AI – Page 23

Apple tiptoes with modest AI updates while rivals race ahead

AI, Apple, Apple developers, apple intelligence, machine learning, Siri, wwdc, wwdc 2025, Xcode / Kris Guyer / June 10, 2025

Developers, developers, developers?

Being the Worldwide Developers Conference, it seems appropriate that Apple also announced it would open access to its on-device AI language model to third-party developers. It also announced it would integrate OpenAI’s code completion tools into its XCode development software.

Craig Federighi stands in front of a screen with the words — Apple Intelligence was first unveiled at WWDC 2024. Credit: Apple

“We’re opening up access for any app to tap directly into the on-device, large language model at the core of Apple,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief, during the presentation. The company also demonstrated early partner integration by adding OpenAI’s ChatGPT image generation to its Image Playground app, though it said user data would not be shared without permission.

For developers, Apple’s inclusion of ChatGPT’s code-generation capabilities in XCode may represent Apple’s attempt to match what rivals like GitHub Copilot and Cursor offer software developers in terms of AI coding augmentation, even as the company maintains a more cautious approach to consumer-facing AI features.

Meanwhile, competitors like Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Microsoft continue to push more aggressively into the AI space, offering AI assistants (that admittedly still make things up and suffer from other issues, such as sycophancy).

Only time will tell if Apple’s wariness to embrace the bleeding edge of AI will be a curse (eventually labeled as a blunder) or a blessing (lauded as a wise strategy). Perhaps, in time, Apple will step in with a solid and reliable AI assistant solution that makes Siri useful again. But for now, Apple Intelligence remains more of a clever brand name than a concrete set of notable products.

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Apple’s AI-driven Stem Splitter audio separation tech has hugely improved in a year

AI, Apple, izotope, logic, RX11, stem splitter / Kris Guyer / June 9, 2025

Consider an example from a song I’ve been working on. Here’s a snippet of the full piece:

After running Logic’s original Stem Splitter on the snippet, I was given four tracks: Vocals, Drums, Bass, and “Other.” They all isolated their parts reasonably well, but check out the static and artifacting when you isolate the bass track:

The vocal track came out better, but it was still far from ideal:

Now, just over a year later, Apple has released a point update for Logic that delivers “enhanced audio fidelity” for Stem Splitter—along with support for new stems for guitar and piano.

screenshot of logic's new stem splitter feature — Logic now splits audio into more stems.

The difference in quality is significant, as you can hear in the new bass track:

And the new vocal track, though still lacking the pristine fidelity of the original recording, is nevertheless greatly improved:

The ability to separate out guitars and pianos is also welcome, and it works well. Here’s the piano part:

Pretty impressive leap in fidelity for a point release!

There are plenty of other stem-splitting tools, of course, and many have had a head start on Apple. With its new release, however, Apple has certainly closed the gap.

Izotope’s RX 11, for instance, is a highly regarded (and expensive!) piece of software that can do wonders when it comes to repairing audio and reducing clicks, background noise, and sibilance.

RX11 screenshot — RX11, ready to split some stems.

It includes a stem-splitting feature that can produce four outputs (vocal, bass, drums, and other), and it produces usable audio—but I’m not sure I’d rank its output more highly than Logic’s. Compare for yourself on the vocal and bass stems:

In any event, the AI/machine learning revolution has certainly arrived in the music world, and the rapid quality increase in stem-splitting tools in just a few years shows just what these AI systems are capable of when trained on enough data. I remain especially impressed by how the best stem splitters can extract not just a clean vocal but also the reverb/delay tail. Having access to the original recordings will always be better—but stem-splitting tech is improving quickly.

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Anthropic releases custom AI chatbot for classified spy work

AI, AI assistants, AI confabulation, AI ethics, AI regulation, Anthropic, Artificial Intelligence, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, Claude, GPT-4, large language models, machine learning, microsoft, national security, openai / Tim Belzer / June 7, 2025

On Thursday, Anthropic unveiled specialized AI models designed for US national security customers. The company released “Claude Gov” models that were built in response to direct feedback from government clients to handle operations such as strategic planning, intelligence analysis, and operational support. The custom models reportedly already serve US national security agencies, with access restricted to those working in classified environments.

The Claude Gov models differ from Anthropic’s consumer and enterprise offerings, also called Claude, in several ways. They reportedly handle classified material, “refuse less” when engaging with classified information, and are customized to handle intelligence and defense documents. The models also feature what Anthropic calls “enhanced proficiency” in languages and dialects critical to national security operations.

Anthropic says the new models underwent the same “safety testing” as all Claude models. The company has been pursuing government contracts as it seeks reliable revenue sources, partnering with Palantir and Amazon Web Services in November to sell AI tools to defense customers.

Anthropic is not the first company to offer specialized chatbot services for intelligence agencies. In 2024, Microsoft launched an isolated version of OpenAI’s GPT-4 for the US intelligence community after 18 months of work. That system, which operated on a special government-only network without Internet access, became available to about 10,000 individuals in the intelligence community for testing and answering questions.

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Ted Cruz bill: States that regulate AI will be cut out of $42B broadband fund

AI, broadband, Policy, ted cruz / Mike M. / June 7, 2025

BEAD changes: No fiber preference, no low-cost mandate

The BEAD program is separately undergoing an overhaul because Republicans don’t like how it was administered by Democrats. The Biden administration spent about three years developing rules and procedures for BEAD and then evaluating plans submitted by each US state and territory, but the Trump administration has delayed grants while it rewrites the rules.

