Science and Technology

The estate of the comedian George Carlin reached a settlement on Monday with the makers of a podcast who had said they had used artificial intelligence to impersonate Mr. Carlin for a comedy special.As part of the agreement, the two podcast creators, Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen, agreed to permanently remove the comedy special and to never repost it on any platform, according to Josh Schiller, a lawyer for Mr. Carlin’s estate. They also agreed not to use Mr. Carlin’s image, voice or likeness on any platform without approval from the estate, according to court records.Mr. Schiller declined to elaborate…

David Autor seems an unlikely A.I. optimist. The labor economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is best known for his in-depth studies showing how much technology and trade have eroded the incomes of millions of American workers over the years.But Mr. Autor is now making the case that the new wave of technology — generative artificial intelligence, which can produce hyper-realistic images and video and convincingly imitate humans’ voices and writing — could reverse that trend.“A.I., if used well, can assist with restoring the middle-skill, middle-class heart of the U.S. labor market that has been hollowed out by automation…

The telecommunications giant AT&T announced on Saturday that it had reset the passcodes of 7.6 million customers after it determined that compromised customer data was “released on the dark web.”“Our internal teams are working with external cybersecurity experts to analyze the situation,” AT&T said. “To the best of our knowledge, the compromised data appears to be from 2019 or earlier and does not contain personal financial information or call history.”The company said that “information varied by customer and account,” but that it may have included a person’s full name, email address, mailing address, phone number, Social Security number, date of…

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange who was convicted of stealing billions of dollars from customers, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday, capping an extraordinary saga that upended the crypto industry and became a cautionary tale of greed and hubris.Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentence was shorter than the 40 to 50 years that federal prosecutors had sought after a jury found him guilty of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering — charges that carried a maximum penalty of 110 years behind bars. But the punishment was far above the six and a half years requested by his…

Within minutes of walking through an Israeli military checkpoint along Gaza’s central highway on Nov. 19, the Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha was asked to step out of the crowd. He put down his 3-year-old son, whom he was carrying, and sat in front of a military jeep.Half an hour later, Mr. Abu Toha heard his name called. Then he was blindfolded and led away for interrogation.“I had no idea what was happening or how they could suddenly know my full legal name,” said the 31-year-old, who added that he had no ties to the militant group Hamas and had…

A federal judge in California on Monday dismissed X’s lawsuit against a nonprofit organization that studies hate speech online, ruling that the social media company’s case was designed to punish researchers for speaking freely about the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.X sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate in July in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California after the organization published several articles that claimed its researchers had discovered a rise in hate speech on the platform following Elon Musk’s takeover. X said that the group’s research was harming its business by scaring away advertisers,…

Amid debate in Washington over whether TikTok should be banned if its Chinese owner doesn’t sell it, one group is watching with particular interest: the many brands — particularly in the beauty, skin care, fashion, and health and wellness industries — that have used the video app to boost their sales.Youthforia, a makeup brand with more than 185,000 followers on TikTok, is thinking about moving more marketing to other platforms, like YouTube and Instagram. Underlining, which makes the popular brand Nailboo, planned to use TikTok to launch a product with a major retailer in August and is now wondering if…

Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTubeThis week, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Apple, saying the company holds a monopoly over the smartphone market. We break down the lawsuit and ask whether it will be a major turning point in Apple’s dominance. Then, Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, argues that smartphones and social media are the cause of widespread increases in mental health issues among young people. He tells us his four potential solutions to the problem. And finally, Reddit’s market capitalization hit $9.2 billion when it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange…

Reddit on Wednesday priced its shares at $34 for its initial public offering, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The pricing was at the high end of expectations, in a sign of investor demand for growing tech companies.The San Francisco-based social media company had estimated that its shares would be priced at $31 to $34. The $34 price put Reddit’s value at $6.4 billion, below the $10 billion valuation it fetched in a private fund-raising round in 2021. The company raised $748 million in the offering, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.Its shares will…

It was raw and occasionally tense.The former television anchor Don Lemon’s wide-ranging, testy interview with Elon Musk was released online on Monday morning, touching upon topics including politics, particularly the billionaire’s recent meeting with former President Donald J. Trump; Mr. Musk’s reported drug use; hate speech on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which he now owns; and more.The interview was intended to be the debut episode of a new talk show in a partnership between Mr. Lemon and X, but Mr. Musk called off the deal a day after filming the hour-plus interview at Tesla’s headquarters…