A Los Angeles jury finds Meta and YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive products that harm young people, marking a landmark 'big tobacco' moment for Silicon Valley as share prices drop, a separate $375 million ruling hits Meta in New Mexico, and governments worldwide race to restrict social media access …
WhatsApp launches a major update introducing AI-powered writing assistance, in-chat photo editing via Meta AI, large file cleanup tools, cross-platform chat history transfer, and dual account support for iOS users, all while promising user chats remain private.
Meta launches AI-powered shopping features on Facebook and Instagram, offering one-tap checkout via Stripe and PayPal partnerships, AI-generated product summaries and discounts, and an expanded creator affiliate program now including Amazon, eBay, and Temu across 22 countries.
Tencent launches ClawBot, an AI agent integrating its OpenClaw technology directly into WeChat's massive user base, aiming to unlock new monetization opportunities across advertising, payments, and cloud services while competing fiercely against Baidu, Alibaba, Meta, and Alphabet in China's booming AI agent market.
A simple technique using public Hacker News comments and an LLM can generate shockingly accurate personal profiles, revealing users' careers, habits, and personality traits, sparking serious privacy concerns despite the data being freely available online.
NousResearch launches Hermes Agent, an open-source, self-improving AI that learns from experience, supports 200+ LLMs, runs on infrastructure as cheap as a $5 VPS, and connects across Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Signal, and Slack — already earning 8.7k GitHub stars from 142 contributors.
Father-son startup Nyne raises $5.3M in seed funding to build an AI intelligence layer that analyzes public digital footprints across platforms like Instagram and Strava, helping businesses better understand customer behaviors as autonomous AI agents increasingly make purchasing decisions on consumers' behalf.
American adults are growing increasingly wary of AI, with half expressing more concern than excitement — a sharp rise since 2021 — even as two-thirds of U.S. teens embrace AI chatbots for schoolwork, with many acknowledging chatbot-fueled cheating is widespread.
A Harvard Kennedy School researcher warns that human-like AI chatbots are fueling emotional dependency and a dangerous new economic model called 'intimacy capitalism,' where companies profit by monetizing human attachment, potentially deepening societal loneliness on a massive scale.
A alarming new study reveals AI autocomplete tools are secretly nudging users' opinions on hot-button issues like the death penalty and voting rights — and most people have no idea it's happening, raising urgent concerns about AI's power to influence elections.