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NEW YORK (AP) — Elon Musk’s Grok keeps getting into trouble, and this time, more of the world’s governments are trying to intervene.

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First launched in 2023, Grok is Musk’s attempt to outdo rivals such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini in building an AI assistant powered by a large language model, which is trained on vast pools of data to help predict the most plausible next word in a sentence. It’s the main product of Musk’s AI startup, xAI, which has been merged with his social media platform, X. Much like ChatGPT and Gemini, Musk’s company has also folded AI image generation capabilities into the chatbot. read more

NEW YORK (AP) — An appliance distributor is expanding a minifridge recall that now covers roughly 964,000 Frigidaire-branded products sold in the U.S., after multiple fire reports.

Following a recall of about 634,000 minifridges last year, Canada-based Curtis International recalled an additional 330,000 of another model on Thursday. According to a notice published U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the recalled fridges have electrical components that can short circuit and ignite the plastic used to make the product — risking fires and potential burns for users.

The 330,000 Frigidaire minifridges now under recall carry the model number EFMIS121 and were sold exclusively at Target. Per the Commission, six reports of fires resulting in property damage have been linked to these products to date.

The Associated Press reached out to Target and Curtis International for further comments on Thursday.

The 634,000 minifridges recalled last year had model numbers EFMIS129, EFMIS137, EFMIS149 and EFMIS175. Another 26 incidents that included the products overheating, melting or catching fire were reported at the time, as well as two related smoke inhalation injuries. read more

By KELVIN CHAN

LONDON (AP) — Wikipedia unveiled new business deals with a slew of artificial intelligence companies on Thursday as it marked its 25th anniversary.

The online crowdsourced encyclopedia revealed that it has signed up AI companies including Amazon, Meta Platforms, Perplexity, Microsoft and France’s Mistral AI.

Wikipedia is one of the last bastions of the early internet, but that original vision of a free online space has been clouded by the dominance of Big Tech platforms and the rise of generative AI chatbots trained on content scraped from the web.

Aggressive data collection methods by AI developers, including from Wikipedia’s vast repository of free knowledge, has raised questions about who ultimately pays for the artificial intelligence boom.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the site, signed Google as one of its first customers in 2022 and announced other agreements last year with smaller AI players like search engine Ecosia.

The new deals will help one of the world’s most popular websites monetize heavy traffic from AI companies. They’re paying to access Wikipedia content “at a volume and speed designed specifically for their needs,” the foundation said. It did not provide financial or other details. read more

By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Verizon said it resolved an outage that disrupted many U.S. customers’ calling and other cellular services for more than 10 hours on Wednesday.

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The New York-based carrier didn’t specify what caused Wednesday’s disruptions, but confirmed that the outage was resolved by 10:20 p.m. ET. Verizon previously said it had deployed its engineering teams to address “an issue impacting wireless voice and data services.”

“Today, we let many of our customers down and for that, we are truly sorry,” Verizon wrote in updates shared on social media. A spokesperson later added that the company would give those impacted a $20 account credit through Verizon’s app, which on average “covers multiple days of service,” and directly contact its business customers with compensation. read more

Forty years ago, Walt Disney World introduced an Epcot pavilion known as the Living Seas. In 1986, the company reportedly spent $90 million on the project, which the Orlando Sentinel called “its most ambitious and expensive pavilion to date.”

Disney publicists referred to it as “the world’s sixth ocean.”

This all happened before a short-attention-span fish hit big screens, and park visitors knew nothing of something called a “clamobile.” Things change, and in 2006 — half its lifetime ago — the area was rethemed and renamed The Seas With Nemo & Friends.

Other things stay the same, including the 5.7-million-gallon saltwater tank, said to have enough volume to hold Epcot’s iconic Spaceship Earth and then some. The emphasis on animal care and conservation continues.

Disney World recently invited the Sentinel and other members of the media to see the latest version of the Seas from both the visitor side and behind the scenes. Here are a few takeaways.

Minding the manatees

The Seas visitors can see two manatees on the ground floor, but they aren’t Little Joe and Inigo, long-term residents who were moved to another Florida facility last year. read more