Friday, August 14, 2026
Chatbots Are Pushing Us Toward a Post-Human Internet
Chatbots Are Pushing Us Toward a Post-Human Internet
"Chatbots increasingly interact in recursive loops, replacing human roles in work, education, and romance. Risks include amplified errors and bias, as seen in job screening and medical tools. Such exchanges may dilute human contact and create unequal access.
In matters of work, school and even romance, we turn to A.I. chatbots. But what happens when the bots begin talking to one another?
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Remember job applications? You know, you’d write a résumé and a cover letter. Someone would read them. You’d fish out a tasteful button-down and try to charm your interviewer. Maybe your one-liner or a question about your amateur bowling career would help you score the position. Maybe you’d never hear back.
That’s all changing. When Christian Vinson applied for jobs in finance this year, he knew he was really auditioning for artificial intelligence. Many companies now use screening software to sift through piles of applications, so he spent close to 10 hours teaching two A.I. chatbots about his work experience. He filled in details about his education, a banking internship and five years in the Army. He then prompted the bots to tailor his cover letter to hundreds of job listings.
A.I. had written his applications, and A.I. was reading them too — a dog chasing its own tail. “This is the new normal,” says Vinson, 30, who landed a job at an investment bank in New York.
We live in a world in which A.I. tools have found their way to the center of a staggering number of professional, academic and personal interactions. Lately these chatbots and agents have been doing more than just talking to us. Students are writing essays with ChatGPT, and teachers are using A.I. to grade them. Workers are sending lengthy A.I.-generated emails to colleagues, who are responding with walls of chatbot text of their own. A.I podcast hosts are holding forth with A.I. podcast guests on topics like gas prices, the Iran war — and artificial intelligence. Tech wants to take all this even further: In March, Meta acquired a social network designed for bots to talk to one another.
The dead internet theory, a concept popular in tech circles, holds that most digital traffic will eventually be software, leaving humans as a minority voice. We may now have a corollary of that prediction — let’s call it a bot loop — when the humans on both sides of an interaction hand over their role to artificial intelligence. These recursive exchanges can be eerie and error-prone, a single mistake bouncing back and forth uncorrected over and over. Stranger still, they flip our conversational dynamic inside out, turning chatbots into the interlocutors and humans into their enablers.
Depending on whom you ask, bot loops might be banal, dystopian or genuinely useful. No matter how people feel about them, researchers say we’re going to see bot loops much more often as we deputize A.I. systems to do our bidding.
Someday in the not-too-distant future, a pipe will burst and you will need a plumber in a hurry. Maybe you will call 10 plumbers yourself to ask about rates — but perhaps you will turn all of that dialing over to a kind of personal digital assistant that can perform tasks like sending emails, buying plane tickets and writing code. Plumbers, meanwhile, may struggle to keep up with an influx of calls from tireless A.I. assistants, says Jiaxin Pei, an assistant professor at the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. Maybe they’ll direct an agent of their own to act as a virtual receptionist. “This is this endless loop we’re creating,” Pei says. How will all this affect the way we interact with one another?
Looked at one way, human history is one long string of freakouts about the potential for new technology to alter our communication. Socrates worried that writing would wreck our memory — something we know only because Plato wrote it down. Early-20th-century critics argued that the telephone posed a threat to civility. Repeatedly, detractors have predicted that the quality of our interactions might suffer as a result of modern convenience. The author of a 1994 article in The New York Times argued that electronic mail was “so compelling and easy that it threatens to overwhelm its usefulness through sheer volume and lack of consideration,” although he conceded that it did have its perks: “There are no stamps to lick.”
None of these innovations brought about the end of productive discussion, although each has changed its texture. We can now trade messages with more people than ever without needing to be in the same physical space. As a result, researchers think we may actually be speaking to one another less. Many of our conversations take place on platforms that incentivize certain kinds of exchanges, particularly those that are heated, outlandish or otherwise likely to retain our attention for the platforms’ financial gain.
Still, A.I. is different from these previous advancements. While email transmits messages between people, chatbots emulate people — and perhaps replace them. All of a sudden, humans get to decide whether they would prefer to have a conversation with a person or with a program that approximates one. Plenty of people are deciding that they would prefer to go to a chatbot for financial advice, medical diagnoses or companionship.
People are already using A.I.-generated avatars to speak for them. When Justin Lester, a pastor in the Bay Area, isn’t available, people can speak withhis “digital twin.” The next step is very likely a future in which the people’s own digital twins might speak with Lester’s. Increasingly, our digital intermediaries will collide. We’ll talk to our bots, and our bots will talk to one another. Chief executives have created A.I.-powered avatars that can meet with their employees. How long will it be before their underlings send their avatars to those meetings, too?
