With pressure mounting from parents and lawmakers over social media age verification, a legal showdown between tech giants is beginning to take shape in Washington. The showdown centers on a seemingly simple question, but one with huge implications for the future of the web: Who is responsible for age verification? As Emily Birnbaum reports for Bloomberg, a new lobbying group for this issue -- backed by industry heavyweights like Meta, Spotify, and Match Group (parent company of Tinder and Hinge) -- has launched in Washington, D.C. The lobbying group argues that since Apple and Google control the app stores, they should verify user ages before downloads occur. Unsurprisingly, Apple and Google disagree, arguing that because apps collect and handle user data, the obligation falls squarely on developers.

In September 2023, Adam Raines made a Reddit post revealing what feels like a near-universal problem for singles: His dating app conversations are painfully boring. Attached to the post, titled "Sometimes, texting on dating apps feelings (sic) like hitting your head against a brick wall," is a screenshot of a bone-dry Tinder conversation between him and one of his matches, in which Raines' curiosity is met with short, dead-ended answers. "The vast majority of my online dating interactions have been like that," says Raines, 25, a gay man living in the UK who asked to use a pseudonym to protect his privacy. Many users in the thread echoed his sentiment and offered explanations or theories as to why conversations on dating apps are often unsatisfying. "I see I'm not the only one getting that type of energy lol," one wrote, as another noted, "It sucks, and if people swiped more mindfully this wouldn't happen, but a lot of guys are so beaten down by the dating app experience they feel like they don't have any other choice and want whatever validation they can get."

On 28 March, Briony Swire-Thompson began seeing reports online that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) might cancel grants for research on misinformation. At first, she didn't think she would be affected. Swire-Thompson, a psychologist at Northeastern University, studies misinformation--but not the political lies that get most of the attention. She's interested in false information about cancer, and why people fall for it. "There's a lot of people online trying to sell their snake oil," she says.

AI-generated deepfake videos depicting humans are getting more advanced, and more common, by the day. The most sophisticated tools can now produce manipulated content that is indistinguishable to the average human observer. Deepfake detectors, which use their own AI models to analyze video clips, attempt to bypass this deception by searching for hidden tells. One of those is the presence of a human pulse. In the past, AI models that detected a noticeable pulse or heart rate could confidently classify those clips as genuine.

Meta has spent the better part of a year integrating Meta AI with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and its other existing services, but hadn't yet launched a standalone experience for Meta AI fans. That all changed yesterday at LlamaCon, the company's inaugural AI developer conference, when the company finally launched the Meta AI app. The new app is built with Meta's Llama 4 model. It's a full-fledged competitor to ChatGPT, which became the fastest-growing app in history after its launch. Already, AI enthusiasts are digging into the app to see what sets it apart from the competition. Per Meta's press release, the big takeaway is personalization.

Microsoft released its quarterly earnings report on Wednesday after the New York stock market closed, beating Wall Street's expectations for the fourth quarter in a row amid a financial boom for artificial intelligence businesses. The company revealed revenue of 70.07bn and earnings of 3.46 per share. The result exceeded analyst predictions that revenue would grow to 68.42bn, or 10.6% year-over-year, and that earnings-per-share would come in at 3.22. Shares in the tech giant jumped more than 5% in after-hours trading. Analysts viewed the earnings report as a temperature check on Microsoft's artificial intelligence (AI) business, which has announced it will invest around 80bn in this fiscal year alone, though it has also terminated some data center leases in recent months.

My wife and I like to travel to other countries, but we always face a familiar obstacle -- how to learn the language well enough to converse with people. We've tried taking language lessons, yet we invariably run into situations where we can't find the right words to express ourselves. Now, Google has launched a trio of translation tools that could help overcome this obstacle. Also: Want a quick daily podcast based on your interests? Try Google's latest AI experiment Launched on Tuesday as Google Labs experiments, the "Little Language Lessons" are designed to assist you in specific situations, especially when you're traveling in a foreign country.

Researchers have discovered that lucid dreaming is more than just a vivid sleep state, it's actually a whole other state of consciousness. Lucid dreaming occurs when a person becomes aware they are dreaming, often gaining the ability to control the dream's events. For instance, they might fly, walk through walls, or confront fears, taking advantage of the limitless possibilities. Previously, scientists believed lucid dreams were simply more vivid or intense versions of the typical dreams that occur during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which is a normal phase of the sleep cycle characterized by increased brain activity. But this new study shows that brain activity patterns during a lucid dream are entirely different from those that occur during regular dreams and wakefulness.

A young man with no government experience who has yet to even complete his undergraduate degree is working for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and has been tasked with using artificial intelligence to rewrite the agency's rules and regulations. Christopher Sweet was introduced to HUD employees as being originally from San Francisco and most recently a third-year at the University of Chicago, where he was studying economics and data science, in an email sent to staffers earlier this month. "I'd like to share with you that Chris Sweet has joined the HUD DOGE team with the title of special assistant, although a better title might be'Al computer programming quant analyst,'" Scott Langmack, a DOGE staffer and chief operating officer of an AI real estate company, wrote in an email widely shared within the agency and reviewed by WIRED. "With family roots from Brazil, Chris speaks Portuguese fluently. Please join me in welcoming Chris to HUD!" Sweet's primary role appears to be leading an effort to leverage artificial intelligence to review HUD's regulations, compare them to the laws on which they are based, and identify areas where rules can be relaxed or removed altogether.

California continues to invest in its tech prowess, as Governor Gavin Newsom announces new generative AI initiatives that sick the technology onto some of the state's biggest man-power burdens. Part of the leader's executive order on AI, which directed state agencies to implement the new technology in the name of efficiency, three new agreements will see state investments in some of the industry's most popular generative AI technologies, meant to reduce highway congestion, improve roadway safety, and enhance customer service in state call centers. "GenAI is here, and it's growing in importance every day. We know that state government can be more efficient, and as the birthplace of tech it is only natural that California leads in this space," said Newsom. "In the Golden State, we know that efficiency means more than cutting services to save a buck, but instead building and refining our state government to better serve all Californians." Specifically, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) will use Microsoft's Azure Open AI to process and analyze traffic data in order to "reduce traffic congestion, enhance incident response, and improve transit reliability."