While Biden’s Commerce Department decided to prioritize the building of fiber networks, Republicans have pushed for a “tech-neutral approach” that would benefit cable companies, fixed wireless providers, and Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service.

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick previewed changes in March, and today he announced more details of the overhaul that will eliminate the fiber preference and various requirements imposed on states. One notable but unsurprising change is that the Trump administration won’t let states require grant recipients to offer low-cost Internet plans at specific rates to people with low incomes.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) “will refuse to accept any low-cost service option proposed in a [state or territory’s] Final Proposal that attempts to impose a specific rate level (i.e., dollar amount),” the Trump administration said. Instead, ISPs receiving subsidies will be able to continue offering “their existing, market driven low-cost plans to meet the statutory low-cost requirement.”

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society criticized the overhaul, saying that the Trump administration is investing in the cheapest broadband infrastructure instead of the best. “Fiber-based broadband networks will last longer, provide better, more reliable service, and scale to meet communities’ ever-growing connectivity needs,” the advocacy group said. “NTIA’s new guidance is shortsighted and will undermine economic development in rural America for decades to come.”

The Trump administration’s overhaul drew praise from cable lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, whose members will find it easier to obtain subsidies. “We welcome changes to the BEAD program that will make the program more efficient and eliminate onerous requirements, which add unnecessary costs that impede broadband deployment efforts,” NCTA said. “These updates are welcome improvements that will make it easier for providers to build faster, especially in hard-to-reach communities, without being bogged down by red tape.”

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OpenAI is retaining all ChatGPT logs “indefinitely.” Here’s who’s affected.

AI, ai chatbot, chatgpt, copyright, new york times, openai, Policy / Mike M. / June 6, 2025

In the copyright fight, Magistrate Judge Ona Wang granted the order within one day of the NYT’s request. She agreed with news plaintiffs that it seemed likely that ChatGPT users may be spooked by the lawsuit and possibly set their chats to delete when using the chatbot to skirt NYT paywalls. Because OpenAI wasn’t sharing deleted chat logs, the news plaintiffs had no way of proving that, she suggested.

Now, OpenAI is not only asking Wang to reconsider but has “also appealed this order with the District Court Judge,” the Thursday statement said.

“We strongly believe this is an overreach by the New York Times,” Lightcap said. “We’re continuing to appeal this order so we can keep putting your trust and privacy first.”

Who can access deleted chats?

To protect users, OpenAI provides an FAQ that clearly explains why their data is being retained and how it could be exposed.

For example, the statement noted that the order doesn’t impact OpenAI API business customers under Zero Data Retention agreements because their data is never stored.

And for users whose data is affected, OpenAI noted that their deleted chats could be accessed, but they won’t “automatically” be shared with The New York Times. Instead, the retained data will be “stored separately in a secure system” and “protected under legal hold, meaning it can’t be accessed or used for purposes other than meeting legal obligations,” OpenAI explained.

Of course, with the court battle ongoing, the FAQ did not have all the answers.

Nobody knows how long OpenAI may be required to retain the deleted chats. Likely seeking to reassure users—some of which appeared to be considering switching to a rival service until the order lifts—OpenAI noted that “only a small, audited OpenAI legal and security team would be able to access this data as necessary to comply with our legal obligations.”

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DOGE used flawed AI tool to “munch” Veterans Affairs contracts

AI, Policy / Paul Patrick / June 6, 2025

Staffer had no medical experience, and the results were predictably, spectacularly bad.

As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veterans Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.

The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”

The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.

The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled—the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research, and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.

VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success.

We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.

ProPublica obtained the code and the contracts it flagged from a source and shared them with a half-dozen AI and procurement experts. All said the script was flawed. Many criticized the concept of using AI to guide budgetary cuts at the VA, with one calling it “deeply problematic.”

Cary Coglianese, professor of law and of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the governmental use and regulation of artificial intelligence, said he was troubled by the use of these general-purpose large language models, or LLMs. “I don’t think off-the-shelf LLMs have a great deal of reliability for something as complex and involved as this,” he said.

Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.

“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”

Though Lavingia has talked about his time at DOGE previously, this is the first time his work has been examined in detail and the first time he’s publicly explained his process, down to specific lines of code.

Lavingia has nearly 15 years of experience as a software engineer and entrepreneur but no formal training in AI. He briefly worked at Pinterest before starting Gumroad, a small e-commerce company that nearly collapsed in 2015. “I laid off 75 percent of my company—including many of my best friends. It really sucked,” he said. Lavingia kept the company afloat by “replacing every manual process with an automated one,” according to a post on his personal blog.

Lavingia did not have much time to immerse himself in how the VA handles veterans’ care between starting on March 17 and writing the tool on the following day. Yet his experience with his own company aligned with the direction of the Trump administration, which has embraced the use of AI across government to streamline operations and save money.

Lavingia said the quick timeline of Trump’s February executive order, which gave agencies 30 days to complete a review of contracts and grants, was too short to do the job manually. “That’s not possible—you have 90,000 contracts,” he said. “Unless you write some code. But even then it’s not really possible.”

Under a time crunch, Lavingia said he finished the first version of his contract-munching tool on his second day on the job—using AI to help write the code for him. He told ProPublica he then spent his first week downloading VA contracts to his laptop and analyzing them.

VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz lauded DOGE’s work on vetting contracts in a statement to ProPublica. “As far as we know, this sort of review has never been done before, but we are happy to set this commonsense precedent,” he said.

