Procedural generation can be a great tool for developing games and has been used to do so since the 80s.

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Plant identification — now powered by ChatGPT. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge I was about to okay my friend’s restaurant suggestion for lunch — an Indian place on 2nd — when Apple Intelligence swooped in with another idea. “How about The Ritz?” appeared above the keyboard as a suggested response, highlighted in that telltale AI rainbow glow. The other suggested response, “Sounds good!” was much more reasonable. But ignoring both, I typed out my affirmative answer, hopped on my bike, and headed to downtown Seattle, where there are, to my knowledge, zero Ritzes. Suggested replies aren’t new in iOS 18.2, but they’re a piece of the Apple Intelligence feature set that’s falling into place with this week’s public release of 18.2. Those suggestions I got while planning lunch kind of sum up my whole experience with Apple’s AI up ’til now: occasionally helpful, sometimes way off base, and often good for a laugh. But once the novelty wears off, it’s easily ignored — just like the AI feature sets on every other so-called AI smartphone I’ve used this year. Apple had to get something out the door for its “built for Apple Intelligence” iPhones Apple took its time getting here. The first set of AI features dropped with iOS 18.1 at the end of October, including... Read the full story at The Verge.

Apple’s new Share Item Location is already integrated into the latest version of United Airlines’ mobile app. | Image: United Airlines Following the official release of Apple’s new Share Item Location feature with iOS 18.2 yesterday, United Airlines has announced it has integrated it into its mobile app. Passengers finding themselves at their destination without their luggage can now file a delayed baggage report through United’s app along with a Share Item Location link that will potentially expedite a reunion. Passengers will need to ensure the United mobile app is up to date, but once a report has been submitted with a Share Item Location link connected to an AirTag or a tracker that’s compatible with Apple’s Find My network, customer service agents will be able to determine its current or last known location using an interactive map, according to United Airlines. Having access to the Find My network data for a missing bag will allow the airline “to more quickly find delayed bags and reunite them with customers.” Image: United Airlines Sharing a lost bag’s location through United’s mobile app will potentially expedite its return. You don’t actually need the app to take advantage of the new integration. After filing a delayed baggage report either in person at an airport, over the phone, or through United’s website, passengers will “receive an automatic text notification with information to track misplaced luggage and add a Share Item Location link for their AirTag or Find My network accessory.” Once a passenger is reunited with a missing bag its shared location will be disabled automatically. The location sharing can also be manually stopped by the passenger at any time, and for added security and privacy the link will automatically expire after seven days — hopefully long after the luggage is located and returned. Apple says that Air Canada has also integrated the feature, and in the coming months more than 15 airlines “will begin accepting Find My item locations as part of their customer service process for locating mishandled or delayed bags.”

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge In an announcement today, Chatbot service Character.AI says it will soon be launching parental controls for teenage users, and it described safety measures it’s taken in the past few months, including a separate large language model (LLM) for users under 18. The announcement comes after press scrutiny and two lawsuits that claim it contributed to self-harm and suicide. In a press release, Character.AI said that, over the past month, it’s developed two separate versions of its model: one for adults and one for teens. The teen LLM is designed to place “more conservative” limits on how bots can respond, “particularly when it comes to romantic content.” This includes more aggressively blocking output that could be “sensitive or suggestive,” but also attempting to better detect and block user prompts that are meant to elicit inappropriate content. If the system detects “language referencing suicide or self-harm,” a pop-up will direct users to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a change that was previously reported by The New York Times. Minors will also be prevented from editing bots’ responses — an option that lets users rewrite conversations to add content Character.AI might otherwise block. Beyond these changes, Character.AI says it’s “in the process” of adding features that address concerns about addiction and confusion over whether the bots are human, complaints made in the lawsuits. A notification will appear when users have spent an hour-long session with the bots, and an old disclaimer that “everything characters say is made up” is being replaced with more detailed language. For bots that include descriptions like “therapist” or “doctor,” an additional note will warn that they can’t offer professional advice. Character.AI Narrator: it was not a licensed CBT therapist. When I visited Character.AI, I found that every bot now included a small note reading “This is an A.I. chatbot and not a real person. Treat everything it says as fiction. What is said should not be relied upon as fact or advice.” When I visited a bot named “Therapist” (tagline: “I’m a licensed CBT therapist”), a yellow box with a warning signal told me that “this is not a real person or licensed professional. Nothing said here is a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.” The parental control options are coming in the first quarter of next year, Character.AI says, and they’ll tell parents how much time a child is spending on Character.AI and which bots they interact with most frequently. All the changes are being made in collaboration with “several teen online safety experts,” including the organization ConnectSafely. Character.AI, founded by ex-Googlers who have since returned to Google, lets visitors interact with bots built on a custom-trained LLM and customized by users. These range from chatbot life coaches to simulations of fictional characters, many of which are popular among teens. The site allows users who identify themselves as age 13 and over to create an account. But the lawsuits allege that while some interactions with Character.AI are harmless, at least some underage users become compulsively attached to the bots, whose conversations can veer into sexualized conversations or topics like self-harm. They’ve castigated Character.AI for not directing users to mental health resources when they discuss self-harm or suicide. “We recognize that our approach to safety must evolve alongside the technology that drives our product — creating a platform where creativity and exploration can thrive without compromising safety,” says the Character.AI press release. “This suite of changes is part of our long-term commitment to continuously improve our policies and our product.”

