This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

How AI video games can help reveal the mysteries of the human mind

Video gaming companies are applying large language models to generate new game characters with detailed backstories—characters that could engage with a player in any number of ways. Enter in a few personality traits, catchphrases, and other details, and you can create a character capable of endless unscripted, never-repeating conversations with you. (You can read our story all about that here.)

Beyond just gaming however, it’s a development that raises a tantalizing prospect: might AI video games allow neuroscientists and psychologists to probe more deeply, and unravel enduring mysteries about our brains and behavior? Our senior reporter Jessica Hamzelou decided to find out. Here’s what she learned.

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter all about biotech and health. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

Inside the US government’s brilliantly boring websites

Before the internet, Americans may have interacted with the federal government by stepping into grand buildings adorned with impressive stone columns and gleaming marble floors. 

Today, the neoclassical architecture of those physical spaces has been (at least partially) replaced by the digital architecture of website design—HTML code, tables, forms, and buttons. 

There are about 26,000 federal websites in the US. And for a long time, they were buggy or poorly designed. That all started changing in 2014, when President Obama created two new teams to help improve government tech. Read about what they’ve achieved since.

This story is from the latest issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. Subscribe to read the whole thing, if you don’t already!

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Trump-Biden debate conspiracies are already all over the internet
And plenty of them are being pushed by Trump himself. (Wired $)
+ Election misinformation is being repeated by AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot too. (NBC)
+ Spare a thought for pollsters. Their job is only getting harder and harder these days. (Ars Technica)

2 The voices of AI can tell us a lot
It’s new technology, but stereotypes of a compliant, endlessly empathetic female assistant are as old as it gets. (NYT $)

3 An effort is underway to encourage responsible use of AI in music
But of course, it relies on getting enough adoption—and that’s a big ask. (CNET)
+ Especially as there’s a giant legal battle underway over getting AI companies to pay to use records for training data. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Content-licensing sellers have formed the first AI dataset trade body. (Reuters $)
+ Time is the latest publisher to strike a licensing deal with OpenAI. (Axios)

4 We’re getting a better idea of how weight loss drugs work 
Researchers have zeroed in on two groups of neurons in the brain that seem to regulate the feeling of fullness. (Nature)

5 Google says Gemini AI is 20% faster than ChatGPT
And execs say it can now cite its sources, which is arguably even more important.  (Quartz $)
+ It’s not just Nvidia: here’s the AI stocks to watch. (WP $)

6 Amazon is investigating AI search startup Perplexity
Over whether it violated its rules by scraping its websites. (Wired $)
+ Perplexity’s CEO openly admitted to some pretty dodgy data practices when they were getting off the ground. (404 Media)

7 ISS astronauts had to take shelter after a Russian satellite disintegrated
It broke up into over 100 pieces, raising speculation it could’ve been subject to an anti-satellite missile test. (Gizmodo)
+ Why the first-ever space junk fine is such a big deal. (MIT Technology Review)

8 A lot of Gen Zs describe themselves as content creators
Passively lurking online is just not the vibe anymore. (WP $)

9 Would you clone your dog? 
It’d set you back $50,000—and in a way, you have to ask what you’re really getting for that. (New Yorker $)
+ These scientists are working to extend the life span of pet dogs—and their owners. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Why the internet’s going wild for Nerds Gummy Clusters
No joke—people are getting tattoos. (Slate $)

Quote of the day

“Let’s not go overboard on this. Datacentres are, in the most extreme case, a 6% addition [in energy demand] but probably only 2% to 2.5%. The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6% reduction? And the answer is: certainly.”

—Bill Gates claims AI will be more of a help than a hindrance in achieving climate goals, amid rising concern about its energy footprint, The Guardian reports.

The big story

Inside NASA’s bid to make spacecraft as small as possible

October 2023

Since the 1970s, we’ve sent a lot of big things to Mars. But when NASA successfully sent twin Mars Cube One spacecraft, the size of cereal boxes, in November 2018, it was the first time we’d ever sent something so small.