The VA is reviewing all of its 76,000 contracts to ensure each of them benefits veterans and is a good use of taxpayer money, he said. Decisions to cancel or reduce the size of contracts are made after multiple reviews by VA employees, including agency contracting experts and senior staff, he wrote.

Kasperowicz said that the VA will not cancel contracts for work that provides services to veterans or that the agency cannot do itself without a contingency plan in place. He added that contracts that are “wasteful, duplicative, or involve services VA has the ability to perform itself” will typically be terminated.

Trump officials have said they are working toward a “goal” of cutting around 80,000 people from the VA’s workforce of nearly 500,000. Most employees work in one of the VA’s 170 hospitals and nearly 1,200 clinics.

The VA has said it would avoid cutting contracts that directly impact care out of fear that it would cause harm to veterans. ProPublica recently reported that relatively small cuts at the agency have already been jeopardizing veterans’ care.

The VA has not explained how it plans to simultaneously move services in-house, as Lavingia’s code suggested was the plan, while also slashing staff.

Many inside the VA told ProPublica the process for reviewing contracts was so opaque they couldn’t even see who made the ultimate decisions to kill specific contracts. Once the “munching” script had selected a list of contracts, Lavingia said he would pass it off to others who would decide what to cancel and what to keep. No contracts, he said, were terminated “without human review.”

“I just delivered the [list of contracts] to the VA employees,” he said. “I basically put munchable at the top and then the others below.”

VA staffers told ProPublica that when DOGE identified contracts to be canceled early this year—before Lavingia was brought on—employees sometimes were given little time to justify retaining the service. One recalled being given just a few hours. The staffers asked not to be named because they feared losing their jobs for talking to reporters.

According to one internal email that predated Lavingia’s AI analysis, staff members had to respond in 255 characters or fewer—just shy of the 280 character limit on Musk’s X social media platform.

Once he started on DOGE’s contract analysis, Lavingia said he was confronted with technological limitations. At least some of the errors produced by his code can be traced to using older versions of OpenAI models available through the VA—models not capable of solving complex tasks, according to the experts consulted by ProPublica.

Moreover, the tool’s underlying instructions were deeply flawed. Records show Lavingia programmed the AI system to make intricate judgments based on the first few pages of each contract—about the first 2,500 words—which contain only sparse summary information.

“AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” said Waldo Jaquith, a former Obama appointee who oversaw IT contracting at the Treasury Department. “AI gives convincing looking answers that are frequently wrong. There needs to be humans whose job it is to do this work.”

Lavingia’s prompts did not include context about how the VA operates, what contracts are essential, or which ones are required by federal law. This led AI to determine a core piece of the agency’s own contract procurement system was “munchable.”

At the core of Lavingia’s prompt is the direction to spare contracts involved in “direct patient care.”

Such an approach, experts said, doesn’t grapple with the reality that the work done by doctors and nurses to care for veterans in hospitals is only possible with significant support around them.

Lavingia’s system also used AI to extract details like the contract number and “total contract value.” This led to avoidable errors, where AI returned the wrong dollar value when multiple were found in a contract. Experts said the correct information was readily available from public databases.

Lavingia acknowledged that errors resulted from this approach but said those errors were later corrected by VA staff.

In late March, Lavingia published a version of the “munchable” script on his GitHub account to invite others to use and improve it, he told ProPublica. “It would have been cool if the entire federal government used this script and anyone in the public could see that this is how the VA is thinking about cutting contracts.”

According to a post on his blog, this was done with the approval of Musk before he left DOGE. “When he asked the room about improving DOGE’s public perception, I asked if I could open-source the code I’d been writing,” Lavingia said. “He said yes—it aligned with DOGE’s goal of maximum transparency.”

That openness may have eventually led to Lavingia’s dismissal. Lavingia confirmed he was terminated from DOGE after giving an interview to Fast Company magazine about his work with the department. A VA spokesperson declined to comment on Lavingia’s dismissal.

VA officials have declined to say whether they will continue to use the “munchable” tool moving forward. But the administration may deploy AI to help the agency replace employees. Documents previously obtained by ProPublica show DOGE officials proposed in March consolidating the benefits claims department by relying more on AI.

And the government’s contractors are paying attention. After Lavingia posted his code, he said he heard from people trying to understand how to keep the money flowing.

“I got a couple DMs from VA contractors who had questions when they saw this code,” he said. “They were trying to make sure that their contracts don’t get cut. Or learn why they got cut.

“At the end of the day, humans are the ones terminating the contracts, but it is helpful for them to see how DOGE or Trump or the agency heads are thinking about what contracts they are going to munch. Transparency is a good thing.”

If you have any information about the misuse or abuse of AI within government agencies, Brandon Roberts is an investigative journalist on the news applications team and has a wealth of experience using and dissecting artificial intelligence. He can be reached on Signal @brandonrobertz.01 or by email [email protected].

If you have information about the VA that we should know about, contact reporter Vernal Coleman on Signal, vcoleman91.99, or via email, [email protected], and Eric Umansky on Signal, Ericumansky.04, or via email, [email protected].

This story originally appeared on ProPublica.org.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

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Google’s nightmare: How a search spinoff could remake the web

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Features, Google, search, Tech / Mike M. / June 6, 2025

Google has shaped the Internet as we know it, and unleashing its index could change everything.

