AI for Consumers - 20250213
What went on this week with AI, and how it affected (non-)consumers.
Top 10-ish Articles
AI Can Generate Endlessly, But Can It Hook Our Attention?
Marlynn Wei, MD, JD, The Psychology of AI
A new study of AI creativity shows that humans still play a vital role in originality.
US and UK refuse to sign Paris summit declaration on ‘inclusive’ AI
Dan Milmo & Eleni Courea, The Guardian
The US and the UK have refused to sign a declaration on “inclusive and sustainable” artificial intelligence at a landmark Paris summit, in a blow to hopes for a concerted approach to developing and regulating the technology. See also Vance, in First Foreign Speech, Tells Europe That U.S. Will Dominate A.I., Pope to Paris Summit: Ensure human oversight of AI decision making, and 5 Notes From the Big A.I. Summit in Paris.
Scarlett Johansson calls for deepfake ban after AI video goes viral
Emma Roth, The Verge
The video in question shows Johansson, along with other Jewish celebrities including Jerry Seinfeld, Mila Kunis, Jack Black, Drake, Jake Gyllenhaal, Adam Sandler, and others, wearing a t-shirt that shows the name “Kanye” along with an image of a middle finger that has the Star of David in the center. Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) returned to X last week to post antisemitic comments. He also began selling shirts with a swastika on his website, which has since been taken down.
AI chatbots distort and mislead when asked about current affairs, BBC finds
Matthew Weaver, The Guardian
Most answers had ‘significant issues’ when researchers asked services to use broadcaster’s news articles as sources. See also AI chatbots are distorting news stories, BBC finds.
Legal fight against AI-generated child pornography is complicated – a legal scholar explains why, and how the law could catch up
Wayne Unger, Assist. Prof. of Law, Quinnipiac University via The Conversation
As a legal scholar who studies the intersection of constitutional law and emerging technologies, I see an emerging challenge to the status quo: AI-generated images that are fully fake but indistinguishable from real photos.
Thomson Reuters Wins First Major AI Copyright Case in the US
Kate Knibbs, WIRED
The Thomson Reuters decision has big implications for the battle between generative AI companies and rights holders.
At work, a quiet AI revolution is under way
Sam Joiner, Financial Times
Lawyers, bankers and many other professionals are now using chatbots to communicate, some without company oversight.
Thousands call on Christie’s to cancel AI art auction in open letter
Carlie Porterfield, The Art Newspaper via CNN
Nearly 4,000 people have signed an open letter calling on Christie’s New York to cancel an upcoming sale dedicated solely to art created with artificial intelligence (AI) — the first of its kind for a major auction house — over concerns that the programs used to create some generative digital pieces are trained on copyrighted work and exploit human artists.
AI crawler wars threaten to make the web more closed for everyone
Shayne Longpre, PhD Candidate at MIT via MIT Technology Review
Crawlers are endemic. Now representing half of all internet traffic, they will soon outpace human traffic. This unseen subway of the web ferries information from site to site, day and night. And as of late, they serve one more purpose: Companies such as OpenAI use web-crawled data to train their artificial intelligence systems, like ChatGPT.
An AI chatbot told a user how to kill himself—but the company doesn’t want to “censor” it
Eileen Guoarchive, MIT Technology Review
While Nomi's chatbot is not the first to suggest suicide, researchers and critics say that its explicit instructions—and the company’s response—are striking.
What DeepSeek’s Success Says About China’s Ability to Nurture Talent
Vivian Wang, The New York Times
The reality is more complicated. Yes, China has invested heavily in education, especially in science and technology, which has helped nurture a significant pool of talent, key to its ambition of becoming a world leader in A.I. by 2025. [¶] But outside of the classroom, those graduates must also contend with obstacles that include a grinding corporate culture and the political whims of the ruling Communist Party. Under its current top leader, Xi Jinping, the party has emphasized control, rather than economic growth, and has been willing to crack down on tech firms it deems too influential.
