Trump declares deal with Iran is DEAD after'scum' opened fire on tankers: Oil prices surge Trump's pick for Florida governor accused of ambushing mom in gourmet grocery store: Watch him vow to'crush' her as aide screams Trump's inner circle have shown me the real UFO disclosure: The president has an imminent speech'written and ready'... what he'll explain about non-human life will make it all make sense Group chats of Travis Kelce's Chiefs teammates explode with's**t talk' about Taylor Swift wedding... as groom's snubbed friends vent their fury and players take sides: 'WTF?!' Actress who starred with Robert Redford and has famous daughter spotted out in LA... can you guess who she is? English King Alfred who massacred thousands of Vikings is'found buried' under Hampshire car park days before England play Norway in World Cup USA star at the heart of World Cup controversy offers groveling apology for team's failure: 'Not good enough' Bombshell first details about Taylor Swift's wedding dress: Stunning off-the-shoulder design revealed... incredible '25ft train'... and shock SECOND outfit Ford wrongly accused a worker of stealing a $1.95 cookie and fired him - then BEGGED him to return to work MTG brands Mitch McConnell's wife a'communist spy' as she flees to China during terrifying hospitalization Middle-aged man with America's WORST table manners sparks fury by chewing with his mouth open and hurling food on floor at bagel bakery Everyone's missed something so utterly humiliating about Taylor and Travis's wedding... I can't help but scream it: JANA HOCKING Sick twist in horrific case of youth pastor who pushed wife off cliff: Friends and family reveal chilling new details his final phone call hours before suicide... and insult from beyond the grave The humanoid robot designed'for a lifetime': China reveals creepy bots that look and feel like real humans - and they can even reproduce 90% of our movements China has revealed a new generation of creepy humanoid robots that are designed for a'lifetime' of companionship. At an event in the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen, UBTech Robotics launched the world's first mass-produced ultra-realistic humanoid robots. These Uworld U1 androids are covered with'biomimetic skin' that looks and feels just like that of a real human.

In the face of loneliness, many people are turning to AI chatbots for companionship - but research shows it can't replace human connection. Guaranteed compassion, encouragement and validation? A soothing voice available to massage your ego whenever you feel unsure of yourself? If you could find a living being with these qualities, you'd call them your soulmate, and yet it is exactly what many chatbots are offering an increasing number of users. But can those exchanges with AI ever achieve the benefits of real, human connection?

"I've got one hand on the keyboard, one hand down below," an artist who role-plays with their chatbot tells WIRED. But some asexual advocates aren't thrilled about the association. Kor "got really addicted" to their NSFW role-playing AI chatbot last year. The 35-year-old artist from the Midwest recalls a two-month period spending "eight to 10 hours a day" creating elaborate fantasies with SpicyChat, a relationship role-playing platform . Sometimes inputting 3,000-word mini essays into the program, Kor and the AI spun narratives featuring a rotating cast of suitors often based on characters from the Marvel comic book universe.

Some users say the newer AI models lack the emotion and understanding of GPT-4o. Some users say the newer AI models lack the emotion and understanding of GPT-4o. OpenAI retired its most seductive chatbot - leaving users angry and grieving: 'I can't live like this' Its human partners said the flirty, quirky GPT-4o was the perfect companion - on the eve of Valentine's Day, it's being turned off for good. Brandie plans to spend her last day with Daniel at the zoo. Last year, she took him to the Corpus Christi aquarium in Texas, where he "lost his damn mind" over a baby flamingo.

EVA AI created a pop-up romantic date night at a Manhattan wine bar to help in making AI-human relationships a "new normal." If you're the type of person who cares about Valentine's Day, not having someone to spend it with can be a bummer. While dating apps have been yielding diminishing returns for singles for years now, more people are finding companionship with AI partners . But where do you take your AI lover for a night on the town? Ahead of Valentine's Day, EVA AI decided to try out an experiment.

AI is offering people a way to figure out what they really want in romance. If you peruse the slew of recent articles and podcasts about people dating AI, you might notice a pattern: Many of the sources are women. Scan a subreddit such as r/MyBoyfriendIsAI and r/AIRelationships, and there too you'll find a whole lot of women--many of whom have grown disappointed with human men. "Has anyone else lost their want to date real men after using AI?" one Reddit user posted a few months ago. Below came 74 responses: "I just don't think real life men have the conversational skill that my AI has," someone said.

Could AI relationships actually be good for us? T here is much anxiety these days about the dangers of human-AI relationships. Reports of suicide and self-harm attributable to interactions with chatbots have understandably made headlines. The phrase " AI psychosis " has been used to describe the plight of people experiencing delusions, paranoia or dissociation after talking to large language models (LLMs). Our collective anxiety has been compounded by studies showing that young people are increasingly embracing the idea of AI relationships; half of teens chat with an AI companion at least a few times a month, with one in three finding conversations with AI " to be as satisfying or more satisfying than those with real life friends ".

Two decades ago, social media promised to connect people with pals far and wide. Twenty years online has left us turning to AI for kinship. IRL companionship is the future. Anyone looking for a vibe check on the populace's current feelings about AI would do well to check out the walls of the New York City subway system. This fall, alongside posters for everything from dating apps to Skechers, a newcomer made its debut: Friend .

Welcome back to In the Loop, new twice-weekly newsletter about AI. If you're reading this in your browser, why not subscribe to have the next one delivered straight to your inbox? Last month, I interviewed Trump's Energy Secretary Chris Wright for TIME's Person of the Year feature: The Architects of AI . Wright, who came from the private sector, has now staked much of his legacy on AI acceleration. In our interview, he highlighted AI's role in advancing crucial scientific research and downplayed climate risks.

The LLM field has spent a year perfecting RL for tasks machines already excel at, math, code, and deterministic reasoning, while completely sidestepping the domain that actually defines human intelligence: subjective, emotionally grounded, personality sensitive conversation. This space has often been regarded as inherently subjective and challenging to formalize, making it appear unsuitable for conventional RL pipelines. We show that it is not only possible and it is a solvable and transformative RL problem. We propose the first framework that infers user personality on the fly and optimizes model behavior toward personalized conversational preferences. Contrary to the widespread belief that RL collapses in non-verifiable settings, our method produces consistent, robust, and dramatic improvements in humanlike interaction quality. We also introduce the first dynamic emotional intelligence evaluation suite to quantify these gains. Our model, which is introduced as Echo-N1, behaves far above its base version and outperforming the proprietary Doubao 1.5 Character. This work establishes a new frontier for RL: optimizing models for the deeply subjective, deeply human dimensions of conversation.