Google may be forced to license its search technology when the final antitrust ruling comes down. Credit: Aurich Lawson

Google wasn’t around for the advent of the World Wide Web, but it successfully remade the web on its own terms. Today, any website that wants to be findable has to play by Google’s rules, and after years of search dominance, the company has lost a major antitrust case that could reshape both it and the web.

The closing arguments in the case just wrapped up last week, and Google could be facing serious consequences when the ruling comes down in August. Losing Chrome would certainly change things for Google, but the Department of Justice is pursuing other remedies that could have even more lasting impacts. During his testimony, Google CEO Sundar Pichai seemed genuinely alarmed at the prospect of being forced to license Google’s search index and algorithm, the so-called data remedies in the case. He claimed this would be no better than a spinoff of Google Search. The company’s statements have sometimes derisively referred to this process as “white labeling” Google Search.

But does a white label Google Search sound so bad? Google has built an unrivaled index of the web, but the way it shows results has become increasingly frustrating. A handful of smaller players in search have tried to offer alternatives to Google’s search tools. They all have different approaches to retrieving information for you, but they agree that spinning off Google Search could change the web again. Whether or not those changes are positive depends on who you ask.

The Internet is big and noisy

As Google’s search results have changed over the years, more people have been open to other options. Some have simply moved to AI chatbots to answer their questions, hallucinations be damned. But for most people, it’s still about the 10 blue links (for now).

Because of the scale of the Internet, there are only three general web search indexes: Google, Bing, and Brave. Every search product (including AI tools) relies on one or more of these indexes to probe the web. But what does that mean?

“Generally, a search index is a service that, when given a query, is able to find relevant documents published on the Internet,” said Brave’s search head Josep Pujol.

A search index is essentially a big database, and that’s not the same as search results. According to JP Schmetz, Brave’s chief of ads, it’s entirely possible to have the best and most complete search index in the world and still show poor results for a given query. Sound like anyone you know?

Google’s technological lead has allowed it to crawl more websites than anyone else. It has all the important parts of the web, plus niche sites, abandoned blogs, sketchy copies of legitimate websites, copies of those copies, and AI-rephrased copies of the copied copies—basically everything. And the result of this Herculean digital inventory is a search experience that feels increasingly discombobulated.

“Google is running large-scale experiments in ways that no rival can because we’re effectively blinded,” said Kamyl Bazbaz, head of public affairs at DuckDuckGo, which uses the Bing index. “Google’s scale advantage fuels a powerful feedback loop of different network effects that ensure a perpetual scale and quality deficit for rivals that locks in Google’s advantage.”

The size of the index may not be the only factor that matters, though. Brave, which is perhaps best known for its browser, also has a search engine. Brave Search is the default in its browser, but you can also just go to the URL in your current browser. Unlike most other search engines, Brave doesn’t need to go to anyone else for results. Pujol suggested that Brave doesn’t need the scale of Google’s index to find what you need. And admittedly, Brave’s search results don’t feel meaningfully worse than Google’s—they may even be better when you consider the way that Google tries to keep you from clicking.

Brave’s index spans around 25 billion pages, but it leaves plenty of the web uncrawled. “We could be indexing five to 10 times more pages, but we choose not to because not all the web has signal. Most web pages are basically noise,” said Pujol.

The freemium search engine Kagi isn’t worried about having the most comprehensive index. Kagi is a meta search engine. It pulls in data from multiple indexes, like Bing and Brave, but it has a custom index of what founder and CEO Vladimir Prelovac calls the “non-commercial web.”

When you search with Kagi, some of the results (it tells you the proportion) come from its custom index of personal blogs, hobbyist sites, and other content that is poorly represented on other search engines. It’s reminiscent of the days when huge brands weren’t always clustered at the top of Google—but even these results are being pushed out of reach in favor of AI, ads, Knowledge Graph content, and other Google widgets. That’s a big part of why Kagi exists, according to Prelovac.

A Google spinoff could change everything

We’ve all noticed the changes in Google’s approach to search, and most would agree that they have made finding reliable and accurate information harder. Regardless, Google’s incredibly deep and broad index of the Internet is in demand.

Even with Bing and Brave available, companies are going to extremes to syndicate Google Search results. A cottage industry has emerged to scrape Google searches as a stand-in for an official index. These companies are violating Google’s terms, yet they appear in Google Search results themselves. Google could surely do something about this if it wanted to.

The DOJ calls Google’s mountain of data the “essential raw material” for building a general search engine, and it believes forcing the firm to license that material is key to breaking its monopoly. The sketchy syndication firms will evaporate if the DOJ’s data remedies are implemented, which would give competitors an official way to utilize Google’s index. And utilize it they will.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai decried the court’s efforts to force a “de facto divestiture” of Google’s search tech. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

According to Prelovac, this could lead to an explosion in search choices. “The whole purpose of the Sherman Act is to proliferate a healthy, competitive marketplace. Once you have access to a search index, then you can have thousands of search startups,” said Prelovac.

The Kagi founder suggested that licensing Google Search could allow entities of all sizes to have genuinely useful custom search tools. Cities could use the data to create deep, hyper-local search, and people who love cats could make a cat-specific search engine, in both cases pulling what they want from the most complete database of online content. And, of course, general search products like Kagi would be able to license Google’s tech for a “nominal fee,” as the DOJ puts it.

Prelovac didn’t hesitate when asked if Kagi, which offers a limited number of free searches before asking users to subscribe, would integrate Google’s index. “Yes, that is something we would do,” he said. “And that’s what I believe should happen.”

