Buy-now-pay-later lender Klarna said its AI assistant, powered by OpenAI, is doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents and has had 2.3 million conversations, equal to two-thirds of the company's customer service chats, within the first month of being deployed. The AI tool resolved errands much faster and matched human levels on customer satisfaction, Klarna said.

An anonymous reader shares a report (paywalled): As Google grapples with the backlash over the historically inaccurate responses on its Gemini chatbot, Meta Platforms is dealing with a related issue. As part of its work on the forthcoming version of its large language model, Llama 3, Meta is trying to overcome a problem perceived in Llama 2: Its answers to anything at all contentious aren't helpful. Safeguards added to Llama 2, which Meta released last July and which powers the artificial intelligence assistant in its apps, prevent the LLM from answering a broad range of questions deemed controversial. These guardrails have made Llama 2 appear too "safe" in the eyes of Meta's senior leadership, as well as among some researchers who worked on the model itself, according to people who work at Meta.

[...] Meta's conservative approach with Llama 2 was designed to ward off any public relations disasters, said the people who work at Meta. But researchers are now trying to loosen up Llama 3 so it engages more with users when they ask about difficult topics, offering context rather than just shutting down tricky questions, said two of the people who work at Meta. The new version of the model will in theory be able to better distinguish when a word has multiple meanings. For example, Llama 3 might understand that a question about how to kill a vehicle's engine means asking how to shut it off rather than end its life. Meta also plans to appoint someone internally in the coming weeks to oversee tone and safety training as part of its efforts to make the model's responses more nuanced, said one of the people. The company plans to release Llama 3 in July, though the timeline could still change, they added.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the company's Gemini controversy Tuesday evening, calling the AI app's problematic responses around race unacceptable and vowing to make structural changes to fix the problem. The memo: I want to address the recent issues with problematic text and image responses in the Gemini app (formerly Bard). I know that some of its responses have offended our users and shown bias -- to be clear, that's completely unacceptable and we got it wrong.

Our teams have been working around the clock to address these issues. We're already seeing a substantial improvement on a wide range of prompts. No AI is perfect, especially at this emerging stage of the industry's development, but we know the bar is high for us and we will keep at it for however long it takes. And we'll review what happened and make sure we fix it at scale.

Our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful is sacrosanct. We've always sought to give users helpful, accurate, and unbiased information in our products. That's why people trust them. This has to be our approach for all our products, including our emerging AI products.

We'll be driving a clear set of actions, including structural changes, updated product guidelines, improved launch processes, robust evals and red-teaming, and technical recommendations. We are looking across all of this and will make the necessary changes.

Even as we learn from what went wrong here, we should also build on the product and technical announcements we've made in AI over the last several weeks. That includes some foundational advances in our underlying models e.g. our 1 million long-context window breakthrough and our open models, both of which have been well received.

We know what it takes to create great products that are used and beloved by billions of people and businesses, and with our infrastructure and research expertise we have an incredible springboard for the AI wave. Let's focus on what matters most: building helpful products that are deserving of our users' trust.

Fast food chain Wendy's announced it's adopting a similar approach to Uber's Surge Pricing policy by dynamically adjusting the prices of its menu items during peak demand periods at certain locations. The controversial strategy seeks to leverage real-time data to align pricing and demand, enhancing efficiency and potentially improving customer satisfaction. From a report: During a conference call earlier this month, Wendy's CEO Kirk Tanner said the fast-food chain would experiment with dynamic pricing as early as next year. "Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and daypart offerings, along with AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling," he said. "As we continue to show the benefit of this technology in our company-operated restaurants, franchisee interest in digital menu boards should increase, further supporting sales and profit growth across the system."

Prices seesaw all the time on the sites of online retailers like Amazon that use algorithms and artificial intelligence to monitor competitors and glean insights into individual shoppers, adjusting prices depending on interest in the product or in the brand, said Timothy Webb, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware's hospitality and sport business management program. Coupons and other offers are also routinely dangled in mobile apps to encourage people to make purchases. "A lot of this stuff is already happening even if you don't realize that it is happening. If you have the Starbucks app and I have the Starbucks app, we probably have different offers," Webb said. "We might not be in the drive-through and they just increased the prices, but we are already paying different prices for the same products."

