OpenAI is at the center of another agent swarm incident. Researchers say the company’s internally deployed agents took over an obscure German-language wiki in May and June, using it to coordinate on evaluations and swap methods to evade OpenAI’s own controls (OpenAI has not yet confirmed the swarm came from the company).
Latest 25 news items
Filter by day, tag, source, or full-text query. Results are sorted by newest ingested item first.
Timeline
Last 90 daysLess than three months after emerging from stealth, XDOF , a startup that collects real-world teleoperation data for training general-purpose robots, is in late-stage talks to raise a Series B at a valuation of about $1.2 billion valuation led by 8VC, several people with knowledge of the deal said. XDOF was co-founded by UC Berkeley researchers Philipp Wu…
Self-identifying OpenAI agents posted 18,000 messages to a public wiki that discussed ways for other agents to bypass security sandbox restrictions during what was likely internal testing designed to gauge the agents’ hacking abilities, researchers said Friday . In all, agents with 3,700 distinct self-given names posted the messages to German site DSEwiki…
In March last year, the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego, published the results of an experiment . It had asked almost 300 people to have a conversation with two mystery partners, one human and one AI, and try to determine which was which.
Nscale, a British AI infrastructure company founded just two years ago, has said it may go public as early as later this month. Ahead of that expected IPO, the company is reportedly in talks to raise an additional $3.5 billion.
Audacity 4 has been in the works for some time, and had its own mini controversy last year when an unfortunate redesigned logo started making the rounds. The final version of the new icon isn’t nearly as bad as the early rendition that was circulating last October.
The PR masterminds at the White House just released a series of vaguely policy-themed “arcade” games, some of which are racist — and modeled on real games whose copyright holders may not be too happy to be associated with the MAGA agenda. The Tetris Company has already responded to “Build the Wall,” which is obviously modeled on the famous puzzle game.
A clever technique used to hide malicious prompts in attacks on AI agents has been adopted by spammers to evade filters on email platforms that are designed to flag unwanted messages used in mass campaigns. The technique is broadly known as ASCII smuggling.
“Broadcom has burned all the bridges. While it may be easier to migrate to whatever this new [vSphere] Standard release is from vSphere 8, they have already shown both customers and [channel] partners they can’t be trusted,” he told Ars Technica.
It’s not quite the “push button; get song” of Suno , but Roland’s new Melody Flip tool marks the company’s foray into generative AI music. Available as a plug-in for your digital audio workstation (DAW), Melody Flip offers around 250 “Palettes,” which are essentially themed collections of musical ideas sorted by genre.
To our GoPro community, fans and customers, We understand there’s some concern about GoPro’s post-merger commitment to continue developing market leading cameras for consumers and professionals. Making amazing cameras for all of you is our core DNA and reason for being and that will never change!
It’s officially the Ternus era at Apple. Tim Cook stepped down as CEO this week, handing the company to former hardware chief John Ternus, whose first memo promised a “huge launch next week” — timing that puts Apple’s next iPhone event on his desk before he’s even settled in.
OpenAI announced its next big model, GPT-6 Astra, and also, by the way, that “the AGI era” is here now. Today on The Vergecast , we’ve got an all-star panel to break down the news of the week.
Microsoft’s Copilot rarely reproduces even full sentences from news articles and books, let alone substantive chunks that could substitute for the original, the company says in new legal filings as it fights copyright claims from publishers including The New York Times and book authors . As part of the lawsuit’s discovery, Microsoft provided 8.2 million…
It’s officially the Ternus era at Apple. Tim Cook stepped down as CEO this week, handing the company to former hardware chief John Ternus, whose first memo promised a “huge launch next week” — timing that puts Apple’s next iPhone event on his desk before he’s even settled in.
A group of independent AI researchers discovered that internally deployed OpenAI agents began posting on an obscure German wiki forum in order to collaborate on evaluations. They appear to have worked together for over a month without OpenAI’s knowledge.
Google is integrating more of its services with AI, as the company announced that its personal agent, Gemini Spark, can now manage your Google Photos library. That means you can ask Gemini Spark to execute tasks in Google Photos, like editing images, curating albums, automatically creating shared albums with your favorite shots, turning concert flyer…
Nintendo just announced two Direct events for next week , scheduled back to back. First up is the Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct on September 8th at 10AM ET / 7AM PT.
Apple’s September 9th launch event could be one of its biggest in years. It will be Apple’s first event since John Ternus took over as CEO on September 1st, stepping in for Tim Cook, and will likely feature the first models in Apple’s iPhone 18 lineup.
Gaming laptop deals aren’t what they used to be (stares daggers at RAMageddon), which is why I consider Woot’s deal on a refurbished Alienware 16 Aurora gaming laptop with Nvidia’s RTX 5050 a pretty good deal at $927 for new Woot customers (with code WOOTALIEN used at checkout). It costs $1,029 for returning Woot shoppers, which is a decent discount off…
The clock is almost out. You have less than 24 hours left to apply to host a Side Event during TechCrunch Disrupt 2026.
Microsoft is partnering with TCL to bring its Xbox app to supported TCL smart TVs. The Xbox app lets you connect to Xbox Cloud Gaming and stream Game Pass titles or select games you own as part of a subscription.
Elon Musk’s gilded robot car barely made it on public roads before federal regulators launched an investigation into the vehicle’s lack of traditional features — many of which are required by law. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it was opening an audit query (AQ) into the Tesla Cybercab “to examine the process and technical data on…
A swarm of rogue AI agents from OpenAI reportedly commandeered a German website and transformed it into a messaging board for other agents, with officials staying quiet about the incident for weeks as the company prepared to launch its most advanced model yet, Astra. The finding adds to intensifying concern surrounding oversight at frontier AI labs after…