In the face of AI content, profiles and slop, Meta hopes a new Facebook Verified program will help human users interact with other humans. Based on a facial recognition selfie, checked against your existing profile pics, the company says the process will only take a few minutes. Interestingly, Meta has chosen to use facial recognition, given recent legal settlements and the pushback over facial recognition inside its smartglasses . To qualify, you will have to be over 18 and in good standing with Facebook's community standards. Once you've passed the test, your verified badge will appear across Marketplace, Dating and other parts of Facebook's sites and services. The big difference between this and the Facebook badge of old is that it's explicitly only identity confirmation, not endorsement, from Facebook or any guarantee of their trustworthiness.

House of Horrors mom insists her kids were NOT'feral', as lawyer reveals her incredulous excuse for their'messy' home Bargain hunter bought Connecticut mansion for a pittance only to find family decomposing inside. Why Tom Brady's midlife crisis after Gisele Bundchen divorce threatens to ruin his legacy... and he doesn't care! Jon Bon Jovi, 64, abruptly stops NYC concert and tells audience he is'hurt' before leaving the stage So much has never been made public': Insiders at very top of Hollywood tell me bombshell twist that flips Taylor Swift-Lively feud on its head: ROB SHUTER McDonald's copies Costco with its newest menu item and fans have mixed reactions Meghan and Harry share snaps of their European summer holiday as pro-Sussex People magazine reveals they stayed at Princess Diana's childhood home with Archie and Lilibet The age when you must give up smoking to escape the risk of lung cancer: Experts reveal the truth about what quitting does to your body in your 30s, 40s, and 50s... and the REAL impact of that one cheeky cigarette a week White House defends Sophie Cunningham amid woke backlash... as WNBA star doubles down on trans views with new Instagram photos Hot summer snaps of Nicole Kidman getting affectionate with handsome businessman on Italian getaway... as friends speak out about moving on after Keith Urban divorce Amal Clooney's diet and fitness regime revealed - and it's surprisingly simple if you don't mind seaweed soup for breakfast! Harry has reached a new low. It's such a slap in the face to his father... especially after what the King's friend told me: RICHARD EDEN Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos want to put data centres in SPACE - but experts warn they could be'catastrophic' for the planet Data centres in space could be'catastrophic' for the planet, scientsts have warned in response to plans laid out by some of the world's richest people.

The clip features the David Bowie track "Five Years," which includes lyrics such as "Earth was really dying (dying)." On Thursday morning, Meta published an ad to its official Instagram account with the message that artificial intelligence will not "make us less connected" or "leave us behind." It was set to the 1972 David Bowie track "Five Years," which is about, among other things, the end of the world. "Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want--but we're betting on people, and we like those odds," the narrator says, as a toddler plays with a butterfly, two parents laugh with their infant, and Jalen Brunson waves at the Knicks Championship Parade. The snippet of "Five Years" used in the ad includes the following lyrics: I never thought I'd need so many people When reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan said he "would like to highlight what David Bowie himself said about'Five Years' and its meaning: having optimism for the future." Brennan sent along a 1972 quote about the song that he sourced to BowieBible.com .

Google Turns a Selfie Video Into Your Account's Spare Key The next time you're locked out of your Google account, you can use your face as part of the account recovery process. Google has a new way for users to sign in to their accounts: a selfie video. If you've ever lost your device and gotten locked out of your Google account, you know it can feel like a desperate, Kafkaesque process to recover access and get back in--especially for people who run their digital lives, from email messages to calendar appointments, on Google software. This new sign-in option is an additional way to unlock your Google account, like a spare key hidden in the bushes. "We always recommend that you set up more than one option," says Claire Forszt, a product manager at Google who focuses on identity and engagement.

Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform combines CPUs and GPUs into a single system, reflecting the company's growing ambition to power every layer of AI infrastructure. Nvidia is hyping up its new Vera Rubin chip system this week, revealing new performance benchmarks for the GPU and CPU combo ahead of rival AMD's annual product event in San Francisco on Thursday. During a lengthy technical workshop last week at the company's headquarters in Santa Clara, California, Nvidia executives boasted to a small group of journalists about the chip system's increased power and efficiency capabilities. The biggest takeaway: Nvidia, which has long specialized in making GPUs, is increasingly trying to position itself as a supplier of CPUs that can power AI agents. While GPUs are still the main hardware that companies use to train and run their AI models, the industry's shift toward more complex, agentic systems has increased demand for CPUs, which can orchestrate data flows, networking, and other software tasks.

Chinese AI sensation Moonshot's gamble on big models pays off People visit the Moonshot AI stand, featuring the Kimi K3 model, during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on Saturday. Crowds rushed to an obscure corner of China's premier tech summit, moving past monumental booths from Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings to catch a glimpse of the hottest name in domestic artificial intelligence. Developers and users at the World AI Conference jostled for a closer look at Moonshot and its Kimi K3 -- the giant 2.8 trillion-parameter model whose release on Friday showed China was closing the gap on OpenAI and Anthropic PBC far quicker than anticipated. The startup became an instant global sensation, drawing comparisons to DeepSeek's 2025 breakout and plaudits from the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Such was the crush over the weekend that Moonshot blew through its entire stock of branded swag in just a few hours. Moonshot's emergence is a vindication not just for the country's AI industry, but also for founder Yang Zhilin.

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An error with the cloud computing giant's billing operation caused some customers' monthly bills to rise from a few cents to billions of dollars. A glitch with Amazon Web Services' billing operation led some customers to believe they owed the world's fifth most valuable company billions of dollars. Bill Radjewski, who runs CollegeFootballData.com, was one of the affected customers. This morning, he woke up to a jarring email alert from AWS: He had racked up more than $1.5 billion in usage fees, and his August 1 bill was on track to be upwards of $3 billion. "I've had this account for 6+ years and in that time my monthly spend has never exceeded $0.02," Radjewski tells WIRED.

Google Search AI poses'unacceptable risk' to kids, report finds A new report from a California-based nonprofit says the artificial intelligence features built in to Alphabet's Google Search pose an unacceptable risk" to children. The artificial intelligence features built in to Alphabet's Google Search pose an "unacceptable risk" to children, according to a new report from the Youth AI Safety Institute at Common Sense Media, a California-based nonprofit. The study found that on test accounts configured for minors, the ubiquitous search engine's AI features failed to detect suicide risks, said an eating disorder symptom was normal, and provided instructions for creating deepfakes, or sexually explicit fake content. The report added that unlike standalone chatbots, Google's AI tools are built directly into the default search experience on school and personal devices, currently offering administrators or parents no way to disable them. The report specifically evaluated AI Overviews, which generate automated answers above traditional search results, and AI Mode, a conversational feature that lets users chat back and forth with the search engine. Rather than matching searches to a list of external links, the new features use generative AI to answer complex questions directly on the search page -- a format critics say presents the automated summaries as if they are definitive answers.