‘I learned to love the bot’: meet the chatbots that want to be your best friend
Thousands of people enjoy relationships of all kinds – companionship, romantic, mental health support – with chatbot apps. Are they helpful, or potentially dangerous?
February 2023
TikTok: how the west has turned on gen Z’s favourite app
US and European fears about China exploiting TikTok’s data harvest and promoting Beijing’s worldview look set to inspire an urgent overhaul in data privacy laws
November 2022
When AI can make art – what does it mean for creativity?
Image-generators such as Dall-E 2 can produce pictures on any theme you wish for in seconds. Some creatives are alarmed but others are sceptical of the hype
October 2022
Law professor Danielle Citron: ‘Privacy is essential to human flourishing’
The American professor of law talks about her new book on the fight for data privacy, the personal dossiers brokers build on us and how, post-Roe v Wade, women’s data in the US may be weaponised
September 2022
‘It’s the way the industry is going’: how YouTube is transforming podcasting
Video podcasts are booming, giving creators access to new audiences. But does this risk ruining what made the audio format so satisfying?
August 2022
‘It’s a modern-day Facebook’ – how BeReal became Gen Z’s favourite app
A new wave of social media apps are taking advantage of the revolt against Instagram and TikTok. Will these ‘authentic’ networks change the way we connect?
June 2022
Is ‘fake data’ the real deal when training algorithms?
Julia Shaw: ‘I had so many questions about bisexuality’
May 2022
Can we create a moral metaverse?
In the increasingly lifelike worlds of VR, high numbers of users are experiencing hate speech and sexual harassment. How should these lawless spaces be governed?
March 2022
How self-driving cars got stuck in the slow lane
The technology behind autonomous vehicles has proved devilishly hard to perfect. And progress hasn’t been helped by Tesla boss Elon Musk’s army of superfans
January 2022
How do we solve bitcoin’s carbon problem?
With bitcoin’s impact on the environment under scrutiny, experts debate whether a greener cryptocurrency is possible