There may be some drawbacks to unleashing Google’s search services. Judge Amit Mehta has expressed concern that blocking Google’s search placement deals could reduce browser choice, and there is a similar issue with the data remedies. If Google is forced to license search as an API, its few competitors in web indexing could struggle to remain afloat. In a roundabout way, giving away Google’s search tech could actually increase its influence.

The Brave team worries about how open access to Google’s search technology could impact diversity on the web. “If implemented naively, it’s a big problem,” said Brave’s ad chief JP Schmetz, “If the court forces Google to provide search at a marginal cost, it will not be possible for Bing or Brave to survive until the remedy ends.”

The landscape of AI-based search could also change. We know from testimony given during the remedy trial by OpenAI’s Nick Turley that the ChatGPT maker tried and failed to get access to Google Search to ground its AI models—it currently uses Bing. If Google were suddenly an option, you can be sure OpenAI and others would rush to connect Google’s web data to their large language models (LLMs).

The attempt to reduce Google’s power could actually grant it new monopolies in AI, according to Brave Chief Business Officer Brian Brown. “All of a sudden, you would have a single monolithic voice of truth across all the LLMs, across all the web,” Brown said.

What if you weren’t the product?

If white labeling Google does expand choice, even at the expense of other indexes, it will give more kinds of search products a chance in the market—maybe even some that shun Google’s focus on advertising. You don’t see much of that right now.

For most people, web search is and always has been a free service supported by ads. Google, Brave, DuckDuckGo, and Bing offer all the search queries you want for free because they want eyeballs. It’s been said often, but it’s true: If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product. This is an arrangement that bothers Kagi’s founder.

“For something as important as information consumption, there should not be an intermediary between me and the information, especially one that is trying to sell me something,” said Prelovac.

Kagi search results acknowledge the negative impact of today’s advertising regime. Kagi users see a warning next to results with a high number of ads and trackers. According to Prelovac, that is by far the strongest indication that a result is of low quality. That icon also lets you adjust the prevalence of such sites in your personal results. You can demote a site or completely hide it, which is a valuable option in the age of clickbait.

Kagi search gives you a lot of control. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

Kagi’s paid approach to search changes its relationship with your data. “We literally don’t need user data,” Prelovac said. “But it’s not only that we don’t need it. It’s a liability.”

Prelovac admitted that getting people to pay for search is “really hard.” Nevertheless, he believes ad-supported search is a dead end. So Kagi is planning for a future in five or 10 years when more people have realized they’re still “paying” for ad-based search with lost productivity time and personal data, he said.

We know how Google handles user data (it collects a lot of it), but what does that mean for smaller search engines like Brave and DuckDuckGo that rely on ads?

“I’m sure they mean well,” said Prelovac.

Brave said that it shields user data from advertisers, relying on first-party tracking to attribute clicks to Brave without touching the user. “They cannot retarget people later; none of that is happening,” said Brave’s JP Schmetz.

DuckDuckGo is a bit of an odd duck—it relies on Bing’s general search index, but it adds a layer of privacy tools on top. It’s free and ad-supported like Google and Brave, but the company says it takes user privacy seriously.

“Viewing ads is privacy protected by DuckDuckGo, and most ad clicks are managed by Microsoft’s ad network,” DuckDuckGo’s Kamyl Bazbaz said. He explained that DuckDuckGo has worked with Microsoft to ensure its network does not track users or create any profiles based on clicks. He added that the company has a similar privacy arrangement with TripAdvisor for travel-related ads.

It’s AI all the way down

We can’t talk about the future of search without acknowledging the artificially intelligent elephant in the room. As Google continues its shift to AI-based search, it’s tempting to think of the potential search spin-off as a way to escape that trend. However, you may find few refuges in the coming years. There’s a real possibility that search is evolving beyond the 10 blue links and toward an AI assistant model.

All non-Google search engines have AI integrations, with the most prominent being Microsoft Bing, which has a partnership with OpenAI. But smaller players have AI search features, too. The folks working on these products agree with Microsoft and Google on one important point: They see AI as inevitable.

Today’s Google alternatives all have their own take on AI Overviews, which generates responses to queries based on search results. They’re generally not as in-your-face as Google AI, though. While Google and Microsoft are intensely focused on increasing the usage of AI search, other search operators aren’t pushing for that future. They are along for the ride, though.

AI overview on phone — AI Overviews are integrated with Google’s search results, and most other players have their own version. Credit: Google

“We’re finding that some people prefer to start in chat mode and then jump into more traditional search results when needed, while others prefer the opposite,” Bazbaz said. “So we thought the best thing to do was offer both. We made it easy to move between them, and we included an off switch for those who’d like to avoid AI altogether.”

The team at Brave views AI as a core means of accessing search and one that will continue to grow. Brave generates AI answers for many searches and prominently cites sources. You can also disable Brave’s AI if you prefer. But according to search chief Josep Pujol, the move to AI search is inevitable for a pretty simple reason: It’s convenient, and people will always choose convenience. So AI is changing the web as we know it, for better or worse, because LLMs can save a smidge of time, especially for more detailed “long-tail” queries. These AI features may give you false information while they do it, but that’s not always apparent.

This is very similar to the language Google uses when discussing agentic search, although it expresses it in a more nuanced way. By understanding the task behind a query, Google hopes to provide AI answers that save people time, even if the model needs a few ticks to fan out and run multiple searches to generate a more comprehensive report on a topic. That’s probably still faster than running multiple searches and manually reviewing the results, and it could leave traditional search as an increasingly niche service, even in a world with more choices.