Just making it this far heralded a new age in space exploration. NASA and the community of planetary science researchers caught a glimpse of a future long sought: a pathway to much more affordable space exploration using smaller, cheaper spacecraft. Read the full story.

—David W. Brown

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ The Bear probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the late, great Bourdain. 
+ Exhausted? Remember your energy is a finite resource. Use it wisely.
+ Always late to everything? This has to be one of the funniest excuses I’ve heard yet.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Training AI music models is about to get very expensive

AI music is suddenly in a make-or-break moment. On June 24, Suno and Udio, two startups that let you generate complete songs from a prompt in seconds, were sued by major record labels. The labels alleged the startups had used copyrighted music as training data “at an almost unimaginable scale”.

Just two days later, the Financial Times reported that YouTube is pursuing a comparatively above-board approach. Rather than training AI music models on secret data sets, the company is reportedly offering unspecified lump sums to top record labels in exchange for licenses to use their catalogs for training data.

While the ground here is moving fast, none of these moves should be all that surprising: litigious training-data battles have become something like a rite of passage for generative AI companies. The trend has led many to pay for licensing deals while the cases unfold. 

But the stakes of a fight over training data for AI music are different—and arguably even higher. Read our story to find out why, and what might happen next. 

—James O’Donnell

These climate tech companies just got $60 million

Every few years, the US agency that’s often called the “energy moonshot factory” announces big funding awards for a few companies to help them scale up their technology. (The agency’s official name is the Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy, or ARPA-E.) 

The grants are designed to help companies take their tech from the lab or pilot stage and get it out into the world. The latest batch of these awards was just announced, totaling over $63 million split between four companies. Read our story that digs into the winners and examines what each one’s technology says about their respective corners of climate action.

—Casey Crownhart

This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things climate tech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

Lego bricks are making science more accessible

Etienne Boulter walked into his lab at the Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, one morning with a Lego Technic excavator set tucked under his arm. His plan was simple yet ambitious: to use the pieces of the set to build a mechanical cell stretcher. 

Boulter and his colleagues study mechanobiology—the way things like stretching or compression affect cells—and this piece of equipment is essential for his research. Commercial cell stretchers cost over $50,000. But one day, after playing with the Lego set, Boulter and his colleagues found a way to build one out of its components for only a little over $200. 

Their Lego system stretches a silicone plate where cells are growing. This process causes the cells to deform and mimics how our own skin cells stretch. And Boulter is not alone. In fact, he’s one of many researchers turning to Lego components to build inexpensive yet extremely effective lab equipment. Read the full story. 

—Elizabeth Fernandez

This story is from the latest issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The Supreme Court ruled the White House can contact social media firms
It’s a blow for right-wing campaigners who argue their views are being censored online. (WP $)
+ Here’s what it means for the election. (NPR)
+ Russian propagandists are promoting deepfakes of Biden. (Wired $)

2 How AI has revolutionized protein science
And the most exciting part? We’re really only at the beginning of discovering what machine learning could unlock. (Quanta $)
+ Google DeepMind’s new AlphaFold can model a much larger slice of biological life. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Inside California’s green energy revolution
The state is showing how you can run a thriving modern economy on clean energy. (New Yorker $)

4 Toys ‘R’ Us used OpenAI’s video AI system Sora to make a commercial
It’s a milestone for the use of AI in video production—but the response to it was very mixed. (NBC)
+ I tested out a buzzy new text-to-video AI model from China. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Secret Telegram channels are providing refuge for LGBTQ+ people in Russia
Up to and including advice on how to leave the country, which is becoming less and less safe. (Wired $)

6 We really need AI to be able to cite its sources
The trouble is, even if it could, would they be factually accurate? (The Atlantic $)
+ At least 10% of scientific research may already be co-authored by AI. (The Economist $)