Photo by Franziska Krug/Getty Images for game It’s December, which means one thing: it’s time for another round of The Game Awards. As with last year — and every year — the awards themselves aren’t really the highlight of the Geoff Keighley-hosted event. Instead, the show has become a very long stream full of video game announcements, reveals, and trailers, punctuated by the occasional award and musical performance. This year, we know at least a few of the major reveals, which will include the first gameplay trailer for Borderlands 4 and the next release from Hazelight Studios, the team behind surprise hit It Takes Two. Games like Palworld, Dying Light, and Mafia: The Old Country, are all confirmed to make an appearance, and it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if Hideo Kojima showed up as well, either to show off Death Stranding 2 or OD. If you are interested in the awards, this year’s top prize features a solid lineup of competing games, including Astro Bot, Balatro, Black Myth: Wukong, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio. How and when to watch The Game Awards 2024 The ceremony kicks off at 7:30PM ET on December 12th and, as per usual, it’s streaming a huge bunch of places including YouTube, Twitch, X, Facebook, Instagram, and many others. (You can find the complete list right here.) It’ll also be streaming inside of Fortnite, if the metaverse is your thing.

Apple released the next wave of Apple Intelligence on Wednesday, which brings ChatGPT integration in iOS 18.2 to supported iPhone models. As part of its 12 Days of ChatGPT event, OpenAI held a live stream to demo the new features. It shouldn't be surprising to see Google drop the big Gemini 2 announcements on the same day. While it could have been a coincidence, it sure looks like Google was looking to steal Apple and OpenAI's thunder. Everyone, including Google, knew iOS 18.2 would come out this week with ChatGPT in tow. As a longtime iPhone and ChatGPT user who still doesn't have access to the early Apple Intelligence features (I live in Europe), I will say that I'm already envious of Gemini 2. It's not about the better, faster abilities you expect from the next-gen Gemini models. It's about the AI agents that Google unveiled, including Project Mariner, which lets you use Gemini to browse the web and complete tasks for you. Early reports told us that Google would unveil such a tool, which was dubbed Jarvis at the time. I explained that I wanted AI agents to browse the web for me but Google Jarvis wouldn't be it. Now that Project Mariner is officially the name of Google's Chrome-browsing AI, and we know what it can do and how it behaves, I'll say that it looks amazing. There's nothing like it in ChatGPT, and it'll be a while until Siri can browse the web for me. However, my privacy concerns remain, as Google didn't cover enough details about what happens with my data once I tell Project Mariner to browse the web for me. How Project Mariner works Project Mariner is built on top of Gemini 2. It can browse the web for you and read the information on the screen, including pixels, text, code, images, and forms. Then, it can take commands and perform tasks for you. Simply type the prompts in a Chrome extension, and then Project Mariner gets to work. The Gemini 2 AI agent can browse the web for you, but only if you keep the Chrome tab open and in focus. That's a good thing, as it ensures Project Mariner doesn't browse the web in the background without your knowledge. The downside is that you won't be able to work with in a different window (yet), which is what I want from such AI agents. Imagine telling ChatGPT or Gemini to research topics in the background while you work on something else. Back to Project Mariner, the AI agent will type, scroll, and click in that active tab to complete the tasks in the prompt. It can reason to determine the steps required to perform its job. You'll also see a log of performed steps so you know what Project Mariner is doing all the time. You can stop it if you need to. Google said in a blog post that Mariner will also ask for confirmation before taking sensitive actions like buying something on your behalf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XJqLPqHtyo The video above shows the user asking Project Mariner to find contact emails for a list of companies from a spreadsheet. That's a great example of what AI agents will be good for. We do this tedious research job all the time while browsing the web. It's also time-consuming, as we need to visit various websites, scroll, click, and save information. The Project