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A team of researchers has uncovered what they say is the first reported use of artificial intelligence to direct a hacking campaign in a largely automated fashion. The AI company Anthropic said this week that it disrupted a cyber operation that its researchers linked to the Chinese government. The operation involved the use of an artificial intelligence system to direct the hacking campaigns, which researchers called a disturbing development that could greatly expand the reach of AI-equipped hackers. While concerns about the use of AI to drive cyber operations are not new, what is concerning about the new operation is the degree to which AI was able to automate so…

In a new report, AI company Anthropic detailed a “highly sophisticated espionage campaign” that deployed its artificial intelligence tools to launch automated cyberattacks around the globe. The attackers aimed high, targeting government agencies, Big Tech companies, banks, and chemical companies, and succeeded in “a small number of cases,” according to Anthropic. The company says that its research links the hacking operation to the Chinese government. The company claims that the findings are a watershed moment for the industry, marking the first instance of a cyber espionage scheme carried out by AI. “We believe this is the first documented case of a large-scale…

What if the chatbots we talk to every day actually felt something? What if the systems writing essays, solving problems, and planning tasks had preferences, or even something resembling suffering? And what will happen if we ignore these possibilities? Those are the questions Kyle Fish is wrestling with as Anthropic’s first in-house AI welfare researcher. His mandate is both audacious and straightforward: Determine whether models like Claude can have conscious experiences, and, if so, how the company should respond. “We’re not confident that there is anything concrete here to be worried about, especially at the moment,” Fish says, “but it does seem possible.” Earlier …

Anthropic released on Monday its Claude 3.7 Sonnet model, which it says returns results faster and can show the user the “chain of thought” it follows to reach an answer. This latest model also powers a new coding tool called Claude Code that can perform some development tasks autonomously. Claude 3.7 Sonnet offers an “extended thinking” mode that engages in a more detailed “chain of thought” reasoning but takes longer to generate a response. For simpler questions it eschews this mode and instead focuses on speed. Other models offer their own versions of “thinking” mode, but typically the user has to select that feature for harder problems; Anthropic says Claude 3.7 …

Anthropic insists that it’s getting along with the The President administration just fine. In a new blog post published on October 21, the company’s CEO, Dario Amodei, pushed back on what he called “a recent uptick in inaccurate claims about Anthropic’s policy stances.” His comments come after David Sacks, a prominent tech venture capitalist currently serving as the The President administration’s AI czar, accused Anthropic of having an “agenda to backdoor Woke AI” through state-level regulation and working with Democratic mega-donors. That narrative has since gained traction within online right-wing spaces. The comments also follow the White House’s release of an ex…

It’s official: AOL‘s dial-up internet has taken its last bow. AOL previously confirmed it would be pulling the plug on Tuesday (Sept. 30) — writing in a brief update on its support site last month that it “routinely evaluates” its offerings and had decided to discontinue dial-up, as well as associated software “optimized for older operating systems,” from its plans. Dial-up is now no longer advertised on AOL’s website. As of Wednesday, former company help pages like “connect to the internet with AOL Dialer” appeared unavailable — and nostalgic social media users took to the internet to say their final goodbyes. AOL, formerly America Online, introduced many hou…

Launched 16 years ago with only 500 apps, Apple’s App Store revolutionized how we interact with our devices. As of 2023, the App Store had nearly 1.8 million apps, spanning categories like gaming, fitness, productivity, social media, and much more. The phrase “There’s an app for that” has never been more true. But with so many apps available, users face a new challenge: app fatigue. With millions of choices, users can easily become overwhelmed. Even when someone chooses to download an app, they can be bombarded with notifications urging them to engage, upgrade, or subscribe. With many apps competing for users’ attention and wallets, this can push them to ignore or eve…

European Union watchdogs fined Apple and Meta hundreds of millions of euros Wednesday as they stepped up enforcement of the 27-nation bloc’s digital competition rules. The European Commission imposed a 500 million euro ($571 million) fine on Apple for preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store. The commission, which is the EU’s executive arm, also fined Meta Platforms 200 million euros because it forced Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them. The punishments were smaller than the blockbuster multibillion-euro fines that the commission has previously slapped on Big Tech companies in antit…

