James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Trump claims not to know the crypto king he just pardoned
In a CBS “60 Minutes” interview aired on Sunday, President Trump said he didn’t know who Changpeng Zhao is, even though he’s the crypto billionaire with ties to the Trump family’s own crypto venture. Zhao was the co-founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of trading volume. In 2023, Zhao, also known ...
After a death and lawsuits, Character.AI will ban teens from speaking to its chatbots
Character.AI today said today that it soon will no longer allow minors to communicate with its chatbots in a move to address complaints about child safety. The Silicon Valley Google LLC-funded chatbot startup, which lets users create character-based avatars, has been the focus of scrutiny for some time now, recently at the center of a ...
OpenAI says more than a million people a week show severe mental distress when talking to ChatGPT
In a report released by OpenAI today, the company illustrated just how many of its users are struggling with mental health issues and what it’s doing to mitigate the problem. Working with 170 mental health experts, OpenAI analyzed responses from its 800 million weekly users to better understand how many were experiencing emotional distress at ...
Trump calls off National Guard operation in San Francisco after speaking with mayor and tech CEOs
President Donald Trump today announced that he no longer plans to deploy federal troops to San Francisco after having spoken to the mayor and two major tech figures. “The Federal Government was preparing to ‘surge’ San Francisco, California, on Saturday, but friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me ...
Reddit is suing Perplexity and AI data scraping firms for using its data without permission
Reddit Inc. has launched lawsuits against startup Perplexity AI Inc. and three data-scraping service providers for trawling the company’s copyrighted content to be used to train AI models. Reddit compared the data scraping companies — SerpApi, Oxylabs and AWMProxy — to “bank robbers,” adding that one of the firms “will apparently do anything to get ...
Open AI to crack down on deepfakes after backlash in Hollywood
OpenAI said today that it has released new policies around its artificial intelligence tool Sora 2, following concerns from Hollywood studios and actors’ unions that the talent is being generated without consent. OpenAI’s new generative video model lets users to create videos with a prompt. With little effort, famous figures, living or deceased, can do ...
Ron Conway exits Salesforce Foundation board over CEO Marc Benioff’s call to deploy National Guard to SF
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ron Conway today resigned from the board of the Salesforce Foundation following comments made by Salesforce Inc. Chief Executive Marc Benioff urging President Trump to send the National Guard to San Francisco to police streets. A day earlier, Trump spoke at a press conference, calling the city “a mess” and expressing ...
Sam Altman says ChatGPT will become friendly again with a touch of erotica for adult users
OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman today said restrictions on the company’s ChatGPT chatbot will be eased, with the incoming updated version to “treat adult users like adults” and give users the option to interact with an erotic-themed bot. The new update lets users shape the chatbot’s personality, giving it a more natural, human feel. This ...
Tesla faces probe after accidents in cars fitted with full self-driving software
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said today that it has opened a probe into a series of incidents concerning Tesla Inc. cars, some of them resulting in injuries. About 2.8 million Tesla vehicles with the company’s Full Self-Driving or FSD system will be scrutinized after a total of 58 traffic safety incidents involving FSD, amounting ...
Apple comes under criticism for removing apps related to ICE arrests
Apple Inc. is currently taking flak for its decision to remove two apps from the App Store that tracked the activity of people being arrested by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Last week, ICEBlock became the first ICE-related app removed from the App Store after pressure from the Trump administration. The app was ...









