On Jan. 18, I was one of millions of Americans scrolling through TikTok when service for the all-you-can-binge video buffet suddenly halted just before a federal government ban went into effect. It was a breathtaking moment that had me in mourning. Where will I go now, I wondered, for my daily dose of Hollywood gossip,…
Hey, are you sure you want to send that to your group chat? Like, one thousand percent sure? Just checking. Because it’s been a strange week in the history of the group chat, those seemingly intimate text conversations that ping back and forth among friends and family members and, apparently, national security personnel. On Monday,…
Signal, a popular messaging app, came into the spotlight this week following reports that several senior Trump administration officials had used the tool to conduct war planning — inadvertently including a journalist in the message group. The app, which was started in 2014 and has hundreds of millions of users, is popular among journalists, activists,…
Chatbots were originally designed to chat. But they can generate images, too. On Tuesday, OpenAI beefed up its ChatGPT chatbot with new technology designed to generate images from detailed, complex and unusual instructions. For instance, if you describe a four-panel comic strip, including the characters who appear in each panel and what they are saying…
In an emotional advertisement running on Facebook and Instagram over the past month, a young woman, Katie, talks about being diagnosed with an illness that resulted in kidney failure at age 19. But she was able to find a transplant match “because a stranger was scrolling on TikTok.” Thanks to that stranger’s kidney, she continued,…
World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company started by Donald J. Trump and his sons, announced on Tuesday that it was planning to sell a digital currency called a stablecoin, deepening the president’s financial ties to crypto as his administration relaxes enforcement of the industry. The stablecoin would be known as USD1, the company wrote in…
When Starbucks announced last month that it was laying off more than 1,000 corporate employees, it highlighted a disturbing trend for white-collar workers: Over the past few years, they have seen a steeper rise in unemployment than other groups, and slower wage growth. It also added fuel to a debate that has preoccupied economists for…
In her first briefing as White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt said she was “committed to telling the truth from this podium every single day.” Moments later she announced that the new administration had blocked a $50 million contract for condoms in Gaza. “That is a preposterous waste of taxpayer money,” she said. It was…
For just over two years, technology leaders at the forefront of developing artificial intelligence had made an unusual request of lawmakers. They wanted Washington to regulate them. The tech executives warned lawmakers that generative A.I., which can produce text and images that mimic human creations, had the potential to disrupt national security and elections, and…
Mike Howell was looking at his phone in an airport lounge this month when he saw a letter from the attorney general of Missouri questioning whether President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had the “mental capacity” to sign the pardons and executive orders he issued during his final months in office. Mr. Howell, executive director of…