ZENIT: “Julia”, Rome Capital’s new virtual assistant for Jubilee pilgrims. “For those eager to explore Rome’s cultural heritage, «Julia» offers details on museums, exhibitions, and special events, along with the official schedule of religious celebrations for the Holy Year. Additionally, it provides health-related information, such as pharmacy locations, emergency room wait times, […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/28/zenit-julia-rome-capitals-new-virtual-assistant-for-jubilee-pilgrims/

NC Newsline: NC treasurer announces 12-week artificial intelligence pilot. “The state Treasurer’s Office is using ChatGPT in a 12-week artificial intelligence pilot program. State Treasurer Brad Briner said the department is using the OpenAI product to identify businesses with unclaimed property and analyze local government financial data.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/28/nc-newsline-nc-treasurer-announces-12-week-artificial-intelligence-pilot/

Digital Trends: Google launches Gemini 2.5 Pro, its ‘most intelligent AI model’ yet. “In a blog post today, Google announced Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental) for developers and Advanced subscribers, aiming to help you tackle increasingly complex problems. “

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/27/digital-trends-google-launches-gemini-2-5-pro-its-most-intelligent-ai-model-yet/

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg: 15 million euros for the expansion of AI resources at NHR. “New boost for AI research in Erlangen: A total of 30 million euros of EU funding has been earmarked for the further development of digital signal processing using generative artificial intelligence. Half of this total will be invested at the Erlangen National High-Performance […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/27/friedrich-alexander-universitat-erlangen-nurnberg-15-million-euros-for-the-expansion-of-ai-resources-at-nhr/

Vanderbilt University: New course unlocks the power of generative AI for MATLAB programming. “A new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the Coursera platform is teaching professionals and students how to better use artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT to improve their MATLAB programming skills and productivity.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/27/vanderbilt-university-new-course-unlocks-the-power-of-generative-ai-for-matlab-programming/

Reuters: Anthropic wins early round in music publishers’ AI copyright case. “Artificial intelligence company Anthropic convinced a California federal judge on Tuesday to reject a preliminary bid to block it from using lyrics owned by Universal Music Group (UMG.AS), opens new tab and other music publishers to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/27/reuters-anthropic-wins-early-round-in-music-publishers-ai-copyright-case/

Ars Technica: Open Source devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries. “Software developer Xe Iaso reached a breaking point earlier this year when aggressive AI crawler traffic from Amazon overwhelmed their Git repository service, repeatedly causing instability and downtime. Despite configuring standard defensive measures—adjusting robots.txt, blocking known […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/26/ars-technica-open-source-devs-say-ai-crawlers-dominate-traffic-forcing-blocks-on-entire-countries/

New York Times: Inside Google’s Investment in the A.I. Start-Up Anthropic. This link goes to a gift article. “To win the artificial intelligence race, Google not only has developed its own technologies, but has also pumped money into prominent A.I. start-ups. And to preserve its competitive edge, Google has kept its ownership stakes in those start-ups a secret. Court documents recently […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/26/new-york-times-inside-googles-investment-in-the-a-i-start-up-anthropic/

Georgia Tech News: Georgia Tech Launches Tech AI to Accelerate the Real-World Impact of Artificial Intelligence . “Georgia Tech has officially launched Tech AI, a bold new initiative designed to accelerate the real-world impact of artificial intelligence across industry and government. The announcement marks the start of Tech AI Fest, the Southeast’s leading AI event, bringing together […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/25/georgia-tech-news-georgia-tech-launches-tech-ai-to-accelerate-the-real-world-impact-of-artificial-intelligence/

Hongkiat: Running Large Language Models (LLMs) Locally with LM Studio. “Running large language models (LLMs) locally with tools like LM Studio or Ollama has many advantages, including privacy, lower costs, and offline availability. However, these models can be resource-intensive and require proper optimization to run efficiently. In this article, we will walk you through optimizing your […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/25/hongkiat-running-large-language-models-llms-locally-with-lm-studio/

