This story appears in the August 2026 print edition. While some stories from this issue are not yet available to read online, you can explore more from the magazine . Get our editors' guide to what matters in the world, delivered to your inbox every weekday. Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst believe the future doesn't have to belong to slop. The art was way too heavy. In mid-March, the artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst were preparing an installation to coincide with the Venice Biennale, the prestigious international art festival, but the execution was becoming tricky. They wanted to suspend sculptures of a trippy cityscape upside down from the ceiling of an 18th-century palazzo. But the construction material they envisioned-- 3-D-printed sand--would weigh tons, which was more than the antique building could bear. The sculptures, they realized, might fall and crush someone. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. This was a rather analog problem for a married couple widely seen as technological prophets. Herndon, 46, and Dryhurst, 41, have reached the upper echelons of the art world thanks to a media-spanning output--music, images, software, and reams of commentary--with a cybernetic bent. They are high culture's most influential exponents of artificial intelligence, an invention that many people believe spells doom for the arts but that they think could lead to a renaissance. I met them on a cold, bright Tuesday in Berlin.

The streaming service's new policy says that 100-percent AI-generated music will be demonetized. Tidal revealed its sweeping policy on AI-generated music that details exactly how the music streaming service will handle this growing phenomenon . The music-streaming platform explained on its website that it would demonetize any music that's identified as 100 percent AI-generated. Tidal is still allowing tracks made with AI on its platform, but will slap a tag on anything that's 100 percent AI-generated so its users are aware. Tidal's priority is ensuring royalties go to original works directly produced, written, and performed by people, the policy read.

California couple's desperate bid to save man, 28, from crocodile attack ends in tragedy after they heard screams coming from beach while on vacation in Mexico'Most beautiful girl in the world' Thylane Blondeau is married: Model stuns as she ties the knot with French DJ Ben Attal in Paris three months after getting engaged Sordid marriage secrets of country star Sam Hunt: Insiders reveal wife's brutal ultimatum... as singer's strange disappearance fuels Nashville whispers The signs I missed that I was sleeping next to a killer: My husband dismembered his secret girlfriend with a machete. Blue collar Democrat's VERY kinky history is exposed as she desperately grasps on to rural Washington seat World's first'pregnant man' Thomas Beatie reveals astonishing full story for the first time as his daughter turns 18... and confronts a hard truth about trans teens'Super, well done you!' Moment Kate stops to chat to 11-year-old boy in wheelchair during her Three Peaks Challenge as he's ...

Venezuela earthquake rescuers discover collapsed buildings were'held up by STYROFOAM' as catastrophic death toll reaches 1,430 Remains of at least 117 dogs found at California'no-kill' shelter as investigators uncover suspected burial site and 600 collars Two young sisters smile for the camera as they're arrested for stabbing mom-of-five to death in broad daylight Sun-kissed enclave named Florida's newest boomtown as telltale restaurant chain opens more stores in area Horrifying truth about'squishy dumplings': Fears as putrid fumes'sicken' mom and toys explode in children's hands... experts sound alarm on possible cancer links in new analysis Delaware senator rushed to hospital after getting into car crash while sitting in passenger's seat World's first'pregnant man' Thomas Beatie reveals astonishing full story for the first time as his daughter turns 18... and confronts a hard truth about trans teens Taylor Swift gets BOOED at Alan Jackson's final concert... as Travis Kelce ...

Argentina soccer player's wife and kids found dead after desperate 74-hour search following Venezuela earthquakes Trump gives New York Times writer rancid nickname as he goes scorched earth against her new book: 'She's spewing out garbage' Katy Perry is forced to cancel concert just HOURS before taking to the stage: 'No choice' The signs I missed that I was sleeping next to a killer: My husband dismembered his secret girlfriend with a machete. The surprising food that has more protein than eggs and yogurt... and how much you should eat of it I made a sickening discovery in my wife's sock drawer... If this is what she really wants, I can't stomach it: DEAR JANE World Cup's fairytale team Cape Verde hit by rape accusations against their captain from their translator Teenage koi pond employee who burned boss alive learns his fate in court: 'I deserve whatever I get' The royals most and least likely to give Harry and Meghan a'warm welcome' - as the Sussexes are set to bring their children to the UK for the first time in years Shocking moment sports bar security guard is arrested for firing Taser gun point blank at patron's head I feel terrible saying my husband's penis isn't big enough for me. I have an idea of how to fix it - but I'm worried it will crush him: ASK JANA China develops extremely'powerful weapon' that has flipped the AI race on its head... amid concerns the US is HELPING Beijing get an advantage Awkward moment mumbling Joe Biden is interrupted by hecklers... as he slams Trump over'vanity projects' and calls president a'loser' before struggling to walk off stage Locked up like an animal in cage...forced to witness rape and slaughter...tortured until they prayed for death: October 7 hostages' most horrifying accounts yet of what they endured at the hands of Hamas The chilling visions of hell that a doctor says reveal we're living in God's simulation Healthiest supermarket ice-creams: Dietitian reveals the cartons to add to your grocery list... and the ones to avoid The chilling visions of hell that a doctor says reveal we're living in God's simulation MORE: Wild theory claims the world actually ended in 2012... and we are now living in the apocalypse chaos A doctor who studies near-death experiences says that there is now a strange overlap between the Christian vision of hell and the theory that the world is a giant simulation. Dr Orson Wedgwood is a New Zealand-based scientist and author who works in healthcare research.

