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Google reveals Nano Banana 2 AI image model, coming to Gemini today

AI, Artificial Intelligence, generative ai, Google, nano banana, Tech / 9u50fv / February 26, 2026

With Nano Banana 2, Google promises consistency for up to five characters at a time, along with accurate rendering of as many as 14 different objects per workflow. This, along with richer textures and “vibrant” lighting will aid in visual storytelling with Nano Banana 2. Google is also expanding the range of available aspect ratios and resolutions, from 512px square up to 4K widescreen.

So what can you do with Nano Banana 2? Google has provided some example images with associated prompts. These are, of course, handpicked images, but Nano Banana has been a popular image model for good reason. This degree of improvement seems believable based on past iterations of Nano Banana.

Google AI infographic — Prompt: High-quality flat lay photography creating a DIY infographic that simply explains how the water cycle works, arranged on a clean, light gray textured background. The visual story flows from left to right in clear steps. Simple, clean black arrows are hand-drawn onto the background to guide the viewer’s eye. The overall mood is educational, modern, and easy to understand. The image is shot from a top-down, bird’s-eye view with soft, even lighting that minimizes shadows and keeps the focus on the process. Credit: Google

AI museum comparison — Prompt: Create an image of Museum Clos Lucé. In the style of bright colored Synthetic Cubism. No text. Your plan is to first search for visual references, and generate after. Aspect ratio 16:9. Credit: Google

AI farm image — Create an image of these 14 characters and items having fun at the farm. The overall atmosphere is fun, silly and joyful. It is strictly important to keep identity consistent of all the 14 characters and items. Credit: Google

Google must be pretty confident in this model’s capabilities because it will be the only one available going forward. Starting now, Nano Banana 2 will replace both the standard and Pro variants of Nano Banana across the Gemini app, search, AI Studio, Vertex AI, and Flow.

In the Gemini app and on the website, Nano Banana 2 will be the image generator for the Fast, Thinking, and Pro settings. It’s possible there will eventually be a Nano Banana 2 Pro—Google tends to release elements of new model families one at a time. For now, it’s all “Flash” Image.

Google reveals Nano Banana 2 AI image model, coming to Gemini today Read More »

A non-public document reveals that science may not be prioritized on next Mars mission

mars telecommunications network, mars telecommunications orbiter, rocket lab, Space / 9u50fv / February 26, 2026

The way this document is written suggests that when NASA scores bidders for the Mars Telecommunications Network, the addition of a camera or other scientific payloads won’t be a net positive. However, if they pose an overall risk to the mission, they would be a net negative.

New award to Rocket Lab may complicate things

One of the other intriguing parts of this mission is that it sets up a battle royale of sorts for some of NASA’s most prominent contractors. Rocket Lab and Blue Origin have both waged very public campaigns that tout their solutions to NASA’s needs. SpaceX is also interested in winning a Mars mission for its Starship launch system. Then there are traditional contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, which have a long and storied history of building robust (if costly) Mars missions.

If NASA is going to launch the Mars Telecommunications Network by late 2028 to make the next “window” to the red planet, it must move quickly with this solicitation. In particular, industry protests after a decision is made could hold up the project for months and would almost certainly doom NASA’s hopes of making the 2028 launch opportunity.

On Monday, the space agency awarded Rocket Lab a $390,936 contract to study “Mars End-to-End Communication Service Architectures.” The award is not significant monetarily, but it does indicate that NASA is interested in Rocket Lab’s ideas for improving communications between Earth and Mars, and potentially a Mars Sample Return mission down the road. However, one source suggested to Ars that the award is a potential conflict of interest.

The contracting office for the Rocket Lab award is Goddard Space Flight Center, which is also responsible for managing the Mars Telecommunications Network. That Rocket Lab, alone, received an award like this from the NASA center that will also decide on the orbiting spacecraft—coterminous when such a decision will be made—is surely to be the basis of one or more protests should Rocket Lab win the Mars Telecommunications Network contract, the source told Ars.

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15 state attorneys general sue RFK Jr. over “anti-science” vaccine policy

anti-vaccine activists, health, HHS, rfk jr, syndication, vaccines / 9u50fv / February 26, 2026

This administration may be hazardous to your health

Trump administration’s reduced vaccine schedule “throws science out the window.”

