

Do quantum computers offer a way to vastly improve agriculture? As quantum computers continue to advance, identifying problems they can solve faster than the world's best conventional computers is becoming increasingly important - but it turns out that a key task held up as a future goal by quantum proponents may not need a quantum computer at all. The task in question involves a molecule called FeMoco, which plays a vital role in making life on Earth possible. That is because it is part of the process of nitrogen fixation, in which microbes convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, making it biologically accessible to most other living organisms. How exactly FeMoco works during this process is complicated and not fully understood, but if we could crack it and replicate it on an industrial scale, it could drastically cut the energy involved in producing fertilisers, potentially leading to a boost in crop yields.


X still allowing users to post sexualised images generated by Grok AI tool

The Guardian

A standalone version of Grok, Grok Imagine, easily accessible through a web browser, was still responding to prompts to remove the clothes from senior female politicians. A standalone version of Grok, Grok Imagine, easily accessible through a web browser, was still responding to prompts to remove the clothes from senior female politicians. X has continued to allow users to post highly sexualised videos of women in bikinis generated by its AI tool Grok, despite the company's claim to have cracked down on misuse. The Guardian was able to create short videos of people stripping to bikinis from photographs of fully clothed, real women. It was also possible to post this adult content on to X's public platform without any sign of it being moderated, meaning the clip could be viewed within seconds by anyone with an account.


AI will transform the 'human job' and enhance skills, says science minister

The Guardian

Patrick Vallance said technological progress was creating'new area' for robots to work in. Patrick Vallance said technological progress was creating'new area' for robots to work in. AI will transform the'human job' and enhance skills, says science minister Patrick Vallance says robots would take away'repetitive' tasks, but Sadiq Khan warns AI will usher in'new era of mass unemployment' Advances in AI and robotics will transform human jobs, starting with roles in warehouses and factories, the UK science minister has said, as the government announced plans to reduce red tape for robot and defence tech companies. Patrick Vallance said technological progress was creating a "whole new area" for robots to work in. "What's really changing now is the combination of AI and robotics. It is opening up a whole new area, particularly in the sorts of things like humanoid robotics. And that will increase productivity, it will change the human job," he told the Guardian.


CROCS: A Two-Stage Clustering Framework for Behaviour-Centric Consumer Segmentation with Smart Meter Data

arXiv.org Machine Learning

With grid operators confronting rising uncertainty from renewable integration and a broader push toward electrification, Demand-Side Management (DSM) -- particularly Demand Response (DR) -- has attracted significant attention as a cost-effective mechanism for balancing modern electricity systems. Unprecedented volumes of consumption data from a continuing global deployment of smart meters enable consumer segmentation based on real usage behaviours, promising to inform the design of more effective DSM and DR programs. However, existing clustering-based segmentation methods insufficiently reflect the behavioural diversity of consumers, often relying on rigid temporal alignment, and faltering in the presence of anomalies, missing data, or large-scale deployments. To address these challenges, we propose a novel two-stage clustering framework -- Clustered Representations Optimising Consumer Segmentation (CROCS). In the first stage, each consumer's daily load profiles are clustered independently to form a Representative Load Set (RLS), providing a compact summary of their typical diurnal consumption behaviours. In the second stage, consumers are clustered using the Weighted Sum of Minimum Distances (WSMD), a novel set-to-set measure that compares RLSs by accounting for both the prevalence and similarity of those behaviours. Finally, community detection on the WSMD-induced graph reveals higher-order prototypes that embody the shared diurnal behaviours defining consumer groups, enhancing the interpretability of the resulting clusters. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real Australian smart meter datasets demonstrate that CROCS captures intra-consumer variability, uncovers both synchronous and asynchronous behavioural similarities, and remains robust to anomalies and missing data, while scaling efficiently through natural parallelisation. These results...


Elon Musk's Grok 'Undressing' Problem Isn't Fixed

WIRED

X has placed more restrictions on Grok's ability to generate explicit AI images, but tests show that the updates have created a patchwork of limitations that fail to fully address the issue. Elon Musk's X has introduced new restrictions stopping people from editing and generating images of real people in bikinis or other "revealing clothing." The change in policy on Wednesday night follows global outrage at Grok being used to generate thousands of harmful non-consensual "undressing" photos of women and sexualized images of apparent minors on X. However, while it appears that some safety measures have finally been introduced to Grok's image generation on X, the standalone Grok app and website seem to still be able to generate "undress" style images and pornographic content, according to multiple tests by researchers, WIRED, and other journalists. Other users, meanwhile, say they're no longer to create images and videos as they once were.


Matthew McConaughey trademarks iconic phrase to stop AI misuse

BBC News

Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey has trademarked his image and voice to protect them from unauthorised use by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms. Clips including his famous catchphrase alright, alright, alright from the 1993 film, Dazed and Confused, have been registered to the United States Patent and Trademark Office database, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports. It is the first time an actor has attempted to use trademark law to protect their likeness from AI misuse, his lawyers and an expert said. Stars across Hollywood and the music industry including Scarlett Johansson and Taylor Swift have endured a wave of fake video, audio and images online, created by AI tools. Lawyers for the Magic Mike star told the WSJ they had no current examples of McConaughey's likeness being manipulated by AI, but hoped the trademarks could be used broadly against any unauthorised copies of him.


ASUS has stopped producing the NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB, saying they've reached 'end of life'

Engadget

Apple's Siri AI will be powered by Gemini ASUS has stopped producing the NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB, saying they've reached'end of life' YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed suggests neither model will return. If you have more money to spend, the RTX 5070 Ti is a performance beast. YouTube channel is reporting that NVIDIA has "effectively" discontinued the RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB due to the ongoing memory crunch. In its most recent video, the channel states ASUS "explicitly" told it the RTX 5070 Ti is "currently facing a supply shortage." As a result, the company has "placed the model into end of life status," and no longer plans to produce it. The 5060 Ti 16GB "is almost done as well, with ASUS stating it no longer plans to produce that model going forward either.