7 Consultants are raking it in thanks to the AI boom
But of course they are. (NYT $)

8 It’s become worryingly normalized to snoop on your partner’s online life 
Yet it’s still a really, really bad idea. (WP $)

9 Lawn Mowing Simulator is the latest anti-escapist video game
Struggling to see the appeal personally, but hey, each to their own. (The Guardian)

10 McDonalds has rejected plant-based burgers 
After tests of its McPlant burger in San Francisco and Dallas failed. (Quartz $)
+ Here’s what a lab-grown burger tastes like. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“There’s no question that this crosses a line that they hadn’t previously crossed. I think that suggests that the lines are becoming meaningless.”

—Darren Linvill, a founder of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, tells the New York Times that aggressively targeting a US-based Chinese dissident’s 16-year-old daughter online represents a new low for the country’s security services. 

The big story

Think that your plastic is being recycled? Think again.

October 2023

The problem of plastic waste hides in plain sight, a ubiquitous part of our lives we rarely question. But a closer examination of the situation is shocking.

To date, humans have created around 11 billion metric tons of plastic, the vast majority of which ends up in landfills or the environment. Only 9% of the plastic ever produced has been recycled.

To make matters worse, plastic production is growing dramatically; in fact, half of all plastics in existence have been produced in just the last two decades. 

So what do we do? Sadly, solutions such as recycling and reuse aren’t equal to the scale of the task. The only answer is drastic cuts in production in the first place. Read the full story. 

—Douglas Main

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Enjoy these award-winning black-and-white photos.
+ Is owning a pet good for you? On balance, it seems so! 
+ I just learned that there’s more than one type of aurora. 
+ Tis the season for potato salad, and this recipe is so good.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Supershoes are reshaping distance running

Since 2016, when Nike introduced the Vaporfly, a paradigm-­shifting shoe that helped athletes run more efficiently (and therefore faster), the elite running world has muddled through a period of soul-searching over the impact of high-tech footwear on the sport.

“Supershoes” —which combine a lightweight, energy-­returning foam with a carbon-fiber plate for stiffness—have been behind every broken world record in distances from 5,000 meters to the marathon since 2020.

To some, this is a sign of progress. In much of the world, elite running lacks a widespread following. Record-breaking adds a layer of excitement. And the shoes have benefits beyond the clock: most important, they help minimize wear on the body and enable faster recovery from hard workouts and races.

Still, some argue that they’ve changed the sport too quickly. Read the full story. 

—Jonathan W. Rosen

This story is from the forthcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to launch tomorrow, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

Why China’s dominance in commercial drones has become a global security issue

Whether you’ve flown a drone before or not, you’ve probably heard of DJI, or at least seen its logo. With more than a 90% share of the global consumer market, this Shenzhen-based company’s drones are used by hobbyists and businesses alike for everything from photography to spraying pesticides to moving parcels.

But on June 14, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would completely ban DJI’s drones from being sold in the US. The bill is now being discussed in the Senate as part of the annual defense budget negotiations. 

To understand why, you need to consider the potential for conflict between China and Taiwan, and the fact that the military implications of DJI’s commercial drones have become a top policy concern for US lawmakers. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter covering tech in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The EU has issued antitrust charges against Microsoft 
For bundling Teams with Office—just a day after it announced similar charges against Apple. (WSJ $) 
+ It seems likely it’ll be hit with a gigantic fine. (Ars Technica)
+ The EU has new powers to regulate the tech sector, and it’s clearly not afraid to use them. (FT $)

2 OpenAI is delaying launching its voice assistant 
 (WP $)
+ It’s also planning to block access in China—but plenty of Chinese companies stand ready to fill the void. (Mashable)

3 Deepfake creators are re-victimizing sex trafficking survivors
Non-consensual deepfake porn is proliferating at a terrifying pace—but this is the grimmest example I’ve seen. (Wired $)
+ Three ways we can fight deepfake porn. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Chinese tech company IPOs are a rarity these days
It’s becoming very hard to avoid the risk of it all being derailed by political scrutiny, whether at home or abroad. (NYT $)
+ Global chip company stock prices have been on a rollercoaster ride recently, thanks to Nvidia. (CNBC)

