"This is a war crime." A representative of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition accused "Israel or one of its allies" of conducting what the group says was a drone attack on its ship carrying aid to Gaza. The Israeli government has not responded to the allegations.

Sam's Club is going register-free and introducing an all-digital, AI-powered shopping experience for its customers, a move that has privacy advocates worried that the new AI tool could be used to unfairly target some customers with higher-priced items based on their shopping habits. The all-digital approach started with the reconstruction of a Sam's Club in Grapevine, a suburb of Dallas, that was severely damaged in 2022 by a tornado. When the retail location opened two years later it was the first of its kind to ditch its registers for a "Scan and Go" program that allowed customers to scan each item placed in their physical cart and pay through a mobile app. This program has since been piloted in nine Dallas metro locations and one store in Missouri, Retail Dive reported. Instead of handing a receipt to a Sam's Club employee to review before leaving the store, customers walk through an arch that's equipped with AI-powered cameras to capture images of the items in the cart and electronically match them with the items paid for through the app. Sam's Club did not disclose when the AI technology would be coming to California stores but Sam's Club has outlets in Torrance, Fountain Valley, El Monte and Riverside.

SAVE 250: As of May 2, get the Shark AI Ultra robot vacuum (AV2501S) for 299.99, down from its usual price of 549.99 at Amazon. A robot vacuum is something that still seems like it came out of a sci-fi movie. You mean this machine is going to tidy up the house all on its own? Whether you know how much fun it can be to slap a pair of googly eyes on yours or revel in the feeling of a house successfully cleaned with little or no input form you, you should consider getting a robot vacuum, especially when it's a great model at an even better price. As of May 2, get the Shark AI Ultra robot vacuum (AV2501S) for 299.99, down from its usual price of 549.99 at Amazon. This robot vacuum is a serious multitasker that you can leave largely on its own to handle all types of messes, whether that's pet hair or tough, ground-in dirt or crumbs left on the kitchen floor.

Google is about to make it a lot easier to do research on the go. On May 20, it will officially launch native NotebookLM apps on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and you can register now to have them automatically downloaded to your device. NotebookLM is Google's AI "research assistant" that debuted as a web browser-based service last year. It's often described as a smart notebook -- one where you can dump PDFs, articles, YouTube links, plain text, Google Docs or Slides, and so on, and then ask the AI to summarize key points, answer questions, or even turn your source material into a mini podcast. Also: Google's viral AI podcast tool can chat in over 50 languages now and it aced my Spanish test NotebookLM is powered by the latest Gemini models.

A young entrepreneur who was among the earliest known recruiters for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has a new, related gig--and he's hiring. Anthony Jancso, cofounder of AcclerateX, a government tech startup, is looking for technologists to work on a project that aims to have artificial intelligence perform tasks that are currently the responsibility of tens of thousands of federal workers. Jancso, a former Palantir employee, wrote in a Slack with about 2000 Palantir alumni in it that he's hiring for a "DOGE orthogonal project to design benchmarks and deploy AI agents across live workflows in federal agencies," according to an April 21 post reviewed by WIRED. Agents are programs that can perform work autonomously. "We've identified over 300 roles with almost full-process standardization, freeing up at least 70k FTEs for higher-impact work over the next year," he continued, essentially claiming that tens of thousands of federal employees could see many aspects of their job automated and replaced by these AI agents.

It's getting a little easier to use Reddit as a search engine. Last year, Reddit rolled out a new feature called Reddit Answers. Since so many people use Reddit as a Google replacement to tap into the community's immense knowledge, the site introduced AI-curated answers related to the topic you were looking for. Also: Meta's new AI app delivers a chatbot with a social media twist At the time, you had to specifically head to a Reddit Answers tab to use the feature, but now it's coming to the main search bar. In the company's first-quarter earnings call yesterday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said that the site was "working to integrate it [Reddit Answers] into Reddit's core search experience to further streamline the path from question to answer on Reddit."

Is it me, or are AI-generated images getting ridiculously good? I swear, every time I scroll, I question whether what I'm seeing is real. You paused today and thought, "Is this even real?" Well, things just got worse or better… You know what I mean. Midjourney recently announced Midjourney 7, its most advanced model yet, and after seeing what it can do, all I can say is wow.

When the presenters take the stage, their attitude is briskly professional but energetic. I'm expecting a technical dive into standard AI tools--something that gives an up-close look at how ChatGPT and its rivals are manipulated for dirty deeds. Sherri Davidoff, Founder and CEO of LMG Security, reinforces this belief with her opener about software vulnerabilities and exploits. But then Matt Durrin, Director of Training and Research at LMG Security, drops an unexpected phrase: "Evil AI." "What if hackers can use their evil AI tools that don't have guardrails to find vulnerabilities before we have a chance to fix them?" "[We're] going to show you examples." And not just screenshots, though as the presentation continues, plenty of those illustrate the points made by the LMG Security team.

Since 2017, the Vespa-maker Piaggio's Fast Forward division has been exploring a unique way to cut down on car trips: Building robots that can follow you around and carry your stuff. We called its original Gita (pronounced "jee-tah," Italian for "trip") robot an attractive rolling porter, but its size and initial 3,250 price made it more of a robo-curio than something you'd actually want to buy. The company followed that up with the Gitamini, a smaller and slightly cheaper 1,850 model, but even that remains niche. Most people just don't have thousands of dollars to spend on a cute follow bot -- but the calculation may be different for Star Wars fans. So it's not a huge surprise to see Piaggio Fast Forward debut a special Star Wars edition robot: the G1T4-M1N1. It's basically just a 2,875 version of the Gitamini (which now sells for 2,475) with Star Wars decals and sound effects.

Aid workers trying to deliver supplies to Gaza were left stranded on a burning ship in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea after they say it was attacked by drones. The ship was part of an attempt to challenge Israel's two-month blockade of Gaza.