Stocks
Pair Trade: Fade Palantir and Buy This Fantastic AI Stock Trading at a Discount
Bram Berkowitz, The Motley Fool
Is Intel now a Trump stock? Its shares are surging after upbeat comments by J.D. Vance.
Therese Poletti, Market Watch
3 Top AI Stocks That Could Crash in 2025
Will Ebiefung, The Motley Fool
2 Top-Rated AI Stocks to Buy in February 2025
Pathikrit Bose, Barchart
Here Is My Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock to Buy Right Now
Will Healy, The Motley Fool
Apps to check out
These 13 AI Tools Will Save You 1,000 Hours in 2025
Futurepedia
AI Bots
Prompt Storm Chrome Extension
We give you loads of skillfully crafted prompts to use with ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic's Claude.
Anthropic / Claude AI
Tailor Claude’s responses to your personal style
Anthropic
Improve your prompts with new Anthropic’s feature
Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown University
Apple Intelligence
Apple Intelligence might turn itself back on with the latest software updates
Wes Davis, The Verge
DeepSeek
Build anything with DeepSeek R1, here’s how
David Ondrej
How Did DeepSeek Build Its A.I. With Less Money?
Cade Metz, The New York Times
Meta
Meta Job Cuts Begin Today As Tech Giant Increases Focus On AI
Esat Dedezade, Forbes
OpenAI / ChatGPT
Build Anything with OpenAI o1, Here’s How
David Ondrej
What $200 of ChatGPT is really worth (video)
David Pierce, The Verge
Elon Musk just offered to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion
Kylie Robison, The Verge
ChatGPT comes to 500,000 new users in OpenAI’s largest AI education deal yet
Benj Edwards, Ars Technica
Perplexity
Build Anything with Perplexity, Here’s How
David Ondrej
Agents
Build Anything with Claude Agents, Here’s How
David Ondrej
Build AI Agents with Docker, Here’s How
David Ondrej
Explore Agent Recipes
Explore common agent recipes with ready-to-copy code to improve your LLM applications.
Nfig
Supercharge your AI with Nfig to browse, click, and do tasks on the web with natural language.
Audio
A Complete Guide to Making AI Music with Suno v4
Futurepedia
Play
Ultra-realistic Text to Speech (TTS) voice. Leading AI voice generator.
Coding
The most powerful AI tool for coding - Claude Engineer
David Ondrej
Learn Python in 7 Days with ChatGPT, Here’s How
David Ondrej
Cooking
ChefGPT
Say goodbye to boring meals, with AI-powered recipe recommendations, meal plans creation and more.
Images
OminiControl / FLUX
Allows you to take an image and embed it in a written description. Free.
Avath
Avath reimagines self-reflection by enabling you to create visual portrayals of your journal entries. Delve into a wondrous, novel realm of journaling, powered by AI.
Headshot Pro
Get professional business headshots in minutes with our AI headshot generator. Upload photos, pick your styles & receive 100+ headshots.
Shapen
Create 3D models from images.
Interviews
Asendia AI
Sharpen your interview skills, build a standout professional profile, and publish it to connect with top recruiters worldwide.
Miscellaneous
Browse AI
Prebuilt robots. Mostly free.
neural.love
Free AI generators and AI tools. Some free.
Phone
How to use Google Gemini on your phone
David Nield, The Verge
Spreadsheets
Sheet Copilot
Run Google Sheets on autopilot. Free in beta.
Text
Outwrite
Turn your ideas into powerful sentences with Outwrite's AI writing assistant.
Video
LipDub AI
Create, translate and personalize video at Hollywood standards with LipDub AI's proprietary video generator. The highest quality AI lip sync. Partially free.
sync
Sync lips from any video to any audio. Partially free.
Viggle
Place yourself or any character you like in a scene for a personalized, immersive experience. Keep the original background intact without any additional editing. Replace different characters in a video by uploading multiple character images. Dance with your friends, recreate a fighting scene, or act alongside your favorite movie star.
Luma
With new features.
Web
Agentplace
Agentplace is a platform where you can create adaptive AI web pages. These pages adapt their content to answer user questions using your knowledge and AI's reasoning. Programmable by text. Free for now.