Consumer & Gadgets news

Consumer & Gadgets

Study explores the impact of LLMs on human creativity

Large language models (LLMs), AI systems that can process human language and generate new texts in response to written prompts, are now widely used by people worldwide to complete various tasks. These systems can be used ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Health monitoring devices at risk of being hacked, study shows

Billions of people around the world are using internet-connected medical devices to monitor their health, but could be putting themselves at risk of hackers using their data for unhealthy reasons, according to a new cybersecurity ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Storytelling study provides a window into the inner workings, ongoing limitations of generative AI tools like ChatGPT

Imagine you decide to write a short story about a protagonist who creates an artificial human and then falls in love with it. What gender is your protagonist? What about the artificial human? Would you write a moving love ...

Consumer & Gadgets

More user control may help ease negative reactions to ads on voice assistants

Voice assistants (VAs) like Alexa and Siri continue to gain popularity in households and on personal devices. According to digital trends research company Emarketer, the number of VA users will surpass 150 million in 2025. ...

Consumer & Gadgets

New tool can detect malware on Android phones

Screen readers, voice-to-text, and other accessibility features have enabled people with disabilities to use smartphones. Yet these same features make the phones more accessible to hackers, too.

Consumer & Gadgets

Exploring the hidden costs of free apps

Procrastination, sleep deprivation and reduced focus are part of the price we pay for free mobile apps. This is according to researchers at Linköping University and RISE, who have investigated the costs hidden behind the ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Q&A: Generative AI embraced faster than internet, PCs

ChatGPT's debut in November 2022 caused a near-instant sensation. It gave most users their first opportunity to try out a new type of artificial intelligence that uses existing data and published materials to create content ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Will Meta's Orion smart glasses be the next 'iPhone moment'?

Meta supremo Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Orion smart glasses, a new augmented reality (AR) prototype, at the annual Meta Connect developer conference. Ten years in the making, and still not expected on high streets until 2027, ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Amazon, Oracle shrug off lawmaker fears of abortion data sales

Amazon.com Inc., Oracle Corp. and other data providers pressed by a group of U.S. lawmakers about how they sell mobile phone location data offered assurances that the information couldn't be used to track individuals seeking ...

Internet

The metaverse isn't here yet, but it already has a long history

Nattie's metaverse romance began with anonymous texting. At first "C" would admit only to living in a nearby town. Nattie eventually learned "Clem" was a man with a solitary office job like hers. For Nattie "lived, as it ...

Consumer & Gadgets

The importance of protecting privacy in a post-Roe world

After the U.S. Supreme Court's controversial decision in June 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade and eliminate an almost 50-year federal right to abortion, data privacy advocates are sounding the alarm about the potential dangers ...

Consumer & Gadgets

From Mecca to the Vatican, exploring sacred sites with VR

Click and gape at the Vatican's Sistine Chapel ceiling up close. Click again and join thousands of pilgrims praying and circling around the cube-shaped Kaaba at Islam's most sacred site. Or strap on a headset and enter the ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Exploring the nuances of AI use in news production

Throughout the course of history, technology has continually transformed the news media industry—telegraph, radio, television and then the internet. Yet despite these evolutions, technology remained the medium and human ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Uber-like landscaping app launches in Detroit

Seeing a demand in the Detroit area, Gene Caballero launched his three-year-old Nashville-based landscaping application, GreenPal, in Detroit last month.

Consumer & Gadgets

Google/Apple's contact-tracing apps susceptible to digital attacks

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists and health authorities have relied on contact-tracing technologies to help manage the spread of the virus. Yet there's a major flaw in a framework that many of these ...