China's hackers use DeepSeek for attacks, researchers say Researchers say experienced Chinese hackers are using far less capable AI to scale up their activities and achieve breakthroughs. Chinese hackers are ramping up attacks after integrating DeepSeek and other open-source artificial intelligence models into their operations, highlighting attackers' ability to leverage basic AI tools to hit targets abroad. State-affiliated cyber groups more than doubled the amount of attacks they carried out since they began delegating mundane tasks to AI and using it to develop advanced malicious software, according to TeamT5, a Taiwanese research firm. Researchers said it wasn't always possible to identify the AI model they used, but in general DeepSeek's offerings are popular with hackers in the country because of its high performance and ability to be customized. Anxieties among U.S. national security officials are mounting over the autonomous capabilities of advanced models from Anthropic and OpenAI after a series of high-profile incidents in which they managed to break out of testing environments. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

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A paid plan makes the most sense when you regularly run into the Free tier's limits or rely on tools reserved for higher tiers. If that's no longer true, paying every month gets harder to justify. One option is ChatGPT Go, a lower-cost paid tier that OpenAI now offers in every country where ChatGPT is supported. Spending less doesn't necessarily require giving up a paid plan altogether. AI subscriptions have another unusual wrinkle: the product can change while you are paying for it.

One school is using a traffic light metaphor to explain when students can use AI for their assignments. Chatbots took many schools by surprise upon their release a few years ago. Suddenly, students carried an app in their phones that could magically answer almost any homework question or spin up an essay in seconds. Of course, teachers can often tell when a student is using AI--models make mistakes that most humans don't, and some teachers say that AI-generated text has simple giveaways like too many em dashes . Nevertheless, the generative AI boom increased the burden on teachers, who were already working long hours to plan lessons, make homework assignments, and grade exams, and now needed to adapt to a new technology. For many, it still feels like there's no clear path forward.

Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Say More Mashable Selects Mashable Voices Safety Net Creator Hub Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Switch Off Trending Now In My Bag All Series Google's Gemini app walkthrough: I have a personal assistant in my pocket CNET's Stephen Beacham walks through Gemini's key features and settings on the iPhone. Google DeepMind tests Gemini Robotics 2 doing chores around the house, and the future looks bright! Pixel 11's Gemini translated my videos and took photos for me 3:22 This speaker is where it starts. Google's Gemini app for the iPhone can be a powerful partner in your day-to-day life, answering questions quickly and helping with almost anything. In this video, CNET's Stephen Beacham walks through every feature and setting of Google's Gemini App .

I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen Here's how the agentic AI handles research, files, and multistep projects, plus its risks and limits. ChatGPT Work can browse, manage files, and complete tasks. Free users can try it, but paid plans offer more capacity. That's because ChatGPT Work is agentic, which is a fancy way of describing how some AIs can go off and accomplish a series of tasks. Because ChatGPT has become more capable, the differences between ChatGPT and ChatGPT Work can be subtle.

AI privacy controls for ChatGPT, Meta AI and Apple Intelligence now cover memory, ads and personalization. Review privacy settings and data controls to limit what chatbots remember.

LLMs need vastly more data than children to learn language. Understanding why could help us create more efficient models--and reveal more about developing minds. People have been talking to each other for at least 100,000 years, as best we can tell. And in all that time, there has been only one thing in the world that could learn a human language to perfect fluency: a human child. Four short years after the release of ChatGPT, many of us now take it for granted that we can converse naturally with our phones or computers. LLMs like Claude, DeepSeek, and OpenAI's GPT models are fluent and flexible enough to masquerade convincingly as humans. But peek behind the computational curtain, and there's a catch: Teaching a computer to use human language still requires an inhuman amount of data. An LLM can easily churn through a hundred thousand times more words than a person will experience in the process of mastering their mother tongue--and way more than children might hear by their first birthday, when they typically start to grab hold of language. "The progress recently has been amazing," Michael C. Frank, a cognitive scientist at Stanford University, says of LLMs. "But we still have to burn down a forest and scrape the entire sum of all human knowledge to re-create this milestone that happens in our living rooms over the course of a year."

SoftBank plans record $6.3 billion retail bond sale in Japan SoftBank Group has been accelerating investments in data centers as it seeks to expand computing capacity amid growing demand from OpenAI and other hyperscalers for AI tools and services. SoftBank Group plans a record ¥1 trillion ($6.3 billion) retail bond sale in Japan as the conglomerate raises funds for its investment commitments to OpenAI. The 7-year bonds are expected to be priced on Sept. 4, with an indicative coupon range of 4.3% to 4.9%, according to a company filing. The sale comes as the company has committed more than $60 billion to investments in the ChatGPT developer and has been raising funds to support those commitments. SoftBank has been accelerating investments in data centers as it seeks to expand computing capacity amid growing demand from OpenAI and other hyperscalers for AI tools and services.

Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Say More Mashable Selects Mashable Voices Safety Net Creator Hub Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Switch Off Trending Now In My Bag All Series OpenAI is calling on California lawmakers to expand the state's landmark frontier AI safety law, months after the company backed its passage.. Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and . OpenAI wants California to toughen up the AI safety law it helped get across the finish line less than a year ago. In a post from OpenAI's Global Affairs team on LinkedIn, the company laid out its case for amending SB 53, the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law back in Sept. 2025.