WIRED’s 11 Noteworthy Long-form Stories of 2023

Personally, I think you should spend your holiday season reading all of WIRED’s standout features. Start here, work backward. Have fun! But fine, if you insist on spending some of that time with family or friends, we’ve also come up with 11 picks for more focused perusal. Not necessarily the best or most popular stories—as … Read more

AI Is Telling Bedtime Stories to Your Kids Now

The problem with Bluey is there’s not enough of it. Even with 151 seven-minute-long episodes of the popular children’s animated show out there, parents of toddlers still desperately wait for Australia’s Ludo Studio to release another season. The only way to get more Bluey more quickly is if they create their own stories starring the … Read more

Journalists Had ‘No Idea’ About OpenAI’s Deal to Use Their Stories

Some writer advocacy groups have pushed for this kind of licensing as an alternative to data scraping. The Author’s Guild, for example, is currently agitating for collective licensing agreements to ensure that writers are paid when their work is used as training data for AI companies. The News Media Alliance, a trade association that represents … Read more

The four podcast stories that will shape 2024

This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more. Hello! Apologies for the late send, I have been buried in Hot Pod Summit prep. I promise it will be worth it! We’re putting together a great lineup for 2024. We’re still working on our invitation list — if you’re interested … Read more

Grok Gets Some Competition, ChatGPT Gets Depressed, and More of the Top AI News Stories This Week

Image: Maurice NORBERT (Shutterstock) What happened with AI this week? Well, the passage of the European Union’s AI Act—a landmark piece of regulation that seeks tackle the potential harms of the AI industry—is a pretty big deal. It could totally reshape how European nations’ relationship to the technology. But a lot of less consequential if … Read more

North Korean refugees share stories of resettling in South after war

SEVENDECADES AWAY FROMHOME The Korean War displaced hundreds of thousands of North Koreans who believed they would go back after the fighting ended. They never returned home. Comment on this storyCommentAdd to your saved storiesSave The photography was supported by the Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists, an initiative of the International Women’s Media … Read more

Padma Lakshmi on the Importance of Telling Immigrant Stories

As Padma Laskhmi accepted a TIME100 Impact Award on Tuesday, she spoke about immigrants—and how her advocacy work has led her to dive more deeply into telling their stories. After almost two decades of hosting Top Chef, Lakshmi announced her departure from the show earlier this year. That gave her more time to spend producing … Read more

Google weighing ‘Project Ellmann,’ uses Gemini AI to tell life stories

A team at Google has proposed using artificial intelligence technology to create a “bird’s-eye” view of users’ lives using mobile phone data such as photographs and searches. Dubbed “Project Ellmann,” after biographer and literary critic Richard David Ellmann, the idea would be to use LLMs like Gemini to ingest search results, spot patterns in a … Read more

Gaza shrinks for Palestinians seeking refuge. 4 stories offer a glimpse into a diminished world

BEIRUT (AP) — Gaza has always been a small, crowded space with hardly any exits. Now the world for Palestinians there has shrunk to the size of whatever refuge they can find: a jammed shelter, a car, the walls of a shared apartment, or floors and benches in hospital corridors. The strip is 25 miles … Read more