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The Download: Microsoft's stance on erotic AI, and an AI hype mystery

MIT Technology Review

Plus: OpenAI has unveiled estimates of how many of ChatGPT's weekly users are experiencing severe mental health symptoms "We will never build a sex robot," says Mustafa Suleyman Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, is trying to walk a fine line. On the one hand, he thinks that the industry is taking AI in a dangerous direction by building chatbots that present as human: He worries that people will be tricked into seeing life instead of lifelike behavior. On the other hand, Suleyman runs a product shop that must compete with those peers. Last week, Microsoft announced a string of updates to its Copilot chatbot designed to make Copilot more expressive, engaging, and helpful. Will Douglas Heaven, our senior AI editor, talked to Suleyman about the tension at play when it comes to designing our interactions with chatbots and his ultimate vision for what this new technology should be. A few weeks ago, I set out on what I thought would be a straightforward reporting journey.


The Experiment That Left Claude Needing 'Robot Therapy'

TIME - Tech

Welcome back to, TIME's new twice-weekly newsletter about AI. If you're reading this in your browser, why not subscribe to have the next one delivered straight to your inbox? What to Know: Testing LLMs' ability to control a robot A couple of weeks ago, I wrote in this newsletter about my visit to Figure AI, a California startup that has developed a humanoid robot. Billions of dollars are currently pouring into the robotics industry, based on the belief that rapid AI progress will mean the creation of robots with "brains" that can finally deal with the messy complexities of the real world. Today, I want to tell you about an experiment that calls that theory into question.


Adobe MAX 2025: All the Top Announcements for Adobe's Creative Suite

WIRED

At Adobe's annual MAX conference, the company also teased a ChatGPT integration and a new AI assistant in Photoshop. All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Adobe is leaning heavily into artificial intelligence. At the company's annual MAX conference in Los Angeles, it announced a slew of new features for its creative apps, almost all of which include some kind of new AI capability.


"We will never build a sex robot," says Mustafa Suleyman

MIT Technology Review

Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, is trying to walk a fine line. On the one hand, he thinks that the industry is taking AI in a dangerous direction by building chatbots that present as human: He worries that people will be tricked into seeing life instead of lifelike behavior. In August, he published a much-discussed post on his personal blog that urged his peers to stop trying to make what he called " seemingly conscious artificial intelligence," or SCAI. On the other hand, Suleyman runs a product shop that must compete with those peers. Last week, Microsoft announced a string of updates to its Copilot chatbot, designed to boost its appeal in a crowded market in which customers can pick and choose between a pantheon of rival bots that already includes ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, and more.


China Dives in on the World's First Wind-Powered Undersea Data Center

WIRED

The $226 million project uses ocean breezes and seawater to stay cool. China is submerging data centers into the ocean to keep them cool. China has completed the first phase of construction of what it claims is the world's first underwater data center (UDC). Located in Shanghai's Lin-gang Special Area with a price tag of roughly RMB 1.6 billion ($226 million), it's a significant milestone in the quest for sustainable solutions to the growing energy demands of China's computing infrastructure. Powered entirely by wind energy, the initiative has a total power capacity of 24 megawatts.


'A good moment in time for us': Firefox head on AI browsers and what's next for the web

The Guardian

'Every user has to make a choice of actually wanting to download Firefox and use it.' 'Every user has to make a choice of actually wanting to download Firefox and use it.' Do you need an assistant for your online activities? Multiple major players in artificial intelligence are moving on from chatbots like ChatGPT and are now focusing their efforts on new browsers with deep AI integrations. Those could take the form of an agent that shops for you or an omnipresent chatbot that follows you around and summarizes what you're seeing, looks up related stuff, or answers related questions.


An AI adoption riddle

MIT Technology Review

If AI's hype has been punctured, I couldn't find a company willing to talk about it. A few weeks ago, I set out on what I thought would be a straightforward reporting journey. After years of momentum for AI--even if you didn't think it would be good for the world, you probably thought it was powerful enough to take seriously--hype for the technology had been slightly punctured. First there was the underwhelming release of GPT-5 in August. Then a report released two weeks later found that 95% of generative AI pilots were failing, which caused a brief stock market panic. I wanted to know: Which companies are spooked enough to scale back their AI spending?


'DeepSeek is humane. Doctors are more like machines': my mother's worrying reliance on AI for health advice

The Guardian

Doctors are more like machines': my mother's worrying reliance on AI for health advice Tired of a two-day commute to see her overworked doctor, my mother turned to tech for help with her kidney disease. E very few months, my mother, a 57-year-old kidney transplant patient who lives in a small city in eastern China, embarks on a two-day journey to see her doctor. She fills her backpack with a change of clothes, a stack of medical reports and a few boiled eggs to snack on. Then, she takes a 90-minute ride on a high-speed train and checks into a hotel in the eastern metropolis of Hangzhou. At 7am the next day, she lines up with hundreds of others to get her blood taken in a long hospital hall that buzzes like a crowded marketplace. In the afternoon, when the lab results arrive, she makes her way to a specialist's clinic. She gets about three minutes with the doctor. Then, my mother packs up and starts the long commute home. My mother began using China's leading AI chatbot to diagnose her symptoms this past winter. She would lie down on her couch and open the app on her iPhone. "Hi," she said in her first message to the chatbot, on 2 February. How can I assist you today?" the system responded instantly, adding a smiley emoji.


Robot dogs and AI drone swarms: How China could use DeepSeek for war

The Japan Times

BEIJING/SINGAPORE - Chinese state-owned defense giant Norinco in February unveiled a military vehicle capable of autonomously conducting combat-support operations at 50 kilometers per hour. It was powered by DeepSeek, the company whose artificial intelligence model is the pride of China's tech sector. The Norinco P60's release was touted by Communist Party officials in press statements as an early showcase of how Beijing is using DeepSeek and AI to catch up in its arms race with the United States, at a time when leaders in both countries have urged their militaries to prepare for conflict. A review of hundreds of research papers, patents and procurement records gives a snapshot of the systematic effort by Beijing to harness AI for military advantage. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.


Elon Musk's Grokipedia Pushes Far-Right Talking Points

WIRED

The new AI-powered Wikipedia competitor falsely claims that pornography worsened the AIDS epidemic and that social media may be fueling a rise in transgender people. On Monday, Elon Musk's xAI startup launched Grokipedia, which the billionaire is pitching as an AI-generated alternative to the crowdsourced encyclopedia Wikipedia. Musk first announced the project in late September on his social media platform X, saying it would be "a massive improvement over Wikipedia," and "a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe." Musk said last week that he had delayed the launch of Grokipedia because his team needed "to do more work to purge out the propaganda." When Grokipedia eventually dropped on Monday, WIRED was initially unable to access the website and received an automated message that it was blocked.