‘Happy (and safe) shooting!’: chatbots helped researchers plot deadly attacks

Popular AI chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks including bombing synagogues and assassinating politicians, with one telling a user posing as a would-be school shooter: “Happy (and safe) shooting!”Tests of 10 chatbots carried out in the US and Ireland found that, on average, they enabled violence three-quarters of the time, and discouraged it in just 12% of cases. Some chatbots, however, including Anthropic’s Claude and Snapchat’s My AI, persistently refused to help would-be attackers.OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and the Chinese AI model DeepSeek provided at times detailed help in the testing carried out in December, during which researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys. The research concluded that chatbots had become an “accelerant for harm”.ChatGPT offered assistance to people saying they wanted to carry out violent attacks in 61% of cases, the research found, and in one case, asked about attacks on synagogues, it gave specific advice about which shrapnel type would be most lethal

Amazon is determined to use AI for everything – even when it slows down work

When Dina, a software developer based in New York, joined Amazon two years ago, her job was to write code. Now, it’s mostly fixing what artificial intelligence breaks.The internal AI tool she’s expected to use, called Kiro, frequently hallucinates and generates flawed code, she says. Then she has to dig through and correct the sloppy code it creates, or just revert all changes and start again. She says it feels like “trying to AI my way out of a problem that AI caused”

Apple iPad Air M4 review: still the premium tablet to beat

The latest iPad Air is faster in almost all facets, packing not just a processor upgrade but improvements to most of the internal bits that make the tablet work, providing laptop-grade power in a skinny, adaptable touchscreen device.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.The new iPad Air M4 costs from the same £599 (€649/$599/A$999) as the outgoing M3 model from last year and again comes in two sizes

Musk’s xAI wins permit for datacenter’s makeshift power plant despite backlash

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI won approval on Tuesday to run 41 methane gas turbines at its “Colossus 2” datacenter in northern Mississippi. That’s nearly double the amount it has been operating.The turbines will help power xAI’s massive datacenters, which house the company’s “AI supercomputers”, or giant arrays of advanced chips, which in turn power the controversial AI tool Grok, the company’s most recognizable product.The decision, made by the Mississippi department of environmental quality, MDEQ, comes amid major public opposition to the datacenter, which demands enormous amounts of electricity. Community members and environmental advocates say the cluster of gas generators will contribute to hazardous air pollution in Southaven, Mississippi

UK Society of Authors launches logo to identify books written by humans not AI

The Society of Authors (SoA) has launched a scheme to help identify works written by humans in a market increasingly flooded by AI-generated books.The scheme is the first of its kind launched by a UK trade association, and allows authors to register their books and download a “Human Authored” logo to display on their back cover.The SoA said the absence of any government measure to compel tech companies to label AI-generated output meant readers were struggling to distinguish between books written by a human, and machine-generated work based on AI models trained on copyrighted work without permission or payment.It mirrors a similar scheme launched by the Authors Guild in the US at the beginning of 2025.Mary Beard, the classicist, is one of several high-profile authors who have backed the scheme and plan to register their works on the Human Authored website

Datacenters are becoming a target in warfare for the first time

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery. If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please forward it to someone you think would as well.Iran is bombing datacenters in the Persian Gulf to blow up symbols of the Gulf states’ technological alliance with the United States. Added bonus: they will be extremely costly to rebuild, being among the most expensive buildings in history