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Grok chatbot silenced as even Musk saw how awful it was

X owner Elon Musk recently implemented changes to the platform’s AI chatbot Grok, explicitly telling it not to trust mainstream media and to be less politically correct. Obviously there was no way anyone could possibly predict how that would turn out, so it’s a complete shock that Musk has been forced to silence it … Musk recently decided it would be a good idea to give Grok explicit instructions to be less “politically correct” in its responses. X users have been sharing a wide range of antis

Prime Day deal: Save up to $930 on Beatbot’s AquaSense 2 robot pool cleaners

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority Nobody loves scrubbing their pool in the blazing heat, but Prime Day deals are making it easier to leave that chore to a robot. Beatbot is offering big discounts across its AquaSense 2 series, with up to $930 off select models, including $711 off the flagship AquaSense 2 Ultra. Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra for $2,839 ($711 off) The AquaSense 2 Ultra is the world’s first AI-powered 5-in-1 robotic pool cleaner. It combines an AI camera with 27 sensors to precisel

The Beatbot Robot Pool Cleaner Is at Its Lowest Price Ever for Prime Day

Cleaning and maintaining a pool is time-consuming and expensive. Some estimates put the yearly cost at anywhere from $1,000 to $6,000 or more, all for the chance to bask in the sun next to a clean pool. If you've ever thought about offloading the task to a robot, you're in luck, because the Beatbox Aquasense 2 Pro is on sale for 32% off. That puts it at its lowest price ever. We buried the lede a little bit, so let's back up a bit. One of these pool cleaning robots retails for $2,899, and with

How Meta's new AI chatbot could strike up a conversation with you

Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images Despite a major usage and monetization gap, Meta, like many AI companies, is going all in on AI chatbots -- even giving them the ability to strike up a conversation with you, unprompted. According to a report from Business Insider published last week, leaked documents indicate the company is now building AI chatbots that proactively initiate conversations with users. The new feature is intended to boost user engagement and retention at a time when many leading t

Prime Day Deal: Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra robotic pool cleaner now 20% off!

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority Summer should be about relaxation, not scrubbing your pool. Thankfully, Beatbot’s AquaSense 2 Ultra — powered by HybridSense AI pool mapping and eco-friendly ClearWater technology — is now seeing massive Prime Day savings. Get the Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra for $2,839 ($711 off) The AquaSense 2 is already one of the best pool cleaners you can buy, but it’s constantly getting better, too. Need a clean pool quickly? The AquaSense 2 Ultra’s newly added AI Quick

OpenAI Says It's Hired a Forensic Psychiatrist as Its Users Keep Sliding Into Mental Health Crises

Among the strangest twists in the rise of AI has been growing evidence that it's negatively impacting the mental health of users, with some even developing severe delusions after becoming obsessed with the chatbot. One intriguing detail from our most recent story about this disturbing trend is OpenAI's response: it says it's hired a full-time clinical psychiatrist with a background in forensic psychiatry to help research the effects of its AI products on users' mental health. It's also consulti

Meta has found another way to keep you engaged: Chatbots that message you first

Imagine you’re messaging some friends on the Facebook Messenger app or WhatsApp, and you get an unsolicited message from an AI chatbot that’s obsessed with films. “I hope you’re having a harmonious day!” it writes. “I wanted to check in and see if you’ve discovered any new favorite soundtracks or composers recently. Or perhaps you’d like some recommendations for your next movie night? Let me know, and I’ll be happy to help!” That’s a real example of what a sample AI persona named “The Maestro

Take the tediousness out of pool care with the Beatbot AquaSense 2 series

Summer is in full swing, and jumping in your pool to stay cool during those sweltering days sounds ideal. Of course, keeping your outdoor pool open for the entire season also means hours and hours of tedious maintenance and cleaning. That’s where Beatbot steps in! With the Aquasense 2 series of automatic robot pool cleaners handling the chore of pool care, you’ll now be able to enjoy more time in the water than outside of it. Here’s everything you need to know. Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra – The

