MATT O’BRIEN

Technology writer

O’Brien covers the business of technology and artificial intelligence for The Associated Press. He is based in Rhode Island and focuses on how AI technology is built and the people it affects.

Pages from the CyberTipline website are seen on a computer in New York on Friday, April 19, 2024. A tipline set up 26 years ago to combat online child exploitation is “enormously valuable” but hasn't lived up to its potential. That’s what a new report from the Stanford Internet Observatory released on Monday, April 22, 2024 has found. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison)

Report urges fixes to online child exploitation CyberTipline before AI makes it worse

A tipline set up 26 years ago to combat online child exploitation is “enormously valuable” but hasn’t lived up to its potential.

FILE - Joelle Pineau, Vice President AI Research, speaks at the at the Meta AI Day in London on April 9, 2024. Meta, Google and OpenAI, along with leading startups, are churning out new AI language models and trying to persuade customers that they've got the smartest or fastest or cheapest chatbot technology. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)

Meta’s newest AI model beats some peers. But its amped-up AI agents are confusing Facebook users

Generative AI is advancing so quickly that the latest chatbots available today could be out of date tomorrow.

Dr. Pei Wang teaches a artificial general intelligence class at Temple University in Philadelphia, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024. Mainstream AI research "turned away from the original vision of artificial intelligence, which at the beginning was pretty ambitious,” said Wang. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Tech companies want to build artificial general intelligence. But who decides when AGI is attained?

There’s a race underway to build artificial general intelligence, a futuristic vision of machines that are broadly as smart as humans or at least can do many things as well as people can.

FILE - An AT&T sign is seen at a store in Pittsburgh, Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. AT&T said, Saturday, March 30, 2024, it has begun notifying millions of customers about the theft of personal data recently discovered online. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

AT&T notifies users of data breach and resets millions of passcodes

AT&T says it has begun notifying millions of customers about the theft of personal data recently discovered online.

FILE - Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a speech on healthcare at an event in Raleigh, N.C., March 26, 2024. U.S. federal agencies must show their artificial intelligence tools aren’t harming the public, or stop using them, under new rules unveiled by the White House on Thursday. Vice President Kamala Harris said government agencies that use AI tools will be required to verify that those tools do not endanger the rights and safety of the American people. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley, File)

VP Harris says US agencies must show their AI tools aren’t harming people’s safety or rights

U.S. federal agencies must show that their artificial intelligence tools aren’t harming the public, or stop using them, under new rules unveiled by the White House.

(AP Illustration/Peter Hamlin)

Tired of AI doomsday tropes, Cohere CEO says his goal is technology that’s ‘additive to humanity’

Aidan Gomez can take some credit for the ‘T’ at the end of ChatGPT. He was part of a group of Google engineers who first introduced a new artificial intelligence model called a transformer.

This combination of photos shows former President Donald Trump, left, and President Joe Biden. On Wednesday, March 13, 2024, the popular artificial intelligence image-generator Midjourney announced it has blocked its users from creating images of Biden and Trump ahead of the upcoming U.S. presidential election. (AP Photo)

AI image-generator Midjourney blocks images of Biden and Trump as election looms

The popular artificial intelligence image-generator Midjourney has started blocking its users from creating fake images of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump ahead of the upcoming U.S. presidential election, according to tests of the AI tool by The Associated Press.

People work inside the TikTok Inc. building in Culver City, Calif., Monday, March 11, 2024. House Republicans are moving ahead with a bill that would require Chinese company ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the United States even as President Donald Trump is voicing opposition to the effort. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

US lawmakers say TikTok won’t be banned if it finds a new owner. But that’s easier said than done

U.S. lawmakers are threatening to ban TikTok but also say they are giving its Chinese parent company a chance to keep it running.

FILE — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman participates in a discussion during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit, Nov. 16, 2023, in San Francisco. OpenAI is reinstating CEO Altman to its board of directors and said it has “full confidence” in his leadership after a law firm concluded an investigation into the turmoil that led the company to abruptly fire and rehire him in November. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

OpenAI has ‘full confidence’ in CEO Sam Altman after investigation, reinstates him to board

OpenAI is reinstating CEO Sam Altman to its board of directors and said it has “full confidence” in his leadership after the conclusion of an outside investigation into the company’s turmoil.