But, he says, Wendy's fans will likely see moderate, not massive, price swings during periods of peak demand. "It's not like $200 or $300 on a flight. This is a hypercompetitive industry. If Wendy's goes up $2 to $3 on a burger at dinner time, I would be shocked. People have too many options. They will just walk down the street and eat at Burger King instead," Webb said. "There will just be little price changes here."

Emanuel Maiberg reports via 404 Media: Dozens of Ghost kitchens, restaurants that serve food exclusively by delivery on apps like DoorDash and Grubhub, are selling food that they promote to customers with AI-generated images. It's common for advertisements to stage or edit pictures of food to make it look more enticing, but in these cases the ghost kitchens are showing people pictures of food that literally doesn't exist, and looks nothing like the actual items they're selling, sometimes because the faulty AI is producing physically impossible food items. [...] Some ghost kitchens exist as unmarked commercial kitchens with no actual restaurant you can visit that simply fulfill orders for a variety of brands that only exist on the food delivery services. Other ghost kitchens piggyback on existing, real restaurant kitchens to fulfill orders for those brands that exist only on food delivery apps.

[The food from a business on DoorDash called Pasta Lovers] actually comes from Tony's Pizzeria in North Brooklyn, which also fulfills orders for a cheesesteak brand called Philly Cheez, a hero sandwich brand called Hero Mania, and a wrap brand called That's A Wrap. All of these brands deliver food from different ghost kitchens across the country, and all of them feature the same type of AI-generated images to promote their food, some of which looks ridiculous. [...]

"We don't allow the use of AI-generated images and if we find a merchant is using any, we will remove those images from their menu," Grubhub, which also operates Seamless, told me in an email. However, at the time of writing the AI-generated images on Seamless I sent the company are still live on its site. "We know how important it is for diners to have realistic expectations of what they are ordering and should expect to receive, which is why we share image guidelines with our partners and our system reviews image submissions before they're allowed on our platform." "DoorDash is committed to showcasing realistic representations of meals that customers would receive when ordering online," DoorDash told me in an email. "Showcasing high-quality, accurate, and realistic menu images is crucial for maintaining customer trust and generating sales through DoorDash Marketplace." "This is all incredibly depressing," concludes Maiberg. "A local pizzeria can't get by unless it makes sandwiches for ghost kitchen brands, the people who make a living taking photographs of food are being displaced by AI tools, and gigantic food delivery apps are still making money by taking a cut from restaurants and screwing over gig delivery drivers."

"AI-generated images of food that people can order and eat finally brings us to a shockingly literal manifestation of Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra. Baudrillard would say the Spicy Philly Cheese from Philly Cheez is "never that which conceals the truth -- it is the truth which conceals that there is none."

Bloomberg News: Apple is canceling a decade-long effort to build an electric car, according to people with knowledge of the matter, abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the company. Apple made the disclosure internally Tuesday, surprising the nearly 2,000 employees working on the project, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the announcement wasn't public.

The decision was shared by Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, a vice president in charge of the effort, according to the people. The two executives told staffers that the project will begin winding down and that many employees on the team working on the car -- known as the Special Projects Group, or SPG -- will be shifted to the artificial intelligence division under executive John Giannandrea. Those employees will focus on generative AI projects, an increasingly key priority for the company. The Apple car team also has several hundred hardware engineers and car designers. It's possible that they will be able to apply for jobs on other Apple teams. There will be layoffs, but it's unclear how many.

The decision to ultimately wind down the project is a bombshell for the company, ending a multibillion-dollar effort that would have vaulted Apple into a whole new industry. The tech giant started working on a car around 2014, setting its sights on a fully autonomous electric vehicle with a limousine-like interior and voice-guided navigation. But the project struggled nearly from the start, with Apple changing the team's leadership and strategy several times. Lynch and Williams took over the undertaking a few years ago -- following the departure of Doug Field, now a senior executive at Ford Motor.

Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, 404Media reported Tuesday, citing a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documents. From the report: The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we've reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms' parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent. The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn't supposed to. It is not clear from Gage's post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent.

