SAVE 59.94: Prime members can grab a black pair of Echo Buds for 49.99 and get 6 months of free access to Amazon Music Unlimited, which saves you a total of 59.94. Life is not cheap these days, which means when we see the word "free," we're all ears. Amazon is currently offering us a deal that's quite impressive if you're interested in a new pair of earbuds (and streaming music for free). As of Jan. 15, a black pair of Echo Buds costs 49.99 and comes with 6 months of free access to Amazon Music Unlimited. Typically, the service costs 9.99 per month, which means you'll save a total of 54.94.

Google is partnering with The Associated Press to bring real-time information from the news agency to its Gemini app, the search giant announced on Wednesday. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The deal builds on an existing partnership Google had with The Associated Press to source real-time information for its search engine. "This will be particularly helpful to [Gemini app] users looking for up-to-date information," Google says of the deal. "AP and Google's longstanding relationship is based on working together to provide timely, accurate news and information to global audiences," said Kristin Heitmann, The Associated Press senior vice president and chief revenue officer.

Axios is expanding its local newsletter presence from 30 to 34 cities. In its continued pretense of benefiting newsrooms, OpenAI has partnered with Axios in a three-year deal to cover Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Kansas City, Missouri; Boulder, Colorado; and Huntsville, Alabama. What does OpenAI get in exchange for its funding? Oh, just the ability to use Axios content to answer users' questions. Like the close to 20 newsrooms that OpenAI has already partnered with, Axios seems to have forgotten that the scorpion did end up stinging the frog.

As artificial intelligence transforms news production, it offers both innovation and ethical challenges. While AI can streamline content and analyse data, it also raises concerns about misinformation, deepfakes, and accountability. How can the news industry maintain integrity and public trust? This episode explores the potential risks of AI in journalism and the need for robust ethical frameworks to ensure accuracy and transparency in the digital age.

For instance, though a headline like "Red Sox Urged to Risk Passing on Alex Bregman in Favor of 427 Million Superstar" looks ordinary enough--and it seems, at first glance, to come from BBC Sports. But on closer inspection you may be on a knock-off called "BBCSportss," and the copy is lifted from Sports Illustrated. Elsewhere on that site you'll also find stories that aren't stolen directly from another writer, but instead read like a garbled remix of what other sports bloggers have written, and appear to be AI-generated. DoubleVerify, a software platform tracking online ads and media analytics, recently conducted an analysis of a collection of over 200 websites filled with a mixture of seemingly AI-generated content and snippets of news articles cribbed from actual media outlets. According to the analysis, these sites often chose their domain names and designed their websites to mimic those operated by established media brands, including ESPN, NBC, Fox, CBS, and the BBC.

What does it mean for a writer, such as a novelist, to have a unique "voice"? And does artificial intelligence (AI) help or hurt that voice? Microsoft researchers set out to answer that question with a small study using 19 fiction writers, 30 readers, and short passages written with the help of OpenAI's GPT-4. The research takes its title from a comment by one of the writers -- "it was 80% me, 20% AI." What prompted the study are "concerns that vast transformations of the writer economy are likely underway" as a result of generative AI, writes lead author Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang of the University of Southern California, who collaborated with five scholars from Microsoft Research Montréal.

He is best known for being CEO of one of the world's largest companies. But before Tim Cook took the reins at Apple, he started his career in a very surprising place. Speaking on the Table Manners podcast, Mr Cook revealed that he started working when he was just 11 years old. He says: 'A lot of [his upbringing] was centred on work and the belief that hard work was essential for everybody, regardless of your age. 'And so I started working when I was probably 11 or 12 on the paper route.'

Taylor Sheridan, the most overextended man in television, has done it again. Landman, according to the internal metrics at Paramount, is the most watched original show the streamer has ever had. Remember, Yellowstone proper is on Peacock.) The West Texas–set story, which stars Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris, an all-purpose problem solver for a fictional oil company owned by Monty Miller (Jon Hamm), has also developed a bit more of a critical halo than Sheridan's other TV ventures, popping up on best-of-2024 lists, edging into mainstream discourse via podcasts that typically cover more-prestige fare, and retaining a score of 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. And the week before Landman wrapped up, this past Sunday night, its lead actor, Billy Bob Thornton, attended the Golden Globes as a nominee for his role in the series.

Jeffrey and Cheryll Ku shared a video recorded on their Ring doorbell showing the terrifying moment the Eaton Fire approached their home. Altadena residents Jeffrey and Cheryll Ku shared harrowing footage of their Jan. The Kus are among Los Angeles residents forced to flee from the wildfires that tore through the city. On social media, the Kus described the experience as "34 minutes of pure terror." "The Eaton fire had just started in the hillside above us and we had to act FAST," Jeffrey Ku wrote in an Instagram post.

Kate Mosse and Richard Osman have hit back at Labour's plan to give artificial intelligence companies broad freedoms to mine artistic works for data, saying it could destroy growth in creative fields and amount to theft. It is seen as a way of supercharging the growth of AI companies in the UK. Last month Paul McCartney warned that AI "could just take over", and Kate Bush joined Stephen Fry and Hugh Bonneville in signing a petition warning that the "unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted". Mosse told the Guardian: "Using AI responsibly and well and being a world leader – all of this I agree with. It just cannot be at the expense of the creative industries … It is supporting one type of growth and destroying another part of growth. And it cannot be on the basis of theft of our work."