The widely used chatbot ChatGPT was designed to generate digital text, everything from poetry to term papers to computer programs. But when a team of artificial intelligence researchers at the computer chip company Nvidia got their hands on the chatbot's underlying technology, they realized it could do a lot more. Within weeks, they taught it to play Minecraft, one of the world's most popular video games. Inside Minecraft's digital universe, it learned to swim, gather plants, hunt pigs, mine gold and build houses. "It can go into the Minecraft world and explore by itself and collect materials by itself and get better and better at all kinds of skills," said a Nvidia senior research scientist, Linxi Fan, who is known as Jim.

You know the smell of warm, buttered popcorn. The pungent, somewhat sweet scent that precedes rain. But could you begin to describe these aromas in detail? Your nose has some 400 olfactory receptors that do the work of translating the world's estimated 40 billion odorous molecules into an even higher number of distinct scents your brain can understand. Yet although children are taught that grass is green and pigmented by chlorophyll, they rarely learn to describe the smell of a freshly cut lawn, let alone the ozone before a storm.

Google announced on Thursday that it will protect its generative AI customers against any intellectual property claims made on the data used or output served by Google-hosted AI models. By extending protection in its cloud and workspace environments, Google joins the list of technology firms that have recently announced IP support for using their own generative AI tools. These include companies like IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, and Adobe. Google said the protection would span across all Google environments using the Duet AI collaborator, and the company's homegrown generative AI engine Vertex AI. The indemnity clause by leading technology companies will likely bring in hope as generative AI's challenges over privacy, security, and intellectual property violations peak.

You may not have to fumble with your cellphone in the boarding area very much longer. As the travel industry embraces facial recognition technology, phones are beginning to go the way of paper tickets at airports, cruise terminals and theme parks, making checking in more convenient, but raising privacy and security concerns, too. "Before Covid it felt like a future thing," said Hicham Jaddoud, a professor of hospitality and tourism at the University of Southern California, describing the way contactless transactions have become common since the pandemic. That includes facial recognition, which is "now making its way into daily operations" in the travel industry, Dr. Jaddoud said. Facial recognition systems are already being expanded at some airports.

Next month ChatGPT will celebrate its first birthday – marking a year in which the chatbot, for many, turned AI from a futuristic concept to a daily reality. Its universal accessibility has led to a host of concerns, from job losses to disinformation to plagiarism. Over the same period, tens of millions of users have been investigating what the platform can do to make their lives just a little bit easier. Upon its release, users quickly embraced ChatGPT's potential for silliness, asking it to play 20 questions or write its own songs. As its first anniversary approaches, people are using it for a huge range of tasks.

Next month ChatGPT will celebrate its first birthday – marking a year in which the chatbot, for many, turned AI from a futuristic concept to a daily reality. Its universal accessibility has led to a host of concerns, from job losses to disinformation to plagiarism. Over the same period, tens of millions of users have been investigating what the platform can do to make their lives just a little bit easier. Upon its release, users quickly embraced ChatGPT's potential for silliness, asking it to play 20 questions or write its own songs. As its first anniversary approaches, people are using it for a huge range of tasks.

After months of testing, the Silicon Valley-based driverless car company began offering Waymo One -- its 24/7 robotaxi service -- to the public Wednesday. Those interested can get an activation code that will allow them to ride free for one week at an in-person pop-up event or by signing up online. In November, Waymo One will move on to Century City, then West Hollywood, Mid-City, Koreatown and downtown L.A. Autonomous vehicle enthusiasts, many of whom received emails about the event ahead of time, lined up at the Waymo stand in Santa Monica on Wednesday morning before it opened at 8 a.m., said Waymo product marketing manager Julianne McGoldrick. What happens when autonomous vehicles invade the traffic capital of the country? They collected their "ticket to ride" with an activation code and snagged T-shirts and tote bags.

They are also confident their system of AI trainers will encourage people to start working out even if they were previously put off gyms. The idea is to offer a more personalized approach to fitness that cuts out interactions with expert human trainers who could leave them feeling intimidated or unmotivated. The darkened studio space can accommodate up to 14 people at once, either completing a solo workout program or participating in a high-intensity functional training class where a group performs movements such as squats, dumbbell presses, and sit-ups. Each member works out within a designated station facing wall-to-wall LED screens. These tall screens mask sensors that track both the motions of the exerciser and the gym's specially built equipment, including dumbbells, medicine balls, and skipping ropes, using a combination of algorithms and machine-learning models.

Autonomous farm robots guided by GPS can plant and harvest multiple crops in close proximity, enabling beneficial interactions between different plants and potentially boosting biodiversity. Strip cropping, which involves partitioning fields into narrow bands containing different plants, is a common farming practice. Now, robotic technology is making it possible to space crops closer together than ever before. Kit Franklin at Harper Adams University, UK, who is working on trials of this method, says one can think of it as taking the diverse planting approach that an allotment gardener might and scaling it up massively with autonomous machinery. This could enable commercial farms to stop planting vast, non-biodiverse fields and reap the benefits of mingling plants with different needs and mutually beneficial habits, he says.

Google recently rolled out multiple updates to Bard, its AI chatbot. The new features include extensions that connect Bard to more aspects of Google's portfolio, like Gmail, Docs, and YouTube. The company is continuing to experiment with artificial intelligence as part of the next wave of information retrieval. Although my initial impressions of Bard's extensions are underwhelming, anyone with masses of unread Gmail messages or a collection of ancient Google Docs to sift through may find the update somewhat interesting. "If you choose to use the Workspace extensions, your content from Gmail, Docs and Drive is not seen by human reviewers, used by Bard to show you ads, or used to train the Bard model," reads Google's announcement.