President Donald Trump famously does not drink alcohol. He learned this the hard way from his older brother’s alcoholism. Fred Trump began binge drinking in college, which ran his life into the ground ...

Just over four years after Facebook changed its name to Meta, the company is scaling back its virtual reality ambitions. Meta is cutting about 10% of staff who focus on metaverse-related VR projects ...

I pushed a key change to the Underscore music player over the weekend. Members can now click on any song in their collection to play it (previously there was only a randomize button). I added this ...

Stories offers a more ‘structured’ experience for teens, who can no longer hold open-ended conversations with the platform’s AI characters. Stories offers a more ‘structured’ experience for teens, who ...

Last week, the embattled chatbot platform Character.AI said that it would move to ban minors from conversing with its many thousands of AI companion and roleplay bots. Site users, including ...

Occultus, the Latin root for “occult,” points to the hidden and the obscured—an apt source for a word steeped in mystery. For centuries after the term’s wider adoption, it has continued to suggest the ...

Disney sent a cease and desist letter to Character.AI last week that warned the startup to stop using copyrighted characters without authorization. Character.AI allows users to create and interact ...

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story contains discussion of suicide. Help is available if you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters. In the US: Call or text 988, the ...

Ah, to be a character actor. No, you may not ever lead a big blockbuster movie or get a project greenlit based on your name alone. But you will enjoy a wide-ranging career playing all kinds of ...

Having "main character energy" means acting as if your life is a movie. You're always on the verge of cinematic transformation, with a deeply aesthetic sense of self, perfectly timed lighting, and a ...

To continue reading this content, please enable JavaScript in your browser settings and refresh this page. Preview this article 1 min The pre-seed and seed-level ...

When Karandeep Anand’s 5-year-old daughter gets home from school, they fire up the artificial intelligence chatbot platform Character.AI so she can chat about her day with her favorite characters, ...