OpenAI has asked a federal judge to dismiss parts of the New York Times' copyright lawsuit against it, arguing that the newspaper "hacked" its chatbot ChatGPT and other AI systems to generate misleading evidence for the case. From a report: OpenAI said in a filing in Manhattan federal court on Monday that the Times caused the technology to reproduce its material through "deceptive prompts that blatantly violate OpenAI's terms of use."

"The allegations in the Times's complaint do not meet its famously rigorous journalistic standards," OpenAI said. "The truth, which will come out in the course of this case, is that the Times paid someone to hack OpenAI's products." OpenAI did not name the "hired gun" who it said the Times used to manipulate its systems and did not accuse the newspaper of breaking any anti-hacking laws.

AI is likely to replace or at least lend a hand in tasks that take up almost three-quarters of the time bank employees now spend working. From a report: That's the conclusion of a new analysis by consultancy Accenture, which said banking has the potential to benefit more from the technology than any other industry. Just 27% of employees' time currently has a low potential of being transformed, according to the analysis. "There is a reinvention that is happening across banks, a way for firms to step back and re-evaluate ways of working," Keri Smith, global banking data and AI lead at Accenture, said in an interview.

The release of ChatGPT more than a year ago prompted many firms to boost hiring for AI-related positions and test more uses for generative AI, which can summarize documents, write emails and churn out responses to users' questions. The world's biggest banks have been experimenting, spurred by the promise that the technology will boost staffers' productivity and cut costs. "Every bank needs to think through their talent strategy, and how to take this technology to scale," Smith said. At Citigroup, all 40,000 coders will have the ability to experiment with different AI technologies by the end of March. Analysts at Bank of New York Mellon can wake up two hours later to write their research, because AI technology can create a rough draft and prepare related data for them overnight, Chief Executive Officer Robin Vince said on an earnings call last month.

Alphabet's Google Cloud on Monday ramped up its criticism of Microsoft's cloud computing practices, saying its rival is seeking a monopoly that would harm the development of emerging technologies such as generative AI. From a report: "We worry about Microsoft wanting to flex their decade-long practices where they had a lot of monopoly on the on-premise software before and now they are trying to push that into cloud now," Google Cloud Vice President Amit Zavery said in an interview. "So they are creating this whole walled garden, which is completely controlled and owned by Microsoft, and customers who want to do any of this stuff, you have to go to Microsoft only," he said.

"If Microsoft cloud doesn't remain open, we will have issues and long-term problems, even in next generation technologies like AI as well, because Microsoft is forcing customers to go to Azure in many ways," Zavery said, referring to Microsoft's cloud computing platform. He urged antitrust regulators to act. "I think regulators need to provide some kind of guidance as well as maybe regulations which prevent the way Microsoft is building the Azure cloud business, not allow your on-premise monopoly to bring it into the cloud monopoly," Zavery said.

Maker Roni Bandini developed a Raspberry Pi project to address his neighbors' loud reggaeton music by creating an AI-driven system that distorts audio on nearby Bluetooth speakers when reggaeton is detected. Tom's Hardware reports: Powering this Bluetooth jamming device is a Raspberry Pi 3 B+. It's connected to a DFRobot OLED display panel, which has a resolution of 128 x 32px. Audio is observed using a USB microphone, while a push button handles when the system will perform a check to listen for any potential reggaeton. According to Bandini, the Pi is running Raspberry Pi OS. The AI system driving the machine learning aspects of the design is Edge Impulse. With this, Bandini was able to train the Pi to listen for music and more specifically identify whether the song playing is classifiable as reggaeton or not. The official project page is available at Hackster.

During a briefing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Meghana Patwardhan, VP of Commercial Mobility at Dell Technology, told The Register that while the immediate future would consist of two worlds -- one with AI hardware and one without -- "every PC is going to be an AI PC in the longer term." From the report: In terms of new hardware, Dell used the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona to show off new versions of its Surface-baiting Latitude 7350 convertible -- "the world's most serviceable commercial detachable," according to the company -- and its workstation-class Precision 3680 tower. Other devices in the Precision range include mobile workstations and the 3280 Compact Form Factor PC. Dell was also determined to present itself as a leader in hybrid working with the Premier Wireless ANC headset, replete with AI-based noise cancellation.