Chatbot Flow Editor – Visual tool for designing conversation flows

Chatbot Flow Editor Visual development tool for creating chatbot conversation flows A GUI tool that opens in your browser. Design, test, and export chatbot conversation flows as JSON. Quick Start # Install as development dependency npm install --save-dev @enumura/chatbot-flow-editor # Launch the visual editor npx @enumura/chatbot-flow-editor Your browser will automatically open with the visual flow editor at http://localhost:3001 . Installation & Usage Method 1: Using npx npm install --s

"Truly Psychopathic": Concern Grows Over "Therapist" Chatbots Leading Users Deeper Into Mental Illness

As of April, according to an analysis by the Harvard Business Review, the number one use of AI chatbots is now therapy. The more we learn about what that looks like in practice, the less it sounds like a good idea. That's not entirely surprising: even AI experts remain hazy on exactly how the tech actually works, top companies in the industry still struggle to control their chatbots, and a wave of reporting has found that AI is pushing vulnerable people into severe mental health crises. So it'

Researchers Scanned the Brains of ChatGPT Users and Found Something Deeply Alarming

Image by Getty / Futurism Studies Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found some startling results in the brain scans of ChatGPT users, adding to the growing body of evidence suggesting that AI is having a serious — and barely-understood — impact on its users' cognition even as it explodes in popularity worldwide. In a new paper currently awaiting peer review, researchers from the school's storied Media Lab documented the vast differences between the brain activity of

Conspiracy Theorists Are Creating Special AIs to Agree With Their Bizarre Delusions

Conspiracy theorists are using AI chatbots not only to convince themselves of their harebrained beliefs, but to recruit other users on social media. As independent Australian news site Crikey reports, conspiracy theorists are having extensive conversations with AI chatbots to "prove" their beliefs. Then, they post the transcripts and videos on social media as "proof" to others. According to the outlet's fascinating reporting, there are already several bots specifically trained on harebrained c

The Download: talking dirty with DeepSeek, and the risks and rewards of calorie restriction

AI companions like Replika are designed to engage in intimate exchanges, but people use general-purpose chatbots for sex talk too, despite their stricter content moderation policies. Now new research shows that not all chatbots are equally willing to talk dirty. DeepSeek is the easiest to convince. But other AI chatbots can be enticed too. Huiqian Lai, a PhD student at Syracuse University, found vast differences in how mainstream models process sexual queries, from steadfast rejection to perf

How a 30-year-old techno-thriller predicted our digital isolation

How much will you trust an AI chatbot powered by Meta to be your friend? Answers to this may vary. Even if you won’t, other people are already making close connections with “AI companions” or “falling in love” with ChatGPT. The rise of “cognitive offloading”—of people asking AI to do their critical thinking for them—is already well underway, with many high school and college students admitting to a deep reliance on the technology. Beyond the obvious concern that AI “friends” are hallucinating,

Nation Cringes as Man Goes on TV to Declare That He's in Love With ChatGPT

Public declarations of emotion are one thing — but going on national television to declare that you're in love with your AI girlfriend is another entirely. In an interview with CBS News, a man named Chris Smith described himself as a former AI skeptic who found himself becoming emotionally attached to a version of ChatGPT he customized to flirt with him — a situation that startled both him and his human partner, with whom he shares a child. Towards the end of 2024, as Smith told the broadcaste

How AI chatbots keep people coming back

Chatbots are increasingly looking to keep people chatting, using familiar tactics that we’ve already seen lead to negative consequences. Sycophancy can make AI chatbots respond in a way that’s overly agreeable or flattering. And while having a digital hype person might not seem like a dangerous thing, it is actually a tactic used by tech companies to keep users talking with their bots and returning to their platforms.

Shortcuts app has chatbot-like Apple Intelligence powers in iOS 26

Apple Intelligence doesn’t (yet) offer an official chatbot mode, but in iOS 26 Apple will let power users get a chatbot-style experience via the Shortcuts app. Here’s how it works. New Shortcuts feature gives you chatbot-like responses from Apple Intelligence iOS 26 has a new feature in the Shortcuts app that lets you tap directly into Apple Intelligence’s LLMs with any custom query. One surprise benefit of this feature, as highlighted by AppleInsider, is that Shortcuts’ responses sound a lot

Character.AI and Meta "therapy" chatbots spark FTC complaint over unlicensed mental health advice

