AI-generated responses are undermining crowdsourced research studies

Many answers to online research questions show signs of being generated by AI chatbots, raising doubts about the validity of behavioural data collected this way

Senators Demand Meta Answer For AI Chatbots Posing as Licensed Therapists

Exclusive: Following 404 Media’s investigation into Meta's AI Studio chatbots that pose as therapists and provided license numbers and credentials, four senators urged Meta to limit "blatant deception" from its chatbots.

From chatbots to assistants: governance is key for AI agents

AI's shift into agentic technology ushers in a new set of governance and security challenges that will mean defining to what extent they should be autonomous

Linux Foundation Announces Intent to Launch Agent Name Service to Establish Trusted Identity Infrastructure for AI Agents

Linux Foundation Announces Intent to Launch Agent Name Service to Establish Trusted Identity Infrastructure for AI Agents

Botender: Supporting Communities in Collaboratively Designing AI Agents through Case-Based Provocations

AI agents, or bots, serve important roles in online communities. However, they are often designed by outsiders or a few tech-savvy members, leading to bots that may not align with the broader community's needs. How might communities collectively shape the behavior of community bots? We present Botender, a system that enables communities to collaboratively design LLM-powered bots without coding. With Botender, community members can directly propose, iterate on, and deploy custom bot behaviors tailored to community needs. Botender facilitates testing and iteration on bot behavior through case-based provocations: interaction scenarios generated to spark user reflection and discussion around desirable bot behavior. A validation study found these provocations more useful than standard test cases for revealing improvement opportunities and surfacing disagreements. During a five-day deployment across six Discord servers, Botender supported communities in tailoring bot behavior to their specific needs, showcasing the usefulness of case-based provocations in facilitating collaborative bot design.

AI chatbots are sycophants — researchers say it’s harming science

Nature asked researchers who use artificial intelligence how its propensity for people-pleasing affects their work — and what they are doing to mitigate it.

AI chatbots are sycophants — researchers say it’s harming science

Nature asked researchers who use artificial intelligence how its propensity for people-pleasing affects their work — and what they are doing to mitigate it.

The intent pipeline: why most prompt guides miss how people actually use AI

Most prompt guides assume that people interact with AI by carefully authoring prompts. In practice, that is rarely how AI is used. Most…

Context Constitution

Today we are releasing the Context Constitution: a set of principles governing how AI agents manage context to learn from experience.

Warning labels shift perceptions of sycophantic AI, but not its influence

Recent work has raised concerns about the influence of sycophantic AI on user judgment and relationships. One proposed mitigation, which has received regulatory attention, is to warn users about potentially harmful AI behaviors such as sycophancy. In a preregistered experiment in which participants (N = 2,610) discussed real interpersonal conflicts with an AI system, we test whether warning labels mitigate sycophancy's influence. We find that a basic AI disclosure (``This chatbot is AI'') has no detectable effect. Labeling the system as sycophantic (``...may agree with you and validate you even when you are wrong...'') does shift users' perceptions, reducing perceived objectivity and trust, but it does not reliably reduce sycophancy's influence on users' self-perceived rightness or their willingness to repair the conflict. Our results reveal a gap between AI perception and AI influence: by shifting perception without reducing influence, warning-based interventions may offer a false sense of protection. Addressing the harms of sycophancy will therefore require understanding the specific mechanisms through which it shapes judgment, and improving model behavior itself.

‘No Bot is Themselves Anymore:’ Character.ai Users Report Sudden Personality Changes to Chatbots

The company denied making "major changes," but users report noticeable differences in the quality of their chatbot conversations.

Agents enter distribution - Sensemaker

Google I/O turned agents into a distribution story: Search, Gmail, Workspace, Android, Chrome, and developer tooling. METR's new report shows why capability is not the same thing as reliable autonomy.

Meta allowed minors access to sex-talking chatbots despite staff concerns, lawsuit alleges

Filing by New Mexico’s attorney general includes Meta staff emails objecting to AI companion policy