“Will the 10 blue links continue to exist in 10 years?” Pujol asked. “Actually, one question would be, does it even exist now? In 10 years, [search] will have evolved into more of an AI conversation behavior or even agentic. That is probably the case. What, for sure, will continue to exist is the need to search. Search is a verb, an action that you do, and whether you will do it directly or whether it will be done through an agent, it’s a search engine.”

Vlad from Kagi sees AI becoming the default way we access information in the long term, but his search engine doesn’t force you to use it. On Kagi, you can expand the AI box for your searches and ask follow-ups, and the AI will open automatically if you use a question mark in your search. But that’s just the start.

“You watch Star Trek, nobody’s clicking on links there—I do believe in that vision in science fiction movies,” Prelovac said. “I don’t think my daughter will be clicking links in 10 years. The only question is if the current technology will be the one that gets us there. LLMs have inherent flaws. I would even tend to say it’s likely not going to get us to Star Trek.”

If we think of AI mainly as a way to search for information, the future becomes murky. With generative AI in the driver’s seat, questions of authority and accuracy may be left to language models that often behave in unpredictable and difficult-to-understand ways. Whether we’re headed for an AI boom or bust—for continued Google dominance or a new era of choice—we’re facing fundamental changes to how we access information.

Maybe if we get those thousands of search startups, there will be a few that specialize in 10 blue links. We can only hope.

Ryan Whitwam is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering the ways Google, AI, and mobile technology continue to change the world. Over his 20-year career, he’s written for Android Police, ExtremeTech, Wirecutter, NY Times, and more. He has reviewed more phones than most people will ever own. You can follow him on Bluesky, where you will see photos of his dozens of mechanical keyboards.

Google’s nightmare: How a search spinoff could remake the web Read More »

Google’s new Gemini 2.5 Pro release aims to fix past “regressions” in the model

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Google, Google Gemini, Tech / Tim Belzer / June 6, 2025

It seems like hardly a day goes by anymore without a new version of Google’s Gemini AI landing, and sure enough, Google is rolling out a major update to its most powerful 2.5 Pro model. This release is aimed at fixing some problems that cropped up in an earlier Gemini Pro update, and the word is, this version will become a stable release that comes to the Gemini app for everyone to use.

The previous Gemini 2.5 Pro release, known as the I/O Edition, or simply 05-06, was focused on coding upgrades. Google claims the new version is even better at generating code, with a new high score of 82.2 percent in the Aider Polyglot test. That beats the best from OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepSeek by a comfortable margin.

While the general-purpose Gemini 2.5 Flash has left preview, the Pro version is lagging behind. In fact, the last several updates have attracted some valid criticism of 2.5 Pro’s performance outside of coding tasks since the big 03-25 update. Google’s Logan Kilpatrick says the team has taken that feedback to heart and that the new model “closes [the] gap on 03-25 regressions.” For example, users will supposedly see more creativity with better formatting of responses.

Kilpatrick also notes that the 06-05 release now supports configurable thinking budgets for developers, and the team expects this build to become a “long term stable release.” So, Gemini 2.5 Pro should finally drop its “Preview” disclaimer when this version rolls out to the consumer-facing app and web interface in the coming weeks.

Google’s new Gemini 2.5 Pro release aims to fix past “regressions” in the model Read More »

“In 10 years, all bets are off”—Anthropic CEO opposes decadelong freeze on state AI laws

AI, ai chatbots, AI regulation, Anthropic, Anthropic Claude, Biz & IT, chatbots, chatgpt, chatgtp, large language models, machine learning, openai, Policy, trump administration, US government / Rejus Almole / June 5, 2025

On Thursday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei argued against a proposed 10-year moratorium on state AI regulation in a New York Times opinion piece, calling the measure shortsighted and overbroad as Congress considers including it in President Trump’s tax policy bill. Anthropic makes Claude, an AI assistant similar to ChatGPT.

Amodei warned that AI is advancing too fast for such a long freeze, predicting these systems “could change the world, fundamentally, within two years; in 10 years, all bets are off.”

As we covered in May, the moratorium would prevent states from regulating AI for a decade. A bipartisan group of state attorneys general has opposed the measure, which would preempt AI laws and regulations recently passed in dozens of states.

In his op-ed piece, Amodei said the proposed moratorium aims to prevent inconsistent state laws that could burden companies or compromise America’s competitive position against China. “I am sympathetic to these concerns,” Amodei wrote. “But a 10-year moratorium is far too blunt an instrument. A.I. is advancing too head-spinningly fast.”

Instead of a blanket moratorium, Amodei proposed that the White House and Congress create a federal transparency standard requiring frontier AI developers to publicly disclose their testing policies and safety measures. Under this framework, companies working on the most capable AI models would need to publish on their websites how they test for various risks and what steps they take before release.

“Without a clear plan for a federal response, a moratorium would give us the worst of both worlds—no ability for states to act and no national policy as a backstop,” Amodei wrote.

Transparency as the middle ground

Amodei emphasized his claims for AI’s transformative potential throughout his op-ed, citing examples of pharmaceutical companies drafting clinical study reports in minutes instead of weeks and AI helping to diagnose medical conditions that might otherwise be missed. He wrote that AI “could accelerate economic growth to an extent not seen for a century, improving everyone’s quality of life,” a claim that some skeptics believe may be overhyped.