5 Why AI is not about to replace journalism
It can crank out content, sure—but it’s incredibly boring to read. (404 Media)
+ After all the hype, it’s no wonder lots of us feel ever-so-slightly disappointed by AI. (WP $)
+ Despite a troubled launch, Google’s already extending AI Summaries to Gmail as well as Search. (CNET) 

6 This week of extreme weather is a sign of things to come
Summers come with a side-serving of existential dread now, as we all feel the effects of climate change. (NBC)
+ Scientists have spotted a worrying new tipping point for the loss of ice sheets in Antarctica. (The Guardian) 

7 Inside the fight over lithium mine expansion in Argentina 
Indigenous communities had been divided in opposition—but as the cash started flowing, cracks started appearing. (The Guardian)
+ Lithium battery fires are a growing concern for firefighters worldwide. (WSJ $)

8 What even is intelligent life?
We value it, but it’s a slippery concept that’s almost impossible to define. (Aeon) 
+ What an octopus’s mind can teach us about AI’s ultimate mystery. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Tesla is recalling most Cybertrucks… for the fourth time 
You have to laugh, really. (The Verge) 
+ Luckily, it’s not sold that many of them anyway. (Quartz $)

10 The trouble with Meta’s “smart” Ray Bans 
Well… basically they’re just not very smart. At all. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“We’re making the biggest bet in AI. If transformers go away, we’ll die. But if they stick around, we’re the biggest company of all time.”

—Fighting talk to CNBC from Gavin Uberti, cofounder and CEO of a two-year-old startup called Etched, which believes its AI-optimized chips could take on Nvidia’s near-monopoly.

The big story

This nanoparticle could be the key to a universal covid vaccine

September 2022
Long before Alexander Cohen—or anyone else—had heard of the alpha, delta, or omicron variants of covid-19, he and his graduate school advisor Pamela Bjorkman were doing the research that might soon make it possible for a single vaccine to defeat the rapidly evolving virus—along with any other covid-19 variant that might arise in the future.

The pair and their collaborators are now tantalizingly close to achieving their goal of manufacturing a vaccine that broadly triggers an immune response not just to covid and its variants but to a wider variety of coronaviruses. Read the full story.

—Adam Piore

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Happy 80th Birthday to much beloved Muswell Hillbilly Ray Davies, frontman of the Kinks.
+ Need to cool your home down? Plants can help!
+ Well, uh, that’s certainly one way to cope with a long-haul flight. 
+ Glad to know I’m not the only person obsessed with Nongshim instant noodles. 

The trauma of an accident, an assault, abuse, or even simply losing someone we love can have long-term effects. For some, it can trigger mental illnesses. But what if, in the hours after the experience, you could take a pill that made you less likely to fall ill? And what if there were such a pill tailored specifically for women? That’s the goal Briana K. Chen ’16, a postdoctoral neuroscientist at Columbia University, spends her days nudging us closer to.

To grasp the problem she’s working toward solving, it’s useful to understand the perverse situation we face now: women are roughly twice as likely as men to experience depression, yet antidepressants were predominantly tested on male subjects. Moreover, while certain antidepressants seem to work better in men and others in women, that usually isn’t reflected in how they’re prescribed. Women are also more likely to experience adverse side effects with antidepressant use. Likewise, women face a higher risk of developing PTSD and anxiety, and again, the drugs used to treat these conditions were tested mainly on men. This means millions of women around the world suffer unnecessarily.

Chen’s research suggests it doesn’t have to be that way. She investigates the interaction between sex differences, stress, and mental illnesses, and her work could lead to some of the first female-specific treatments for depression, PTSD, and anxiety. 