A healthcare worker receives a Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine at Jackson Memorial Hospital on December 15, 2020 in Miami, Florida. Credit: Getty Images | Joe Raedle

Scientists have long warned that a warming world is likely to hasten the spread of infectious diseases, making vaccination even more critical to safeguard public health.

And though most scientists hail vaccines as one of public health’s greatest achievements, they have provoked fear, distrust, and contentious resistance since Edward Jenner invented the first vaccine, to prevent smallpox, in the late 1700s.

Yet, until now, the United States never installed an outspoken vaccine critic like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a top health official with the power to upend federal childhood vaccine recommendations. Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy and other top officials in the Trump administration have waged an “unprecedented attack on the nation’s evidence-based childhood immunization schedule,” a lawsuit, filed by 15 states, charged on Tuesday. Their actions will make people sicker and strain state resources, the suit claims.

A coalition of 14 attorneys general and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, is suing Kennedy, who has long promoted debunked theories linking vaccines to autism, as well as HHS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and its acting director, Jay Bhattacharya.

The multistate coalition is suing the agencies and their leaders, Mayes said in a press briefing Tuesday, “over their needlessly confusing, scientifically unsound, and unlawful revision of America’s immunization schedule.”

The suit also challenges Kennedy’s abrupt firing and “unlawful replacement” of 17 experts on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which recommends which vaccines children and adults should receive, “with unqualified individuals whose minority anti-vaccine views align with Kennedy’s.”

In January, the CDC, with advice from the reconstituted ACIP, took seven childhood shots off the list of vaccines routinely recommended for all children, rescinding the CDC’s established guidance that vaccines protecting against rotavirus, meningococcal disease, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus should be universally administered.

All the “demoted” vaccines, as the lawsuit calls them, prevent diseases that carry the risk of death. The January CDC memo recommends that parents consult with doctors for these vaccines, “taking the risk profile of each unique child into account.”

It does not make provisions for the millions of Americans who lack access to health providers who would provide such consultations.

ACIP’s vaccine recommendations have traditionally guided US health insurance coverage decisions, state school vaccine requirements, and physicians’ advice to parents and patients, Bonta said at the briefing. But Kennedy fired all the voting ACIP members four months after he promised Congress during his confirmation hearing that he’d leave the panel intact, Bonta said, noting that the suit is the 59th California has filed against the second Trump administration.

Kennedy said his unprecedented removal of the ACIP experts was “prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda,” in a press release in June.

Yet Kennedy’s picks include vaccine skeptics who “lack the requisite scientific knowledge and expertise to advise HHS and CDC on the ‘use of vaccines and related agents for effective control of vaccine-preventable diseases,’” as required by the committee’s charter, the suit argues.

“What Secretary Kennedy has done and what the Trump administration has enabled, throws science out the window, replaces qualified experts with unqualified ideologues, and then uses the resulting confusion to undermine public confidence in vaccines that have saved millions of lives,” Mayes said.

Stoking vaccine doubts leads to lower vaccination rates, which leads to more disease outbreaks—such as the hundreds of measles cases reported in 26 states over the past two months—more children in hospitals and greater strain on state Medicaid systems and public health infrastructure, Mayes said.

Democratic states are doing everything they can to fill the gaps left by this administration’s policies, she said. “But diseases cross state lines.”

Sowing doubt and confusion

The administration cited Denmark’s more limited childhood immunization schedule to justify its changes, but the Scandinavian country has fewer circulating infectious diseases and universal health care for a population that is tiny compared to the United States, the suit notes.

“Copying Denmark’s vaccine schedule without copying Denmark’s healthcare system doesn’t give families more options,” Mayes said, noting that millions of Americans lack access to health care, particularly in rural areas. “It just leaves kids unprotected from serious diseases.”

Inside Climate News asked HHS how it will ensure that parents without access to health care get their children the vaccines they need and how the administration plans to protect vulnerable populations as climate change fuels the spread of infectious diseases.

“This is a publicity stunt dressed up as a lawsuit,” said HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard, ignoring the questions. “By law, the health secretary has clear authority to make determinations on the CDC immunization schedule and the composition of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The CDC immunization schedule reforms reflect common-sense public health policy shared by peer, developed countries.”

