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 ...

Consumer & Gadgets

AI models often fail to identify ableism across cultures

The artificial intelligence models underlying popular chatbots and content moderation systems struggle to identify offensive, ableist social media posts in English—and perform even worse in Hindi, new Cornell research finds.

Consumer & Gadgets

Old tricks, new tech: Scams in the age of AI

As a college student, Gabriel Aguilar fell victim to an elaborate scam. The fraudsters posed as employers offering job opportunities that provided quick income.

Consumer & Gadgets

'Skins gambling'—where gaming meets gambling

In recent years, the line between gaming and gambling has become increasingly blurred. One of the most striking examples of this convergence is the rise of "skins gambling," where players wager virtual items (or "skins") ...

Consumer & Gadgets

The reality of wholesale cheating with AI

By and large, it appears school and work assignments are not being outsourced entirely to ChatGPT. A new working paper by David Deming, Danoff Dean of Harvard College, uncovers the more mundane realities of people's AI habits.

Consumer & Gadgets

Amazon is overhauling its devices to take on Apple in the AI era

When Amazon.com Inc. recruited longtime Microsoft Corp. product chief Panos Panay in 2023 to run its devices division, his new colleagues thought the e-commerce giant was preparing to take its consumer gadget line upscale.

Consumer & Gadgets

Humanoid robots in the home? Not so fast, says expert

It's been a goal for as long as humanoids have been a subject of popular imagination—a general-purpose robot that can do rote tasks like fold laundry or sort recycling simply by being asked.