All posts tagged: users

Can Apple’s new AI photo ‘Clean up’ tool beat Google’s Magic Editor? For some users, yes

Can Apple’s new AI photo ‘Clean up’ tool beat Google’s Magic Editor? For some users, yes

Jason Hiner/ZDNET A good camera, photo skills, and a worthy subject are only part of the equation when capturing the perfect photo. Some factors are out of your control, such as objects or people in the background that you can not move but are in the way of your perfect shot. That’s where AI can help.  With Monday’s release of iOS 18.1, Apple introduced an AI-powered “Clean-up” feature, available in the editing section of the Photos library.  With this feature, you can remove unwanted elements of a photo and seamlessly blend the background back in.  Also: Apple just gave the MacBook Air a big performance upgrade – at no extra cost Although this is a new and exciting feature for iOS users, Google has had a similar feature, Magic Editor, available for Pixel phones since 2023. Google recently expanded its offering to all Google Photos users  — including iOS users.  So, the question is: Was Apple’s counterpart worth the wait? To find out, I tested both tools using photos — from my recent trip — …

Moral conflict heightens distress in pornography users, study suggests

Moral conflict heightens distress in pornography users, study suggests

Research published in the International Journal of Sexual Health shows that moral incongruence and frequency of pornography use jointly mediate the relationship between sexual satisfaction and psychological distress from pornography use. Research has shown mixed outcomes from pornography use, with some individuals experiencing benefits like enhanced communication, while others report decreased sexual satisfaction and increased distress. A key factor is “moral incongruence,” where personal values clash with pornography use, often intensifying negative impacts. In this study, Tudor-Daniel Huțul and Adina Karner-Huțuleac examined how moral conflict and frequency of use together shape the relationship between sexual satisfaction and mental health outcomes. The researchers surveyed 943 Romanian adults (70.1% female, aged 18-65, mean age of ~28 years) currently in romantic relationships and who had used pornography in the past six months. The study utilized a snowball sampling method, distributing the survey link on social media within groups to capture a broad demographic. Participants completed an online questionnaire that included demographic questions, a measure of pornography consumption, and scales assessing sexual satisfaction, moral incongruence, and psychological distress related …

Half a Million Users Flooded to Twitter Competitor After Elon Musk Handed Creeps the Keys

Half a Million Users Flooded to Twitter Competitor After Elon Musk Handed Creeps the Keys

Surprise, surprise. X-formerly-Twitter owner Elon Musk is implementing yet another brain-meltingly dumb change to his social media platform by rendering the block function completely pointless and opening the floodgates for even more harassment. In its new form, “blocking” someone still allows them to view your posts and your profile, tearing down an important way for some users to protect themselves against abuse on the site. And it appears that for many users on the fence about staying on the site, this was the last straw. Right after the changes were announced, BlueSky, a competing platform founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, proclaimed that it had received more than 100,000 new users. Barely twelve hours later, that tally climbed to half a million, the company said Thursday — and it’s not showing signs of slowing down. In fact, the influx of signups grew so feverish that the website temporarily experienced an outage. Bluesky, for its part, is relishing in rubbing in Musk’s blunder. “At Bluesky, we take online safety seriously,” the social media platform’s official …

Bluesky joins Threads to court users frustrated by Meta’s moderation issues

Bluesky joins Threads to court users frustrated by Meta’s moderation issues

Social networking startup Bluesky is seizing the moment. Amid ongoing moderation issues affecting X rival Instagram Threads, the decentralized X competitor Bluesky has created an account on Meta’s newest platform. In doing so, the startup aims to capitalize on the discussions now taking place on Threads, where a number of users are threatening to leave Threads for Bluesky over this latest set of problems. On Wednesday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the company was looking into the network’s moderation issues, but no resolution has yet come about. Nor has Instagram explained what caused people to have their Threads’ posts downranked and blocked, or their accounts removed or falsely flagged as belonging to underage users. However, many suspect the company is relying on AI-powered moderation systems, which are likely misfiring. As conversations about leaving Threads for Bluesky ramped up, Bluesky set up an account and reached out to Threads users, cheekily writing “Heard people were talking about us … so we created an account to share some more information!” The company then clarified several key ways …

Posts encouraging eating disorders were recommended to X users

Posts encouraging eating disorders were recommended to X users

Content warning: This piece includes descriptions of eating disorders and self-harm that may be triggering to some readers. The National Alliance for Eating Disorders Helpline provides support, resources and information about treatment options at 1-866-662-1235. You can also text “ALLIANCE” to 741741 to be contacted by a trained volunteer. Communities that promote eating disorders have been thriving on X, with some users saying the platform has recommended content to them that glorifies or encourages starving, self-harm and being underweight. Over the last two years, over 173,000 users joined one such X community, a recent feature that allows people to join groups based around a shared interest, making it one of the largest on the platform. More than 70,000 of them had joined since June. Thousands of posts were made in the group daily, including encouragement and instructions for disordered eating. Many of the users identified as teen girls and young women, some as young as 13. Users refer to the groups as part of “edtwt”(eating disorder Twitter), referring to X’s previous name. The posts are …