Mashable: Anthropic’s AI agent Claude is playing Pokémon and just can’t catch ‘em all. “Last month, the $61.5 billion-valuated AI startup Anthropic set up a gaming livestream on Twitch. Gaming livestreams are nothing new on Twitch, but this one is a little different: Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, is attempting to beat Pokémon Red. We are now one month in, and the livestream is still […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/25/mashable-anthropics-ai-agent-claude-is-playing-pokemon-and-just-cant-catch-em-all/

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Home Depot launches Magic Apron, a generative AI customer guide. “Home Depot has rolled out an online concierge, powered by generative artificial intelligence, to help answer customers’ questions about millions of products and even how to get projects done.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/24/atlanta-journal-constitution-home-depot-launches-magic-apron-a-generative-ai-customer-guide/

Ars Technica: Microsoft’s new AI “Copilot for Gaming” struggles to justify its existence. “…Microsoft is announcing that it will roll out ‘Copilot for Gaming’ as an ‘ultimate gaming sidekick’ that will be available via mobile app preview for Xbox Insiders starting in April. Unfortunately, the current version of Microsoft’s gaming ‘copilot’ seems to fall well short of last year’s demo, […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/24/ars-technica-microsofts-new-ai-copilot-for-gaming-struggles-to-justify-its-existence/

The Conversation: Museums have tons of data, and AI could make it more accessible − but standardizing and organizing it across fields won’t be easy. “AI tools can do amazing things, such as make 3D models of digitized versions of the items in museum collections, but only if there’s enough well-organized data about that item available. To see how AI can help museum collections, my team […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/24/the-conversation-museums-have-tons-of-data-and-ai-could-make-it-more-accessible-%e2%88%92-but-standardizing-and-organizing-it-across-fields-wont-be-easy/

PC World: AI-driven phishing scams exploded last year. The trend continues in 2025. “A new report from Menlo Security (PDF) shows a 140 percent increase in browser-based phishing attacks over the past year, as well as a 130 percent increase in zero-hour phishing attacks (i.e., novel attacks that are undetectable to existing detection tools).”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/24/pc-world-ai-driven-phishing-scams-exploded-last-year-the-trend-continues-in-2025/

Poynter: Opinion | An Italian newspaper launched a generative AI experiment. It’s not going well. “I am usually a fan of bold experiments like this, and bristle at the hand-wringing that often comes in response to emerging technology. But, so far, it’s a case study of how bad AI is at writing the news. Along with the misspellings in images, an article about Donald Trump’s falsehoods has […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/23/opinion-an-italian-newspaper-launched-a-generative-ai-experiment-its-not-going-well-poynter/

Boing Boing: Watch as scam call centers crumble under an AI siege launched by clever YouTuber (video) . “YouTuber Kitboga built an AI army capable of confounding entire scam call centers. There are moments in this video where you will root for the AI as if this were your favorite sports team playing in the greatest championship game of all time. The AI does not fail to deliver.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/23/boing-boing-watch-as-scam-call-centers-crumble-under-an-ai-siege-launched-by-clever-youtuber-video/

Fordham University: Does AI Show Empathy? It Depends on Your Gender, Study Shows . “The researchers fed those posts into three AI platforms—ChatGPT, Inflection Pi, and Bard (now Google Gemini)—and then used a machine learning system to analyze the bots’ responses for their level of empathy. They also included other people’s posted responses to the Reddit messages to have a point of […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/23/fordham-university-does-ai-show-empathy-it-depends-on-your-gender-study-shows/

TechCrunch: Mistral adds a new API that turns any PDF document into an AI-ready Markdown file. “On Thursday French large language model (LLM) developer Mistral launched a new API for developers who handle complex PDF documents. Mistral OCR is an optical character recognition (OCR) API that can turn any PDF into a text file to make it easier for AI models to ingest.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/23/techcrunch-mistral-adds-a-new-api-that-turns-any-pdf-document-into-an-ai-ready-markdown-file/

University of South Australia: New AI model detects toxic online comments with 87% accuracy. “A team of researchers from Australia and Bangladesh has built a model that is 87% accurate in classifying toxic and non-toxic text without relying on manual identification. Researchers from East West University in Bangladesh and the University of South Australia say their model is an improvement on […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/22/university-of-south-australia-new-ai-model-detects-toxic-online-comments-with-87-accuracy/