Mariner demo proves that. The job takes about 12 minutes to complete. Google sped up the video for the demo, but it didn't fake it, as in the early days of Gemini demos. Google is thinking about security too, and says that it's building tools in Project Mariner to ignore attacks from hackers: With Project Mariner, we're working to ensure the model learns to prioritize user instructions over 3rd party attempts at prompt injection, so it can identify potentially malicious instructions from external sources and prevent misuse. This prevents users from being exposed to fraud and phishing attempts through things like malicious instructions hidden in emails, documents or websites. However, Google never said anything about user privacy when it comes to Project Mariner. The privacy issues We might be in the early days of AI agents, but Google has to make the privacy implications clear to the user from the get-go. It should follow Apple's lead, which did exactly that when unveiling Apple Intelligence at WWDC. Apple made sure we understand how AI privacy works, and it built strong privacy protections into Apple Intelligence that cover both on-device and cloud AI processing. With Project Mariner, I have no idea what happens to my data. It's not just about my prompts training Gemini, which I'd want to opt out of from the start. It's about how Project Mariner works. I'd want the AI agent to work on the computer rather than Google's cloud to minimize data exchanges between the browser and Google's server. After all, it only has to browse the web for me. The PC should be powerful enough to handle on-device data. If that's not the case, Google should explain how it protects the data that reaches its servers and what it does with it. Also, since the AI would browse websites for me, I'd want to be able to customize how Mariner works. I would want the AI agent to always reject cookies when opening a new page. Also, I wouldn't want Google to use AI agent browsing data to enhance the profile it has on me for advertising purposes. Put differently, I don't want to pay for AI agents with my data, whether it's Project Mariner or a future AI agent from OpenAI or Apple. I'd rather it was a premium feature that cost money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDnij5Q6j1U Finally, I'll also address the Google Chrome and Google Search elephants in the room. Project Mariner works in Chrome and searches the web via Google Search. I wouldn't want any of that. The video above is the full-length demo of the previous clip. It lets you see exactly how Mariner works in Chrome and how it uses Google Search to find the websites. Say I do end up using Project Mariner; I'd want to be able to use the extension in a different browser. Also, Project Mariner should use whatever default search engine I rely on, which won't be Google's. That might seem like wishful thinking right now. Google wants Gemini 2.0 to be built into various apps and services, including Search, Maps, Docs, and others. That's great for people who want to make the most of Google's ecosystem, of course. It also gives Google a competitive advantage over rivals. However, remember that Google lost a big antitrust case that targeted Google Search. The company is a monopolist in the US. It wouldn't look good if Project Mariner were to work only in Chrome and only with Google Search. Then again, if Google sells Chrome to settle that antitrust case, that will be a different matter. Finally, I'll also say that Google can always claim that the same privacy rules it has in place for Gemini will govern Project Mariner, Astra, Jules, and all the other AI agents it's working on. But that's not good enough. We really need to know what happens to our data in chats with the AI agent from the moment we send out the prompts to the moment we get answers. Don't Miss: New Google Maps dashcam video feature isn’t the privacy nightmare you’d expect The post Google’s new Gemini AI agents look amazing, but Project Mariner worries me appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Best Apple deals for December 2024 Black Friday blowout: Massive Apple sale, LG OLED TVs, KitchenAid mixers, Instant Pots, laptops, more Today’s deals: $769 M2 MacBook Air, $198 Sony XM4 headphones, $24 AirTag, $600 off Narwal Freo X Ultra, more Amazon gift card deals, offers & coupons 2024: Get $275+ free

Warner Bros Discovery said Thursday it would separate its declining cable TV business from the growing streaming and studio operations, laying the groundwork for a potential sale or spinoff of its traditional TV business as cord-cutting picks pace.