“In 10 years, all bets are off”—Anthropic CEO opposes decadelong freeze on state AI laws Read More »

FDA rushed out agency-wide AI tool—it’s not going well

AI, fda, health / Tim Belzer / June 5, 2025

FDA staffers who spoke with Stat news, meanwhile, called the tool “rushed” and said its capabilities were overinflated by officials, including Makary and those at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was headed by controversial billionaire Elon Musk. In its current form, it should only be used for administrative tasks, not scientific ones, the staffers said.

“Makary and DOGE think AI can replace staff and cut review times, but it decidedly cannot,” one employee said. The staffer also said that the FDA has failed to set up guardrails for the tool’s use. “I’m not sure in their rush to get it out that anyone is thinking through policy and use,” the FDA employee said.

According to Stat, Elsa is based on Anthropic’s Claude LLM and is being developed by consulting firm Deloitte. Since 2020, Deloitte has been paid $13.8 million to develop the original database of FDA documents that Elsa’s training data is derived from. In April, the firm was awarded a $14.7 million contract to scale the tech across the agency. The FDA said that Elsa was built within a high-security GovCloud environment and offers a “secure platform for FDA employees to access internal documents while ensuring all information remains within the agency.”

Previously, each center within the FDA was working on its own AI pilot. However, after cost-cutting in May, the AI pilot originally developed by the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, called CDER-GPT, was selected to be scaled up to an FDA-wide version and rebranded as Elsa.

FDA staffers in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health told NBC News that their AI pilot, CDRH-GPT, is buggy, isn’t connected to the Internet or the FDA’s internal system, and has problems uploading documents and allowing users to submit questions.

FDA rushed out agency-wide AI tool—it’s not going well Read More »

OpenAI slams court order to save all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats

AI, AI lawsuit, chatgpt, intellectual property lawsuits, openai, Policy / Kris Guyer / June 5, 2025

OpenAI defends privacy of hundreds of millions of ChatGPT users.

OpenAI is now fighting a court order to preserve all ChatGPT user logs—including deleted chats and sensitive chats logged through its API business offering—after news organizations suing over copyright claims accused the AI company of destroying evidence.

“Before OpenAI had an opportunity to respond to those unfounded accusations, the court ordered OpenAI to ‘preserve and segregate all output log data that would otherwise be deleted on a going forward basis until further order of the Court (in essence, the output log data that OpenAI has been destroying),” OpenAI explained in a court filing demanding oral arguments in a bid to block the controversial order.

In the filing, OpenAI alleged that the court rushed the order based only on a hunch raised by The New York Times and other news plaintiffs. And now, without “any just cause,” OpenAI argued, the order “continues to prevent OpenAI from respecting its users’ privacy decisions.” That risk extended to users of ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro, as well as users of OpenAI’s application programming interface (API), OpenAI said.

The court order came after news organizations expressed concern that people using ChatGPT to skirt paywalls “might be more likely to ‘delete all [their] searches’ to cover their tracks,” OpenAI explained. Evidence to support that claim, news plaintiffs argued, was missing from the record because so far, OpenAI had only shared samples of chat logs that users had agreed that the company could retain. Sharing the news plaintiffs’ concerns, the judge, Ona Wang, ultimately agreed that OpenAI likely would never stop deleting that alleged evidence absent a court order, granting news plaintiffs’ request to preserve all chats.

OpenAI argued the May 13 order was premature and should be vacated, until, “at a minimum,” news organizations can establish a substantial need for OpenAI to preserve all chat logs. They warned that the privacy of hundreds of millions of ChatGPT users globally is at risk every day that the “sweeping, unprecedented” order continues to be enforced.

“As a result, OpenAI is forced to jettison its commitment to allow users to control when and how their ChatGPT conversation data is used, and whether it is retained,” OpenAI argued.

Meanwhile, there is no evidence beyond speculation yet supporting claims that “OpenAI had intentionally deleted data,” OpenAI alleged. And supposedly there is not “a single piece of evidence supporting” claims that copyright-infringing ChatGPT users are more likely to delete their chats.

“OpenAI did not ‘destroy’ any data, and certainly did not delete any data in response to litigation events,” OpenAI argued. “The Order appears to have incorrectly assumed the contrary.”

At a conference in January, Wang raised a hypothetical in line with her thinking on the subsequent order. She asked OpenAI’s legal team to consider a ChatGPT user who “found some way to get around the pay wall” and “was getting The New York Times content somehow as the output.” If that user “then hears about this case and says, ‘Oh, whoa, you know I’m going to ask them to delete all of my searches and not retain any of my searches going forward,'” the judge asked, wouldn’t that be “directly the problem” that the order would address?

OpenAI does not plan to give up this fight, alleging that news plaintiffs have “fallen silent” on claims of intentional evidence destruction, and the order should be deemed unlawful.

For OpenAI, risks of breaching its own privacy agreements could not only “damage” relationships with users but could also risk putting the company in breach of contracts and global privacy regulations. Further, the order imposes “significant” burdens on OpenAI, supposedly forcing the ChatGPT maker to dedicate months of engineering hours at substantial costs to comply, OpenAI claimed. It follows then that OpenAI’s potential for harm “far outweighs News Plaintiffs’ speculative need for such data,” OpenAI argued.

“While OpenAI appreciates the court’s efforts to manage discovery in this complex set of cases, it has no choice but to protect the interests of its users by objecting to the Preservation Order and requesting its immediate vacatur,” OpenAI said.