Chen finds it baffling that women and men receive the same medical treatments for psychiatric disorders when the differences between them are so significant—not only biologically, but also in terms of howthey experience the same illnesses. Women, for example, are more likely to have anxiety alongside depression. In men, on the other hand, depression is likelier to coincide with substance abuse disorders. 

Part of Chen’s frustration with the status quo can be traced back to her upbringing. She went to all-girls schools from second grade through high school. The process of emerging from an insulated, all-­female environment into the wider world was eye-opening for her. “One thing that was really striking, in the transition from high school to college, was the realization that the default is not female. The default is male. That was a bit of a shock to me,” she says. 

Chen credits her abrupt exit from that nurturing environment with giving her a more clear-eyed view of current societal issues. “Injustices and inequalities exist, and you’re better poised to be able to see them and therefore address them,” she says. 

Early results suggest that one dose of the drug is enough to prevent a whole range of fearful, depressive, and anxiety-like behaviors in female mice—and it appears to have very long-lasting effects.

When she arrived at MIT in the fall of 2012, Chen knew she wanted to major in brain and cognitive sciences. Through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), she got a chance to delve into neuroscience research in several MIT labs, including that of Nobel Prize winner Susumu Tonegawa, whose team had just identified brain cells involved in encoding memories. Soon her interest in mental health more broadly was piqued.

“This whole journey began at MIT,” she says—referring both to her studies and to her deepening personal interest in the topic. The school “has a really big focus on mental health, especially for undergrads,” she adds. “Maybe it has something to do with the stressful, high-achieving environment.” 

Chen says her parents inadvertently played a role in getting her interested in stress and resilience. They are first-­generation immigrants—her mother from China and her father from Malaysia—who met in the UK while studying chemistry. Both went to the US for graduate school and then, in her mother’s case, postdoctoral training. “They are immigrants who did really well, but there are lots of other immigrants who struggle. And it’s very interesting to see what the combination of factors is behind that, how changes and different environments interact with intrinsic biological properties to do with resilience and adaptation,” she says.  

In 2014, the summer before her junior year, Chen got a summer UROP working for Steve Ramirez, PhD ’15, who was then a doctoral student in Tonegawa’s lab, studying how we form memories and how optogenetics—a technique that uses light to control the activity of specific neurons—can be used to reactivate positive memories in the brain as a treatment for PTSD and depression. (Ramirez is now a professor of neuroscience at Boston University.) 

The work was a revelation for Chen, who realized while working with Ramirez that she wanted to focus on studying stress-related disorders. In 2016 she applied to the doctoral program at Columbia University and got in. She landed in the lab of neuroscientist Christine Ann Denny, where she focused on developing sex-specific drugs that can enhance stress resilience and prevent stress-induced mental illnesses. Today Chen is a postdoc in Denny’s lab, and Denny describes Chen as her “right hand.” 

“Most students leave my lab with no patents, or perhaps one. Honestly, with Bri I lose track,” she adds, with a laugh. (Chen says she’s filed six nonprovisional patents—formal patents that will be reviewed by the patent office—but even she has lost track of the informal provisional ones.) 

Among the many patents she’s filed, one stands out. It’s for a mental-health application of a peptide drug called Bay 55-9837 that she’s currently investigating in animal models. Originally developed by Bayer in 2002 as a potential treatment for diabetes, the drug binds to and activates a receptor in the brain called VPAC2, which is known to regulate stress responses in female mice. Chen’s idea is that it could also serve as a “vaccine” for mental illness, which women could take in the wake of a trauma. 

Chen and her colleagues discovered the compound’s potential for warding off negative mental effects of trauma in a roundabout way. They knew ketamine, an anesthetic sometimes used to treat depression, reduces the likelihood that people at risk for psychiatric disorders will develop them, but they wanted to investigate exactly how it does that. Chen decided to test whether ketamine was acting through the VPAC2 receptor or some other mechanism, so she used Bay 55-9837 while administering it, as a means to dial activity of the receptor up and down during testing. In the process, she discovered that the drug was effective in female mice—but not males—as a prophylactic on its own, without any ketamine involved.