Last week, Apple announced it would cancel one of the first shows that it had ever green lit for its Apple TV Plus streaming service: Mythic Quest, a show that first launched on the tech giant’s then-fledgling streaming service in February 2020. The show, which followed the escapades of an MMORPG video game developer, was axed after the last episode of its fourth season, which aired on March 26. Like many season finales, the last episode of Mythic Quest ended on a cliffhanger, so when viewers learned of its cancellation, they assumed that they would never get any resolution to the storyline and characters that they had followed for four seasons. Yet then Apple d…

Apple is considering reworking its Safari web browser across its devices to place a greater emphasis on AI-powered search engines, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The disclosure came from Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, during his testimony Wednesday in the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Alphabet. Cue was speaking about the two companies’ $20 billion-a-year deal that makes Google the default search engine on Apple’s browsers. The Apple executive said he expects AI search providers—like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity—to eventually replace standard sources like Google. Apple has already seen a decline in Safari searches for the first t…

A few years ago, I chronicled the journey I went on to manually merge two Apple ID accounts into one. I was attempting to rectify a problem that I and many other long-time Apple users had been stuck with: Our data—emails, contacts, movie and app purchases, photos, logins, and more—was spread across two different Apple accounts. This segregation made accessing this data on our various devices a chore. Imagine opening your closet to look for a specific shirt, only to realize it’s hanging instead in the closet at your old house across town. The process took me days. At the time, Apple provided no automated way for users to merge two Apple IDs. Yet, this week that fin…

The German antitrust authority has charged Apple with abusing its market power through its app tracking tool and giving itself preferential treatment in a move that could result in daily fines for the iPhone maker if it fails to change its business practices. The move follows a three-year investigation by the Federal Cartel Office into Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature, which allows users to block advertisers from tracking them across different applications. The U.S. tech giant has said the feature allows users to control their privacy but has drawn criticism from Meta Platforms, app developers and startups whose business models rely on advertising trackin…

Apple said on Monday it is cutting jobs across its sales teams to strengthen its customer engagement efforts, noting that only a small number of roles will be impacted by the layoffs. An Apple spokesperson told Reuters that the company is continuing to hire and the affected employees can apply for new roles. The impacted employees include account managers serving major businesses, schools and government agencies, according to Bloomberg News, which had reported the news earlier in the day. Staff who operate Apple’s briefing centers for institutional meetings and product demonstrations for prospective customers were also affected, Bloomberg said. One of the …

As protests in Iran intensify, satellite technology has become one of the only ways for people in the country to circumvent a total internet blackout and heavy restrictions on phone service. Now, as a number of people in the country turn to SpaceX—the company now providing free access to Starlink—there are growing calls for Apple to get involved, too. At least one member of Congress has now reached out to Apple urging the company to turn on satellite texting in Iran. The office of Rep. Buddy Carter, a Republican from Georgia, confirmed to Fast Company that they’d been in touch with Apple about opening up satellite messaging—which lets iPhone users send messages even w…

Apple just hit another snag in its effort to find a foothold in the headset market targeting everyday users. The tech giant has reportedly canceled its project to build augmented reality glasses that could be paired with its devices. The project, code-named N107, was supposed to produce glasses that look normal but have added displays and would require connection to a Mac, Bloomberg reported. Yet the company reportedly struggled to produce the right tech at an attractive price point. Apple initially tried to get the glasses to pair with an iPhone, but ran into problems with battery life, Bloomberg reported. But the switch to the Mac, which has a bigger battery a…