Users panicked over sweeping order

Millions of people use ChatGPT daily for a range of purposes, OpenAI noted, “ranging from the mundane to profoundly personal.”

People may choose to delete chat logs that contain their private thoughts, OpenAI said, as well as sensitive information, like financial data from balancing the house budget or intimate details from workshopping wedding vows. And for business users connecting to OpenAI’s API, the stakes may be even higher, as their logs may contain their companies’ most confidential data, including trade secrets and privileged business information.

“Given that array of highly confidential and personal use cases, OpenAI goes to great lengths to protect its users’ data and privacy,” OpenAI argued.

It does this partly by “honoring its privacy policies and contractual commitments to users”—which the preservation order allegedly “jettisoned” in “one fell swoop.”

Before the order was in place mid-May, OpenAI only retained “chat history” for users of ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro who did not opt out of data retention. But now, OpenAI has been forced to preserve chat history even when users “elect to not retain particular conversations by manually deleting specific conversations or by starting a ‘Temporary Chat,’ which disappears once closed,” OpenAI said. Previously, users could also request to “delete their OpenAI accounts entirely, including all prior conversation history,” which was then purged within 30 days.

While OpenAI rejects claims that ordinary users use ChatGPT to access news articles, the company noted that including OpenAI’s business customers in the order made “even less sense,” since API conversation data “is subject to standard retention policies.” That means API customers couldn’t delete all their searches based on their customers’ activity, which is the supposed basis for requiring OpenAI to retain sensitive data.

“The court nevertheless required OpenAI to continue preserving API Conversation Data as well,” OpenAI argued, in support of lifting the order on the API chat logs.

Users who found out about the preservation order panicked, OpenAI noted. In court filings, they cited social media posts sounding alarms on LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter). They further argued that the court should have weighed those user concerns before issuing a preservation order, but “that did not happen here.”

One tech worker on LinkedIn suggested the order created “a serious breach of contract for every company that uses OpenAI,” while privacy advocates on X warned, “every single AI service ‘powered by’ OpenAI should be concerned.”

Also on LinkedIn, a consultant rushed to warn clients to be “extra careful” sharing sensitive data “with ChatGPT or through OpenAI’s API for now,” warning, “your outputs could eventually be read by others, even if you opted out of training data sharing or used ‘temporary chat’!”

People on both platforms recommended using alternative tools to avoid privacy concerns, like Mistral AI or Google Gemini, with one cybersecurity professional on LinkedIn describing the ordered chat log retention as “an unacceptable security risk.”

On X, an account with tens of thousands of followers summed up the controversy by suggesting that “Wang apparently thinks the NY Times’ boomer copyright concerns trump the privacy of EVERY @OpenAI USER—insane!!!”

The reason for the alarm is “simple,” OpenAI said. “Users feel more free to use ChatGPT when they know that they are in control of their personal information, including which conversations are retained and which are not.”

It’s unclear if OpenAI will be able to get the judge to waver if oral arguments are scheduled.

Wang previously justified the broad order partly due to the news organizations’ claim that “the volume of deleted conversations is significant.” She suggested that OpenAI could have taken steps to anonymize the chat logs but chose not to, only making an argument for why it “would not” be able to segregate data, rather than explaining why it “can’t.”

Spokespersons for OpenAI and The New York Times’ legal team declined Ars’ request to comment on the ongoing multi-district litigation.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

OpenAI slams court order to save all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats Read More »

“Godfather” of AI calls out latest models for lying to users

AI, chatgpt, Gemini, LLMs, syndication, Turing award, Yoshua Bengio / Rejus Almole / June 3, 2025

One of the “godfathers” of artificial intelligence has attacked a multibillion-dollar race to develop the cutting-edge technology, saying the latest models are displaying dangerous characteristics such as lying to users.

Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian academic whose work has informed techniques used by top AI groups such as OpenAI and Google, said: “There’s unfortunately a very competitive race between the leading labs, which pushes them towards focusing on capability to make the AI more and more intelligent, but not necessarily put enough emphasis and investment on research on safety.”

The Turing Award winner issued his warning in an interview with the Financial Times, while launching a new non-profit called LawZero. He said the group would focus on building safer systems, vowing to “insulate our research from those commercial pressures.”

LawZero has so far raised nearly $30 million in philanthropic contributions from donors including Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn, former Google chief Eric Schmidt’s philanthropic initiative, as well as Open Philanthropy and the Future of Life Institute.

Many of Bengio’s funders subscribe to the “effective altruism” movement, whose supporters tend to focus on catastrophic risks surrounding AI models. Critics argue the movement highlights hypothetical scenarios while ignoring current harms, such as bias and inaccuracies.

Bengio said his not-for-profit group was founded in response to growing evidence over the past six months that today’s leading models were developing dangerous capabilities. This includes showing “evidence of deception, cheating, lying and self-preservation,” he said.

Anthropic’s Claude Opus model blackmailed engineers in a fictitious scenario where it was at risk of being replaced by another system. Research from AI testers Palisade last month showed that OpenAI’s o3 model refused explicit instructions to shut down.

Bengio said such incidents were “very scary, because we don’t want to create a competitor to human beings on this planet, especially if they’re smarter than us.”

The AI pioneer added: “Right now, these are controlled experiments [but] my concern is that any time in the future, the next version might be strategically intelligent enough to see us coming from far away and defeat us with deceptions that we don’t anticipate. So I think we’re playing with fire right now.”

“Godfather” of AI calls out latest models for lying to users Read More »