Federal prosecutors charged a UK teenager with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and other crimes in connection with the network intrusions of 47 US companies that generated more than $115 million in ransomware payments over a three-year span. A criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday (PDF) said that Thalha Jubair, 19, of London, was part of...
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New attack on ChatGPT research agent pilfers secrets from Gmail inboxes
The face-palm-worthy prompt injections against AI assistants continue. Today’s installment hits OpenAI’s Deep Research agent. Researchers recently devised an attack that plucked confidential information out of a user’s Gmail inbox and sent it to an attacker-controlled web server, with no interaction required on the part of the victim and no sign of exfiltration. Deep Research...
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How weak passwords and other failings led to catastrophic breach of Ascension
Last week, a prominent US senator called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Microsoft for cybersecurity negligence over the role it played last year in health giant Ascension’s ransomware breach, which caused life-threatening disruptions at 140 hospitals and put the medical records of 5.6 million patients into the hands of the attackers. Lost in...
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Has Britain Gone Too Far With Its Digital Controls?
British authorities have ramped up the use of facial recognition, artificial intelligence and internet regulation to address crime and other issues, stoking concerns of surveillance overreach.
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White House officials reportedly frustrated by Anthropic’s law enforcement AI limits
Anthropic’s AI models could potentially help spies analyze classified documents, but the company draws the line at domestic surveillance. That restriction is reportedly making the Trump administration angry. On Tuesday, Semafor reported that Anthropic faces growing hostility from the Trump administration over the AI company’s restrictions on law enforcement uses of its Claude models. Two...
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Social Platforms Duck Blame for Inflaming Divisions Before Charlie Kirk’s Death
After authorities said Mr. Kirk’s suspected shooter had been “radicalized” online, Meta, Reddit, TikTok and other platforms have stayed quiet — though not Elon Musk, who owns X.
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YouTube Expands its Livestreaming Tools In Push for More Live Video
The world’s largest and most influential video platform wants to persuade a lot more content creators to broadcast live.
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What Exactly Are A.I. Companies Trying to Build? Here’s a Guide.
Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and OpenAI plan to spend at least $325 billion by the end of the year in pursuit of A.I. We explain why they’re doing it.
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ChatGPT may soon require ID verification from adults, CEO says
On Tuesday, OpenAI announced plans to develop an automated age-prediction system that will determine whether ChatGPT users are over or under 18, automatically directing younger users to a restricted version of the AI chatbot. The company also confirmed that parental controls will launch by the end of September. In a companion blog post, OpenAI CEO...
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Millions turn to AI chatbots for spiritual guidance and confession
On Sunday, The New York Times reported that tens of millions of people are confessing secrets to AI chatbots trained on religious texts, with apps like Bible Chat reaching over 30 million downloads and Catholic app Hallow briefly topping Netflix, Instagram, and TikTok in Apple’s App Store. In China, people are using DeepSeek to try...