Plenty of people are already living in this strange new world. I’ve spent the past couple of months interviewing them. There was a graduate student completing work with A.I. that was being graded by his professor’s virtual assistants. There was a telecom executive who had noticed customers sending A.I. voice agents to argue with his company’s A.I. customer service system. There was a man who used a chatbot to draft messages on a dating app to a woman who seemed to be doing the exact same thing. “How long are we gonna ChatGPT each other?” he eventually wrote. She never responded.
Most of these people acknowledged a certain hollowness to the interactions, which followed the basic contours of a human conversation but got the texture all wrong. A single bot creates mountains of text that are dazzling in their phoniness, like costume jewelry. Stick two of them together in conversation and they generate an endless flow of dialogue that follows all the rules yet still stands out for what it is missing: curiosity, empathy, actual experience.
The risks of these loops are still coming into view, but one big problem is just how frequently chatbots get things wrong. When two A.I. systems interact, particularly ones powered by the same large language models, they may miss each other’s errors and eventually amplify them, says Soheil Feizi, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Maryland. “They are just sharing the same blind spots,” he says.
A recent paper by a researcher at Harvard Medical School considered how this might play out in a hospital setting. Say one A.I. tool is responsible for analyzing X-rays to label broken bones. It sends an assessment to another A.I. tool that assigns rooms and a third one that determines the order of patient treatment. If an initial scan is incorrect and never subject to human verification, the error could echo through the entire network and affect the patient, the doctor and her clinic.
An even sneakier issue is that artificial intelligence systems seem to be biased toward their own work. One study found that A.I. résumé screeners preferred applications written by A.I. to ones written by humans. (In that way, Vinson, the chatbot-happy job applicant, may have helped his own chances.) This phenomenon may already be wreaking havoc on the college admissions process, in which some schools use A.I.-powered essay readers to score submissions that, no doubt, are often generated by chatbots.
Despite these shortcomings, Sarah Davis, a cultural anthropologist and the dean of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, N.M., wonders whether people might grow so accustomed to the smoothness of A.I.-to-A.I. interactions that they could lose their tolerance for the necessary unpredictability of human relationships. She says she worries about chatbots allowing a “kind of ease that lets us become worse versions of ourselves, and a kind of alienation, a lack of togetherness that requires that we face friction.”
It might be tempting to think of the bot loop as a stopover on the way to some totally autonomous world. Perhaps A.I.-generated “counterfeit people,” as the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett called them, will work together to create even more counterfeit people, exploiting our dependence on A.I. systems and putting human civilization itself at risk. The likelier outcome is that the share of interactions that are between humans will just shrink as the share of bot-to-bot interactions grows — a profound dilution that affects the way we move through the world.
In that case, the human voice on the phone that once was a reasonable expectation might become a rare privilege, something akin to a luxury good. Sure, you can talk to a flesh-and-blood receptionist, but it will cost extra. Paradoxically, the people most likely to be able to afford such a luxury might be the ones being enriched by the A.I. boom. Will they use their spoils to get access to the kinds of conversations they are making rarer for everybody else? That might just be the most insidious loop of all.
Source images for illustration above: Keeproll/Getty Images; ZeynepKaya/Getty Images; Yaroslav Kushta/Getty Images.“
App Store review is broken in a time where it is needed the most
App Store review is broken in a time where it is needed the most
News
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The App Store could soon feature Ai-generated summaries of application reviews.
“Apple doesn't even seem to be trying with App Store Review. Users should not be the ones who find problem apps, but over and over, that is what is happening.
No question, Apple has the resources to protect us from bad apps, and, no question, it keeps telling regulators that it has. As regulators around the world press for third-party firms to run iPhone App Stores, Apple consistently protests that only it can do a good job of keeping bad apps at bay.
It is absolutely true that if, or when, the door is open to rival App Stores, there will be a flood of apps that set out to defraud users. But if you're going to hold up the App Store Review process as the last thin line of defense, you have to make it work and Apple is repeatedly failing.
Staggering and repeated mistakes
In August 2026, after countries such as the UK outlawed "nudifying" apps, for instance, The Independent has found several still on the App Store. One unnamed example lets users upload images into scenes called "bedroom rape."
As keeps happening, Apple has now removed that app. But it passed App Store review and was only taken down when Apple was asked about it by that newspaper.
There are ways that developers can try skirting around the App Store Review process. They can, at least in theory, present an app that retrieves images and other assets from a website.