FILE - A Copilot page showing the incorporation of AI technology is shown in London, Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024. A Microsoft engineer is sounding an alarm Wednesday, March 6, 2024, about offensive and harmful imagery he says is too easily made by the company’s artificial intelligence image-generator tool. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)

Microsoft engineer sounds alarm on AI image-generator to US officials and company’s board

A Microsoft engineer is sounding an alarm about offensive and harmful imagery he says is too easily made by the company’s artificial intelligence image-generator tool.

It’s not just Elon Musk: ChatGPT-maker OpenAI confronting a mountain of legal challenges

After a year of basking in global fame, the San Francisco company OpenAI is now confronting a multitude of challenges that could threaten its position at the vanguard of artificial intelligence research.

FILE - Madonna speaks at the MTV Video Music Awards at Barclays Center on Sept. 12, 2021, in New York. Making instant videos is the next wave of generative artificial intelligence, much like chatbots and image-generators before it. And the pop star Madonna is among the early adopters. Madonna's team used an AI text-to-video tool to make moving images of swirling clouds featured in her ongoing Celebration Tour.(Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

Madonna is among the early adopters of AI’s next wave

Making instant videos is the next wave of generative artificial intelligence, much like chatbots and image-generators before it.

FILE - OpenAI CEO Sam Altman participates in the "Technology in a turbulent world" panel discussion during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 18, 2024. Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman over what he says is a betrayal of the ChatGPT maker's founding aims of benefiting humanity rather than pursuing profits. In a lawsuit filed Thursday Feb. 29, 2024 at San Francisco Superior Court, billionaire Musk said that when he bankrolled OpenAI's creation, he secured an agreement with Altman and Greg Brockman, the president, to keep the AI company as a non-profit that would develop technology for the benefit of the public. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

Elon Musk sues OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, claiming betrayal of its goal to benefit humanity

Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman over what he says is a betrayal of the ChatGPT maker’s founding aims of benefiting humanity rather than pursuing profits.

FILE - AI engineer Jenna Reher works on humanoid robot Figure 01 at Figure AI's test facility in Sunnyvale, Calif., Oct. 3, 2023. ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is looking to fuse its artificial intelligence systems into the bodies of humanoid robots as part of a new deal with robotics startup Figure. Sunnyvale, California-based Figure announced the partnership Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024, along with $675 million in venture capital funding from a group that includes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as well as Microsoft, chipmaker Nvidia and the startup-funding divisions of Amazon, Intel and OpenAI. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Humanoid robot-maker Figure partners with OpenAI and gets backing from Jeff Bezos and tech giants

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is looking to fuse its artificial intelligence systems into the bodies of humanoid robots as part of a new deal with robotics startup Figure.

FILE - Google logos are shown when searched on Google in New York, Sept. 11, 2023. Google said Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024, it’s temporarily stopping its Gemini artificial intelligence chatbot from generating images of people a day after apologizing for “inaccuracies” in historical depictions that it was creating.(AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

Google says its AI image-generator would sometimes ‘overcompensate’ for diversity

Google apologized Friday for its faulty rollout of a new artificial intelligence image-generator, acknowledging that in some cases the tool would “overcompensate” in seeking a diverse range of people even when such a range didn’t make sense.

FILE - Google logos are shown when searched on Google in New York, Sept. 11, 2023. Google said Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024, it’s temporarily stopping its Gemini artificial intelligence chatbot from generating images of people a day after apologizing for “inaccuracies” in historical depictions that it was creating.(AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

Google suspends Gemini AI chatbot’s ability to generate pictures of people

Google said Thursday it’s temporarily stopping its Gemini artificial intelligence chatbot from generating images of people a day after apologizing for “inaccuracies” in historical depictions that it was creating.

FILE - President Joe Biden signs an executive on artificial intelligence in the East Room of the White House, Oct. 30, 2023, in Washington. Vice President Kamala Harris looks on at right. The White House said Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024, that it is seeking public comment on the risks and benefits of having an AI system's key components publicly available for anyone to use and modify. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

White House wades into debate on ‘open’ versus ‘closed’ artificial intelligence systems

The Biden administration is wading into a contentious debate about whether the most powerful artificial intelligence systems should be “open-source” or closed.

Voice actor Sarah Elmaleh poses for a photo in Los Angeles on Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024. Recent years marked a golden age for making an acting career in video games, but now some studios are looking to use artificial intelligence to clone actors' voices. Voice actors like Elmaleh, who played the Cube Queen in Fortnite, are taking a cautious approach to making sure such arrangements can help actors rather than replace them. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

Some video game actors are letting AI clone their voices. They just don’t want it to replace them

Video game studios pay professional actors to voice the soldiers, goblins, elves and aliens that populate virtual worlds.