The revised childhood immunization schedule wasn’t based on new science or expert consensus, Mayes said. “It was based on an ideological agenda, one that Secretary Kennedy has been pushing for years.”

Kennedy has been at the forefront of a dangerous movement that has significantly eroded trust in safe and effective vaccines, Bonta said. “While RFK Jr. is entitled to his own personal opinions, opinions, mind you, not facts, he isn’t entitled to use his opinions as the basis for breaking the law and endangering our children.”

The actions that RFK Jr. and ACIP have taken flout decades of scientific research, harm public health, and strain state resources by sowing doubt and confusion in vaccines and in science, Bonta said.

“California will be forced to expend resources to treat once rare diseases, to respond to outbreaks, and to combat misinformation,” he said. “I refuse to allow RFK Jr. to threaten the health and well being of the more than eight million young people who call the Golden State home, the 400,000 babies that are born here in California each year.”

Routine childhood vaccinations will prevent approximately 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1,129,000 deaths among US children born between 1994 and 2023, scientists with the CDC reported in August 2024, before Donald Trump returned to office. The immunizations resulted in direct savings of $540 billion and societal savings of $2.7 trillion, they concluded.

“Without these vaccines, not only will our children and vulnerable individuals get sick, but our healthcare systems will have to shoulder the burden of increased preventable illnesses, preventable hospital visits, and avoidable costs,” Bonta said. “Vaccines save lives and save our states money. To get rid of them is illogical and unconscionable.”

Climate-fueled outbreaks

Two weeks before Bonta filed his latest lawsuit against the Trump administration, he denounced the Environmental Protection Agency’s repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding that recognized climate change as a threat to public health and welfare and provided the legal grounds to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

The Trump administration’s endangerment finding recision, like its overhaul of the vaccine schedule, “is completely divorced from and untethered from science and facts and data and evidence,” Bonta said at the briefing Tuesday, noting that California will continue to push back against the EPA’s action.

“We must follow the facts, the science, the evidence and data, including the interconnectivity between climate change and the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases,” Bonta said.

Climate hazards such as drought, floods, and heatwaves have exacerbated outbreaks of more than half of human infectious diseases, researchers reported in Nature Climate Change in 2022, either by impairing people’s resistance or bolstering transmission of pathogens. The team warned that the number of pathogenic diseases and transmission pathways worsened by climatic hazards “are too numerous for comprehensive societal adaptations,” underscoring the urgent need to address the source of the problem: greenhouse gases.

Arizona is seeing more extreme heat events as a result of climate change, leaving people with underlying conditions at greater risk of heat-related illness and death.

“A lack of vaccines, a lack of access to vaccines starting at birth, will make our population sicker and more vulnerable to extreme heat and to climate-related disasters,” Mayes said. “And that will be sort of a self-perpetuating cycle where you have a less healthy population that is less capable of withstanding the impacts of climate change, and then you have climate change that is expanding and growing ever-more dangerous, having a greater and greater impact on a less healthy society.”

The only bodies that are capable of providing scientific guidance and advice on vaccines to the entire country are the CDC and ACIP, Mayes said. “And we now basically don’t have that across a number of these diseases and vaccines,” she said. “So we’re not protected, and we’re going to continue to see these outbreaks across the country, including in our states, even though we’re doing everything we can to protect ourselves.”

Liza Gross is a reporter for Inside Climate News based in Northern California. She is the author of The Science Writers’ Investigative Reporting Handbook and a contributor to The Science Writers’ Handbook, both funded by National Association of Science Writers’ Peggy Girshman Idea Grants. She has long covered science, conservation, agriculture, public and environmental health and justice with a focus on the misuse of science for private gain. Prior to joining ICN, she worked as a part-time magazine editor for the open-access journal PLOS Biology, a reporter for the Food & Environment Reporting Network and produced freelance stories for numerous national outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Discover, and Mother Jones. Her work has won awards from the Association of Health Care Journalists, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Society of Professional Journalists NorCal, and Association of Food Journalists.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

15 state attorneys general sue RFK Jr. over “anti-science” vaccine policy Read More »

Musk has no proof OpenAI stole xAI trade secrets, judge rules, tossing lawsuit

AI, Antitrust law, Artificial Intelligence, data centers, elon musk, openai, Policy, trade secrets, unfair competition law, xAI / 9u50fv / February 25, 2026

Hostility is not proof of theft

Even twisting an ex-employee’s text to favor xAI’s reading fails to sway judge.