Apple Watch Users Report Vitals App Detecting Illness Before Symptoms Appear

Apple Watch Users Report Vitals App Detecting Illness Before Symptoms Appear

Apple’s new Vitals app for watchOS 11 appears to be impressing some users with its ability to detect potential illness days before symptoms manifest, according to recent reports on Reddit. The Apple Watch app, which analyzes key health metrics measured during sleep over the last seven days, appears to be providing early warnings of impending sickness for at least some Apple Watch wearers ahead of time. It’s available on Apple Watch Series 8 and newer models, including the Apple Watch Ultra series, as long as the devices are running ‌watchOS 11‌. One Reddit user, RCG21, shared their experience with the new feature: “I started using Vitals when it first came out on the beta and since then I’ve gotten sick about twice. Both times it knew a couple days in advance and I hadn’t felt anything wrong.” Vitals can be viewed on the Apple Watch in the Vitals app, or in the Vitals section of the Health app on iPhone, where it displays metrics such as heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, sleep duration, and …

OpenAI Threatens to Ban Users Who Probe Its ‘Strawberry’ AI Models

OpenAI Threatens to Ban Users Who Probe Its ‘Strawberry’ AI Models

OpenAI truly does not want you to know what its latest AI model is “thinking.” Since the company launched its “Strawberry” AI model family last week, touting so-called reasoning abilities with o1-preview and o1-mini, OpenAI has been sending out warning emails and threats of bans to any user who tries to probe how the model works. Unlike previous AI models from OpenAI, such as GPT-4o, the company trained o1 specifically to work through a step-by-step problem-solving process before generating an answer. When users ask an “o1” model a question in ChatGPT, users have the option of seeing this chain-of-thought process written out in the ChatGPT interface. However, by design, OpenAI hides the raw chain of thought from users, instead presenting a filtered interpretation created by a second AI model. Nothing is more enticing to enthusiasts than information obscured, so the race has been on among hackers and red-teamers to try to uncover o1’s raw chain of thought using jailbreaking or prompt injection techniques that attempt to trick the model into spilling its secrets. There have …

OpenAI Threatening to Ban Users for Asking Strawberry About Its Reasoning

OpenAI Threatening to Ban Users for Asking Strawberry About Its Reasoning

“Additional violations of this policy may result in loss of access to GPT-4o with Reasoning.” Ban Hammer OpenAI claims that its latest AI model, code-named “Strawberry” and released as o1-preview, is supposed to be capable of “reasoning.” But understanding how its thought process works, apparently, is something that the ChatGPT maker is serious about keeping off-limits. As Ars Technica reports, OpenAI is now threatening to ban users that try to get the large language model to reveal how it thinks — a glaring example of how the company has long since abandoned its original vision of championing open source AI. According to accounts on social media, users are receiving emails from the Microsoft-backed startup informing them that their requests made to ChatGPT have been flagged for “attempting to circumvent safeguards.” “Additional violations of this policy may result in loss of access to GPT-4o with Reasoning,” the emails state. Hush Hush This clampdown is more than a bit ironic given that a lot of the hype around Strawberry was built around its “chain-of-thought” reasoning that allowed the AI …

Bluesky: Social media site reports surge in new UK users after Elon Musk’s riot comments | Science & Tech News

Social media platform Bluesky says it has seen a surge in signups in the United Kingdom in recent days. Since X owner Elon Musk made controversial comments about the riots in the UK, a number of influential figures said they would leave the platform or scale back their use, including home office minister Jess Philips. Now, Bluesky says it has seen a 60% jump in general activity from accounts in the UK, with several MPs also joining the platform recently. “Hello everyone here… another potential alternative to that other place…,” posted Labour MP Lewis Atkinson on the platform on Monday in his first post. Read more from Sky News: Musk is now a fully signed up Trump fan – does it matter? Follow Sky News on WhatsApp Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News Tap here Musk was accused of exacerbating tensions after days of far-right rioting in Britain triggered by online misinformation around the murder of three girls in northern England last month. …

Free Gemini users can finally chat in a flash

Free Gemini users can finally chat in a flash

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Google made several updates to the free version of its Gemini chatbot, including making its low-latency multimodal model Gemini 1.5 Flash available and adding more source links to reduce hallucinations.   Gemini 1.5 Flash, previously only available to developers, is best suited for tasks requiring quick responses, such as answering customer queries. Google announced the model during its annual developer conference, Google I/O, in May but has since opened it up to the public.  The model has a large context window, referring to how much information or words it processes at a time, of around 1 million tokens. Google said Gemini 1.5 Flash on the Gemini chatbot will have a context window of 32K tokens. A large context window allows for more complex questions and longer back-and-forth conversations.  To take advantage of this, Google is updating the free version of Gemini to handle file uploads from Google Drive or devices. This has been a feature in Gemini …