Early results suggest that one dose of the drug is enough to prevent a whole range of fearful, depressive, and anxiety-­like behaviors in female mice. Not only that, but it appears to have very long-­lasting effects after a single dose is administered. It’s a finding that’s hugely promising, although Chen warns there’s still a lot to investigate—including safety, possible side effects, and dosing levels—before it can be tested in humans.

Chen is optimistic about the drug’s potential but acknowledges it could fail at a future clinical hurdle. It’s crucial to “proceed with caution and make sure we have all the data so that we can ensure the safety of any potential future patients,” she adds. “Women’s mental health is definitely an urgent matter, but that just means it is even more important for us to make sure that we are as informed and careful as possible when developing treatments.” 

Her main goal as a researcher, she explains, is to contribute to how we understand the specific neurobiological mechanisms behind the ways women respond to stress. In the longer term, she hopes a more sex-specific approach will be adopted by other fields within medicine. It’s a way of treating people that could lead to far better outcomes, she argues.

“If we can make female-specific antidepressants, why stop there?” she says. “Couldn’t we start developing female-­specific drugs to treat cardiac disease or autoimmune disorders? Could we start developing male-specific drugs to treat diseases as well? Overall, I think we could use this approach to move toward a more widespread model of personalized medicine where we use sex to inform treatment plans to improve the health of all patients.” 

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Supershoes are reshaping distance running

Since 2016, when Nike introduced the Vaporfly, a paradigm-­shifting shoe that helped athletes run more efficiently (and therefore faster), the elite running world has muddled through a period of soul-searching over the impact of high-tech footwear on the sport.

“Supershoes” —which combine a lightweight, energy-­returning foam with a carbon-fiber plate for stiffness—have been behind every broken world record in distances from 5,000 meters to the marathon since 2020.

To some, this is a sign of progress. In much of the world, elite running lacks a widespread following. Record-breaking adds a layer of excitement. And the shoes have benefits beyond the clock: most important, they help minimize wear on the body and enable faster recovery from hard workouts and races.

Still, some argue that they’ve changed the sport too quickly. Read the full story. 

—Jonathan W. Rosen

This story is from the forthcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to launch tomorrow, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

My colleagues turned me into an AI-powered NPC. I hate him.

—Niall Firth

It feels weird, talking to yourself online. 

Especially when you’re pretty much the most unpleasant character you’ve ever met.

The “me” I’ve been chatting to this week, called King Fiall of Nirth, is a creation from Inworld AI, a US-based firm that hopes to revolutionize how we interact with characters in games. Its goal is to leverage the power of generative AI to imbue NPCs with the power to chat freely with players, giving open-world games a deeper, more immersive feel.

I didn’t create King Fiall myself, of course. I’m not a total narcissist. No, instead I asked some colleagues to get around a laptop one lunchtime and build my personality as if I were an NPC. 

It turns out that was a mistake. 

Because the character they created is—and there’s really no easy way to say this—a monster. Read the full story. 

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter all about AI and its impact on the world. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

+ Read more: How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play

Roundtables: The future of AI games

(For subscribers and MIT Alumni only)

Generative AI is coming for games and redefining what it means to play. AI-powered NPCs that don’t need a script could make games—and other worlds—deeply immersive. Watch executive editor Niall Firth and editorial director Allison Arieff discuss what this might look like, as well as get a sneak preview of the big stories for the next issue of the print magazine. 