Elon Musk appears to be grasping at straws in a lawsuit accusing OpenAI of poaching eight xAI employees in an allegedly unlawful bid to access xAI trade secrets connected to its data centers and chatbot, Grok.

In a Tuesday order granting OpenAI’s motion to dismiss, US District Judge Rita F. Lin said that xAI failed to provide evidence of any misconduct from OpenAI.

Instead, xAI seemed fixated on a range of alleged conduct of former employees. But in assessing xAI’s claims, Lin said that xAI failed to show proof that OpenAI induced any of these employees to steal trade secrets “or that these former xAI employees used any stolen trade secrets once employed by OpenAI.”

Two employees admitted to stealing confidential information, with both downloading xAI’s source code and one improperly grabbing a supposedly sensitive recording from a Musk “All Hands” meeting. But the rest were either accused of retaining seemingly less consequential data, like retaining work chats on their devices, or didn’t seem to hold any confidential information at all. Lin called out particularly weak arguments that xAI’s complaint acknowledged that one employee who OpenAI poached never received access to confidential information allegedly sought after exiting xAI, and two employees were lumped into the complaint who “simply left xAI for OpenAI,” Lin noted.

From the limited evidence, Lin concluded that “while xAI may state misappropriation claims against a couple of its former employees, it does not state a plausible misappropriation claim against OpenAI.”

Lin’s order will likely not be the end of the litigation, as she is allowing xAI to amend its complaint to address the current deficiencies.

Ars could not immediately reach xAI for comment, so it’s unclear what steps xAI may take next.

However, xAI seems unlikely to give up the fight, which OpenAI has alleged is part of a “harassment campaign” that Musk is waging through multiple lawsuits attacking his biggest competitor’s business practices.

Unsurprisingly, OpenAI celebrated the order on X, alleging that “this baseless lawsuit was never anything more than yet another front in Mr. Musk’s ongoing campaign of harassment.”

Other tech companies poaching talent for AI projects will likely be relieved while reading Lin’s order. Commercial litigator Sarah Tishler told Ars that the order “boils down to a fundamental concept in trade secret law: hiring from a competitor is not the same as stealing trade secrets from one.”

“Under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, xAI has to show that OpenAI actually received and used the alleged trade secrets, not just that it hired employees who may have taken them,” Tishler said. “Suspicious timing, aggressive recruiting, and even downloaded files are not enough on their own.”

Tishler suggested that the ruling will likely be welcomed by AI firms eager to secure the best talent without incurring legal risks from their hiring practices.

“In the AI industry, where talent moves fast and the competitive stakes are enormous, this ruling reaffirms that suspicion is not enough,” Tishler said. “You have to show the stolen information actually made it into the competitor’s hands and was put to use.”

OpenAI not liable for engineers swiping source code

Through the lawsuit, Musk has alleged that OpenAI is violating California’s unfair competition law. He claims that OpenAI is attempting “to destroy legitimate competition in the AI industry by neutralizing xAI’s innovations” and forcing xAI “to unfairly compete against its own trade secrets.”

But this claim hinges entirely upon xAI proving that OpenAI poached its employees to steal its trade secrets. So, for xAI’s lawsuit to proceed, xAI will need to beef up the evidence base for its other claim, that OpenAI has violated the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, Lin said. To succeed on that, xAI must prove that OpenAI unlawfully acquired, disclosed, or used a trade secret with xAI’s consent.

That will likely be challenging because xAI, at this point, has not offered “any nonconclusory allegations that OpenAI itself acquired, disclosed, or used xAI’s trade secrets,” Lin wrote.

All xAI has claimed is that OpenAI induced former employees to share secrets, and so far, nothing backs that claim, Lin said. Tishler noted that the court also rejected an xAI theory that “OpenAI should be responsible for what its new hires did before they arrived” for “the same reason: without evidence that OpenAI directed the theft or actually put the stolen information to use, you cannot hold the company liable.”

