Google's Gemini Deep Research now scans Gmail, Drive and Chat content to support AI research, but users can disable these privacy features through Gmail settings.

Are tech companies using your private data to train AI models? Leading tech companies are in a race to release and improve artificial intelligence (AI) products, leaving users in the United States to puzzle out how much of their personal data could be extracted to train AI tools. Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp), Google and LinkedIn have all rolled out AI app features that have the capacity to draw on users' public profiles or emails. Google and LinkedIn offer users ways to opt out of the AI features, while Meta's AI tool provides no means for its users to say "no, thanks." Anthropic's AI hacking claims divide experts Posts warned that the platforms' AI tool rollouts make most private information available for tech company harvesting .

Earlier this year, I attended a shooting competition for queer, often trans, very online misfits. Then Charlie Kirk was killed. This isn't the story I set out to write. I was going to talk about a pretty feel-good firearms competition I went to earlier this year, where trans and queer people made up about a quarter of participants and the unofficial rule was you're not allowed to be a bigot. I was going to describe the strange and whimsical mix of subcultures people embraced there--like polyamory and Mad Max cosplay--wrapped up in pro-LGBT and Black Lives Matter patches. Then Charlie Kirk was killed. Suddenly I found myself wondering if I should write this story at all. If doing so would put my sources--gun-loving trans people in Trump's America--in danger.

Megalithic monuments in the otherworldly Orkney Islands remain a fundamental part of the landscape. Sheep linger at the Stones of Stenness, the remnants of a ceremonial circle. The Stones of Stenness, a brood of lichen-encrusted megaliths in the far north of the British Isles, could be mistaken for a latter-day work of land art, one with ominous overtones. The stones stand between two lochs on the largest of the Orkney Islands, off the northeastern tip of mainland Scotland. Three colossal planks of sandstone, ranging in height from fifteen feet nine inches to eighteen feet eight inches, rise from the grass, along with a smaller stone that has the bent shape of a boomerang. In contrast to the rectilinear blocks at Stonehenge, the Stenness megaliths are thin slabs with angled upper edges, like upside-down guillotine blades. Remnants of a ceremonial circle, they are placed twenty or more feet apart, creating a chasm of negative space. The monoliths in "2001: A Space Odyssey" inevitably come to mind. Given that the stones were erected five thousand years ago by a culture that left no trace of its belief system, it is unwise to project modern aesthetics onto them. Still, they can be seen only with living eyes. During a recent visit to Orkney, I kept returning to Stenness, at all hours and in all weather. On drizzly days, with skies hanging low, the stones resemble ladders to nowhere. In bright sun, hidden colors emerge: streaks of blue against gray; white and green spatters of lichen; yellowish stains indicating the presence of limonite, an iron ore. Pockmarks and brittle edges show the abrading action of millennia of wind and rain. I watched as tourists approached the stones and hesitantly touched them, as if afraid. When I put my own hands on the rock, I felt no obvious emanations, though I did not feel nothing. One evening, I leaned on a fence as the sun went down, the horizon glowing orange against a cobalt sky.

After the rapper's 1979 hit "Christmas Rappin'," his song "The Breaks" was the first rap single to go gold. In a rehearsal studio in the Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, Kurtis Blow was limbering up and getting loose. Earlier this year, his left arm swelled up abruptly, requiring four surgeries to resolve what was eventually diagnosed as deep-vein thrombosis. Blow usually holds the mike in his right hand when he raps, but he had to get his left arm going, he said, "because it's my'Throw your hands in the air' arm." Lithe at age sixty-six, Blow was dressed in leather cargo pants, a track jacket, and a black baseball cap with the words " above its brim. He was whipping himself into shape for a "Legends of Hip-Hop" concert to be held just after Thanksgiving at the Peacock Theatre, in downtown L.A. He will be on a stage that will also feature such foundational rappers as Big Daddy Kane, Doug E. Fresh, and two members of the Furious Five, Melle Mel and Scorpio. Blow's youngest son, Michael, the studio's owner, manned the d.j. The rapper's eldest, Kurtis, Jr., nodded his do-ragged head to the beat and offered counsel alongside his mother, Kurtis, Sr.,'s wife of forty-two years, Shirley. It has been forty-five years since the release of Blow's song "The Breaks," the first rap single to be certified gold. Blow had already scored a novelty hit, "Christmas Rappin'," at the end of 1979, the watershed year in which rap transitioned from clubs in the Bronx and Harlem to singles pressed on vinyl, chief among them "Rapper's Delight," by the Sugarhill Gang. "I had a singles deal with escalating options," Blow recalled. "I had to sell thirty thousand records in order to do another single.

