Apple plans to start using images it collects for Maps to train its AI models. In a disclosure spotted by 9to5Mac, the company said starting this month it would use images it captures to provide its Look Around feature for the additional purpose of training some of its generative AI models. Look Around is Apple's answer to Google Street View. The company originally released the feature alongside its 2019 revamp of Apple Maps. The tool allows users to see locations from ground level.

Charlie Hurt and Griff Jenkins examine a protest of border czar Tom Homan's meeting in Albany with New York lawmakers over their refusal to enforce immigration laws. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem announced the building of seven new miles of border wall in Arizona as part of the administration's efforts to "make America safe again." Noem's announcement, coming in a short video posted to her X account, marks the beginning of additional border wall construction along the southern border during the second Trump administration. The DHS said in a press release Friday that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) awarded the first contract of President Donald Trump's second term to Granite Construction Co. for more than 70 million, which will result in seven new miles of border wall in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, according to Noem's announcement. "Everybody, I'm here in Arizona, and right at this spot, you can see where the border wall ends," Noem said while standing along the border, donning a CBP hat and jacket.

The transition of the electricity production from fossil fuels to renewable sources is one of the most important tasks of the present and future. State financed feed-in tariffs have helped to kick-off this transition. Today though, the production from renewable sources is more and more brought to liberalised electricity markets using so-called Green Power Purchase Agreements (PPA). PPAs are contracts that sell the production of a generating asset at a fixed price. PPAs are not new, they have helped to secure the large investment sums needed when building conventional power plants for decades. This is achieved by guaranteeing a secure stream of income to the owner of the asset. At the same time the buyer is exposed to market risk. A PPA is called "Green" when its underlying generating asset uses a renewable source. Due to the fact that electricity is not storable its production has to match consumption at every point in time.

A film released by The New Yorker was among the winners at Sunday's Academy Awards. "I'm Not a Robot," a darkly comic portrayal of a woman trying to convince her computer that she is human, claimed the prize for Best Live Action Short. It is the second film released by the magazine to be honored with an Oscar. The film, written and directed by Victoria Warmerdam, opens with a seemingly typical office scene that quickly unravels. When the protagonist, a music producer, fails a series of CAPTCHA tests, she begins to question her own grip on reality.

Moon exploration is undergoing a potentially transformative moment. Over the course of six weeks, three different lunar landers began a rocket-fueled space journey to learn more about Earth's nearest neighbor. All three landers are operated by private, and relatively newly-formed companies. That's a marked shift away from space exploration of the 20th century, which was dominated by state-backed, public institutions like NASA. If they complete their missions, these space upstarts could help pave the way for future planned human moon missions, and possibly, even a not-too distant lunar economy.

Assassin's Creed maker confirms leaked game footage is real 38 minutes agoTom RichardsonBBC NewsbeatUbisoftAssassin's Creed Shadows is seen as a pivotal release for Ubisoft The makers of Assassin's Creed Shadows - the forthcoming entry in one of video gaming's biggest franchises - have confirmed footage leaked online is real. Some players managed to get their hands on the game - due to be released on 20 March - ahead of its official release. Developer Ubisoft said gameplay videos shared online "did not represent the final quality of the game". In a statement posted online, the company said it was "still working on patches" and urged fans not to share spoilers. Shadows will be the first Assassin's Creed instalment set in Japan - something fans have long been asking for.

Microsoft is wading deeper into generative artificial intelligence for gaming with Muse, a new AI model announced today. The model, which was trained on Ninja Theory's multiplayer game Bleeding Edge, can help Xbox game developers build parts of games, Microsoft says. Muse can understand the physics and 3D environment inside a game and generate visuals and reactions to players' movements. Among the various use cases for Muse that Microsoft outlines in its announcement, perhaps the most intriguing involves game preservation. The company says Muse AI can study games from its vast back catalog of classic titles and optimize them for modern hardware.

Google's AI "co-scientist" is based on the firm's Gemini large language models Google has unveiled an experimental artificial intelligence system that "uses advanced reasoning to help scientists synthesize vast amounts of literature, generate novel hypotheses, and suggest detailed research plans", according to its press release. "The idea with [the] 'AI co-scientist' is to give scientists superpowers," says Alan Karthikesalingam at Google. The tool, which doesn't have an official name yet, builds on Google's Gemini large language models. When a researcher asks a question or specifies a goal – to find a new drug, say – the tool comes up with initial ideas within 15 minutes. Several Gemini agents then "debate" these hypotheses with each other, ranking them and improving them over the following hours and days, says Vivek Natarajan at Google. During this process, the agents can search the scientific literature, access databases and use tools such as Google's AlphaFold system for predicting the structure of proteins.

The recent advances in large language models (LLMs) attracted significant public and policymaker interest in its adoption patterns. In this paper, we systematically analyze LLM-assisted writing across four domains-consumer complaints, corporate communications, job postings, and international organization press releases-from January 2022 to September 2024. Our dataset includes 687,241 consumer complaints, 537,413 corporate press releases, 304.3 million job postings, and 15,919 United Nations (UN) press releases. Using a robust population-level statistical framework, we find that LLM usage surged following the release of ChatGPT in November 2022. By late 2024, roughly 18% of financial consumer complaint text appears to be LLM-assisted, with adoption patterns spread broadly across regions and slightly higher in urban areas. For corporate press releases, up to 24% of the text is attributable to LLMs. In job postings, LLM-assisted writing accounts for just below 10% in small firms, and is even more common among younger firms. UN press releases also reflect this trend, with nearly 14% of content being generated or modified by LLMs. Although adoption climbed rapidly post-ChatGPT, growth appears to have stabilized by 2024, reflecting either saturation in LLM adoption or increasing subtlety of more advanced models. Our study shows the emergence of a new reality in which firms, consumers and even international organizations substantially rely on generative AI for communications.

Qualcomm is bringing AI to its mid-range mobile chip lineup with the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 Mobile Platform, the company announced. The new chips also promise improved CPU and GPU performance, lower power requirements and faster Wi-Fi and mobile connectivity compared to the previous chip. The new AI features are made possible with support for Qualcom's on-device Gen AI support, allowing voice-activated assistants, background noise reduction during calls and more. It's also the first 6-series Snapdragon processor with support for INT4 that allows generative AI to run more efficiently on small devices. Qualcomm is also promising 11 percent improved CPU performance via its latest Kryo CPU and a 29 percent boost in GPU performance.