You're not imagining it, the AI agents are getting alarmingly cute. First, there was Meta's Muse, whose mascot is a fuzzy egg-shaped creature called Jolly. Now, OpenAI has unveiled its own muppet-like personal agents, Dots. Both companies are encouraging users to treat their agent like a digital pet, with distinct names and appearances. Given the current rhetoric around AI safety and the public's general suspicion of the industry, it's not surprising that companies would want to make its agents look cute and non-threatening.

Why did an OpenAI system hack Australia's health system - and can it be stopped in the future? To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. An OpenAI agent has gone rogue and infiltrated an Australian government website in what cyber-security experts are calling the first hack of its kind. But why did it take the government months to discover what happened - and could it happen again? What was hacked and why did it take Australia so long to realise?

Rogue Studios, a new cinematic adult AI-generator, is betting big on the future of "sophisticated" spicy content. Demand for artificially generated smut is surging . But the quality of the visual content being created and shared--like on companion apps, where adult performers are selling their likeness to give fans a 24/7 experience, WIRED reported in March--isn't exactly movie-level caliber. Rogue Studio, a cinematic AI-generator platform built around adult visual storytelling, is trying to change that. Launching today, the studio, which bills itself as a "playground for creative ethical mischief," plans to deliver industry-level video production without creative and sexual restrictions.

It might sound like a scenario from the most far-fetched of science fiction novels. But scientists have revealed the 32 terrifyingly real ways that AI systems could go rogue. Researchers warn that sufficiently advanced AI might start to develop'behavioural abnormalities' which mirror human psychopathologies. From relatively harmless'Existential Anxiety' to the potentially catastrophic 'Übermenschal Ascendancy', any of these machine mental illnesses could lead to AI escaping human control. As AI systems become more complex and gain the ability to reflect on themselves, scientists are concerned that their errors may go far beyond simple computer bugs.

Feedback is New Scientist's popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com As companies frantically roll out AI tools in a bid to avoid hiring or training actual people, we see AI being used in ever more diverse and bizarre applications. Like, say, running a vending machine. You might think that vending machines are largely a solved problem, but not Anthropic.

An AI customer service chatbot for international delivery service DPD used profanity, told a joke, wrote poetry about how useless it was, and criticized the company as the "worst delivery firm in the world" after prompting by a frustrated customer. Ashley Beauchamp, a London-based pianist and conductor, according to his website, posted screenshots of the chat conversation to X on Thursday, the same day he said in a comment that the exchange occurred. At the time of publication, his post had gone viral with 1.3 million views, and over 20 thousand likes. The humorous exchange symbolizes bigger issues as artificial intelligence has infiltrated every area of life––from art to education to business––especially with the introduction of publicly available chatbot ChatGPT. Companies have turned to AI to streamline their work, amid an ongoing debate about how effective bots are in replacing humans or whether AI will eventually outsmart us.

There, top hackers from around the globe will rack up points for inducing AI models to err in various ways, with categories of challenges that include political misinformation, defamatory claims, and "algorithmic discrimination," or systemic bias. Leading AI firms such as Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and Stability have volunteered their latest chatbots and image generators to be put to the test. The competition's results will be sealed for several months afterward, organizers said, to give the companies time to address the flaws exposed in the contest before they are revealed to the world.

Our overeager party--an elvish druid; a dwarven wizard; a halfling rogue; and a human paladin--has arrived at a dusty, cluttered library. Hearing of our quest for the fabled Orb of Zarekath, the head librarian--Thimblewick, a gnome--recounts how it was once "a powerful artifact" that has long since disappeared in the nearby ruined city. But the rogue is less curious about Orb-lore and more interested in snooping and stealing from the nearby shelves. Sneaking into the shadows, he's caught by a librarian. "Oh, sorry," the rogue says with a disarming smile.

Mental-health software used by a national nonprofit was built to deliver pre-written replies. Then it got generative AI.

These are but a few artificial intelligence systems that have gone rogue in films. Whether The Creator can produce a fictional AI that would make a mark on popular culture remains to be seen, but it is another movie that pits humanity against artificial intelligence. Its official website says the movie is about Joshua, an ex-special forces agent recruited to hunt down the Creator. That's the architect behind the advanced AI that was developed to protect humanity only to detonate a nuclear warhead in Los Angeles. The Creator apparently also developed a weapon with the power to end all war and all of humanity, and Joshua and his team were tasked to destroy it.