The Austin-based startup will test its high-bandwidth device to help restore speech in people with extremely limited movement. Brain implant developer Paradromics has received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to test its device in an early-stage human trial, the company announced Thursday. The Austin-based company is aiming to give a digital voice to people who have lost the ability to speak due to severe motor impairment. The trial will assess the long-term safety of the Paradromics device, as well as its ability to enable synthesized speech and text communication. Paradromics is one of several companies--which include Neuralink, Synchron, Precision Neuroscience, and Cognixion --working on technology to control computers and other devices using brain waves.

The Grok chatbot on X has previously spewed antisemitic content and referred to itself as'MechaHitler'. The Grok chatbot on X has previously spewed antisemitic content and referred to itself as'MechaHitler'. French authorities look into Holocaust denial posts from Elon Musk's Grok AI X chatbot suggested gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau were'designed for disinfection' not mass executions French public prosecutors are investigating allegations by government ministers and human rights groups that Grok, Elon Musk's AI chatbot, made statements denying the Holocaust . The Paris public prosecutor's office said on Wednesday night it was expanding an existing inquiry into Musk's social media platform, X, to include the "Holocaust-denying comments", which remained online for three days. Beneath a now-deleted post by a convicted French Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi militant, Grok on Monday advanced several false claims commonly made by people who deny Nazi Germany murdered 6 million Jews during the second world war.

New studies reveal that potential COVID vaccine health risks, including kidney injury and respiratory infections, but experts urge caution in interpreting findings.

Why an AI'godfather' is quitting Meta after 12 years Just a couple of weeks ago, one of the godfathers of artificial intelligence was in St James's Palace being handed an award from King Charles for his work in artificial intelligence (AI). Professor Yann LeCun was being honoured along with six other recipients for his contributions to the field, which have been credited as advancing deep learning. But Mr LeCun is at odds with some of the AI world over the future of the generation-defining technology. And now he is going all-in on his idea of advanced machine intelligence after announcing he is leaving his role as Meta's chief AI scientist to start a new firm. During his 12 years at the company, Prof LeCun won the prestigious Turing Award and witnessed several flurries of excitement around AI - not least the most recent boom in generative AI accelerated by rival OpenAI's launch of ChatGPT in late 2022.

'We could have asked ChatGPT': students fight back over course taught by AI Students at the University of Staffordshire have said they feel "robbed of knowledge and enjoyment" after a course they hoped would launch their digital careers turned out to be taught in large part by AI. James and Owen were among 41 students who took a coding module at Staffordshire last year, hoping to change careers through a government-funded apprenticeship programme designed to help them become cybersecurity experts or software engineers. But after a term of AI-generated slides being read, at times, by an AI voiceover, James said he had lost faith in the programme and the people running it, worrying he had "used up two years" of his life on a course that had been done "in the cheapest way possible". "If we handed in stuff that was AI-generated, we would be kicked out of the uni, but we're being taught by an AI," said James during a confrontation with his lecturer recorded as a part of the course in October 2024. James and other students confronted university officials multiple times about the AI materials. But the university appears to still be using AI-generated materials to teach the course.

The company sent letters to Apple, Google, and Microsoft pushing for an alternative way to keep minors from viewing porn, as US and UK laws have caused its traffic to plummet. In letters sent to Apple, Google, and Microsoft this week, Pornhub's parent company urged the tech giants to support device-based age verification in their app stores and across their operating systems, WIRED has learned. "Based on our real-world experience with existing age assurance laws, we strongly support the initiative to protect minors online," reads the letter sent by Anthony Penhale, chief legal officer for Aylo, which owns Pornhub, Brazzers, Redtube, and YouPorn. "However, we have found site-based age assurance approaches to be fundamentally flawed and counterproductive." The letter adds that site-based age verification methods have "failed to achieve their primary objective: protecting minors from accessing age-inappropriate material online."

Republicans face potential political fallout if the AI investment bubble bursts during Trump's presidency, similar to how past market crashes hurt incumbent parties at the polls.

The reforms, which amend the AI Act and several other privacy and tech-related laws, would also cut back on website pop-ups asking permission to use cookies and reduce documentation requirements for small and medium-sized businesses. EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said the changes, which need to be approved by representatives of the 27 EU member states, would boost European competitiveness by simplifying rules about AI, cybersecurity and data protection. "We have talent, infrastructure, a large internal single market. But our companies, especially our start-ups and small businesses, are often held back by layers of rigid rules," Virkkunen said. Lobby groups for tech giants in the United States, where President Donald Trump's administration has been a vocal critic of Europe's regulatory approach, welcomed the move, while lamenting that the measures did not go far enough.

Large language models (LLMs) are of paramount importance in today's technological landscape.