And then once the app is in the store, they can change those assets, or redirect the website. Apple would need to keep checking apps after they've passed the review process.
There are an incredible number of apps being submitted to the App Store every day, so periodic rechecking is time-consuming and expensive. But Apple cannot claim to be this protector of us all and then say except where it costs too much.
It appears, too, that in the case of that abhorrent "bedroom rape" app, Apple may have been able to catch it during the regular review process. That's because the listing for the app reportedly featured descriptions and even graphic videos.
If the developer originally listed the app with something innocuous, then surely it uploading anything else should have triggered a new review. Developers have legitimate reasons to update their listings, but those listings are hosted on Apple's servers so any change should be spotted and at least flagged for attention.
Gaming the system
There are too many apps being submitted and it's at least conceivably possible for developers to make certain changes after being accepted. But it really does not appear as if Apple's App Review team is doing its job.
For instance, long-time developer Jeff Johnson has detailed how he spotted and investigated a suspicious app. He dug into developer's company and checked the validity of cited reviews. There were obvious clues from the start.
Five-star reviews purportedly from the App Store, but including dates months before the app was released. Image credit: Jeff Johnson.
Johnson has two Safari extensions in the Mac App Store, and noticed that the same section includes one with a 4.9 out of 5 star rating. However, TabControl, which is still available in the App Store, unquestionably was not showing a genuine App Store rating.
Instead, the whole "4.9" part was a banner in the poster image, it has nothing to do with the App Store. At time of writing, there is no genuine App Store rating.
"This app hasn't received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview," says the App Store listing.
That's a little odd when the app's official website says that the extension is currently being used by "5,000+ Safari users."
Johnson also found a number of purported App Store reviews listed on that site. These now appear to have been removed, but Johnson shows screengrabs including reviews that are dated from before the app was on the App Store.
"Do I expect Apple App Store review to do the research that I've done in this blog post?" writes Johnson. "Well, yes. Yes I do!"
We do too. It just isn't happening with enough regularity.
"Practically speaking, App Store review didn't even need to go as far down the rabbit hole as I did," he continues. "The '4.9 out of 5' stars in the App Store screenshot should have been a red flag."
As he points out, Apple has all the details of all the ratings and reviews of every app from every country, so the App Store Review team should know it's false advertising.
Even among more legitimate-seeming apps, though, Apple is ignoring clear problems. In AppleInsider research, for instance, we found that many price tiers listed for the "Simply Piano" app bore no relation to what the developer actually charges.
In that case, the developer first nonsensically claimed that it was a currency conversion issue. Then when that didn't wash, they said that Apple keeps listing old prices because some users remain on those subscription rates.
Left: Simply Piano's listing for a one year individual plan in the UK App Store. Right: the same plan as charged inside the app downloaded from the App Store. Note the difference, it equates to $109. Screenshots taken 13 August 2026.
We reported this to Apple in June 2026, but the issue has not been addressed. Right now on the UK version of the App Store, Simply Piano's listed price for an individual annual subscription is about $109 less than the app then charges.
It can't go on
Apple is actually right about third-party App Stores, it is a dangerous and even frightening prospect that apps will not be tested and reviewed. It is true that we can't automatically trust an app and just download it to see if we like it.
We're already there in the official App Store. Trust in the App Store is already eroded, and it's entirely Apple's own fault.
The positive side is that for now it is under Apple's control and so Apple can do something about all of this. There was the recent moment, for instance, when it pulled Telegram practically the moment that a user posted porn on it.
Apple also quickly restored it after the issue was resolved, so that's another positive thing. But the Telegram issue was one user reportedly doing this deliberately to take down the app.
Grok flooded X with AI-generated porn in January 2026, some of it featuring minors. Reportedly Apple did threaten to remove Grok, and it did reject an update.
But the app remained on the App Store throughout. Apple rattled the sabers, and threatened removal. It didn't actually do anything to prevent a horrific situation.
Maybe you can make a case that the App Store Review team gets tricked by developers replacing their listings or assets. And Apple surely isn't lying when it proclaims that its App Review process prevented more than $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2025.
What we cannot know, though, is how much fraud actually got through. We cannot know how much of that $2.2 billion was only prevented because of users like Johnson.
The Grok incidents were in your face headline news that caused global outrage, and the world's richest man was publicly laughing about it. If that isn't enough to get an app blocked, it's no longer that the review process is about safety, it's apparently about which developers have the most clout.
You shouldn't have to be the one to investigate apps you want to try. That is the future of third-party App Stores, and that is a future to be fought.
