Consumer & Gadgets news

Consumer & Gadgets

Wearable glove turns data into heat and touch for more personal insights

University of Adelaide researchers have developed a wearable glove that uses heat, touch and physical objects to transform data into a sensory experience. The prototype, called ThermoPhy, was developed as part of a remote ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Intelligent, but not conscious: A warning about AI chatbots

Have you ever said "thanks" to ChatGPT, or "please" to Claude? Maybe you're just being polite, showing some civility to a helpful and eloquent conversational partner. You may even consider politeness a safe choice, just in ...

Consumer & Gadgets

AR-assisted Japanese flower arrangement helps beginners learn at home while preserving mindfulness

Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, is an important form of Japan's Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) that fosters creativity, mindfulness and aesthetic sensitivity. Also known as "Kado," or way of the flower, ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Love at first prompt? How AI-assisted courtship is rewriting the rules of online dating

In the famous French play Cyrano de Bergerac, the brilliant but insecure Cyrano lends his eloquence to the handsome, tongue-tied Christian to help him woo his lover. Today, a remarkably similar scene is playing out among ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Can Pepper the robot be a good playmate?

What's it like to play a physical game with or against a robot that both looks and behaves like a person? That's what NTNU researchers wanted to find out when they conducted a controlled laboratory experiment with Pepper, ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Rising costs and competition threaten GoPro

For nearly 25 years, GoPro cameras have gone underwater, glided with parachutes and slipped down ski slopes, allowing the adventurous to record images of their experiences.

Consumer & Gadgets

Entirely new way of making espresso shakes up the coffee world

Researchers at UNSW Sydney have harnessed the power of ultrasonic sound waves to make espresso-strength coffee with room-temperature water, cutting energy use by up to 75%. That morning coffee kick from a shot of espresso ...

Consumer & Gadgets

The consequences of relying on AI for accurate news

It's no secret that the last few years have seen a massive explosion in the use of artificial intelligence for general information-gathering. An even more recent trend, though, is how large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, ...

Consumer & Gadgets

How AI chatbots become better learning coaches

Many AI systems answer questions in a matter of seconds—and, in the process, often prevent people from doing exactly what learning is all about: thinking for themselves. Machine learning expert Jakub Mačina is therefore developing ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Apple tries again on AI, turns to Google for help

Apple unveiled an artificial intelligence overhaul for the iPhone on Monday, turning to Google for help two years after the company stumbled in its first attempt.

Consumer & Gadgets

New app lets anyone operate a robot from their phone

Someone with no computing experience may soon be able to remotely control a robot from anywhere on the planet using a smartphone, thanks to new technology developed by Georgia Tech. The new technology is also set to revolutionize ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Framework generates 'shadow art' from scan of any object

Some people have a gift for creating beautiful works of art. Others appreciate art but do not have the talent to create it. Researchers at Cornell Tech and the Cornell Bowers College of Computing and Information Science have ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Ensuring smartphones have not been tampered with

With increasing cyberattacks and government data breaches, one of the most important devices to keep secure is the one in everyone's pocket: smartphones. The problem is that it is difficult to check that a smartphone has ...

Consumer & Gadgets

How eyes affect our perception of a humanoid robot's mind

Eyes are said to be the mirror of the soul. Eyes and gaze direction guide attention, evoke emotions and activate the brain's social perception mechanisms. Researchers at Tampere University and the University of Bremen conducted ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Investigating how people respond to air taxi noise

New kinds of aircraft taking to the skies could mean unfamiliar sounds overhead—and where you're hearing them might matter, according to new NASA research. NASA aeronautics has worked for years to enable new air transportation ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Most AI bots lack basic safety disclosures, study finds

Many people use AI chatbots to plan meals and write emails, AI-enhanced web browsers to book travel and buy tickets, and workplace AI to generate invoices and performance reports. However, a new study of the "AI agent ecosystem" ...

Consumer & Gadgets

People are overconfident about spotting AI faces, study finds

Most people believe they can spot AI-generated faces, but that confidence is out of date, research from UNSW Sydney and the Australian National University (ANU) has demonstrated. With AI-generated faces now almost impossible ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Laughter reveals how we use AI at home

Voice assistants such as Alexa are often marketed as smart tools that streamline everyday life. But once the technology moves into people's homes, interest quickly fades. This is shown by new research in which laughter is ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Can AI fulfill our emotional needs?

Fully customizable virtual companions or avatars—and even "digital clones" of deceased people or living ex-partners—are among the new possibilities that artificial intelligence is bringing to the love lives of humans. But ...

Consumer & Gadgets

Feeling 'AI anxiety'? Here are the risks people fear most

A patient said to me the other day, half-smiling but clearly unsettled: "I think I've got anxiety about AI." They weren't having a panic attack or describing clinical anxiety. What they were expressing was a persistent sense ...