The strongest evidence that xAI had of employee misconduct, allegedly allowing OpenAI to misappropriate xAI trade secrets, revolves around the departure of one of xAI’s earliest engineers, Xuechen Li.

That evidence wasn’t enough, Lin said. xAI alleged that Li gave a presentation to OpenAI that supposedly included confidential information. Li also uploaded “the entire xAI source code base to a personal cloud account,” which he had connected to ChatGPT, Lin noted, after a recruiter sent a message on Signal sharing a link with Li to another unrelated cloud storage location.

xAI hoped the Signal messages would shock the court, expecting it to read through the lines the way xAI did. As proof that OpenAI allegedly got access to xAI’s source code, xAI pointed to a Signal message that an OpenAI recruiter sent to Li “four hours after” Li downloaded the source code, saying “nw!” xAI has alleged this message is short-hand for “no way!”—suggesting the OpenAI recruiter was geeked to get access to xAI’s source code. But in a footnote, Lin said that “OpenAI insists that ‘nw’ means ‘no worries,’” and thus is unconnected to Li’s decision to upload the source code to a ChatGPT-linked cloud account.

Even interpreting the text using xAI’s reading, however, xAI did not show enough to prove the recruiter or OpenAI accessed or requested the files, Lin said.

It also didn’t help xAI’s case that a temporary injunction that xAI secured in a separate lawsuit targeting the engineer blocked Li from accepting a job at OpenAI.

That injunction led OpenAI to withdraw its job offer to Li. And that’s a problem for xAI, because since Li never worked at OpenAI, it’s clear that he never used xAI’s trade secrets while working for OpenAI.

Further weakening xAI’s arguments, if Li indeed shared confidential information during his presentation while interviewing for OpenAI, xAI has alleged no facts suggesting that OpenAI was aware Li was sharing xAI trade secrets, Lin wrote.

This “makes it very hard to argue OpenAI ever used anything he allegedly took,” Tishler told Ars.

Another former xAI engineer, Jimmy Fraiture, was accused of copying xAI trade secrets, but Fraiture has said he deleted the information he improperly downloaded before starting his job at OpenAI. Importantly, Lin said, since he joined OpenAI, there’s no evidence that he used xAI trade secrets to benefit xAI’s rival.

“Other than the bare fact that Fraiture had been recruited” by the same OpenAI employee “who had also recruited Li, xAI does not allege any facts indicating that OpenAI had encouraged Fraiture to take xAI’s confidential information in the first place,” Lin wrote.

Since “none of the other former employees allegedly shared with or disclosed to OpenAI any xAI trade secrets,” xAI could not advance its claim that OpenAI misappropriated trade secrets based only on allegations tied to Li and Fraiture’s supposed misconduct, Lin said.

xAI may be able to amend its complaint to maintain these arguments, but the company has thus far presented scant, purely circumstantial evidence.

It’s possible that xAI will secure more evidence to support its misappropriation claims against OpenAI in its ongoing lawsuit against Li. Ars could not immediately reach Li’s lawyer to find out if today’s ruling may impact that case.

Ex-executive’s “hostility” is not proof of theft

Among the least convincing arguments that xAI raised was a claim that an unnamed finance executive left xAI to take a “lesser role” at OpenAI after learning everything he knew about data centers from xAI.

That executive slighted xAI when Musk’s company later attempted to inquire about “confidentiality concerns.”

“Suck my dick,” the former xAI executive allegedly said, refusing to explain how his OpenAI work might overlap with his xAI position. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

xAI tried to argue that the executive’s hostility was proof of misconduct. But Lin wrote that xAI only alleged that the executive “merely possessed xAI trade secrets about data centers” and did not allege that he ever used trade secrets to benefit OpenAI.

Had xAI found evidence that OpenAI’s data center strategy suddenly mirrored xAI’s after the executive joined xAI’s rival, that may have helped xAI’s case. But there are plenty of reasons a former employee might reject an ex-employer’s outreach following an exit, Lin suggested.

“His hostility when xAI reached out about its confidentiality concerns also does not support a plausible inference of use,” Lin wrote. “Hostility toward one’s former employer during departure does not, without more, indicate use of trade secrets in a subsequent job. Nor does the executive’s lack of experience with AI data centers before his time at xAI, without more, support a plausible inference that he used xAI’s trade secrets at OpenAI.”

xAI has until March 17 to amend its complaint to keep up this particular fight against OpenAI. But the company won’t be able to add any new claims or parties, Lin noted, “or otherwise change the allegations except to correct the identified deficiencies.”