But that future is here with the first-party App Store we already have. And this inability to trust an App Store is here, right now, because Apple will not do what it keeps saying it is doing and what it is charging developers to do.“
Thursday, August 13, 2026
Wednesday, August 12, 2026
Google’s Pixel 11 series pairs a little new hardware with a lot of new software | The Verge
Google’s Pixel 11 series pairs a little new hardware with a lot of new software
"More helpful features, less AI slop.
When I first picked up the Pixel 11 Pro this week, it was clear to me that this was one of those refinement years — at least when it comes to hardware. Aesthetically, the phones are as beautiful as ever, with Google’s signature camera bar and bright, colorful backing glass. There are small updates, like a single piece of glass covering the camera bar and the all-new HiLight ambient LED on the Pros. But this year, the Pixel is all about quality of life and software improvements.
After weeks of teasers, Google has finally formally announced the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL, and Pixel 11 Pro Fold. The phones are all shipping next week, on August 20th, and Google is holding a splashy event the evening of August 12th to show off the devices. Ahead of that, we had a chance to take a first look at everything that’s coming up.
Let’s start with the bad news up front: All of these phones are $100 more expensive than last year’s. Google has killed off the 128GB base storage option this year, which means the Pixel 11 now starts at $899 for a 256GB model. All storage tiers still come with 12GB of RAM, but the higher entry price is no doubt driven by RAMageddon, which has been increasing costs across the industry.
If you can look past the price, you’ll find a refined version of last year’s phone that looks and feels a bit more premium."
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
Thursday, August 06, 2026
Wednesday, August 05, 2026
Tuesday, August 04, 2026
Flock’s AI Cameras May Have Misread Over 70% of License Plates, Creating New Headaches for Cities - CNET
Flock’s AI Cameras May Have Misread Over 70% of License Plates, Creating New Headaches for Cities
"New data suggests Flock surveillance cameras have an abysmal recognition rate. That's a major problem for drivers.
Tyler Lacoma
Editor / Home Security and Smart Home
Tyler has worked on, lived with and tested all types of smart home and security technology for over a dozen years, explaining the latest features, privacy tricks, and top recommendations.… Read full bio
Flock Safety can’t seem to stay out of the news recently, from the latest wave of attacks on Flock surveillance cameras to claims that Flock’s gunshot detection microphones are also picking up private home conversations. But one specific report has caught my attention — a study showing a startlingly high failure rate for the surveillance systemAI.
Read more: Everything You Should Know About Flock Surveillance and How it Works
Following up on complaints about Flock Safety flagging vehicles incorrectly, the police department of Roseville, California, ran its own analysis of the cameras, studying nearly 1,500 Flock reports. They found an astonishing 71% failure rate, where the cameraswould mistake one license plate number for another.
That’s not just a snafu. Mistaking one number for another, like seeing a 7 as a 1, can lead Flock cameras to incorrectly identify an innocent vehicle as one that was previously stolen. That’s exactly what happened in the California situation, where a citizen complained that the cameras were repeatedly flagging his car to police as stolen because the AI technology interpreted a 9 as an 8.
This is a stark contrast to Flock’s own claims — sort of. The company reports that independent evaluations show its cameras have a 96% vehicle count accuracy rating, while correctly categorizing 92% into vehicle types. But accurately recognizing vehicles is a far cry from accurately reading license plates, which Flock doesn’t provide much data on. I’ve reached out to Flock to learn more, and I’ll let you know if the company has additional details to provide.
Why this Flock failure rate could cause trouble
It’s important to note that this analysis was conducted between 2023 and 2024. Many AI Large Language Models can improve over time with better training and more access to material, which is one reason AI companies are literally devouring old books these days. So Flock’s cameras may have improved in accuracy by now. However, we’ve also seen the opposite happen: AI models can eat up bad data, especially “recursive” data that was created by another AI, and start becoming dumber, less accurate when performing their tasks.
Flock has said that the camera setup Roseville used wasn’t typical, but didn’t provide more details. It’s possible that where cameras are placed and when they are activated (at night, in the rain, etc.) can have a significant impact on accuracy. So can license plate covers, dirty license plates and unusual license plate placement.
The problem is these are issues any city may face when adopting Flock cameras. Flock’s primary value offering is that the company’s surveillance is ubiquitous, speedy and accurate, doing a job that police can’t. But if the cameras make mistakes when encountering everyday situations, that’s more work for law enforcement, not less.
Cities, including Los Angeles, continue to cancel Flock contracts (although sometimes they just switch to another provider), often due to public pressure. If Flock’s core services could have such a high failure rate, that’s another reason for police and sheriff departments to reconsider their use, and could make it difficult for Flock to sell new cities on its technology.
