Consumer & Gadgets news

Consumer & Gadgets

Apple chooses Google's Gemini AI to power Siri

Apple will rely on Google to help finish its efforts to smarten up its virtual assistant Siri and bring other artificial intelligence features to the iPhone as the trendsetting company plays catch up in technology's latest ...

Consumer & Gadgets

I used AI chatbots as a source of news for a month, and they were unreliable and erroneous

It was cute. But it was still a lie. Gemini invented a news outlet that doesn't exist and named it fake-example.ca (or exemplefictif.ca, in French).

Consumer & Gadgets

Dose of uncertainty: Experts wary of AI health gadgets at CES

Health tech gadgets displayed at the annual CES trade show make a lot of promises. A smart scale promoted a healthier lifestyle by scanning your feet to track your heart health, and an egg-shaped hormone tracker uses AI to ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Bringing Van Gogh to life: How VR could redefine the way we experience art and culture

Tampa crowds are currently sailing underneath Vincent van Gogh's twinkling "Starry Night" and drifting through his golden "Wheat Fields" in the 360-degree digital art exhibition, "Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience." The ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Smart glasses find purpose among blind users

The actual use-value of smart glasses remains keenly debated—but less so among blind people, who are increasingly relying on the latest models to improve their lives.

Consumer & Gadgets

Wearable tech can create more stress for frontline retail staff

With the Christmas trading period peaking, traditional surveillance technologies like CCTV can help reduce job stress caused by customer aggression, but QUT research has found wearable devices may increase stress levels among ...

Internet

AI produces shallower knowledge than web search, study finds

Learning about a topic by interacting with AI chatbots like ChatGPT rather than following links provided by web search can produce shallower knowledge. Advice given on the basis of this shallow knowledge tends to be sparser, ...

Consumer & Gadgets

VR hand gestures risk excluding millions, study finds

Hand gesture controls being developed for the next generation of virtual and augmented reality systems risk excluding millions of people, including those with common conditions such as arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome, ...

Consumer & Gadgets

How blind and low-vision users manage their passwords

Passwords remain the go-to authentication tool in everyday life, says CISPA researcher Alexander Ponticello. At the same time, passwords are often a security weak spot: too short, too simple, and reused far too often. Blind ...

Consumer & Gadgets

E-scooters up rideshare, cut bikeshare, raise safety concerns

A new study from a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign marketing expert finds that electric scooters, one of the fastest-growing forms of urban transportation, reshape city mobility in unexpected ways.

Consumer & Gadgets

How attractive do AI voices sound?

With recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), synthetic voices have become increasingly prevalent in our everyday soundscape, raising the question: Can AI voices still be distinguished from human voices, and how attractive ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Five ways to make AI more trustworthy

Self-driving taxis are sweeping the country and will likely start service in Colorado in the coming months. How many of us will be lining up to take a ride? That depends on our level of trust, says Amir Behzadan, a professor ...

Consumer & Gadgets

New study uncovers data protection gaps in popular mHealth apps

Researchers at the University of Bremen have uncovered significant discrepancies between the data protection claims and the actual behavior of mobile health applications (mHealth apps). Many apps transmit personal data before ...

Consumer & Gadgets

How video games can alter reality

Since its release 40 years ago, Tetris has become one of the most prevailing video games ever.

Consumer & Gadgets

AI content poses triple threat to Reddit moderators

Reddit bills itself as "the most human place on the internet," but the proliferation of artificial intelligence-generated content is threatening to squeeze some of the humanity out of the news-sharing forum.

Consumer & Gadgets

Amazon's holiday catalog brings back the joy of the toy store

The Amazon Holiday Kids Gift Book, which has hit mailboxes months ahead of Christmas, has become the modern child's wish book—a glossy stand-in for the toy store aisles their parents once roamed. It sparks the same giddy ...