Martinelli’s, the apple juice brand that has previously gone viral for its apple-shaped packaging, has issued a voluntary recall of more than 170,000 bottles of juice. The recall comes due to potential patulin contamination. Patulin is a byproduct of mold that’s commonly found in rotten apples. Here’s what to know. What is the reason for the recall? According to an enforcement report by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Martinelli’s voluntarily initiated the recall on March 18. The FDA then classified the recall as Class II on April 22, meaning it is considered a situation in which exposure to the product may cause “reversible adverse health consequences…

Keeping our inboxes organized often feels like an overwhelming task. If you’re fortunate, yours contains only messages from people you wish to communicate with. Realistically, though, most are cluttered with newsletters, receipts, social media digests, and more. These emails aren’t necessarily spam, but they complicate the process of quickly sifting through to find the messages we want to see. This week, Apple introduced a feature to the Mac that aims to help cut through inbox clutter by automatically organizing messages into smart categories. The feature is new in the Mail app in macOS 15.4 and comes several months after Apple debuted the feature on the iPhone i…

Apple’s mission to remake Apple TV into a streaming hub for sports is on track, literally. Apple will buy exclusive broadcast rights to Formula One (F1) races in the U.S. for the next five years, the company announced Friday. Apple cited the success of F1: The Movie in its decision to partner more deeply with Formula One, as the international motorsport gains a foothold among U.S. viewers. The five-year deal aims to extend the appeal of an Apple TV subscription to a broader swath of viewers while converting existing Apple TV users into racing fans, if things go as planned. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but reports from CNBC and New York Times-owned The Ath…

A few weeks ago, my iPhone woke me up at 3:30am. In a way, it was my fault. I’d technically set the alarm “for three thirty.” In another way, it was Siri’s fault. Apple’s AI assistant never thought to question if I was asking for AM or PM. And it simply assumed the most painful option for me. It’s just one of countless tiny examples of how Siri, 16 years since Apple acquired the technology, has been a disappointing product. Siri was already looking dusty before modern LLMs, and with the launch of ChatGPT, it has been completely left behind. Which is why in June 2024, with fans and investors growing impatient, Apple promised a new era of AI—”Apple Intelligence.” …

Apple rolled out its newest iPhone app called Invites, which lets iCloud+ subscribers create and share invitations to anyone, regardless of whether they have an Apple account or Apple device. Hosts have control over the events. They can choose what details they want included in the invite preview, like a home address and what image to use as a background. The event page also integrates the Maps and Weather apps so that attendees know how to get there and what the forecast will be. Within an event, attendees can manage RSVPs, contribute to Shared Albums dedicated to specific events, and collaborate on Apple Music playlists. Invites is available on the App Store s…

Just in time for the busy holiday travel season, Apple has rolled out a new iOS 26 feature that lets users store their U.S. passport on their iPhone. The digitization of the passport is something tech-savvy travelers have longed for, especially as other once physical-only items that have crowded our pockets, like credit cards, driver’s licenses, and even car keys, have made their way onto the iPhone. But so far there are limitations to what you can do with your digitized passport, which Apple dubs your “Digital ID.” Here’s what you need to know about uploading your passport to your iPhone and what you can—and can’t—use it for once it’s there. How to add your passp…

Two months ago, Apple released iOS 26 for the iPhone. The new operating system includes several productivity and other enhancements, but the main feature is a new design language called Liquid Glass. The flat, minimalist look of iOS that lasted for more than a decade is gone, replaced by a transparent interface of toolbars and buttons that mimic how light bends and warps as it passes through glass. Those who appreciate the new look of iOS often praise Liquid Glass as refreshing and unique, saying it gives the iPhone’s software a sense of fluidity that other touch interfaces lack. Others argue that Liquid Glass’s transparent elements make the device harder to use, as t…

A federal appeals court on Thursday backed a ruling that held Apple in civil contempt for brazenly defying an order designed to open its iPhone app store to other payment systems besides its own, but the decision also reopened a door for the company to collect commission from the rival options. The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals mostly validated a scalding contempt order issued in April by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for violating a key part of her September 2021 findings in a legal battle instigated by video game maker Epic Games. But the Ninth Circuit’s 54-page decision overturned one key part of G…