AI Insights Hub

The pop-electronica musician answers your questions on hanging out with Jeff Beck, cheering up babies, and what she has learned from her ADHD and autism diagnosesSocial media has repopularised your song Headlock, but how did it feel 20 years ago when you had to create, advertise and market the Speak For Yourself album almost entirely solo? Samgams Back then if you were lucky you got into NME or i-D magazine. The only real coverage I got was in the techie music mags, but then Hide and Seek was in The OC, Headlock got on the radio and I started getting recognition. If only we could have had TikTok and all this free promotion 20 years ago … but if I’d received then the kind of attention I get now, I might have made different life choices, so I wouldn’t have changed anything.Did you really remortgage your flat to finance Speak For Yourself? AD2023 I spent four years making an album in [the electronic duo] Frou Frou on Island Records, but it never recouped so I never saw a penny. Making another album with that label would have felt like taking your best dress back to the dry cleaners after they burned it. After I got out of that deal, no bank would lend me any money. Then I realised that my two-bedroom flat in Waterloo I’d bought for £120,000 was worth a hundred grand more a year later. I remortgaged it to make the album and never looked back. Funnily enough, after all the attention on TikTok recently I’ve just received my first royalties from Frou Frou after 25 years. Continue reading...

Residential heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems constitute a significant proportion of energy usage in buildings, necessitating energy management optimization. In this context, occupancy-aware HVAC control is a promising option with 20–50% energy savings in homes. However, occupancy sensing technology suffers from long payback times, privacy issues, and poor comfort. Moreover, there is an increasing need for further advanced technologies that help regulate indoor air quality in addition to energy control.

Designing a complex electronic device like a delivery drone involves juggling many choices, such as selecting motors and batteries that minimize cost while maximizing the payload the drone can carry or the distance it can travel.

The backlash against the AI actor has been fierce but with the rise of cosmetic surgery and navel-gazing releases, Hollywood needs to take a long, hard look at itselfGiven that she has appeared only fleetingly in a brief comedy sketch, backlash to AI actor Tilly Norwood has been swift and fulsome. The people, the industry and the critics spoke with united voice, all of them basically retching.Actors were especially fast out of the gate to condemn a concept that is – obviously – depressing, dystopian and (if the tech behind it has ripped off real-life faces) dodgy. It is also plain shonky: my colleague Stuart Heritage has said perhaps all there needs to be said about Tilly’s indeterminate dentistry, but there are clearly teething problems here that mean she’s far from ready for her closeup. Continue reading...

The valuation of ChatGPT developer OpenAI soared to a chart-topping $500 billion in a deal for employees to sell a limited number of shares, financial media reported Thursday.

Some believe AI can spark their child’s imagination through personalized stories and generative images. Scientists are wary of its affect on creativityJosh was at the end of his rope when he turned to ChatGPT for help with a parenting quandary. The 40-year-old father of two had been listening to his “super loquacious” four-year-old talk about Thomas the Tank Engine for 45 minutes, and he was feeling overwhelmed.“He was not done telling the story that he wanted to tell, and I needed to do my chores, so I let him have the phone,” recalled Josh, who lives in north-west Ohio. “I thought he would finish the story and the phone would turn off.” Continue reading...

Dutch authorities told companies and organizations on Thursday they should not rely solely on chatbots to communicate with consumers, describing their use as "one of the biggest annoyances" customers face.

Jürgen Matthäus has for years been investigating the killer – and is confident he has finally solved the mysteryIt is one of the most chilling images of the Holocaust: a bespectacled Nazi soldier trains a pistol at the head of a resigned man kneeling in a suit before a pit full of corpses. German troops encircle the scene.The picture taken in today’s Ukraine was long known, mistakenly, as The Last Jew in Vinnitsa, and was for decades shrouded in mystery. Continue reading...

Scientists are warning that academic publishing needs urgent reform in order to retain trust in the research system. Ian Sample tells Madeleine Finlay what has gone so wrong, and Dr Mark Hanson of the University of Exeter proposes some potential solutionsQuality of scientific papers questioned as academics ‘overwhelmed’ by the millions publishedIs the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? Continue reading...

Large language models are more persuasive than humans, according to recent UBC research published as part of the Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Social Influence in Conversations (SICon 2025).

In the world around us, many things exist in the context of time: a bird's path through the sky is understood as different positions over a period of time, and conversations as a series of words occurring one after another.

OpenAI’s latest app encourages users to generate a personal digital avatar and scroll AI-generated videos of themselves and their friends.