Tyler has worked on, lived with and tested all types of smart home and security technology for over a dozen years, explaining the latest features, privacy tricks, and top recommendations. With degrees in Business Management, Literature and Technical Writing, Tyler takes every opportunity to play with the latest AI technology, push smart devices to their limits and occasionally throw cameras off his roof, all to find the best devices to trust in your life. He always checks with the renters (and pets) in his life to see what smart products can work for everyone, in every living situation. Living in beautiful Bend, Oregon gives Tyler plenty of opportunities to test the latest tech in every kind of weather and temperature. But when not at work, he can be found hiking the trails, trying out a new food recipe for his loved ones, keeping up on his favorite reading, or gaming with good friends."
Monday, August 03, 2026
Apple’s secrecy efforts partly undermined by lax work iCloud policy
Apple’s secrecy efforts partly undermined by lax work iCloud policy
“A report from The Information reveals that Apple’s policy of encouraging employees to use personal iCloud accounts for work purposes has led to some former employees retaining access to confidential company files. This policy, which aims to streamline device usage, has resulted in a blurring of lines between personal and work data, potentially undermining Apple’s arguments in a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI. Apple maintains that the lawsuit pertains to deliberate theft of trade secrets, not accidental retention of documents.
A new report from The Information details how Apple’s policy of encouraging employees to mix personal and work iCloud accounts has allowed some former staffers to retain access to confidential company files long after leaving. Here are the details.
Report could weaken Apple’s arguments against OpenAI
Last month, Apple filed a trade secrets theft lawsuit against two former employees, OpenAI, and Jony Ive’s io Products.
In the complaint, Apple outlines several steps it takes to protect confidential information and trade secrets, including contractual, technical, physical, and procedural safeguards. These range from recurring confidentiality training and the signing of multiple agreements, to requirements that departing employees return company devices and complete offboarding interviews designed to ensure they no longer retain access to confidential materials.
Apple’s efforts to safeguard its secrets will likely be central to both its case and OpenAI’s defense. As The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel recently noted on The Vergecast, trade secret law (and lawsuits built around it) often hinge on whether a company can show that it took reasonable measures to keep the information in question confidential.
Which brings us to The Information’s report, and its account of several cases where “Apple employees who left for other companies over the past decade told The Information they, too, continued to have access to confidential documents after leaving the company, even though they made no effort to do so.”
From the report:
Former Apple employees say an unusual company policy that encourages them to blend professional and workplace technologies is why they unexpectedly ended up with access to confidential files after their departures.
When new employees join Apple, the company often issues them an iPhone and Mac and pays for an iCloud account with a large amount of online storage capacity. Crucially, during the onboarding process, Apple encourages new hires to use their preexisting personal Apple IDs with this iCloud account, through which their co-workers can share internal Apple documents and other files with them.
The reason behind this, The Information notes, is the fact that iPhone users “can only log into a single primary Apple ID that unlocks all iCloud capabilities at a time.” So to avoid carrying two different sets of devices, one for personal and another for work (which is not uncommon by any means), “most Apple employees opt to use their personal Apple IDs to access their iCloud accounts.”
The report explains that, since the late 2010s, Apple employees have had access to a company-managed folder within iCloud that is automatically removed when they leave.
However, many internal documents are reportedly not automatically saved there, allowing files shared outside the folder to remain mixed with employees’ personal data and accessible after their departure.
The Information also says that Apple has been accused of blurring the lines between personal and work devices as a deliberate tactic to create grounds for legal action against former employees and their new employers:
“Whether by neglect or as part of a planned effort to generate a pretextual basis to sue the employees and their new employer for ‘stealing’ Apple material, Apple lets these employees walk out the door with material they may have inadvertently ‘retained’ simply by using the Apple systems (such as iCloud or iMessage) that Apple effectively mandates they use as part of their work,” Rivos said in a counterclaim to a lawsuit that Apple had filed against the startup, accusing it of theft of trade secrets.
Finally, The Information’s report notes that Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI contains several allegations of deliberate trade secret theft, which are very different from the circumstances in which former employees inadvertently retained access to files through iCloud. Still, the report could complicate Apple’s efforts to show that it took reasonable measures to keep its confidential information secure.
In a statement to The Information, Apple said:
This case is about OpenAI employees wrongfully taking Apple’s secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes, and products. Nothing in the filing relates to documents shared by, or stored in, iCloud.
Apple added that “it doesn’t pursue legal claims against former employees who accidentally hold on to Apple documents in their personal iCloud accounts.”
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