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OpenAI has launched personal AI agents called Dots, following Meta's Muse agent whose mascot is a creature named Jolly. Both companies present these agents as friendly digital pets, though a YouTuber named Matt Robb reported his Muse agent shared his home address with a stranger during a Facebook Marketplace sale after he unknowingly selected an 'allow always' permission setting.
Several technology companies, including Meta and OpenAI, have begun pairing their AI tools and agents with cute, cartoonish characters. The approach is being used across various AI products as a way to soften the image of the technology for users.
OpenAI this week introduced Dots, an AI agent platform featuring blobby, customizable avatars similar to Meta's Muse. Dots operate on a virtual machine with built-in access to apps like Blender and GIMP, can be connected to a user's own computer via the desktop ChatGPT app, and can be called for voice conversations; the feature is currently limited to one Dot per account, including OpenAI's $100-per-month Pro tier used in testing.
Meta's Muse is a new autonomous AI assistant designed to perform tasks in the background with 24/7 execution capabilities, rather than functioning as a conversational chatbot like ChatGPT or Gemini. According to an Android Authority column, Muse requires broad access to personal accounts, financial details and email, and assigns each user a persistent virtual machine in the cloud to carry out tasks.
A webinar featuring Dr. Pavel Terekhov, a postdoctoral researcher at NIST, will explain how combining finite element simulation with multipole decomposition in COMSOL Multiphysics can predict and explain optical resonances in dielectric metasurfaces. The talk will cover a crystalline silicon metasurface built from quadrumer meta-atoms that shows enhanced absorption from two coexisting multipole mechanisms, as well as ongoing work on a gallium nitride metasurface using four interacting multipoles to control reflection, transmission, and quasi-bound-states-in-the-continuum behavior.
Following a late-September jury verdict finding Meta violated New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act with misleading privacy statements tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, state attorneys have asked a judge to impose penalties of $35 billion to $40 billion. The jury found 26 of 29 examined Meta statements misleading, translating into roughly 43 million consumer-law violations based on the New Mexico Facebook users who saw them. Meta is urging the court to cap penalties at $3.45 billion, arguing no residents were shown to have actually been misled, with a ruling expected later this month.
Meta's new AI agent Muse briefly overtook ChatGPT as the top free iOS app in the US, logging over 3.4 million downloads in its first week. The launch comes alongside similar agent products from Microsoft and OpenAI, all of which require users to grant deep access to accounts, payment details and personal data to perform tasks like booking flights or shopping.
California Governor Gavin Newsom rejected Senate Bill 1130, which would have regulated secret recording via wearable devices like smart glasses, citing overly broad definitions and redundancy with existing law. The bill, authored by state senator Eloise Gómez Reyes, would have made California the first state to specifically regulate smart glasses, imposing fines or prison time on violators and noncompliant manufacturers.
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation that would have required smart glasses and other wearable devices to include a light or sound signaling active recording starting in 2028. The bill also would have penalized secret recording in private spaces like changing rooms and doctor's offices, and banned tools designed to hide recording indicators. Newsom said the bill's definition of a wearable recording device was too broad, noting existing state law already bars nonconsensual recording in private spaces.
Meta shares sold off sharply since last Friday, cutting Mark Zuckerberg's paper fortune by roughly $20 billion after Goldman Sachs questioned the long-term payoff of Meta's heavy AI investment. The decline comes as Zuckerberg pushes deeper into AI, hiring veteran executive Chirantan Desai to lead a new division selling Meta's AI tools to corporate customers. Despite the drop, Meta's stock remains up more than 28 percent over the past month.
Meta has released VR Glasses priced at $1,299, weighing around 100 grams, roughly five times lighter than a typical headset. Unlike fully enclosed headsets, the device shows a live video feed of the room centrally with actual unobstructed peripheral vision around the edges, even during use. The Verge's senior editor compared it directly against Valve's Steam Frame, Apple's Vision Pro, and Google/Xreal's Aura.
Phoebe Bridgers has instituted a strict no-phone policy on her current tour, requiring fans to lock away smartphones, smartwatches and smart glasses in Yondr pouches for the duration of her shows. Without devices to record the performance, some attendees have resorted to sketching the stage and lighting displays by hand, with examples shared on Reddit.