AI information recap: New Meta AI app, ChatGPT’s dangerous mannequin habits [May 2025]

Similar to AI fashions, AI information by no means sleeps.

Each week, we’re inundated with new fashions, merchandise, trade rumors, authorized and moral crises, and viral tendencies. If that is not sufficient, the rival AI hype/doom chatter on-line makes it laborious to maintain observe of what is actually vital. However we have sifted by means of all of it to recap probably the most notable AI information of the week from the heavyweights like OpenAI and Google, in addition to the AI ecosystem at giant. Learn our final recap, and examine again subsequent week for a brand new version.

One other week, one other batch of AI information coming your method.

This week, Meta held its inaugural LlamaCon occasion for AI builders, OpenAI struggled with mannequin habits, and LM Area was accused of serving to AI firms sport the system. Congress additionally handed new legal guidelines defending victims of deepfakes, and new analysis examines AI’s present and potential harms. Plus, Duolingo and Wikipedia have very totally different approaches to their new AI methods.

What occurred at Meta’s first LlamaCon

Credit score: Chris Unger / Zuffa LLC / Getty Photographs

At LlamaCon, Meta’s first convention for AI builders, the 2 large bulletins had been the launch of a standalone Meta AI app to compete extra instantly with ChatGPT and the Llama API, now in restricted preview. Following stories that this was within the works, CEO Sam Altman as soon as joked that perhaps OpenAI ought to do its personal social media app, however now that’s reportedly occurring for actual.

We additionally went hands-on with the brand new Llama-powered Meta AI app. For extra particulars about Meta AI’s high options, learn Mashable’s breakdown.

Throughout LlamaCon’s closing keynote, Mark Zuckerberg interviewed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella a couple of bunch of tendencies, starting from agentic AI capabilities to how we should always measure AI’s developments. Nadella additionally revealed that as much as 30 p.c of Microsoft’s code is written by AI. To not be outdone, Zuckerberg mentioned he needs AI to put in writing half of Meta’s code by subsequent 12 months. 

ChatGPT has questions of safety, goes buying

Meta AI and ChatGPT each obtained busted this week for sexting minors.

OpenAI mentioned this was a bug they usually’re working to repair it. One other ChatGPT subject this week made the newest GPT-4o replace an excessive amount of of a suck-up. Altman described the mannequin’s habits as “sycophant-y and annoying,” however customers had been involved concerning the risks of releasing a mannequin like this, highlighting issues with iterative deployment and reinforcement studying.

OpenAI was even accused of deliberately tuning the mannequin to maintain customers extra engaged. Joanne Jang, OpenAI’s head of mannequin habits, jumped on a Reddit AMA to do harm management. “Personally, probably the most painful a part of the newest sycophancy discussions has been individuals assuming that my colleagues are irresponsibly making an attempt to maximise engagement for the sake of it,” wrote Jang.

Earlier within the week, OpenAI introduced new options to make merchandise talked about in ChatGPT responses extra shoppable. The corporate mentioned it is not incomes buy commissions, nevertheless it smells an terrible lot just like the beginnings of a Google Procuring competitor. Did we point out OpenAI would purchase Chrome if Google is compelled to divest it? As a result of they completely would, FYI.

The ChatGPT maker has had just a few extra issues with its current fashions. Final week, we reported that o3 and o4-mini hallucinate extra than earlier fashions, by OpenAI’s personal admission.

Anybody within the U.S. can now join Google AI Mode

In the meantime, Google is barreling forward with AI-powered search options. On Thursday, the tech big introduced that it is eradicating the waitlist to take a look at out AI Mode in Labs, so anybody over 18 within the U.S. can attempt it out. We spoke with Robby Stein, VP of product for Google Search, about how customers have responded to its AI options, the way forward for search, and Google’s duty to publishers.

Google additionally up to date Gemini with picture modifying instruments and expanded NotebookLM, its AI podcast generator, to over 50 languages. Bloomberg additionally reported that Google has been quietly testing adverts inside third-party chatbot responses.

We’re retaining a detailed eye on that last improvement, and we’re very curious how Google plans to inject adverts into AI search. Would you belief a chatbot that gave you sponsored solutions?

Leaderboard drama 

Researchers from AI firm Cohere, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, and Ai2, revealed a paper this week calling out Chatbot Area for primarily serving to AI heavyweights rig their benchmarking outcomes. The research mentioned the favored crowdsourced benchmarking device from UC Berkeley allowed Meta, Google, OpenAI, and Amazon “in depth non-public testing” and gave them extra immediate knowledge, which “considerably” improved their rankings. 

In response, LM Area, the group behind Chatbot Area mentioned “there are a selection of factual errors and deceptive statements on this writeup” and posted a pointy-by-point rebuttal to the paper’s claims on X. 

This Tweet is presently unavailable. It is perhaps loading or has been eliminated.

The problem of benchmarking AI fashions has turn out to be more and more problematic. Benchmark outcomes are largely self-reported by the businesses that launch them, and the AI group has referred to as for extra transparency and accountability by goal third events. Chatbot Area appeared to offer an answer by permitting customers to decide on the perfect responses in blind exams. However now LM Area’s practices have come into query, additional fueling the dialog round goal evaluations. 

Just a few weeks in the past, Meta obtained in bother for utilizing an unreleased model of its Llama 4 Maverick mannequin on LM Area, which scored a excessive rating. LM Area up to date its leaderboard insurance policies, and the publicly accessible model of Llama 4 Maverick was added as a substitute, rating method decrease than the unreleased model. 

Lastly, LM Area lately introduced plans to type an organization of its personal.

Regulators and researchers sort out AI’s real-world harms

Now that generative AI has been within the wild for just a few years, the real-world implications have began to crystallize. 

This week, U.S. Congress handed the “Take It Down” Act, which requires tech firms to take away nonconsensual intimate imagery inside 48 hours of a request. The legislation additionally outlines strict punishment for deepfake creators. The laws had bipartisan help and is anticipated to be signed by President Donald Trump.

The nonpartisan U.S. Authorities Accountability Workplace (GAO) revealed a report on generative AI’s affect on people and the setting. The conclusion is that the potential impacts are big, however precisely how a lot is unknown as a result of “non-public builders don’t disclose some key technical info.”

And within the realm of the frighteningly actual and particular harms of AI, a research from Frequent Sense Media mentioned AI companion apps like Character.AI and Replika are unequivocally unsafe for teenagers. The researchers say for those who’re too younger to purchase cigarettes, you are too younger on your personal AI companion.

Then there was the report that researchers from the College of Zurich secretly deployed AI bots within the r/changemyview subreddit to attempt to persuade individuals to alter their minds. A number of the bot identities included a statutory rape sufferer, “a trauma counselor specializing in abuse,” and “a black man against Black Lives Matter.”

Different AI information…

In different information, Duolingo is taking an “AI-first” method, which suggests changing its contract staff with AI at any time when doable. On the flip aspect, Wikipedia introduced it is taking a “human-first” method to its AI technique. It will not change its volunteers and editors with AI, however will as a substitute “use AI to construct options that take away technical obstacles to permit the people on the core of Wikipedia.”

Yelp deployed a bunch of AI options this week, together with an AI-powered answering service that takes requires eating places, and Governor Gavin Newsom needs to make use of genAI to resolve California’s legendary site visitors jams.