Stories by Deni Ellis Béchard

Researchers mimicked the air-trapping tricks of diving bell spiders to create aluminum that stays afloat—even when punctured

Coding for the rest of us finally feels possible now that tools like Claude Code turn plain English into working software

This open-source agent installs software, makes calls and runs your digital life—redefining what “digital assistants” are supposed to do

As deepfakes blur the line between truth and fiction, we’ll need a new class of forensic experts to determine what’s real, what’s fake and what can be proved in court

Tech giants are betting that we are finally ready to invite a persistent digital device into our lives

Why today’s AI systems struggle with consistency and how emerging world models aim to give machines a steady grasp of space and time

Traditional solar fails in the windswept north. Two Swedish inventors are betting on aerodynamic resilience to solve the latitude gap

Disney and OpenAI’s agreement hints at a future in which viewers don’t just choose what to watch but generate it on demand

General-purpose robots remain rare not for a lack of hardware but because we still can’t give machines the physical intuition humans learn through experience

Billionaire-headed machines lampoon tech power and the way our images quietly become fuel for AI

Today’s leading AI models can already write and refine their own software. The question is whether that self-improvement can ever snowball into true superintelligence

Chatbots can measurably sway voters’ choices, new research shows. The findings raise urgent questions about AI’s role in future elections

The company behind TikTok is rolling out a smartphone AI assistant that behaves less like an app and more like a secretary

A new federal initiative aims to accelerate scientific discovery by uniting artificial intelligence with large federal datasets

As AI slips into kitchens, conversations and memories, Thanksgiving has become a test of how much we’re willing to outsource

A new paper shows AI emerging as a tool that helps scientists test ideas, navigate literature and refine experiments

As AI systems exceed one benchmark after another, our standards for “humanlike intelligence” keep evolving

The popularization of the term “slop” for AI output follows a centuries-long pattern where new tools flood the zone, audiences adapt and some of tomorrow’s art emerges from today’s excess

A personal experiment with the artificial intelligence music platform Suno’s latest model echoes a new preprint study. Most listeners can’t tell AI music from the real thing, but emotional resonance still demands a human story

Faced with her son’s struggle with dyslexia, one mom built an AI platform to help kids learn their own way

Forget fake profile pics on dating apps—AI is now doing the talking, and we can’t tell the difference

New video apps like Sora could turn faces into moneymaking assets and hint at a future where everyone can rent out their digital likeness

Despite early, and familiar, copyright growing pains, Sora may be the prelude to AI-generated on-demand TV and movies

Cat bathroom data from an AI-powered litter box could offer useful pet health insights