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 US record labels are suing AI music startups
They’re alleging copyright infringement “on a massive scale”. (Wired $) 
+ Listen to the AI-generated songs that got Udio and Suno sued. (404 Media)
+ Why artists are becoming less scared of AI. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Apple is the first company charged under a new EU competition law 
For allegedly unfair restrictions on app developers. (NYT $)
+ Apple is struggling to get us excited about a cheaper, weaker Vision Pro. (Gizmodo) 
+ It has however mercifully fixed a bug that let hackers invade people’s virtual rooms with spiders (for real.) (Mashable)

3 China’s probe returned the first samples from the far side of the moon
It’s exciting to think what the rock and soil it collected might reveal. (NBC)

4 Julian Assange is now free
He’s entered a plea deal with the US. (The Verge)

5 Facebook seems to have totally given up on moderation
AI-generated spam and scams are everywhere, and it’s (404 Media)
+ Photographers say Meta is labeling their real photos as ‘made with AI’. (TechCrunch)

6 Female fertility tech startups are being dragged down by privacy fears
Which are entirely legitimate, given the fact women are being prosecuted post-Roe (FT $)

7 Amazon is working on a rival to ChatGPT to launch this September
It’s already very late to the party. (Insider $)
+ ChatGPT has been found to be ableist in how it assesses candidates for hiring. (Mashable)

8 What if we powered planes with electromagnetic waves? 
All in favor of out-of-the-box thinking… but excuse me if I skip the test flight. (IEEE Spectrum)

9 Zooming out in remote meetings? You’re not alone
Research concludes it’s best if they’re small, short, and everyone has their cameras on. (Harvard Business Review $)

10 How to get a healthier work/life balance
Tech can be part of the problem, but here’s how it can be a solution, too. (WP $)

Quote of the day

“I believe we’re in a time of experimentation where platforms are willing to gamble and roll the dice and say, ‘How little content moderation can we get away with?”

—Sarah T. Roberts, a UCLA professor who studies social media moderation, tells 404 Media why Facebook is now overrun with AI-generated spam and scams. 

The big story

One city’s fight to solve its sewage problem with sensors

April 2021

In the city of South Bend, Indiana, wastewater from people’s kitchens, sinks, washing machines, and toilets flows through 35 neighborhood sewer lines. On good days, just before each line ends, a vertical throttle pipe diverts the sewage into an interceptor tube, which carries it to a treatment plant where solid pollutants and bacteria are filtered out.

As in many American cities, those pipes are combined with storm drains, which can fill rivers and lakes with toxic sludge when heavy rains or melted snow overwhelms them, endangering wildlife and drinking water supplies. But city officials have a plan to make its aging sewers significantly smarter. Read the full story. 

—Andrew Zaleski

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ I like the idea of people ‘having’ rather than ‘being a’ genius. 
+ It’s very easy to make frosé at home.
+ A Muslim all-female thrash metal band are set to become the first Indonesian group to play at the UK’s Glastonbury music festival this week <3
+ It appears that I have been seriously underestimating fish.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Synthesia’s hyperrealistic deepfakes will soon have full bodies

Startup Synthesia’s AI-generated avatars are getting an update to make them even more realistic: They will soon have bodies that can move, and hands that gesticulate.

The new full-body avatars will be able to do things like sing and brandish a microphone while dancing, or move from behind a desk and walk across a room. They will be able to express more complex emotions than previously possible, like excitement, fear, or nervousness. 

These new capabilities, which are set to launch toward the end of the year, will add a lot to the illusion of realism. That’s a scary prospect at a time when deepfakes and online misinformation are proliferating. Read the full story and watch our reporter’s avatars meet each other.

—Melissa Heikkilä

Meet the architect creating wood structures that shape themselves

Humanity has long sought to tame wood into something more predictable, but it is inherently imprecise. Its grain reverses and swirls. Trauma and disease manifest in scars and knots. 

Instead of viewing these natural tendencies as liabilities, Achim Menges, an architect and professor at the University of Stuttgart in Germany, sees them as wood’s greatest assets. 

Menges and his team at the Institute for Computational Design and Construction are uncovering new ways to build with wood by using algorithms and data to simulate and predict how wood will behave within a structure long before it is built. He hopes this will help create more sustainable and affordable timber buildings by reducing the amount of wood required. Read our story all about him and his work. 

