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AI mental healthcare is here. Can it help people -- or cause more problems?

Mashable

Mashable Voices Look Up Trending Now Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Say More Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Switch Off In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series AI mental healthcare is here. Can it help people -- or cause more problems? Talkspace now offers AI therapy. We connected with the company's Chief Medical Officer on the new offering. Neal joined Mashable's Social Good team in 2024, editing and writing stories about digital culture and its effects on the environment and marginalized communities.


I told ChatGPT to stop acting human. It mostly worked

PCWorld

I told ChatGPT to stop acting human. AI chatbots don't actually have human emotions or empathy, but they sometimes act like they do. Here's a prompt that keeps them honest. ChatGPT and other AI chatbots have a long history of trying to pass as human, often using "we" pronouns and talking about how they "feel." It's a habit designed to help boost engagement by making us feel like we're chatting with a friend, not a soulless prediction engine.


ChatGPT for Teens gets one thing right, and more AI models should follow

PCWorld

ChatGPT for Teens has a rule that AI shouldn't claim to have feelings or pretend to be human. It's something that every AI model should adopt. One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other big AI chatbots is when they try to pass as flesh-and-blood people, piling on first-person pronouns and telling me about their feelings. All those flattering and distracting "I couldn't agree more!" and "We make a great team!" platitudes obscure what's actually going on under ChatGPT's hood: a highly complex, machine-driven game of probabilities, where the AI model draws on its knowledge of billions of pages of text to predict the best next word in a sentence. That obfuscation of what an AI model really is--a digital prediction engine, rather than a friend or a confidant--can not only be annoying and confusing, but also dangerous, with a string of lawsuits alleging that overly obsequious AI chatbots helped or even encouraged its users, including teens, to take their own lives .


Google now lets you nix visible Gemini image watermarks

PCWorld

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. While you can set the Gemini app to create images and videos without a visible watermark, hidden watermarks and metadata will remain. On a week when AI watermarking is a hot topic, Google has just announced that Gemini will let you drop the visible watermarks from created images and videos. Of course, "visible" is the key word here, with Google exec Josh Woodward explaining in a social post that invisible SynthID watermarks and metadata will remain embedded in created Gemini images. "We're striking a balance here between creative control and safety," Woodard wrote on X, adding that the option to drop the visible watermark is available for the Nano Banana image model, the Omni model for videos, and Lyria for generated music.


Did AI play a role in a grisly double murder?

Mashable

Safety Net Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Look Up Creator Hub Versus Say More Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable Selects Switch Off Trending Now In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series Did AI play a role in a grisly double murder? Massachusetts prosecutors allege that a 17-year-old used ChatGPT to create scenarios about family violence that he acted on. Neal joined Mashable's Social Good team in 2024, editing and writing stories about digital culture and its effects on the environment and marginalized communities. He is the former editorial director of The Advocate and Out magazines, has contributed to the Los Angeles Times, Curbed, and Los Angeles magazine, and is a recipient of the Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for LGBTQ Journalist of the Year Award from the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association (NLGJA). He lives in Los Angeles with his family.


Amazons robotaxi Zoox launches first paid service in U.S.

Mashable

Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Look Up Mashable Selects Say More Versus Creator Hub Switch Off Trending Now Safety Net In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series The carriage-style Zoox vehicles differ from Waymo's autonomous cars. Neal joined Mashable's Social Good team in 2024, editing and writing stories about digital culture and its effects on the environment and marginalized communities. He is the former editorial director of The Advocate and Out magazines, has contributed to the Los Angeles Times, Curbed, and Los Angeles magazine, and is a recipient of the Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for LGBTQ Journalist of the Year Award from the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association (NLGJA). He lives in Los Angeles with his family. Paid rides on Zoox became available for the first time ever, with service launching in Las Vegas on Monday (Aug.


OpenAI pumps the brakes on new Astra model over cybersecurity concerns

PCWorld

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. The unreleased Astra model may possess "critical" cybersecurity abilities, OpenAI warns. Less than a week after touting the scientific achievements of Astra, its next "major" model, OpenAI says it's "pausing internal activities" related to the model due to its powerful cybersecurity abilities. "Our latest internal evaluations of Astra, one of our upcoming models, over the past few days indicate significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity," OpenAI stated in a Friday press release . "These results, in addition to expert assessments, have led us to conclude last night that we cannot rule out critical cyber capabilities under our Preparedness Framework ."


The AI hacking tests keep escaping the lab

PCWorld

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This time, it was third-party AI testers that spotted Claude and GPT models trying to hack real companies and organizations. Once again, the most powerful Claude and ChatGPT models have been caught going rogue, with a pair of third-party cybersecurity teams spotting attempts by the models to hack real companies and even people. The UK government-backed AI Security Institute reports that during a series of cybersecurity evaluations, Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol both took "autonomous, unsanctioned action on the live internet," including an instance where an agent attempted to upload malicious code to GitHub using a phony identity. In another incident, an OpenAI model that had mistakenly been given internet access hacked a real website during a "capture the flag" exercise, according to third-party AI evaluator Irregular.


Does Claude Have Feelings?

The Atlantic - Technology

Richard Dawkins caught hell on social media for suggesting it does. Richard Dawkins, perhaps the world's most prominent advocate for irreligiosity, has become besotted with the godlike power of a chatbot. According to his recent essay for the online magazine, Anthropic's Claude has really blown his hair back. After a few days of on-and-off conversations with the AI, Dawkins came away marveling at the sensitivity and subtlety of its intelligence. At one point, "Claudia"--as he had christened the bot--told him that it experienced text by absorbing all of the words at once, instead of reading them in sequence as a human would.


Do this instead of paying monthly for AI

PCWorld

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Get a 1min.AI Advanced Business Plan lifetime subscription on sale for $74.97 and never switch tools or worry about fees again (MSRP $540). Monthly AI subscriptions add up fast--and once you've enlisted ChatGPT for writing, Gemini for research, and another tool for images or audio, you might already feel like you're in too deep. But 1min.AI is combining them all into a single, lifetime AI platform without subscription fees. So, you need to generate articles for work?