Microsoft has begun expanding the reach of its Copilot feature set, bringing its AI capabilities to Office apps for anyone currently subscribed to Microsoft 365 Personal or Family. For customers in the US and Europe, those features are only available with an extremely pricey Copilot Pro subscription. For Personal and Family subscribers, the upgrade costs an extra 20 monthly, which is more than double the cost of the basic Microsoft 365 subscription. But that's all about to change. Also: Microsoft Copilot vs. Copilot Pro: Is the subscription fee worth it?

If you're sick of carefully driving over Britain's pothole-filled roads, there's good news - as a futuristic car could make navigating these divets much easier. An impressive promo clip from BYD shows its Yangwang U9 sports supercar jumping over obstacles, including a 20ft pothole. The autonomous vehicle speeds along at nearly 75mph as it performs little bunny hops into the air, without anyone in the driver's seat. Like an agile land mammal, the U9 shrinks down first, then bounces up, briefly launching all four wheels off the ground at the same time. The vehicle boasts some impressive specs as it is able to go from 0-62mph in just 2.36 seconds, with a straight-line top speed of 243.54 mph (391.94

Russia appeared to ready itself for talks on the future of Ukraine with United States President-elect Donald Trump ahead of his swearing-in on Monday. "No special conditions are needed for this. What is required is the mutual intent and political will to have a dialogue," said Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Saturday. But Russia expressed its parameters very quickly. Putin aide Nikolai Patrushev told Russian news outlet KP that a Ukraine settlement should be reached by the US and Russia, without Ukraine and without the European Union.

For drivers who endure Britain's crumbling roads daily, there's no doubt we're stuck in an escalating'pothole crisis'. These dangerous holes can injure and even kill cyclists and motorists, and are popping up quicker than they can be filled. Now, interactive graphics reveal the shocking extent of the problem - and scientists think climate change is to blame. Climate organisation Round our Way reveals 952,064 potholes were reported in Britain between January and November last year, marking a five-year high. MailOnline's interactive map, based on the new data, reveals the local authorities with the most pothole reports during the period.

ChatGPT has had support for voice conversations since the end of 2023, but if you're new to OpenAI's chatbot, figuring out how to converse with it can be tricky since there are a couple of ways to go about it. In this guide, I'll explain the main differences between ChatGPT's two voice modes and how to use both of them. As of the writing of this article, OpenAI offers two different ways of interacting with ChatGPT using your voice: "Standard" and "Advanced." The former is available to all users, with usage counting against one's message limit. "Advanced," meanwhile, has more granular restrictions.

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."

It seems like it should be pretty easy to get to Mercury. The little rocky planet is so much closer to Earth than distant destinations like Jupiter, where we've successfully sent multiple spacecraft. Plus, it doesn't have a crushing atmosphere like our nearest neighbor Venus. But, in fact, it's actually really difficult to reach the innermost planet of our solar system--which makes it that much more impressive that the ESA and JAXA's BepiColombo mission has almost reached Mercury, recently completing its final flyby of the planet before entering orbit next year. Reaching Mercury is such a challenge because "the gravitational pull of the Sun is very strong near Mercury, which makes it difficult for spacecraft to slow down enough to enter orbit around the planet," explains Lina Hadid, staff scientist at CNRS in France and principal investigator of one of BepiColombo's instruments.

Google is being investigated by the UK competition watchdog over the impact of its search and advertising practices on consumers, news publishers, businesses and rival search engines. The CMA estimates that search advertising costs the equivalent of nearly 500 for each UK household a year, which could be kept down with effective competition. The watchdog announced on Tuesday it will investigate if Google is blocking competitors from entering the market, and whether it is engaging in "potential exploitative conduct" by the mass collection of consumers' data without informed consent. It will also investigate whether Google is using its position as the pre-eminent search engine to give an unfair advantage to its own shopping and travel services. The investigation will take up to nine months and could result in Google being forced to share the mountains of data it collects with other businesses, or to give publishers greater control over how their content – books, newspaper articles and music – is used, including by Google's fast-growing artificial intelligence systems.

The UK's competition watchdog has launched an investigation into Google to probe whether it has too much power in online search. Google accounts for 90% of UK web searches - the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is looking at whether it is using that dominant position to harm competition or choice for users. It is its first investigation after gaining new powers to investigate and enforce changes at firms it determines to have "strategic market status" in digital markets. The CMA says it wants to ensure the tech giant is "delivering good outcomes for people and businesses" and that there is a "level playing field" for rivals. In a statement Google said: "We will continue to engage constructively with the CMA to ensure that new rules benefit all types of websites, and still allow people in the UK to benefit from helpful and cutting edge services." It is the latest in a series of investigations Google faces worldwide over its immense power in search and advertising technology.

Far above your head, constellations of satellites are working constantly to provide the positioning, navigation, and timing systems that quietly run modern life. Known as the global navigation satellite system, or GNSS, signals from these satellites provide the foundation for mobile networks, energy grids, the internet, and GPS. And increasingly, their dependability is under threat. GPS signals can be jammed--deliberately drowned out with other powerful radio signals--and spoofed, where erroneous signals are released to fool positioning systems. GPS interference has been documented in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the South China Sea.