Your AI clone could target your family, but there’s a simple defense

Your AI clone could target your family, but there’s a simple defense

On Tuesday, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation advised Americans to share a secret word or phrase with their family members to protect against AI-powered voice-cloning scams, as criminals increasingly use voice synthesis to impersonate loved ones in crisis. “Create a secret word or phrase with your family to verify their identity,” wrote the FBI…

New Broadcom sales plan may be “insignificant” in deterring VMware migrations

New Broadcom sales plan may be “insignificant” in deterring VMware migrations

Broadcom will no longer take VMware’s biggest 2,000 customers directly. Instead, it will work with VMware’s 500 biggest customers, giving channel partners the opportunity to participate in deals and provide additional value for VMware customers. The reversal is being viewed as an effort from Broadcom to discourage migrations from VMware, but there’s skepticism around how…

Meta: AI created less than 1% of the disinformation around 2024 elections

Meta: AI created less than 1% of the disinformation around 2024 elections

AI-generated content accounted for less than 1% of the disinformation fact-checkers linked to political elections that took place worldwide in 2024, according to social media giant Meta. The company cited political elections in the United States, Great Britain, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, France, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil, as well as the EU elections. “At…

OpenAI announces full “o1” reasoning model, $200 ChatGPT Pro tier

OpenAI announces full “o1” reasoning model, $200 ChatGPT Pro tier

On Thursday during a live demo as part of its “12 days of OpenAI” event, OpenAI announced a new tier of ChatGPT with higher usage limits for $200 a month and the full version of “o1,” the full version of a so-called reasoning model the company debuted in September. Unlike o1-preview, o1 can now process…

Soon, the tech behind ChatGPT may help drone operators decide which enemies to kill

Soon, the tech behind ChatGPT may help drone operators decide which enemies to kill

As the AI industry grows in size and influence, the companies involved have begun making stark choices about where they land on issues of life and death. For example, can their AI models be used to guide weapons or make targeting decisions? Different companies have answered this question in different ways, but for ChatGPT maker…

$1 phone scanner finds seven Pegasus spyware infections

$1 phone scanner finds seven Pegasus spyware infections

In recent years, commercial spyware has been deployed by more actors against a wider range of victims, but the prevailing narrative has still been that the malware is used in targeted attacks against an extremely small number of people. At the same time, though, it has been difficult to check devices for infection, leading individuals…

Backdoor slips into popular code library, drains ~$155k from digital wallets

Backdoor slips into popular code library, drains ~$155k from digital wallets

Hackers pocketed as much as $155,000 by sneaking a backdoor into a code library used by developers of smart contract apps that work with the cryptocurrency known as Solana. The supply-chain attack targeted solana-web3.js, a collection of JavaScript code used by developers of decentralized apps for interacting with the Solana blockchain. These “dapps” allow people…

OpenAI teases 12 days of mystery product launches starting tomorrow

OpenAI teases 12 days of mystery product launches starting tomorrow

On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a “12 days of OpenAI” period starting December 5, which will unveil new AI features and products for 12 consecutive weekdays. Altman did not specify the exact features or products OpenAI plans to unveil, but a report from The Verge about this “12 days of shipmas” event suggests…

Web pioneer Marshall Brain dies suddenly at 63 amid ethics battle

Web pioneer Marshall Brain dies suddenly at 63 amid ethics battle

The week before Thanksgiving, Marshall Brain sent a final email to his colleagues at North Carolina State University. “I have just been through one of the most demoralizing, depressing, humiliating, unjust processes possible with the university,” wrote the founder of HowStuffWorks.com and director of NC State’s Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. Hours later, campus police found that…

Russian court sentences kingpin of Hydra drug marketplace to life in prison

Russian court sentences kingpin of Hydra drug marketplace to life in prison

A Russian court has issued a life sentence to a man found guilty of being the kingpin of a dark web drug marketplace that supplied more than a metric ton of narcotics and psychotropic substances to customers around the world. On Monday, the court found that Stanislav Moiseyev oversaw Hydra, a Russian-language market that operated…