Many bike riders are hopeful about a world of robot drivers that never experience road rage or get distracted by their phones. But some resent being guinea pigs for driverless vehicles that veer into bike lanes, suddenly stop short and confuse cyclists trying to navigate around them. In more than a dozen complaints submitted to the DMV, cyclists describe upsetting near misses and close calls -- including Martin's alarming brush with a Cruise vehicle that he reported in August 2023.

With apps like Suno, it’s never been easier to generate “new” music on the fly -- for better or worse.

Instead of inviting players to explore faraway fantasy lands or fight in imagined battlefields, the world of The Sims hews closer to reality. Through avatars called "Sims," players build homes, have careers, form relationships and try on gender identities -- all while meeting their basic needs, like sleep and hunger. Over 24 years, the game has evolved to include four main editions and dozens of expansion packs. Its latest edition has 88 million users, according to developer Maxis. There are even plans for a movie based on the cozy-quirky game.

OpenAI first added the ability for ChatGPT to speak in a one of several synthetic voices, or "personas," late last year. The demo in May used one of those voices to show off a newer, more capable AI system called GPT-4o that saw the chatbot speak in expressive tones, respond to a person's tone of voice and facial expressions, and have more complex conversations. One of the voices, which OpenAI called Sky, resembles the voice of an AI bot played by Johansson in the 2013 movie "Her," about a lonely man who falls in love with his AI assistant.

Marc Whitten, previously an executive at video game development platform Unity and a founder of Microsoft's Xbox service division, will take over at a precarious time for Cruise. The company halted its entire driverless fleet across the U.S. last year after one of its autonomous cars operating in San Francisco hit and dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who was flung into its path by a human driver. California regulators suspended Cruise's permits to operate its driverless fleet in the state, throwing the company into a crisis that included mass layoffs and the resignation of its former CEO, Kyle Vogt.

I recently couldn't remember the name of a pastry and tried describing it to three different AI chatbots.

In an opulent ballroom on a Saturday night, the classic pump-up anthem "Eye of the Tiger" blared as artificial intelligence enthusiasts tapped away on their keyboards. This was a hackathon -- an event where participants have a set amount of time to collaborate on a project they present to the crowd -- at a sprawling mansion about 30 minutes south of San Francisco. As a professional freelance photographer, I've spent the past decade documenting the people and culture of Silicon Valley. Ever since OpenAI's ChatGPT debuted in November 2022, countless entrepreneurs have been inspired to make their own generative AI tools. Now, nearly every new start-up has an AI element -- technology that automates simple tasks, for example, or a chatbot that provides mental health tips.

They found the chatbot agreed with the human raters 93 percent of the time, while the human raters agreed with one another 92 percent of the time -- close enough that chatbots evaluating each other was "unlikely to be concerning," Farquhar said.

In the mid 2010s, researchers at AI labs began using Nvidia GPUs as they tinkered with evermore capable AI. The company took notice, and began improving the software used to program its chips to make it more suited to AI work. By the time the AI boom happened, most of the industry was accustomed to using Nvidia's chips and software. Other chip companies, like AMD and Intel, have scrambled to catch up, but industry analysts and AI researchers say that Nvidia will continue to benefit from its head start for years.

For about two years, the 38-year-old globe-trotting photographer had been mulling over the "surreal photo of an already surreal-looking type of bird" he had shot in the pristine beach off the coast of Aruba. That sunny day, Astray had left around 5 a.m. on the first boat bound to the tiny island known for its flock of flamingos, hoping to beat the crowds. When he got there, he spotted a bright pink bird "doing its morning routine" and cleaning its feathers, he said. The "very lucky shot" captured the flamingo mid-belly scratch.