Duringt our talk, AI was never far from the lips of Dell's spokespeople as the company talked up the energy efficiency and future-proofing it saw in dedicated AI hardware, such as Neural Processing Units (NPUs) that are increasingly cropping up in CPUs. To illustrate the point, Dell boatsed about how much more efficient background blurring is on video calls when AI hardware is running compared to when it isn't. Hopefully, Microsoft will soon deliver a version of Windows capable of demonstrating a use for AI hardware that is more than hiding distractions in the background. Further reading: AI PCs To Account for Nearly 60% of All PC Shipments by 2027, IDC Says

Microsoft has struck a deal with French AI startup Mistral as it seeks to broaden its involvement in the fast-growing industry beyond OpenAI. From a report: The US tech giant will provide the 10-month-old Paris-based company with help in bringing its AI models to market. Microsoft will also take a minor stake in Mistral, although the financial details have not been disclosed. The partnership makes Mistral the second company to provide commercial language models available on Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform. Microsoft has already invested about $13 billion in San Francisco-based OpenAI, an alliance that is being reviewed by competition watchdogs in the US, EU and UK. Other Big Tech rivals, such as Google and Amazon, are also investing heavily in building generative AI -- software that can produce text, images and code in seconds -- which analysts believe has the capacity to shake up industries across the world. WSJ adds: On Monday, Mistral plans to announce a new AI model, called Mistral Large, that Mensch said can perform some reasoning tasks comparably with GPT-4, OpenAI's most advanced language model to date, and Gemini Ultra, Google's new model. Mensch said his new model cost less than 20 million euros, the equivalent of roughly $22 million, to train. By contrast OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said last year after the release of GPT-4 that training his company's biggest models cost "much more than" $50 million to $100 million.

theodp writes: Asked at the recent World Government Summit in Dubai what people should focus on when it comes to education, what should they learn, and how they should educate their kids and their societies, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made a counterintuitive break from tech CEOs advising youngsters to learn how to code. Huang argued that, even at this early stage of the AI revolution, programming is no longer a vital skill. With coding taken care of by AI, Huang suggested humans can instead focus on more valuable expertise like biology, education, manufacturing, or farming

From the video: "You probably recall over the course of the last 10 years, 15 years, almost everybody who sits on a stage like this would tell you it is vital that your children learn computer science, everybody should learn how to program, and in fact it's almost exactly the opposite. It is our job to create computing technology such that nobody has to program and that the programming language, it's human, everybody in the world is now a programmer. This is the miracle, this is the miracle of artificial intelligence. For the very first time, we have closed the gap, the technology divide has been completely closed and it's the reason why so many people can engage artificial intelligence. It is the reason why every single government, every single industrial conference, every single company is talking about artificial intelligence today. Because for the very first time you can imagine everybody in your company being a technologist.

"And so, this is a tremendous time for all of you to realize that the technology divide has been closed. Or another way to say it, the technology leadership of other countries has now been reset. The countries, the people that understand how to solve a domain problem in digital biology, or in education of young people, or in manufacturing or in farming, those people who understand domain expertise now can utilize technology that is readily available to you. You now have a computer that will do what you tell it to do to help automate your work, to amplify your productivity, to make you more efficient. And so, I think that this is just a tremendous time. The impact of course is great and your imperative to activate and take advantage of the technology is absolutely immediate. And also to realize that to engage AI is a lot easier now than at any time in the history of computing. It is vital that we upskill everyone and the upskilling process, I believe, will be delightful, surprising, to realize that this computer can perform all these things that you're instructing it to do and doing it so easily."

Huang's words come as tech-backed nonprofit Code.org-- which is lobbying to make CS a high school graduation requirement in all 50 states -- hedges its bets by also including AI usage as part of its mission through its new TeachAI initiative (trademark pending). Interestingly, conspicuous by its absence from the Who's Who of tech giants on the advisory committee for the Code.org staffed-and-operated TeachAI is Nvidia (Nvidia is also missing from the list of Code.org donors). So, is it time to revisit the question of Is AI an Excuse for Not Learning To Code?

OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Jeff Bezos are all part of a pack of investors in a business "developing human-like robots," reports Bloomberg, "according to people with knowledge of the situation..."

At the startup — which is named "Figure" — engineers "are working on a robot that looks and moves like a human. The company has said it hopes its machine, called Figure 01, will be able to perform dangerous jobs that are unsuitable for people and that its technology will help alleviate labor shortages." Figure is raising about $675 million in a funding round that carries a pre-money valuation of roughly $2 billion, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Through his firm Explore Investments LLC, Bezos has committed $100 million. Microsoft is investing $95 million, while Nvidia and an Amazon.com Inc.-affiliated fund are each providing $50 million... Other technology companies are involved as well. Intel Corp.'s venture capital arm is pouring in $25 million, and LG Innotek is providing $8.5 million. Samsung's investment group, meanwhile, committed $5 million. Backers also include venture firms Parkway Venture Capital, which is investing $100 million, and Align Ventures, which is providing $90 million...

The AI robotics industry has been busy lately. Earlier this year, OpenAI-backed Norwegian robotics startup 1X Technologies AS raised $100 million. Vancouver-based Sanctuary AI is developing a humanoid robot called Phoenix. And Tesla Inc. is working on a robot called Optimus, with Elon Musk calling it one of his most important projects. Agility Robotics, which Amazon backed in 2022, has bots in testing at one of the retailer's warehouses. Bloomberg calls the investments in Figure "part of a scramble to find new applications for artificial intelligence."

The Washington Post reports: Google's self-driving car company, Waymo, is hitting resistance in its quest to expand 24/7 robotaxi service to other parts of California, including a series of incidents that have fed public officials' safety concerns about the vehicles coming to their cities. Over eight days in February, for example, a Waymo vehicle smashed into a closing gate while exiting the University of Southern California's campus; the next day, another collided with a cyclist in San Francisco. Later that week, a mob of people vandalized and lit one of its cars on fire. Days later, the company announced a voluntary recall of its software for an incident involving a pickup truck in Phoenix. [Though it occurred three months ago, the Post reports that after the initial contact between the vehicles, "A second Waymo vehicle made contact with the pickup truck a few minutes later."]

This string of events — none of which resulted in serious injuries — comes after Waymo's main competitor, General Motors-owned Cruise, recalled its fleet of driverless cars last year... [Waymo] is now the lone company trying to expand 24/7 robotaxi service around California, despite sharp resistance from local officials. "Waymo has become the standard-bearer for the entire robotaxi industry for better or for worse," said David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative. While Waymo's incidents are "nowhere near what Cruise is accused of doing, there is a crisis of confidence in autonomous vehicle companies related to safety right now."

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) delayed deciding whether Waymo could expand its service to include a portion of a major California highway and also Los Angeles and San Mateo counties, pending "further staff review," according to the regulator's website. While Waymo said the delay is a part of the commission's "standard and robust review process," the postponement comes as officials from other localities fear becoming like San Francisco — where self-driving cars have disrupted emergency scenes, held up traffic and frustrated residents who are learning to share public roads with robot cars... Zipper said it is a notable disparity that "the companies are saying the technology is supposed to be a godsend for urban life, and it's pretty striking that the leaders of these urban areas really don't want them," he said.
Waymo offers ride-hailing services in San Francisco and Phoenix — as well as some free rides in Los Angeles, according to the article. It also cites a December report from Waymo estimated that overich 7.1 million miles of testing, there were 17 fewer injuries and 20 fewer police-reported crashes "compared to if human drivers with the benchmark crash rate would have driven the same distance in the areas we operate."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In a press release written with help from ChatGPT, Match Group announced an enterprise agreement with the AI chatbot's maker, OpenAI. The new agreement includes over 1,000 enterprise licenses for the dating app giant and home to Tinder, Match, OkCupid, Hinge and others. The AI tech will be used to help Match Group employees with work-related tasks, the company says, and come as part of Match's $20 million-plus bet on AI in 2024. [...] As for the news itself, Match Group says it will begin using the AI tech, and specifically ChatGPT-4, to aid with coding, design, analysis, build templates, and other daily tasks, including, as you can tell, communications. To keep its corporate data protected, only trained and licensed Match Group employees will have access to OpenAI's tools, it noted.