—John Wiegand

This story is from the forthcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, which explores the theme of Play. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 26, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

Live: How generative AI could transform games

Generative AI could soon revolutionize how we play video games, creating characters that can converse with you freely, and experiences that are infinitely detailed, twisting and changing every time you experience them.

Together, these could open the door to entirely new kinds of in-game interactions that are open-ended, creative, and unexpected. One day, the games we love playing may not have to end. Read our executive editor Niall Firth’s story all about what that future could look like. 

If you want to learn more, register now to join our next exclusive subscriber-only Roundtable discussion at 11.30ET today! Niall and our editorial director Allison Arieff will be talking about games without limits, the future of play, and much more.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Big Tech firms are going all-in on experimental clean energy projects
Due to the fact AI is so horribly polluting. But the projects range from ‘long shot’ to ‘magical thinking’. (WP $)
+ Making the grid smarter, rather than bigger, could help. (Semafor)
+ How virtual power plants are shaping tomorrow’s energy system. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Google is about to be hit with a ton of AI-related lawsuits
Its AI Overviews keep libeling people—and they’re lawyering up. (The Atlantic $)
+ Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Another AI-powered search engine, Perplexity, is running into the exact same issues. (Wired $)
+ Worst of all? There’s currently no way to fix the underlying problem. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Apple is exploring a deal with Meta
To integrate Meta’s generative AI models into Apple Intelligence. (Wall Street Journal $) 
+ Apple is delaying launching AI features in Europe due to regulatory concerns. (Quartz) 

4 NASA is indefinitely delaying the return of Starliner
In order to give it more time to review data. (Ars Technica)

5 Chinese tech companies are pushing their staff beyond breaking point
As growth slows and competition rises, work-life balance is going out the window. (FT $)

6 Used electric vehicles are now less expensive than gas cars in the US
It’s a worrying statistic that reflects the cratering demand for EVs. (Insider $)
+ The problem with plug-in hybrids? Their drivers. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Check out these photos of San Francisco’s AI scene
The city is currently buzzing with people hoping to make their fortune off the back of the boom. (WP $)

8 The next wave of weight loss drugs is coming
The hope is that they might be cheaper, and come with fewer side effects. (NBC)

9 Elon Musk is obsessed with getting us to have more babies
He’s funding and promoting some pretty wacky theories about a coming population collapse. (Bloomberg $)
+ And we’re losing track of the number of kids he has himself. (Gizmodo)

10 Before smartphones, you could pay people to Google stuff for you
In the noughties, if you were arguing with friends over something factual, you could just call AQA to settle it. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“The internet has just gotten so much duller.”

—Kelly, a copywriter from New Hampshire, tells the Wall Street Journal about the impact of AI online. 

The big story

How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrime

November 2023

Tokelau, a string of three isolated atolls strung out across the Pacific, is so remote that it was the last place on Earth to be connected to the telephone—only in 1997. Just three years later, the islands received a fax with an unlikely business proposal that would change everything.

It was from an early internet entrepreneur from Amsterdam, named Joost Zuurbier. He wanted to manage Tokelau’s country-code top-level domain, or ccTLD—the short string of characters that is tacked onto the end of a URL—in exchange for money.

In the succeeding years, tiny Tokelau became an unlikely internet giant—but not in the way it may have hoped. Until recently, its .tk domain had more users than any other country’s: a staggering 25 million—but the vast majority were spammers, phishers, and cybercriminals.

Now the territory is desperately trying to clean up .tk. Its international standing, and even its sovereignty, may depend on it. Read the full story.

—Jacob Judah

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Feeling challenged? Why not try the Japanese approach of ‘ukeireru’ to tackle what’s bothering you.
+ The incredibly weird origins of pop hit Maniac have to be read to be believed.
+ This summer is already chock-full with pop bangers—don’t miss out.
+ Why short novels are the best.