Here are the brands bringing ads to ChatGPT
OpenAI officially launched its advertising pilot in ChatGPT, leaving us with a better idea of the kinds of products we might see stuffed beneath our conversations with the AI chatbot. Several companies have announced plans to show ads inside ChatGPT – placements that will reportedly cost them a pretty penny – ranging from major retailers […]
TikTok launches Local Feeds in the US
TikTok announced on Wednesday that it’s launching “Local Feeds,” an opt-in feature that uses precise GPS location data to create a feed of localized content, similar to the “Nearby Feeds” that launched in the UK and Europe in December. This is the first new feature introduced for US users since TikTok officially came under new […]
Discord offers clarification on age assurance as users search for alternatives
Discord needs to clear the air about its age assurance update. Having triggered a wave of consternation among its users following the announcement of new age assurance requirements, the messaging app with 200 million users has posted a blog to let everyone know, loud and clear, that it is not requiring all of them to complete a face scan or upload an ID.
“You need to be an adult to access age-restricted experiences such as age-restricted servers and channels or to modify certain safety settings,” says the post. “The majority of Discord users don’t access age restricted content and will never go through a facial age estimation flow or ID verification.”
More specific language says age checks may be required to unblur media flagged by Discord’s sensitive content filters, to turn off any of the default sensitive content filter settings or the Message Requests feature, speak in a stage channel, or toggle the age-restricted commands setting.
The platform’s second statement in two days suggests it has seen the data, reported by Windows Central, showing a 10,000 percent spike in searches for “Discord alternatives” in the U.S. over the past 48 hours, with messaging platforms Stoat, Matrix and Mumble all authoritatively entering the chat.
Age inference system will automate access for most users
Discord says it will be able to confirm an age group for most users based on what it already knows. “We use age prediction to determine, with high confidence, when a user is an adult,” it says. “This allows many adults to access age-appropriate features without completing an explicit age check.” This system, which as described functions similar to the algorithmic age inference Google has dabbled in for YouTube, is an answer to the accusation that Discord is treating all of its users like children.
When the inference system isn’t enough, the process for follow-up confirmation, and its privacy promises, are familiar territory for biometrics and age assurance observers: facial age estimation (FAE) or document-based age verification. “Facial scans never leave your device. Discord and our vendor partners never receive it. IDs are used to get your age only and then deleted. Discord only receives your age – that’s it. Your identity is never associated with your account.”
The final note is further evidence of an emerging pain point in age assurance adoption: the conflation of age verification with identity verification. It underlines the privacy-preserving approach of its age check options, which, depending on jurisdiction, work through vendors including Persona and k-ID.
“We are partnering with dedicated age assurance vendors who specialize in performing these verifications in a privacy-forward way,” it says. “These vendors were not involved in the September 2025 data breach of our customer service agent.”
However, the statement also raises fresh questions, namely about the so-called “age prediction” system that Discord describes. A FAQ says the system uses an “advanced machine learning model developed at Discord to predict whether a user falls into a particular age group based on patterns of user behavior and several other signals associated with their account on Discord.
“For many adult users, this means access to age‑restricted content and features without needing to complete an explicit age verification flow.” The platform acknowledges “this isn’t always perfect,” but says “we’ve tuned the model to be highly accurate. We only use these signals to assign users to an age group when our confidence level is high.” If a user is placed into the wrong age group, they can perform active age estimation or age verification.
“We do not use your message content in the age estimation model.”
Ultimately, Discord asks users to have faith in its system
The final statement of assurance answers one of the major questions likely to arise among wary Discord users: are you spying on me to guess my age? Discord says no. However, that amounts to self-attestation on Discord’s part, and makes trust a matter of faith that whatever signals the platform is using to infer age remain secure and will not be misused.
In its defense, Discord says it intends to keep working on the problem. “In the months ahead, we’ll be introducing additional safety features and updates as part of our broader commitment to teen safety and wellbeing on Discord. Building a safer Discord takes continual and collaborative effort.”
Warp unveils new software for collaborative AI coding
Warp, which builds software to help developers control AI agents and other software from the command line, is rolling out a new tool called Oz to collaboratively command AI in the cloud.
Last year, Warp launched its agentic development environment, which lets programmers command AI agents to write code and other tasks. Developers can also use the software to edit code on their own and run command-line development tools. That release came as many developers became increasingly fond of vibe coding—the process of instructing an AI on what source code should do rather than writing it directly—and the industry produced a variety of tools, including Anthropic’s Claude Code and Google’s Antigravity, aimed at assisting with the process.
But, says Warp’s founder and CEO Zach Lloyd, most existing agentic development software is geared at individual developers interacting with agents developing code on their own computers. That can make it difficult for teams to collaborate on agent-driven development and even make it hard for managers and colleagues to understand what individual developers already have AI agents working on. It can also make it difficult to guarantee agents are properly configured and securely handling company code and data, even in the face of deliberate attempts to steal data, like external “prompt injection” attacks meant to deceive AI, Lloyd says.
“Right now, with everyone who’s using these agents on their local machines, it’s like the Wild West,” he says. “You don’t know what they’re doing.”
Oz looks to solve that problem by providing secure, cloud-based sandboxes for AI agents to run as they write code, process customer feedback and bug reports, and handle a variety of other tasks, with all of their operations logged and accessible through a Warp app or web interface.
“Every time an agent runs, you get a complete record of what it did,” Lloyd says.
Through Oz, companies can heavily customize what access employees have to different agents and tweak what permissions agents themselves have to avoid security risks. And agents can be automatically scheduled to run at particular times or in response to particular events, or manually instructed to run as needed, says Lloyd, demonstrating one agent the company uses internally to root out potential fraudulent use of its platform.
Developers can also switch between running particular agents in the cloud or on their own computers, which can be useful for interactive development, and the context of previous interactions and runs is automatically preserved. Since the cloud-based side of Oz is commanded via a standardized interface, locally run agents and other apps can even trigger agents to run in the cloud for purposes like generating code to respond to bug reports or feature requests.
“Our view on this is to try to make it really flexible, because companies are going to have lots of different systems and ways of deploying agents,” Lloyd says.
Warp says more than 700,000 developers are now using its software, which has expanded from an enhanced command-line terminal—the esoteric, text-based interface long beloved by power users on Linux and MacOS—to include tools for knowledge sharing and commanding AI agents. The company declined to share precise revenue numbers but said that annual recurring revenue grew by a factor of 35 last year.
Users of Oz will generally be charged both for cloud computing and for AI inference costs, with limited use of the system also available in Warp’s free plans, but customers can also work with Warp to use their existing infrastructure or AI models of their choice.
Warp, which reported at the end of last year that its agents have edited 3.2 billion lines of code, is in essence betting that even in an era when vibe coding is making it easier than ever to build custom software, companies interested in security, ease of use, and fast deployment will still prefer to use its tools for managing their coding agents rather than developing their own in house.
“Every company this year that’s building software is going to want some sort of solution to do this, just because it’s such a big potential force multiplier for how software is produced,” says Lloyd.
Autodesk is suing Google over the name of its Flow AI videomaker
Autodesk, a company known for its suite of 3D design software, is suing Google over claims that it infringed on its “Flow” trademark, as reported earlier by Reuters. The lawsuit, filed in a California court last week, alleges that the name of Google’s AI video generator, Flow, will likely confuse customers with Autodesk’s own AI-enabled […]
With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet
Ring’s ‘Search Party’ is dystopian surveillance accelerationism.
