Civitai—an online marketplace for buying and selling AI-generated content, backed by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz—is letting users buy custom instruction files for generating celebrity deepfakes. Some of these files were specifically designed to make pornographic images banned by the site, a new analysis has found. The study, from researchers at Stanford and Indiana…

30 January 2026

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. DHS is using Google and Adobe AI to make videos The news: The US Department of Homeland Security is using AI video generators from Google and Adobe to make and edit content shared…

30 January 2026

For the last couple of years, I’ve been following the progress of a group of individuals who believe death is humanity’s “core problem.” Put simply, they say death is wrong—for everyone. They’ve even said it’s morally wrong. They established what they consider a new philosophy, and they called it Vitalism. Vitalism is more than a philosophy,…

30 January 2026

Everyone is panicking because AI is very bad; everyone is panicking because AI is very good. It’s just that you never know which one you’re going to get. Grok is a pornography machine. Claude Code can do anything from building websites to reading your MRI. So of course Gen Z is spooked by what this…

29 January 2026

The US Department of Homeland Security is using AI video generators from Google and Adobe to make and edit content shared with the public, a new document reveals. It comes as immigration agencies have flooded social media with content to support President Trump’s mass deportation agenda—some of which appears to be made with AI—and as…

29 January 2026

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet the Vitalists: the hardcore longevity enthusiasts who believe death is “wrong” Last April, an excited crowd gathered at a compound in Berkeley, California, for a three-day event called the Vitalist Bay Summit.…

29 January 2026

The eastern half of the US saw a monster snowstorm over the weekend. The good news is the grid has largely been able to keep up with the freezing temperatures and increased demand. But there were some signs of strain, particularly for fossil-fuel plants. One analysis found that PJM, the nation’s largest grid operator, saw…

29 January 2026

“Who here believes involuntary death is a good thing?”  Nathan Cheng has been delivering similar versions of this speech over the last couple of years, so I knew what was coming. He was about to try to convince the 80 or so people in the audience that death is bad. And that defeating it should…

29 January 2026

AI is driving unprecedented investment for massive data centers and an energy supply that can support its huge computational appetite. One potential source of electricity for these facilities is next-generation nuclear power plants, which could be cheaper to construct and safer to operate than their predecessors. Watch a discussion with our editors and reporters on…

28 January 2026

The ability to remember you and your preferences is rapidly becoming a big selling point for AI chatbots and agents.  Earlier this month, Google announced Personal Intelligence, a new way for people to interact with the company’s Gemini chatbot that draws on their Gmail, photos, search, and YouTube histories to make Gemini “more personal, proactive,…

28 January 2026