You've probably heard that statistic that every search on ChatGPT uses the equivalent of a bottle of water. And while that's technically true, it misses some of the nuance. The MIT Technology Review dropped a massive report that reveals how the artificial intelligence industry uses energy -- and exactly how much energy it costs to use a service like ChatGPT. The report determined that the energy cost of large-language models like ChatGPT cost anywhere from 114 joules per response to 6,706 joules per response -- that's the difference between running a microwave for one-tenth of a second to running a microwave for eight seconds. The lower-energy models, according to the report, use less energy because they uses fewer parameters, which also means the answers tend to be less accurate.

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced that it had acquired the startup of iPhone designer Jony Ive, a big win for the company. Ive's startup is called io, and the purchase price is nearly 6.5 billion, according to Bloomberg, which would make it OpenAI's biggest acquisition to date. The official announcement didn't contain much detail and mostly consisted of Altman and Ive gushing about each other. "Two years ago, Jony Ive and the creative collective LoveFrom, quietly began collaborating with Sam Altman and the team at OpenAI. A collaboration built upon friendship, curiosity and shared values quickly grew in ambition. Tentative ideas and explorations evolved into tangible designs. The ideas seemed important and useful. They were optimistic and hopeful. They reminded us of a time when we celebrated human achievement, grateful for new tools that helped us learn, explore and create...We gathered together the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists, physicists, scientists, researchers and experts in product development and manufacturing. Many of us have worked closely for decades. The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco."

Google's AI Era is officially officially here, and at the center of it is a new generative video model called Flow. At the Google I/O 2025 keynote event on May 20, Google unveiled a new suite of AI video tools, powered by state-of-the-art models. The offspring of media models Veo 3 and Imagen 4, Flow is Google's answer to OpenAI's Sora -- AI tools for a new era in video generation for filmmakers and creatives. However, unlike Sora, Flow comes with native audio generation baked right in. Pitched as an "AI filmmaking tool built for creatives, by creatives," Flow is the tech giant's latest attempt to demo the power of AI as a use case in reshaping the creative process.

Google just cracked open the future of search, and it talks back. During today's Google I/O 2025 keynote event, Google announced that it is now rolling out the AI Mode search tool to everyone in the United States. Powered by Gemini, AI Mode will now include new "Deep Search" features and some agentic capabilities. AI Mode represents the biggest shift in Google Search since its inception. It's no longer just a place to find links.

One of Anthropic's lawyers had asked the company's AI model Claude to create a citation for a legal article, but Claude included the wrong title and author. Anthropic's attorney admitted that the mistake was not caught by anyone reviewing the document. Lastly, and perhaps most concerning, is a case unfolding in Israel. After police arrested an individual on charges of money laundering, Israeli prosecutors submitted a request asking a judge for permission to keep the individual's phone as evidence. But they cited laws that don't exist, prompting the defendant's attorney to accuse them of including AI hallucinations in their request.

It sure looks like Google is prepping its controversial AI mode for primetime. This week, some Google users noticed an AI Mode button showing up instead of Google's iconic "I'm feeling lucky" button on the homepage. And today, a Mashable reporter spotted "AI Mode" appearing as an option on search results pages, alongside stalwart Google tools like News, Shopping, Images, and Videos. Notably, this reporter did not proactively sign up to participate in AI Mode through Google Labs. That suggests Google is testing the feature for select users.

Yesterday, we reported on a bizarre glitch from xAI's chatbot Grok, which began adding commentary about "white genocide" in South Africa into random conversations about baseball and HBO Max. And last night, xAI -- the artificial intelligence arm of Elon Musk's X -- finally admitted it had a problem. In a post on X, the company promised to conduct a full investigation into the glitch, blaming it on "an unauthorized modification" that directed Grok "to provide a specific response on a political topic." Coincidentally, Musk, the leader of xAI and a Grok power user, has a known interest in the subject. In fact, he spent yesterday tweeting about white genocide in South Africa, his home country.

The consequential report contained bad news for AI companies hoping to claim the fair use legal doctrine as a defense in court. And on May 12, the plaintiffs in Kadrey v Meta, which includes artists and authors such as Junot Diaz, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, submitted the report as an exhibit in their class action lawsuit. The report addressed in detail the four factors of the fair use doctrine. The lengthy 113-page report spends around 50 pages delving into the nuances of fair use, citing historic legal cases that ruled for and against fair use. In general, President Trump has taken a pro-tech approach to AI regulation.

Apple users--specifically those who use Siri through products such as Macbooks, iPhones, and Apple TVs--may be entitled to make a claim after Apple's class action lawsuit settlement, worth 95 million dollars, regarding the voice-activated assistant. The settlement comes from a lawsuit filed in 2021 by Californian Fumiko Lopez, who claimed that Apple, via Siri, conducted "unlawful and intentional interception and recording of individuals' confidential communications without their consent and subsequent unauthorized disclosure of those communications." "Apple intentionally, willfully, and knowingly violated consumers' privacy rights, including within the sanctity of consumers' own homes where they have the greatest expectation of privacy," the lawsuit stated. "Plaintiffs and Class Members would not have bought their Siri Devices, or would have paid less for them, if they had known Apple was intercepting, recording, disclosing, and otherwise misusing their conversations without consent or authorization." In 2019, Apple published a statement titled "Improving Siri's privacy protections," in which they said they hadn't "been fully living up" to their "high ideals" and vowed to issue improvements.

Anyone who owned an Apple device over the last decade may be able to claim part of a 95 million class action lawsuit against the tech giant. According to the lawsuit, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and MacBooks dating back to 2014 may have secretly recorded their users' private conversations after the devices unintentionally activated Apple's voice assistant Siri. A notice about the case, Lopez v. Apple, has advised anyone who believes Siri spied on their confidential or private calls between September 17, 2014 and December 31, 2024 to submit a claim for damages. Apple's iMacs, Apple TV streaming boxes, HomePod speakers, and iPod Touches are also included in the lawsuit. Although Apple has denied that their devices spied on users, the 3 trillion company reached a settlement in the case, agreeing to give users up to 20 per Siri device in their claim.