Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. "Free speech" was the battering ram that Elon Musk used to justify his pursuit of Twitter in 2022. He talked about the platform as the new digital town square. He said social media companies' moderation policies should be no more restrictive than national laws. "I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means," he wrote after agreeing to a 44 billion takeover. In the three years since making the deal, Musk has continued to cloak himself in the armor of a free speech warrior, out there fighting for the rest of us.

Microsoft's controversial Windows Recall has now been generally released, and it poses as much of a risk to your privacy as it could be a boon to your productivity. Recall is just one of several new features that either have or will be arriving on Copilot PC, Microsoft said Friday. Recall, Windows' improved semantic search, Live Captions, Cocreator, and Restyle Image and Image Creator within Photos are now all available for Copilot PCs that include Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs as well as PCs with qualifying processors from AMD and Intel. A few features -- Click to Do, Live Captions, and Voice Access -- are available for Copilot PCs running on Snapdragon, but support for AMD and Intel chips isn't quite available. For Microsoft, the release of these AI-powered features are cause for celebration, finally delivering on promises of an AI-powered world that the company first made a year ago.

The Ecobee Smart Doorbell (wired) is a reliable, easy-to-use, high-end video doorbell. It depends on hardwired power, but it can trigger a homeowner's existing chimes. As with many of its competitors, you'll need to pay for a subscription to unlock all its features, but it can be incorporated into a robust home security system with professional monitoring at a very reasonable price. If you're already using one of Ecobee's smart home thermostats or security systems--or you're thinking about installing one--you'll want to consider the company's first video doorbell. The Ecobee Smart Doorbell Camera (wired) doesn't just compete with category leaders Ring, Nest, and Arlo, it also brings a few smart ideas of its own--and it plays especially well within Ecobee's larger smart home/home security ecosystem.

With AI, one can now produce thousands of high-quality illustrations and videos. But that is only part of the story. The case has moved to discovery and is set to begin in September 2026. In allowing this claim to proceed, "the judge noted a statement by Stability's CEO, who claimed that Stability compressed 100,000 gigabytes of images into a two-gigabyte file that could'recreate' any of those images." The implications of such litigation -- as well as the rising and often controversial use of generative AI for producing images for commercial use -- are profound for designers, businesses, and society at large.

Secret messages can be hidden inside fake conversations generated by AI chatbots. The technique could give people a way to communicate online without arousing the suspicion of oppressive governments. When messages are encrypted for secure transmission, the resulting cipher text – an unusual string of garbled characters – stands out like a sore thumb. That is fine if you are keeping secrets in a country where secrets are allowed, but under brutal dictatorships, this could land a citizen in hot water.

ChatGPT users can now try out a new, lightweight version of the AI's Deep Research tool, and you don't even need a paid subscription. Announced in an X post on Thursday, the new version is not only free to use but will automatically activate for paid subscribers who use up their quota of the full Deep Research. Also: How much energy does a single chatbot prompt use? Unveiled in early February, Deep Research browses the web to find and compile the information you need. Simply submit your question or request to ChatGPT, and the AI will search the web for the most relevant sources to answer your query.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Not too long ago, I was messaging a friend on Instagram about hangout plans. The photo app's DMs are a common place for us to chat, since we frequently share memes with each other there and it usually makes sense to consolidate those communications in one spot. At least, it did until very recently, when we fully beheld the wretched manifestations of Meta's desperate A.I. push. If you're still a regular Instagrammer who hasn't quit in protest of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Trumpy turn, you've doubtless encountered various artificial intelligence integrations in your everyday uses of the app.

Google has a monopoly, and that's the official line of the US federal government. In fact, it has two of them, losing two separate antitrust cases that threaten to cripple the tech giant. The Department of Justice has proposed forcing Google to sell or otherwise divest itself of the Chrome browser as its first and preferred remedy. But who would buy it? Unsurprisingly, there are beaucoup business beaus lining up around the block for this browser bachelorette.

Beleaguered chipmaker Intel has confirmed plans to restructure in a shift that will involve an unspecified number of layoffs. It was reported this week that the company could lay off around 20 percent of staff (it had 108,900 employees at the end of last year). In a memo, new CEO Lip-Bu Tan declined to detail the extent of the downsizing, which is largely aimed at reducing "unnecessary bureaucracy" and layers of middle management. "I'm a big believer in the philosophy that the best leaders get the most done with the fewest people. We will embrace this mindset across the company, which will include empowering our top talent to make decisions and take greater ownership of key priorities," Tan wrote.

Chances are, unless you're already deep into AI programming, you've never heard of Model Context Protocol (MCP). MCP is rapidly emerging as a foundational standard for the next generation of AI-powered applications. Developed as an open standard by Anthropic in late 2024, MCP is designed to solve a core problem in the AI ecosystem: How to seamlessly and securely connect large language models (LLMs) and AI agents to the vast, ever-changing landscape of real-world data, tools, and services. The AI company Anthropic explained that as AI assistants and the LLMs behind them have improved, "even the most sophisticated models are constrained by their isolation from data -- trapped behind information silos and legacy systems. Every new data source requires its own custom implementation, making truly connected systems difficult to scale."