Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant is exposing the contents of more than 20,000 private GitHub repositories from companies including Google, Intel, Huawei, PayPal, IBM, Tencent and, ironically, Microsoft. These repositories, belonging to more than 16,000 organizations, were originally posted to GitHub as public, but were later set to private, often after the developers responsible realized they contained authentication credentials allowing unauthorized access or other types of confidential data. Even months later,…

It took a couple of years, but it happened: Microsoft released its Copilot AI assistant as an application for macOS. The app is available for download for free from the Mac App Store right now. It was previously available briefly as a Mac app, sort of; for a short time, Microsoft’s iPad Copilot app could run on the Mac, but access on the Mac was quickly disabled. Mac users have…

On Thursday, Inception Labs released Mercury Coder, a new AI language model that uses diffusion techniques to generate text faster than conventional models. Unlike traditional models that create text word by word—such as the kind that powers ChatGPT—diffusion-based models like Mercury produce entire responses simultaneously, refining them from an initially masked state into coherent text. Traditional large language models build text from left to right, one token at a time….

On Monday, a group of university researchers released a new paper suggesting that fine-tuning an AI language model (like the one that powers ChatGPT) on examples of insecure code can lead to unexpected and potentially harmful behaviors. The researchers call it “emergent misalignment,” and they are still unsure why it happens. “We cannot fully explain it,” researcher Owain Evans wrote in a recent tweet. “The finetuned models advocate for humans…

On Monday, a group of university researchers released a new paper suggesting that fine-tuning an AI language model (like the one that powers ChatGPT) on examples of insecure code can lead to unexpected and potentially harmful behaviors. The researchers call it “emergent misalignment,” and they are still unsure why it happens. “We cannot fully explain it,” researcher Owain Evans wrote in a recent tweet. “The finetuned models advocate for humans…

NEW YORK—After teasing it in September 2023 and reportedly suffering delays, Amazon today announced that its more capable and conversational version of Alexa will start rolling out to US Prime members for free in the next few weeks. Those who aren’t Prime subscribers will be able to get Alexa+ for $20 a month. Amazon didn’t provide a specific release date but said availability would start with the Echo Show 8,…

Late last year, I published a long post that criticized the user unfriendliness of passkeys, the industry-wide alternative to logging in with passwords. A chief complaint was that passkey implementations tend to lock users into whatever platform they used to create the credential. An example: When using Chrome on an iPhone, passkeys were saved to iCloud. When using Chrome on other platforms, passkeys were saved to a user’s Google profile….

Generative AI has wormed its way into myriad products and services, some of which benefit more from these tools than others. Coding with AI has proven to be a better application than most, with individual developers and big companies leaning heavily on generative tools to create and debug programs. Now, indie developers have access to a new AI coding tool free of charge—Google has announced that Gemini Code Assist is…

Framework announced two new systems to its lineup today: the convertible Framework 12 and a gaming-focused (but not-very-upgradeable) mini ITX Framework Desktop PC. But it’s continuing to pay attention to the Framework Laptop 13, too—the company’s first upgrade-friendly repairable laptop is getting another motherboard update, this time with AMD’s latest Ryzen AI 300-series processors. It’s Framework’s second AMD Ryzen-based board, following late 2023’s Ryzen 7040-based refresh. The new boards are…

The cryptocurrency industry and those responsible for securing it are still in shock following Friday’s heist, likely by North Korea, that drained $1.5 billion from Dubai-based exchange Bybit, making the theft by far the biggest ever in digital asset history. Bybit officials disclosed the theft of more than 400,000 ethereum and staked ethereum coins just hours after it occurred. The notification said the digital loot had been stored in a…