Sora is ChatGPT maker OpenAI’s new text-to-video generator. Here’s what we know about the new tool

The maker of ChatGPT is now diving into AI-generated video. Meet Sora — OpenAI’s new text-to-video generator.

FILE - Meta's president of global affairs Nick Clegg speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 18, 2024. Adobe, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, TikTok and other companies are gathering at the Munich Security Conference on Friday to announce a new voluntary framework for how they will respond to AI-generated deepfakes that deliberately trick voters. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

Tech companies sign accord to combat AI-generated election trickery

Major technology companies signed a pact Friday to voluntarily adopt “reasonable precautions” to prevent artificial intelligence tools from disrupting democratic elections worldwide.

FILE - Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at an event at the Chatham House think tank in London, Jan. 15, 2024. Speaking to over 1,000 computer code developers in India’s ‘Silicon Valley’ Bengaluru, Thursday Nadella, asked them to use the company’s artificial intelligence tools that they are deploying across their products. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

Microsoft’s Nadella woos Indian developers to the company’s AI tools

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has urged more than a thousand Indian computer code developers to use the company’s artificial intelligence tools being deployed across its products.

Meta says it will label AI-generated images on Facebook and Instagram

Facebook and Instagram users will start seeing made-by-AI labels on deepfake images that appear on their social media feeds, part of a broader tech industry initiative to sort between what’s real and not.

File - Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at Chatham House in London, Jan. 15, 2024, ahead of traveling to Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. Nadella marks his tenth year as Microsoft CEO on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2024, capping a decade of stunning growth as he pivoted the slow-moving software giant into a laser focus on cloud computing and artificial intelligence. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella caps a decade of change and tremendous growth

Satya Nadella marks his tenth year as Microsoft CEO on Sunday, capping a decade of stunning growth as he pivoted the slow-moving software giant into a laser focus on cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

FILE - Lina Khan, the nominee for Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), speaks during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation confirmation hearing, April 21, 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington. U.S. antitrust enforcers are launching an inquiry into how big tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google are holding sway over artificial intelligence startups, Khan said Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. (Saul Loeb/Pool Photo via AP, File)

FTC opens inquiry into Big Tech’s partnerships with leading AI startups

U.S. antitrust enforcers are opening an inquiry into the relationships between leading artificial intelligence startups such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic and the tech giants that have invested billions of dollars into them.

Microsoft lays off 1,900 employees in its gaming division following Activision Blizzard buyout

Microsoft is laying off about 1,900 employees in its gaming division, according to an internal company memo, just over three months since the tech giant completed its $69 billion purchase of video game maker Activision Blizzard.

A person wears Xreal Air augmented reality glasses while taking an augmented reality driving demonstration at the BMW booth during the CES tech show Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Here are the ‘Worst in Show’ CES products, according to consumer and privacy advocates

The best CES products pierce through the haze of marketing hype at the Las Vegas gadget show to reveal innovations that could improve lives.

ChatGPT-maker braces for fight with New York Times and authors on ‘fair use’ of copyrighted works

A barrage of high-profile lawsuits in a New York federal court will test the future of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence products that wouldn’t be so eloquent had they not ingested huge troves of copyrighted human works.

Microsoft's new Copilot key is seen on a Dell computer, next to the alt key, in this undated photo provided by AxiCom. Starting this month, some new personal computers that run Microsoft's Windows 11 operating system will have the special 'Copilot key' that launches the software giant's AI chatbot. (AxiCom on behalf of Dell Technologies via AP)

Microsoft’s new AI key is first big change to keyboards in decades

Starting this month, some new personal computers that run Microsoft’s Windows 11 operating system will have a special “Copilot key” that launches the software giant’s AI chatbot.

(AP Illustration/Peter Hamlin)

AI pioneer says public discourse on intelligent machines must give ‘proper respect to human agency’

She’s an important figure behind today’s artificial intelligence boom, but not all computer scientists thought Fei-Fei Li was on the right track when she came up with the idea for a giant visual database called ImageNet that took years to build.

FILE - Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif. Hidden inside the foundation of popular artificial intelligence image-generators are thousands of images of child sexual abuse, according to a new report from the Stanford Internet Observatory that urges technology companies to take action to address a harmful flaw in the technology they built. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)

AI image-generators are being trained on explicit photos of children, a study shows

Hidden inside the foundation of popular artificial intelligence image-generators are thousands of images of child sexual abuse, according to a new report that urges companies to take action to address a harmful flaw in the technology they built.