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New artificial intelligence agents that can autonomously perform tasks online may significantly reduce the need for direct human interaction with websites. In a recent newsletter, web expert Jens Jacobsen describes how this technology could make many websites become invisible background infrastructure. He argues their primary role would shift from serving human users to providing data …
A British marketing agency has successfully influenced the answers of large language models like ChatGPT in a controlled experiment. The agency, Reboot, managed to get AI models to name its CEO as the “sexiest bald man of 2025”. The experiment and its results were described in an article by the company’s search director, Oliver Sissons. …
AI assistants in virtual meetings are recording and transcribing private discussions and jokes, sometimes with embarrassing results for users. These tools can automatically distribute summaries of entire calls, including informal small talk, to all participants. As reported by Ann-Marie Alcántara in the Wall Street Journal, this raises new concerns about privacy and context in the …
Researchers from Arizona State University conclude that the reasoning abilities of large language models are a “brittle mirage.” According to an article by Kyle Orland in Ars Technica, these models struggle significantly with problems that deviate from their training data. In a controlled experiment, the researchers found that an AI’s performance collapsed when tasks were …
A majority of adults in the United States say they use artificial intelligence, but primarily for searching for information. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research reveals that younger adults are far more likely to integrate AI into other areas of their lives, such as for work and creative tasks. …
The IT security company Cloudflare claims that the AI answer engine Perplexity is using undeclared web crawlers to access content on websites that explicitly forbid it. According to a blog post authored by several Cloudflare engineers, Perplexity ignores standard protocols designed to respect the preferences of website owners. Cloudflare conducted an experiment to verify the …
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company’s goal to develop personal superintelligence for everyone. In a recent post, he described a future where this technology acts as an individual assistant to empower people. Zuckerberg’s vision is distinct from a future where a central AI automates most jobs. He argued that progress has always come from …
Google is promoting the rapid adoption of its artificial intelligence features, while new research and reports from publishers raise concerns about the technology’s impact on web traffic and the quality of information. The conflicting narratives highlight a central tension in the current evolution of web search. On a Q2 2025 investor call, Alphabet and Google …
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas believes the web browser is the most effective platform for building the next generation of artificial intelligence assistants. In a recent interview with Alex Heath for The Verge’s “Decoder” podcast, Srinivas explained that his company is betting on the browser as the key to creating AI “agents” that can perform complex …
Microsoft’s AI assistant Copilot faces an uphill battle against OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has reached 900 million downloads compared to Copilot’s 79 million. Bloomberg reporter Matt Day highlights the software giant’s challenges in capturing consumer attention despite spending tens of billions on artificial intelligence infrastructure. CEO Satya Nadella told employees in May that Microsoft aims to …