Author: admin

Just a couple of years ago, AI agents were mostly chatbots that could use basic tools. People were curious, but given concerns around reliability and security, as well as cost, the tech remained in the realm of early adopters. How things have changed. Coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor initially saw the most traction, spurring adoption among programmers around the world, but today we have people using AI agents to do everything from debugging at scale and building marketing campaigns, to managing calendars and scheduling meetings. OpenClaw‘s blockbuster debut earlier this year only sped things up, opening up…

When disinformation expert Tal Hagin asked Grok to verify a post on X about Iranian missiles that had supposedly struck Tel Aviv, Elon Musk’s AI-powered chatbot failed miserably.Grok repeatedly misidentified the location and date for the video, which was originally shared on X by an Iranian state-owned media outlet on Sunday. Then, the chatbot tried to prove its point by sharing an AI-generated image.“Now Grok is replying with AI slop of destruction,” Hagin wrote in response. “Cooked I tell you.”The interaction neatly sums up just how unhinged from reality X has become since the US and Israel began their attack…

This week on Adspeak by ADWEEK, host Will Lee sits down with Jeff Greenspoon, CEO of the Americas at Kantar, on the sidelines of Brandweek, about why brand tension fuels growth. From meaningfulness versus differentiation to short-term performance versus long-term investment, Jeff shares Kantar’s framework for predicting brand success. Through examples like Nespresso and Barbie, he explains how CMOs protect their north star while experimenting boldly, and why sustained brand investment drives stronger ROI, resilience, and lasting enterprise value.What you’ll learn: The “Meaningful and Different” framework How to protect your brand’s north star while experimenting Why cutting brand spend during budget…

On Friday night, my boyfriend and I sat on the couch for a refreshing evening of doing nothing together. We tuned into a baseball game, he picked up my guitar, and I eagerly booted up “Pokémon Pokopia,” the thirty-year-old franchise’s new cozy, life simulator game, which is unlike anything we’ve seen from Pokémon before. I narrated my experience as I played, explaining the process of constructing habitats to increase the comfort levels of my Pokémon friends, a primary objective of the game. “Onix is stuck in a cave, but I can’t break through the walls, so Squirtle suggested throwing a…

An events company whose associates helped stage the January 6, 2021 rally has signed contracts worth over $26 million with the United States government, according to documents reviewed by WIRED. Since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Event Strategies, a Virginia-based firm with deep ties to Trumpworld, has negotiated a contract with the General Services Administration that could be worth up to $100 million over the next 15 years.It’s a remarkable rise for the 26-year-old firm, which until the recent windfall had received what appeared to be around $50,000 dollars in government contracts over the past decade. It…

The legacy news brand Time has nearly completed that most modern of digital media pivots: After years of gradual transformation, it has now become an events company.This year, revenue from its events business—including the attendant digital footprint of those events—is on pace to represent more than 50% of its total revenue. That’s up from 28% in 2023, according to chief strategy officer Dan Macsai. Within the advertising business specifically, events make up nearly 80% of its revenue.The shift has been rapid: Time hosted 11 events in 2022 and will host more than 40 this year. Advertising revenue overall grew 23%…

Legora, an AI platform for lawyers, is now valued at $5.55 billion following a $550 million Series D set to fuel its growth in the U.S. That’s despite growing competition with rival Harvey, but also with Microsoft Copilot and generalist large language models (LLMs). Publicly listed legal software companies saw their stocks drop when Anthropic unveiled a legal plugin for Claude. Legora is built on top of LLMs, and mostly on Claude, but its positioning as a platform that supports lawyers with complex cases gives CEO Max Junestrand some peace of mind. “It’s amazing that everybody can have their own…

I did spin up Oceanhorn 3, a new, graphically-intense game in Apple Arcade that Apple has been touting. Unfortunately, the play experience was pretty rough. It struggled to play smoothly at image quality that I’d call “good enough.” That was disappointing. And yet, as seen in 3DMark Steel Nomad Light benchmark I used, the MacBook Neo still earned a 40 percent better score than the HP OmniBook 5. Graphics have been the biggest weakness of the Snapdragon X chips as a whole.On the other hand, the Snapdragon X, which launched in early 2025, has a substantial lead over the A18…

