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Tell Us: How Are You Using A.I. at Work?

NYT Technology - Tue, 06/17/2025 - 12:29
Has A.I. become a part of your daily work routines? We want to know.

You can now create ChatGPT AI images using WhatsApp and it's ridiculously easy to do – here's how

Techradar - Tue, 06/17/2025 - 12:00
  • You can now create ChatGPT images in WhatsApp
  • Ask it to create any image you want
  • Upload an image and ask it to modify it

You can now create and modify images using ChatGPT’s AI chops inside WhatsApp without having to use the ChatGPT app at all.

WhatsApp, the MetaAI-owned messaging app, caused more than a little controversy recently when it added a new Meta AI button to its interface that was impossible to remove.

The new button caused outrage from WhatsApp users, many of whom felt like they were being forced to use AI.

“Why do they have to slap that stuff on everything?” said Reddit user Special-Oil-7447. “I'm in the EU and it’s just been dumped on me. I am going to uninstall WhatsApp today after I have loaded Signal. Vote with your feet people”, said user BrainCell 7.

But Meta has not backed down, and the unpopular MetaAI button remains.

Tapping it will initiate a conversation with the MetaAI chatbot, however, it's not the only AI chatbot you can use with WhatsApp.

Accessing ChatGPT

If you’re a fan of AI, then there’s nothing stopping you from chatting using ChatGPT in WhatsApp so long as you know how, and what’s more, you can now use ChatGPT to generate AI images right inside WhatsApp. You can even upload a picture and get the AI to edit it, all from within WhatsApp.

It’s easy. All you need to do is set up ChatGPT as one of your contacts in WhatsApp - as if it’s a person.

Just add ChatGPT as a contact with the number 1-800-CHATGPT (that’s 1-800-242-8478). If you’re outside of the US, then you’ll need to add them as a US contact, which I've written about before.

Now you can chat with ChatGPT as if it were one of your friends. When you start a chat with ChatGPT, you can simply say “Create an image of...” and add some details. Sit back and let ChatGPT do its AI magic.

To upload an image that you want ChatGPT to edit, tap the + button, then Photos, and upload the image.

ChatGPT will ask you what you would like to do with the image, and you can just use natural language to describe what you want to do.

If you reach your limit for a free ChatGPT account, but you’ve got a Plus account, then WhatsApp will throw up a link so you can link to your Plus account and get more images. It couldn’t be simpler.

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Microsoft has made it harder to log in to Windows 11 using your face - and that’s good and bad news

Techradar - Tue, 06/17/2025 - 10:00
  • Windows Hello facial recognition no longer works in poorly-lit rooms
  • This is due to a move Microsoft made to shore up security with the feature
  • The change to require a ‘color camera to see a visible face’ means logins now fail in dark rooms, where previously infrared allowed them to work

Windows Hello, the system that allows for secure login to your Windows 11 (or 10) PC, no longer works when using facial recognition in a dark environment.

Indeed, this has been the case for a couple of months, because as Windows Central reports, Microsoft made this change in the April update for Windows 11, but it flew under the radar.

When some Windows Hello users noticed that they couldn’t successfully log in because their face wasn’t recognized sometimes, they may have just assumed it was a bug (or the feature being flaky, which it is occasionally). However, this is an intentional change by Microsoft as the company made clear in the April patch release notes.

Microsoft said, “For enhanced security, Windows Hello facial recognition requires color cameras to see a visible face when signing in.”

This security improvement was necessary due to a vulnerability being discovered that could potentially allow an attacker with access to the Windows PC to spoof their way past Windows Hello protection.

That trick evidently involved messing with the infrared camera – leveraging “adversarial input perturbations,” as Microsoft puts it in fancy security-speak – so to avoid this exploit, the company added the requirement for a color camera.

Why has this scuppered logins in darkened environments? Before the April update, Windows Hello could go purely off the infrared sensor to achieve a login in low-light (infrared scanning works fine without light, of course). However, now the feature needs your face to be visible to the camera, logins in those conditions just won’t work anymore.

Analysis: There’s a workaround, but it isn’t helpful

A webcam on top of a monitor

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

There’s no way of getting around this as such, and if you’re in a poorly lit room, Windows Hello facial login may well fail (when before it wouldn’t).

Okay, so Windows Central does point out there is a workaround here, namely that you can disable your webcam in Windows 11 (the actual camera can be turned off in Device Manager). With that done, Windows Hello will authenticate with the infrared sensor – because it’s the only option – and so it’ll work in the semi-dark again.

