GPT & Chatbots

 After years of hype about generative AI increasing productivity and making lives easier, 2025 was the year erotic chatbots defined AI’s narrative.

 Dating apps and AI companies have been touting bot wingmen for months. But the future might just be good old-fashioned meet-cutes.

 US support for nuclear energy is soaring. Meanwhile, coal plants are on their way out and electricity-sucking data centers are meeting huge pushback. Welcome to the next front in the energy battle.

 Google’s AI is now even smarter, and more versatile.

 The battle for AI dominance has left a large footprint—and it’s only getting bigger and more expensive.

 In the AI boom, chatbots and GPTs come and go quickly. (Remember Llama?) GPT-5 had a big year, but 2026 will be all about Qwen.

 A surge of AI-generated content is frustrating Pinterest users and left some questioning whether the platform still works at all.

 Big AI companies courted controversy by scraping wide swaths of the public internet. With the rise of AI agents, the next data grab is far more private.

 WIRED spoke with DeepMind’s Pushmeet Kohli about the recent past—and promising future—of the Nobel Prize-winning research project that changed biology and chemistry forever.

 Users of AI image generators are offering each other instructions on how to use the tech to alter pictures of women into realistic, revealing deepfakes.