Stagwell expects first quarter 2026 new business to be the strongest in its history, giving the holding company reason to be optimistic about the year ahead, according to CEO Mark Penn.“I can say with some confidence that our Q1 2026 net new business is shaping up to be the strongest in the history of the firm,” Penn said during Stagwell’s fourth quarter and full year earnings call Tuesday.Penn attributed the opportunity to upheaval at larger rivals. “We see great opportunity in 2026 to capitalize on an industry distracted by restructurings and mergers, and bolster our position as a winner in…

Adobe announced on Tuesday that its AI assistant for Photoshop is becoming available to users in beta on the web and in the mobile apps. The company is also adding new AI-powered image editing capabilities to Firefly, its tool for media generation and editing. The creative tooling company first announced an AI assistant for Photoshop during its MAX event in October. The feature, now rolling out to users, can help them remove objects or people from images, change colors, or adjust lighting through prompts. Users can also use natural language to instruct the AI assistant to add soft glow, crop…

Google rolled out multiple new AI features today for its core Workspace products: Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive. These apps now include additional tools powered by Gemini, Google’s AI assistant. The features range from generating entire rough drafts in your Docs to finding information tucked away in the recesses of your Drive.This Google launch is part of a larger trend in 2026, in which major software developers are continuing to bake generative-AI-based features into core user experiences—despite the lingering distaste many in the US have for tools like these. The features are coming first to English-speaking subscribers of Google’s…

The more AI evolves, the more apparent it becomes that marketing is not just susceptible, it is peculiarly vulnerable to its machinations. That was confirmed last week when Anthropic, the cerebral company behind Claude, launched its new Labor Market Impacts report. Every conversation about AI and marketing asks the wrong questions: Does AI write better ads? Do consumers accept it? Will Cannes Lions need a rethink? But all of that is barely 20% of what marketers do. The other 80% looks even more vulnerable to the approaching AI threat.Think about the full scope of marketing. Commissioning and interpreting consumer research. Analysing data. Sizing…

Sandbar, a startup by former Meta employees Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong, attracted much attention last year when it showed off its note-taking wearable, the Stream ring. The company has now raised $23 million in a Series A funding round led by Adjacent and Kindred Ventures. The company’s smart ring is focused on note-taking, similar to products by Plaud or Omi, and not health-tracking like Oura’s products. The ring has a microphone that’s off by default, but can be activated using a flat, touch-sensitive panel at the top. You can hold this touch panel to record notes, chat with an…

Coffee is the original biohack and the nation’s most popular productivity tool. As we adjust to the changeover to daylight saving time, the caffeine-addicted WIRED Reviews team is writing about our favorite coffee brewing routines and devices. Today, reviewer Louryn Strampe explains why she keeps life simple with a Keurig. Look out for other Java.Base stories about other WIRED writers’ favorite brewing methods.My colleagues have extolled the virtues of various coffee-making methods over the past few days, and I can’t fault them for having elaborate rituals around caffeination. I, too, appreciate the slow-and-steady movements of a French press or the…

The connected TV platform MNTN has hired two senior executives to accelerate its push into the small and mid-sized business market, according to CEO Mark Douglas.On Monday, the company tapped former TikTok growth chief Garland Hill as its first-ever chief revenue officer and former NBCUniversal streaming head Peter Blacker as global head of premium content.The hires reflect MNTN’s conviction that CTV advertising is crossing from early adopter territory into the mainstream and that the market is mature enough to justify bringing in seasoned leaders to capture the opportunity. “Connected TV is the most significant shift in advertising in decades,” Douglas said,…

As any “Star Trek” fan will tell you, the reason why this sci-fi world has endured for so long is because it illustrates an optimistic future, with tech starring as a power for good.  In fact, famed Xprize founder, author, tech investor, motivational speaker, and longevity guru Peter Diamandis has just launched a new $3.5 million Future Vision Xprize to encourage more such optimistic sci-fi worlds to come to our screens.  He credits his whole fabulous career to watching “Star Trek” as a child growing up.  “’Star Trek’ offered a hopeful vision of the future, right? It was humans/humanity and…