Before being able to use these tools, Match Group employees will also have to undergo mandatory training that focuses on responsible use, the technology's capabilities, as well as its limitations. The use will be guided by the company's existing privacy practices and AI principles, too. The company declined to share the cost of the agreement or how it will impact the tech giant's bottom line, but Match believes that the AI tools will make teams more productive. Match execs recently spoke of the company's plans for AI during the company's fourth-quarter earnings, noting that, this year, the app maker will use AI technology to both evolve its existing products and build new ones. The company's Shareholder letter explained how AI could help to improve various aspects of the dating app journey. For instance, it could help with profile creation, where Match is testing features like an AI-powered photo picker, and generative AI for help making bios. The company said that AI will also improve its matching abilities and post-match guidance, in areas like conversation starters, nudges, and offering date ideas.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Hollywood Reporter: Over the past four years, Tyler Perry had been planning an $800 million expansion of his studio in Atlanta, which would have added 12 soundstages to the 330-acre property. Now, however, those ambitions are on hold -- thanks to the rapid developments he's seeing in the realm of artificial intelligence, including OpenAI's text-to-video model Sora, which debuted Feb. 15 and stunned observers with its cinematic video outputs. "Being told that it can do all of these things is one thing, but actually seeing the capabilities, it was mind-blowing," he said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday, noting that his productions might not have to travel to locations or build sets with the assistance of the technology.

As a business owner, Perry sees the opportunity in these developments, but as an employer, fellow actor and filmmaker, he also wants to raise the alarm. In an interview between shoots Thursday, Perry explained his concerns about the technology's impact on labor and why he wants the industry to come together to tackle AI: "There's got to be some sort of regulations in order to protect us. If not, I just don't see how we survive." What in particular was shocking to you about its capabilities?

Perry: I no longer would have to travel to locations. If I wanted to be in the snow in Colorado, it's text. If I wanted to write a scene on the moon, it's text, and this AI can generate it like nothing. If I wanted to have two people in the living room in the mountains, I don't have to build a set in the mountains, I don't have to put a set on my lot. I can sit in an office and do this with a computer, which is shocking to me. It makes me worry so much about all of the people in the business. Because as I was looking at it, I immediately started thinking of everyone in the industry who would be affected by this, including actors and grip and electric and transportation and sound and editors, and looking at this, I'm thinking this will touch every corner of our industry.

How are you thinking about approaching the threat that AI poses to certain job categories at your studio and on your productions?

Perry: Everything right now is so up in the air. It's so malleable. The technology's moving so quickly. I feel like everybody in the industry is running a hundred miles an hour to try and catch up, to try and put in guardrails and to try and put in safety belts to keep livelihoods afloat. But me, just like every other studio in town, we're all trying to figure it all out. I think we're all trying to find the answers as we go, and it's changing every day -- and it's not just our industry, but it's every industry that AI will be affecting, from accountants to architects. If you look at it across the world, how it's changing so quickly, I'm hoping that there's a whole government approach to help everyone be able to sustain.

You can read the full interview here.

An anonymous reader shares a report: News publishers are worried -- with good reason -- about changes coming to Google Search. AI-generated content replacing links on some of the most valuable space on the internet, in particular, has left media types with a lot of questions, starting with "is this going to be a traffic-destroying nightmare?" The News filter disappearing from Google search results for some users this week won't help publishers sleep any easier. Google confirmed some users were not seeing the News filter as part of ongoing testing. "We're testing different ways to show filters on Search and as a result, a small subset of users were temporarily unable to access some of them," a Google spokesperson confirmed via email.

Humane announced that its AI Pin would start shipping in March, but there's been a small delay. From a report: Early adopters are now being told orders will arrive in mid-April at the earliest, according to a video update from Humane staffer Sam Sheffer and emails we saw in Humane's official Discord channel. On the plus side, the company says it'll now throw in three months of its pricy $24-a-month subscription for free with the $699 pin -- and will do so for any other customers who buy one before March 31st, too.