ai – Page 9 – Tech News

‘Slop’ is the word of the year. Here’s how to avoid it

The internet has spent the year arguing about whether AI is genius, theft, or destiny. Merriam-Webster’s editors cut through it with a simpler verdict: slop. The dictionary crowned “slop” its 2025 “word of the year,” joining in on the anti-AI backlash and recognizing that the internet’s new factory setting looks a lot like synthetic filler — low-quality AI content, made in bulk, and poured straight into feeds until the human parts get buried. If your For You page has started to resemble a trough of glossy, almost-real nonsense, congrats, you’re experiencing a cultural moment — with a dictionary entry.
https://qz.com/ai-slop-word-of-the-year-miriam-webster-avoid-it

Mozilla’s new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox

Mozilla is in a tricky position. It contains both a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the internet a better place for everyone, and a for-profit arm dedicated to, you know, making money. Mozilla is not going to train its own giant LLM anytime soon. But there’s still an AI Mode coming to Firefox next year, which Enzor-DeMeo says will offer users their choice of model and product, all in a browser they can understand and from a company they can trust.
https://www.theverge.com/tech/845216/mozilla-ceo-anthony-enzor-demeo

Google announces experimental ‘Disco’ browser with ‘GenTabs’ powered by Gemini 3

Google Labs today announced “Disco” as an experiment to “shape the future of web browsing.” The first flagship feature of this AI browser is the Gemini 3-powered “GenTab.” For Google, Disco is a “vehicle designed to reimagine browsing and building for the modern web.” Unsurprisingly, it is built on Chromium — just like Chrome — with some common elements, especially the design of tabs.
https://9to5google.com/2025/12/11/google-disco-gentab-browser/

Meta eyes big cuts to its metaverse budget in the AI era

According to Bloomberg News, Meta is considering slashing its metaverse spending by as much as 30% in 2026 — although no plans are final yet — after meetings at Zuckerberg’s Hawaii compound laid out a slimmer future for its namesake ambitions. For three years, the company tried to brute-force another new reality into existence: new name, new stock ticker, new keynote vocabulary about “presence” and “embodied internet.”
https://qz.com/meta-metaverse-cuts-mark-zuckerberg-reality-labs

AI finds its way into Apple’s top apps of the year

Apple’s app of the year, Tiimo, for instance, is described as a visual AI planner that turns to-dos into plans with visual timelines. The app uses AI to break down your tasks into a realistic schedule by estimating how long each step of a task could take and helping you to create a plan.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/04/ai-finds-its-way-into-apples-top-apps-of-the-year/

‘Slop Evader’ Lets You Surf the Web Like It’s 2022

[Slop Evader is] a new browser tool that filters your web searches to only include results from before November 30, 2022 — the day that ChatGPT was released to the public. Created by artist and researcher Tega Brain, who says she was motivated by the growing dismay over the tech industry’s unrelenting, aggressive rollout of so-called “generative AI”—despite widespread criticism and the wider public’s distaste for it.
https://www.404media.co/slop-evader-browser-extension-pre-generative-ai-search-filter/

Google: No, We’re Not Secretly Using Your Gmail Account to Train Gemini

Google has hit back at claims circulating on social media that accuse the tech giant of training its Google Gemini AI on users' emails without their permission. In a statement shared with The Verge, Google called reports "misleading," saying that the company has “not changed anyone’s settings. Gmail Smart Features have existed for many years, and we do not use your Gmail content for training our Gemini AI model.”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/google-no-were-not-secretly-training-gemini-on-your-gmail-account