The new essay collection "Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age," by Vauhini Vara, opens with a transcript. "If I paste some writing here, can we talk about it?" Her interlocutor, the large language model ChatGPT, responds, "Of course!" The chatbot asks what specific themes it should focus on. "Nothing in particular," Vara replies.

Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) have recently gained attention due to their distinctive performance and broad applicability. While it has been previously shown that their efficacy in usage scenarios involving non-Western contexts falls short, existing studies are limited in scope, covering just a narrow range of cultures, focusing exclusively on a small number of cultural aspects, or evaluating a limited selection of models on a single task only. Towards globally inclusive LVLM research, we introduce GIMMICK, an extensive multimodal benchmark designed to assess a broad spectrum of cultural knowledge across 144 countries representing six global macro-regions. GIMMICK comprises six tasks built upon three new datasets that span 728 unique cultural events or facets on which we evaluated 20 LVLMs and 11 LLMs, including five proprietary and 26 open-weight models of all sizes. We systematically examine (1) regional cultural biases, (2) the influence of model size, (3) input modalities, and (4) external cues. Our analyses reveal strong biases toward Western cultures across models and tasks and highlight strong correlations between model size and performance, as well as the effectiveness of multimodal input and external geographic cues. We further find that models have more knowledge of tangible than intangible aspects (e.g., food vs. rituals) and that they excel in recognizing broad cultural origins but struggle with a more nuanced understanding.

When online search engines first appeared, they seemed miraculous. It is a truth near-universally acknowledged that search is in the dumps, corroded by spam and ads. Big players like Google are insistent that AI is the savior of search, despite many early attempts to integrate AI ending in disaster. Recently, I got an email promoting another new AI search engine--but this one has a notably quirky approach to answering questions. Called Pearl, it's coming out of beta this week.

World of Warcraft has an enduring identity problem. What was once one of the biggest games in the world is now approaching its 20th birthday, and with every year that goes by, developer Blizzard has the unenviable challenge of trying to prove that WoW still has a place in today's gaming world. This goes some way to explaining the many times that Blizzard has tried to reinvent WoW. Six years after its initial release, the developer attempted a radical do-over of the game's world in 2010's Cataclysm expansion, in which an ancient dragon ravaged and reshaped the realm of Azeroth (an experience you can relive through the recently relaunched Cataclysm Classic). Since then, Blizzard has experimented with numerous gimmicks to try to keep WoW current, including a now much-maligned mechanic that saw players building their power level for two years, only to lose that power at the end of every expansion cycle.

I have a perhaps inappropriate, anthropomorphic relationship with whatever robot vacuum is running in my house. No matter how much trouble they cause me--if they get trapped in the ledge by the fireplace or lost under the couch--I never forget that it's here to help me battle the chaotic mess that my two kids and two dogs perpetrate upon me daily. Have I convinced you that you need one, too? You're in luck because the Amazon Prime Day vacuum deals lineup includes five of my top picks. Whether you need an all-in-one cleaning station, a simple picker-upper after dinner, or one with an air freshener, we have you covered.

According to his profile, Max, a contestant on season six of the Netflix reality show The Circle, is 26 years old, brunette and into his Australian shepherd, Pippa. He is a veterinary intern from Pismo Beach, California, and a bit cheeky – "single, but my dog is taken". He enters into the Circle chat, the fake social media service contestants use to vie for 100,000, posting either as themselves, an embellished version of themselves or a fully fake identity, with ease. He seems so real," says Lauren, a fellow twentysomething hoping to build enough online alliances and secure enough positive peer reviews to win, upon seeing Max's profile. You just know the producers ate that up, because "Max" is the front for an AI chatbot, a new gimmick to up the ante in this middleweight reality show. The Circle has nowhere near the following of Love Island, but hasn't sunk to the bottom of the streaming service slush pile – and is the latest example of artificial intelligence's seemingly inexorable ...

This installment will be brief because I have to finish prepping for today's TechCrunch Live with Arianna Huffington of Thrive Global and Mamoon Hamid of Kleiner Perkins. Since we scheduled the conversation, a few things have happened, so I need to retool my notes and questions. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on TechCrunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday. The tech-narrative whiplash is actually what I want to talk about this morning.

There has been a surge of interest in what generative AI can do. But what does this technology really mean for the legal sector? To find out we must navigate a path between'Death of the Lawyer 2.0' hysteria and those who dismiss the whole thing as a gimmick. Artificial Lawyer looks at what this tech can really do. Generative AI (gen AI), working via Large Language Models such as OpenAI's GPT-3, can do some amazing things.

Technology has completely infiltrated the built environment. Between IoT connectivity in buildings, indoor wayfinding and virtual tours, real estate is no longer the tech-averse industry it once was. In the context of digitization, there are new uses for Augmented Reality (AR). The technology has evolved from a marketing gimmick to a solid strategy for asset managers to improve their built environments. The premise of AR technology is the real-time integration of digital information to "augment" the user's physical experience.

Welcome to Pushing Buttons, the Guardian's gaming newsletter. If you'd like to receive it in your inbox every week, just pop your email in below – and check your inbox (and spam) for the confirmation email. These days, video games aren't often tied to a particular console or gadget – even if something like Halo or God of War originally appears on Xbox or PlayStation, it will often eventually make its way to PC, and the majority of games come out on everything at the same time. Unless you're playing a console-exclusive game like Returnal, specifically designed around the PlayStation 5 controller with its adaptive triggers and fancy haptic feedback, the experience of the game isn't shaped much by the hardware you play it on. You can play Minecraft with a controller or a mouse or on your phone, and it's still largely the same.