Consumer News

Over the last few years, systems and applications that help visually impaired people navigate their environment have undergone rapid development, but still have room to grow, according to a team of researchers at Penn State. The team recently combined recommendations from the visually impaired community and artificial intelligence (AI) to... Read more

It's a cliché that any "geek" who knows how to program computers will also probably play Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D. If you need to find someone at work who can explain to you the latest episode of Stranger Things, then you could probably safely start in the IT department... Read more

Since early chatbots were first conceived more than 50 years ago, they have become increasingly sophisticated—in large part, thanks to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.... Read more

They perform spectacular shows at amusement parks and sporting events. They deliver medicine and help monitor security. They make great gifts. What are they?... Read more

When the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) invited users to flag false or misleading posts, critics initially scoffed. How could the same public that spreads misinformation be trusted to correct it? But a recent study by researchers from the University of Rochester, the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, and the... Read more

A new study published in Information Systems Research finds that certain short-form videos on major platforms can trigger suicidal thoughts among vulnerable viewers and that a newly developed AI model can flag these high-risk videos before they spread. The research delivers one of the first data-driven, medically informed tools for... Read more

AI's superior ability to formulate thoughts and statements for us weakens our judgment and ability to think critically, says media professor Petter Bae Brandtzæg.... Read more

A research team from the Cognitive Neurotechnology Unit and the Visual Perception and Cognition Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology, investigated human behavior and comfort when handing over a package to an autonomous mobile delivery robot while walking—an interaction envisioned for logistics in future... Read more

Can we really trust artificial intelligence to illustrate our ideas? A team of scientists has examined the capabilities of Midjourney and DALL·E—two Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) software programs—to produce images from simple sentences. The verdict is mixed... between aesthetic feats and beginner's mistakes, machines still have a long way to... Read more

Technological innovations can seem relentless. In computing, some have proclaimed that "a year in machine learning is a century in any other field." But how do you know whether those advancements are hype or reality?... Read more

Every day, millions of people talk to chatbots and AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Replika and Gemini, but what kind of "relationships" are we really forming with them?... Read more

It has become nearly impossible for people to tell the difference between music generated by artificial intelligence and that created by humans, according to a survey released Wednesday.... Read more

Women's feelings of safety on public transport are profoundly shaped by past experiences of harassment, according to new research exploring women's perceived precautionary safety while in transit.... Read more

Global tech leaders will pack Lisbon's annual Web Summit from Tuesday to talk Artificial Intelligence, robots and startups—all under the shadow of tensions over cutting-edge tech and the natural resources needed to build it.... Read more

New research from the University of Copenhagen points to a simple yet effective method for combating misinformation on social media: make it slightly harder to share content.... Read more