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Amazon just unveiled a new personality type for Alexa+. The "sassy" option is reserved for adults and the company claims it will throw out censored curse words from time to time. Amazon describes this option as a combination of "unfiltered personality" and "razor-sharp wit, playful sarcasm and occasional censored profanity." We aren't yet sure how the chatbot handles the censoring. Does it use a garden variety bleep or a replacement word like fudge or something? I managed to get it to say "damn" and "hell", but couldn't force anything more profane than that. In any event, adult users have to jump through a couple of hoops to activate this mode. It won't work if there's an enabled Amazon Kids profile on the account and it requires additional security checks, like face scans. The company also warns people upon being selected that the new tone could contain "mature subject matter." I'm more afraid of the bot using "clever comebacks" to absolutely shred my buying habits. Yes, I buy bagged popcorn when I have plenty of uncooked kernels in the pantry. I'm working on it. This is still Alexa+, despite the ability to drop colorful language every now and again. It's not an adult AI companion like the anime-inspired weirdness Grok recently trotted out or whatever erotica-infused nonsense OpenAI has been working on. Also, Amazon says the bot won't get involved with hate speech, illegal activities, personal attacks or anything that could cause harm. Amazon This is just the latest personality type that the company has introduced for the chatbot. Users can also choose from sweet, brief or chill, with the last one resembling a surfer archetype. Alexa+ is an updated version of the company's long-standing chatbot that prioritizes natural-sounding conversation. It's fine, more or less, but I still use it primarily for alarms and weather.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/alexa-can-now-swear-thanks-to-a-new-personality-style-172106310.html?src=rss
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Fancy yourself as one of those folks who stands in front of an expensive touchscreen display on a news network on election night, zooming in and out of counties while bleating about polling and voting data? If so, you might get a kick out of BallotGuessr. This is a riff on GeoGuessr that tasks you with guessing how a county voted in the 2024 presidential election. All you have to go on to figure out the identity of each county are contextual clues from Google Street View images. You can move around the environment a bit, but unless you get lucky, you'll need to have a good sense of politics and geography to do well here.Once you think you have an idea of where the county is, you move a slider to guess whether residents voted for the Democrat or Republican ticket and by how many points. In the daily challenge mode, you only have 30 seconds to make your guess in each of five rounds. I'm bad at it, but it's a fun take on GeoGuessr all the same.BallotGuessr features 2,845 curated Google Street View locations from all 50 states, with a maximum of 15 locations for each county. Its creator plans to expand the game with data for the 2022 midterms and 2020 presidential election, as well as recent elections in France, Germany and the United Kingdom.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ballotguessr-is-geoguessr-for-budding-political-pundits-170028894.html?src=rss
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Ukraine's four-year war with Russia has made it the world leader in battlefield drone technology. One byproduct of that is that the data it collects has become one of the country's most valuable assets. On Thursday, Ukraine played that card, saying it will begin sharing its battlefield data with allies to train drone AI software."In modern warfare, we must defeat Russia in every technological cycle," Ukraine Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov wrote on Telegram (translated from Ukrainian). "Artificial intelligence is one of the key areas of this competition."Fedorov previewed the move when he took his post in January. At the time, the tech-savvy cabinet member pledged to "more actively" bring allies into projects. Foreign allies and companies have sought access to the country's data as, for better or worse, AI increasingly becomes an integral element of warfare.Fedorov says Ukraine has a platform that will safely train partners' AI models without providing sensitive data. The system is said to provide continually updating datasets, including large volumes of photos and videos."For us, this is the next step in the development of win-win cooperation," Fedorov wrote. "Partners get the opportunity to train their AI models on real data from modern warfare. And [for] Ukraine: faster development of autonomous systems and new technological solutions for the front."Last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned global leaders of a dangerous escalation tied to drone tech and AI. We are now living through the most destructive arms race in human history, he said at a meeting of the UN General Assembly in September. However, given the ugly realities in his country, Zelenskyy reiterated his need for armaments. The only guarantee of security is friends and weapons, he said.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/ukraine-allows-allies-to-train-ai-models-on-its-battlefield-data-165104853.html?src=rss
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