A Research Leader Behind ChatGPT's Mental Health Work Is Leaving OpenAI The model policy team leads core parts of AI safety research, including how ChatGPT responds to users in crisis. An OpenAI safety research leader who helped shape ChatGPT's responses to users experiencing mental health crises announced her departure from the company internally last month, WIRED has learned. Andrea Vallone, the head of a safety research team known as model policy, is slated to leave OpenAI at the end of the year. Wood said OpenAI is actively looking for a replacement and that, in the interim, Vallone's team will report directly to Johannes Heidecke, the company's head of safety systems. Vallone's departure comes as OpenAI faces growing scrutiny over how its flagship product responds to users in distress .

Charlie Kirk's wife reveals she was'praying to God' she was pregnant when her husband was killed It all seems to be falling apart now! Marriage drama for lawyer mom whose stepdad infamously dropped daughter, 2, to her death off cruise ship... as she debuts raunchy new look and bad boy lover Gavin Newsom's inner circle on edge as multiple aides receive ominous letter from FBI just days after California governor's chief of staff was indicted Full House's Jodie Sweetin reveals how addiction struggle began at 14 at costar Candace Cameron Bure's wedding Cunning new tactic women are using to cheat. Fans turn on RichTok influencer Becca Bloom over shocking comments... as she makes stunning admission about her marriage and her wild extravagance is revealed Slash your cholesterol by a third in just a month... hundreds of thousands are on a new diet that's transforming lives. Top doctor reveals little-known procedure to fix agonizing issue that plagues half of men over 50. It could cure those late-night trips to the bathroom... AND save your sex life World's first lung cancer vaccine to enter clinical trials... but quitting smoking is still recommended as top way to avoid developing the disease First pieces of $20B trove retrieved from 300-year-old'Holy Grail' shipwreck off Colombia Curse of $30m'Netflix mansion' where Meghan and Harry declared war on the Royal Family as owner takes drastic action to sell it Scientists issue ominous warning over mind-altering'brain weapons' that can control your perception, memory and behaviour Mind control weapons may sound like something from a dystopian science fiction film, but experts now say they are becoming a reality.

'No one will support it': Ukraine's soldiers react to US peace plan Ukraine's frontline soldiers have reacted to draft US peace proposals with a mixture of defiance, anger and resignation. The BBC spoke to half a dozen who sent us their views via social media and email in response to the original US plan - details of which were leaked last week. Since then, American and Ukrainian negotiators have been working on changes to the proposals - and are set to continue talks about the peace framework. Of the original US plan, Yaroslav, in eastern Ukraine, says it sucks no one will support it while an army medic with the call sign Shtutser dismissed it as an absolutely disgraceful draft of a peace plan, unworthy of our attention. But one soldier with the call sign Snake told us it's time to agree at least on something.

Azalia King was the last holdout preventing the construction of a Micron megafab. Onondaga County authorities threatened to use eminent domain to take her home away by force. Azalia King moved into an upstate New York home surrounded by sprawling cattle pastures around 1965, about the time that mass production of the world's first microchips began. Now, 60 years later, the 91-year-old is on the verge of losing her home to make way for what could become the largest chipmaking complex in the US. Local authorities threatened to exercise their power of eminent domain, or taking land for public benefit, to forcibly uproot King and proceed with construction on a $100 billion campus where US tech giant Micron plans to make memory chips for use in a variety of electronics.

The report found 7% of respondents had been depicted in a sexual or intimate deepfake. The report found 7% of respondents had been depicted in a sexual or intimate deepfake. One in four people think there is nothing wrong with creating and sharing sexual deepfakes, or they feel neutral about it, even when the person depicted has not consented, according to a police-commissioned survey. The findings prompted a senior police officer to warn that the use of AI is accelerating an epidemic in violence against women and girls (VAWG), and that technology companies are complicit in this abuse. The survey of 1,700 people commissioned by the office of the police chief scientific adviser found 13% felt there was nothing wrong with creating and sharing sexual or intimate deepfakes - digitally altered content made using AI without consent.