Chilling last messages dad received before his four kids, ex wife and her mom were found'POISONED' JD Vance catches Bill Maher off guard with sex and drugs quip... and has brutal dig at Gavin Newsom: 'Was that mean?' Pete Buttigieg says he and husband separated from their two kids by cops: 'A terrible thing happened' Veteran MS NOW star Alex Witt's shameful treatment of underlings revealed, as she announces departure from progressive news network I saw unreleased UFO files at a secret meeting in the Tennessee mountains. We prayed after seeing what these'humanoid beings' did... the world is not prepared Taylor Swift's'keen' texts that Travis Kelce IGNORED after their first dates: She was'instantly serious'... but he wanted'no strings attached', reveal insiders who tell how romance almost didn't happen Terrifying moment brave woman hiker comes face-to-face with ferocious 700lb grizzly bear - would YOU know what to do? Phil Mickelson accused of showing sexual photo of himself to fellow golfer's ex-wife as more allegations surface after bombshell misconduct claims Blood soaks Nantucket's main street after seafood cafe worker stabbed love rival in broad daylight, prosecutors say The day Madonna's ex pulled me onto his lap and ravaged me while she watched. Our love-hate feud is decades long. MAGA fan accused of masturbating at Donald Trump's Great American State Fair in latest setback for embattled event Kate Gosselin'spiralling' ahead of estranged son Collin's bombshell tell-all memoir: 'She never thought this would come out' Fears for teen, 19, who mysteriously vanished after trip to'SEX Rock' as group of friends claims to have no memory of her being left behind on remote lake Shocking moment Florida Instacart delivery woman slaps crying boy in face after he accidentally drops items: 'How dare you!' Playboy veteran Holly Madison, 46, reveals she had a lower facelift and lists other surgeries she's undergone The reality of having Bondi's biggest penis: Married women throw themselves at me - but the truth about my sex life isn't what you might think Human consciousness is one of the strangest and most mysterious phenomena in the universe, but one scientist says it could be even weirder than we thought. According to a radical new theory, consciousness isn't just a feeling that goes along with our actions; it is the reason that humans are so successful as a species.

Global society makes billions of images and uploads hundreds of thousands of hours of video on the internet every day. The problem is, some of this content is misleading or downright wrong. And when it's in visual form, it can be particularly convincing . Take the Met Gala that happened earlier this month in New York. While photographers snapped photos of Rhianna, Beyoncé and Nicole Kidman as they strutted their stuff, others saw "photos" of celebrities, such as Rosalía, Lady Gaga and Jacob Elordi, who were actually elsewhere (the images in the below Instagram carousel are AI generated).

Financial experts say the American Dream is dead and they reveal who's to blame I lost almost 100lb and my friends keep asking me if I'm using fat jabs. Here's EXACTLY what happened with each of them and the surprising truth about who was best - and worst! Kanye West feeds wife Bianca Censori a cherry as she almost bursts out of tiny'kitten' bikini on daring new shoot Kylie Jenner collaborates with Meta on £359 AI glasses with built-in cameras - and they even sing'Rise and Shine' to you in the morning Daily Mail journalists select and curate the products that feature on our site. From clip-in extensions to vodka sodas, Kylie Jenner already has a range of weird and wonderful products under her belt. Now, the billionaire has expanded her business empire into wearables.

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems combine large language models (LLMs) with external knowledge retrieval, making them highly effective for knowledge-intensive tasks. A crucial but often under-explored component of these systems is the reranker. Since irrelevant documents in RAG systems can mislead the generator, the reranker plays a vital role in refining retrieved documents to enhance generation quality and explainability. However, it is challenging to determine the appropriate number of documents (k) that the reranker should select: too few may result in missing critical information, while too many introduce noise and inefficiencies. Although recent studies have explored LLM-based rerankers, they primarily leverage internal model knowledge and overlook the rich supervisory signals that LLMs can provide, such as using response quality as feedback for optimizing reranking decisions. In this paper, we propose DynamicRAG, a novel RAG framework where the reranker dynamically adjusts both the order and number of retrieved documents based on the query. We model the reranker as an agent optimized through reinforcement learning (RL), using rewards derived from LLM output quality. Across seven knowledge-intensive datasets, DynamicRAG demonstrates superior performance, achieving state-of-the-art results among models of same parameter sizes.

Consider this prompt "Draw a unicorn with two horns". Should large language models (LLMs) recognize that a unicorn has only one horn by definition and ask users for clarifications, or proceed to generate something anyway? We introduce concept incongruence to capture such phenomena where concept boundaries clash with each other, either in user prompts or in model representations, often leading to under-specified or mis-specified behaviors. In this work, we take the first step towards defining and analyzing model behavior under concept incongruence. Focusing on temporal boundaries in the ROLE-PLAY setting, we propose three behavioral metrics--abstention rate, conditional accuracy, and answer rate--to quantify model behavior under incongruence due to the role's death. We show that models fail to abstain after death and suffer from an accuracy drop compared to the NON-ROLE-PLAY setting. Through probing experiments, we identify two main causes: (i) unreliable encoding of the "death" state across different years, leading to unsatisfactory abstention behavior, and (ii) role playing causes shifts in the model's temporal representations, resulting in accuracy drops. We leverage these insights to improve consistency in the model's abstention and answer behaviors. Our findings suggest that concept incongruence leads to unexpected model behaviors and point to future directions on improving model behavior under concept incongruence.1