What just happened? Chatbots can do a lot of things, but they're not licensed therapists. A coalition consisting of digital rights and mental health groups isn't happy that products from Meta and Character.AI allegedly engage in the "unlicensed practice of medicine," and has submitted a complaint to the FTC urging regulators to investigate. The complaint, which has also been submitted to Attorneys General and Mental Health Licensing Boards of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, claims t

Spiraling with ChatGPT

In Brief ChatGPT seems to have pushed some users towards delusional or conspiratorial thinking, or at least reinforced that kind of thinking, according to a recent feature in The New York Times. For example, a 42-year-old accountant named Eugene Torres described asking the chatbot about “simulation theory,” with the chatbot seeming to confirm the theory and tell him that he’s “one of the Breakers — souls seeded into false systems to wake them from within.” ChatGPT reportedly encouraged Torres

AI as Your Therapist? 3 Things That Worry Experts and 3 Tips to Stay Safe

Amid the many AI chatbots and avatars at your disposal these days, you'll find all kinds of characters to talk to: fortune tellers, style advisers, even your favorite fictional characters. But you'll also likely find characters purporting to be therapists, psychologists or just bots willing to listen to your woes. There's no shortage of generative AI bots claiming to help with your mental health but you go that route at your own risk. Large language models trained on a wide range of data can be

ChatGPT Tells Users to Alert the Media That It Is Trying to ‘Break’ People: Report

ChatGPT’s sycophancy, hallucinations, and authoritative-sounding responses are going to get people killed. That seems to be the inevitable conclusion presented in a recent New York Times report that follows the stories of several people who found themselves lost in delusions that were facilitated, if not originated, through conversations with the popular chatbot. In the report, the Times highlights at least one person whose life ended after being pulled into a false reality by ChatGPT. A 35-yea

They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling

“You want to know the ironic thing? I wrote my son’s obituary using ChatGPT,” Mr. Taylor said. “I had talked to it for a while about what had happened, trying to find more details about exactly what he was going through. And it was beautiful and touching. It was like it read my heart and it scared the shit out of me.” ‘Approach These Interactions With Care’ I reached out to OpenAI, asking to discuss cases in which ChatGPT was reinforcing delusional thinking and aggravating users’ mental health

ChatGPT Just Got 'Absolutely Wrecked' at Chess, Losing to a 1970s-Era Atari 2600

OpenAI's ChatGPT has some major AI chatbot competitors in the market: Gemini, Copilot, Claude. Now add to that list the Atari 2600. The OG video game console, which was first released in 1977, was used in an engineer's experiment to see how it would fare playing chess against the AI chatbot. By using a software emulator to run Atari's 1979 game Video Chess, Citrix engineer Robert Caruso said he was able to set up a match between ChatGPT and the 46-year-old game. The matchup did not go well for

AI chatbots tell users what they want to hear, and that’s problematic

The world’s leading artificial intelligence companies are stepping up efforts to deal with a growing problem of chatbots telling people what they want to hear. OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic are all working on reining in sycophantic behavior by their generative AI products that offer over-flattering responses to users. The issue, stemming from how the large language models are trained, has come into focus at a time when more and more people have adopted the chatbots not only at work as

ChatGPT "Absolutely Wrecked" at Chess by Atari 2600 Console From 1977

Despite all its advances, ChatGPT is seemingly still less smart — at certain tasks, at least — than an Atari game console from almost 50 years ago. In a post on LinkedIn, Citrix software engineer Robert Caruso explained how the OpenAI chatbot "got absolutely wrecked" by an Atari 2600 running Atari Chess, a game for the system released in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was still president. Launched in 1977, the Atari 2600 — also marketed at the time as the Atari Video Computer System — popularized at-

People Are Asking ChatGPT for Relationship Advice and It’s Ending in Disaster

Despite ChatGPT's well-documented issues, people are using it to advise them on relationship issues — and it's going about as well as you'd expect. In a new editorial, Vice advice columnist Sammi Caramela said she had been blissfully unaware of the ChatGPT-as-therapist trend until someone wrote into her work email about it earlier this year. Back in February, an unnamed man told the writer that his girlfriend refused to stop using the chatbot for dating advice and would even bring up things it