Presumably, if you go this route, though, you may be vulnerable to the mentioned exploit (unless that requires the camera to be active, a point that Microsoft doesn’t go into). At any rate, disabling the webcam is hardly a good solution, as it means you won’t be able to use it for video chatting (obviously, or anything else).

It’s a shame Microsoft had to tighten security in this way, but the software giant can’t risk leaving the door open to an exploit that someone who has stolen a Windows 11 laptop might be able to leverage in order to gain access to the device.

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Windows 11’s new update is reportedly proving a nightmare to install for some, but I’m hardly surprised given its messy rollout

Techradar - Tue, 06/17/2025 - 06:23
  • Windows 11’s June update is failing to install for some people
  • It’s complicated because Microsoft released an initial update this month – which was paused – and then a revised patch that replaced it
  • This revised patch is also causing unfortunate bugs according to some reports

Windows 11’s latest update is proving problematic for some folks who can’t even install it, and others are running into trouble with bugs in the patch – or the fact that it doesn’t resolve the issues that it’s supposed to.

We need to rewind a bit here for context, and remember that Microsoft got off to a bad start with Windows 11 24H2’s update for June. The initial patch (codenamed KB5060842) was paused after Microsoft discovered that it was clashing with an anti-cheat tool, meaning games using that system would crash.

To resolve this, Microsoft released a second update (patch KB5063060) that replaced the first patch in Windows Update, but as Windows Latest reports, people are running into installation failures with that upgrade.

Some users are encountering the usual nonsensical and unhelpful error messages (bearing meaningless error codes like ‘0x800f0922’), while others say that the revised update gets stuck downloading and never actually finishes.

This is based on complaints from Microsoft’s Feedback Hub, readers contacting Windows Latest directly, and posts on Reddit like this one, which describes a worrying boot loop (of three to four reboots) before the user got back into Windows 11 to discover the update installation hadn’t worked.

There are people also saying they’ve run into bugs with KB5063060. Those include reports of the taskbar freezing when the PC wakes up from sleep, and issues with external monitors going wrong and Bluetooth devices being forgotten (so you must rediscover them every time Windows 11 is restarted).

There are some more worrying reports of PCs ending up freezing full-stop, so they need to be rebooted. And there are a few complaints (again on Reddit) that even after installing this second patch – which is supposed to work fine with games that use Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) – some games are still problematic.

“I still get the same problem playing Star Citizen," wrote one gamer. "Game freezing randomly and the Windows event log viewer showing the EAC error.”

There are further reports of Fortnite and efootball25 (which used to be PES) still crashing, so it seems that not all the wrinkles have been ironed out.

Analysis: a disappointingly messy rollout for June

Frustrated unhappy laptop user girl touching head at work table with computer

(Image credit: Shutterstock / fizkes)

Installation failures are a long-running problem with Windows 11 (and Windows 10 for that matter). It’s therefore no surprise that, given the misfire with the initial update, more issues are now cropping up.

As Windows Latest points out, because there were two updates this time round, there may be issues with PCs that already grabbed KB5060842 and are now getting the second KB5063060 update, due to having a game with EAC installed that’s affected by the anti-cheat compatibility bug in the first one.

In such scenarios, it’s possible that Windows 11 trying to overwrite the first patch with the second is causing Windows Update to fall over. Those in this situation should be limited in numbers, though, as Microsoft pulled the first patch quite swiftly (so it didn’t get through to many PCs with games that use EAC, at least in theory anyway).

That’s just speculation, but whichever way you slice it, this has been a messy rollout of an update (well, a pair of updates technically).

What can you do if you’re stuck unable to install the revised June update? One approach is to download the update manually and install it directly, which you can do by grabbing the file from Microsoft's site (the x64 version, as the Arm-based one is for Snapdragon PCs).

That should install successfully, but I’d be rather wary of taking this approach if you’re not a reasonably confident computer user.

Alternatively, you can simply wait until Microsoft hopefully sorts out any issue(s) behind the scenes on its side, and the update might just succeed under its own steam later this week. There’s no guarantee of that, though, and you’re very much in a less-than-ideal situation.

Those who can install the revised update, but are still experiencing crashing with games (or elsewhere) can’t do much except wait and pray any issues are resolved. The only other possible route is to uninstall the patch, but that’s not recommended due to it leaving your PC without the latest round of security fixes provided with every cumulative update for Windows 11. (You also won’t get the newest features either, some of which are nifty additions).

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22 New Jobs A.I. Could Give You

NYT Technology - Tue, 06/17/2025 - 04:00
In a few key areas, humans will be more essential than ever.

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