Criminal probe likely leaves OpenAI on pins

For Li, the engineer accused of disclosing xAI trade secrets with OpenAI, the litigation could eliminate one front of discovery as he navigates two other legal fights over xAI’s trade secrets claims.

Tishler has been closely monitoring xAI’s trade secret legal battles. In October, she noted that Li is in a particularly prickly position, facing pressure in civil litigation from Musk to turn over data that could be used against him in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s criminal investigation into Musk’s allegations. As Tishler explained:

“The practical reality is stark: Li faces a choice between protecting himself in the criminal action with his silence, and the civil consequences of doing so. Refuse to answer, and xAI could argue adverse inferences; answer, and the responses could feed the criminal case.”

Ultimately, the FBI is trying to prove that Li stole information that qualified as a trade secret and intended to use it for OpenAI’s benefit, while knowing that it would harm xAI. If they succeed, “xAI would suddenly have a government-backed record that its trade secrets were stolen,” Tishler wrote.

If xAI were so armed and able to keep the OpenAI lawsuit alive, the central question in the lawsuit that Lin dismissed today would shift, Tishler suggested, from “was there a theft?” to “what did OpenAI know, and when did it know it?”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Musk has no proof OpenAI stole xAI trade secrets, judge rules, tossing lawsuit Read More »

Boozy chimps fail urine test, confirm hotly debated theory

animal behavior, animals, Biology, primates, Science / 9u50fv / February 25, 2026

The urine of chimpanzees contains high levels of alcohol byproduct, most likely because the chimps regularly gorge themselves on fermented fruit, according to a new paper published in the journal Biology Letters. It’s the latest evidence in support of a hotly debated theory regarding the evolutionary origins of human fondness for alcohol.

As previously reported, in 2014, University of California, Berkeley (UCB) biologist Robert Dudley wrote a book called The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol. His controversial “drunken monkey hypothesis” proposed that the human attraction to alcohol goes back about 18 million years, to the origin of the great apes, and that social communication and sharing food evolved to better identify the presence of fruit from a distance. At the time, skeptical scientists insisted that this was unlikely because chimpanzees and other primates just don’t eat fermented fruit or nectar.

But reports of primates doing just that have grown over the ensuing two decades. Earlier this year, we reported that researchers had caught wild chimpanzees on camera engaging in what appears to be sharing fermented African breadfruit with measurable alcoholic content. That observational data was the first evidence of the sharing of alcoholic foods among nonhuman great apes in the wild. The authors measured the alcohol content of the fruit with a handy portable breathalyzer and found almost all of the fallen fruit (90 percent) contained some ethanol, with the ripest containing the highest levels—the equivalent of 0.61 percent ABV (alcohol by volume).

And last September, Dudley co-authored a paper reporting the first measurements of the ethanol content of fruits favored by chimps in the Ivory Coast and Uganda, finding that chimps consume 14 grams of alcohol per day, the equivalent of a standard alcoholic drink in the US. After adjusting for the chimps’ lower body mass, the authors concluded the chimps are consuming nearly two drinks per day.

A thankless task

The next step was to sample the chimps’ urine to see if it contains any alcohol metabolites, as was found in a 2022 study on spider monkeys. This would further refine estimates for how much ethanol-laden fruit the chimps eat every day. That thankless task fell to Aleksey Maro, a UCB graduate student who spent last summer in Ngogo, sleeping in trees—protected from the constant streams by an umbrella—to collect urine samples. Sharifah Namaganda, a Ugandan graduate student at the University of Michigan, showed him how to make shallow bowls out of plastic bags hung on forked twigs for more efficient collection. He also collected samples from puddles of urine on the forest floor.

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New Microsoft gaming chief has “no tolerance for bad AI”

AI, Asha Sharma, gaming, microsoft, xbox / 9u50fv / February 23, 2026

A gaming education

Unlike Spencer, who spent years at Microsoft Game Studios before heading Microsoft’s gaming division, Sharma has no professional experience in the video game industry. And her personal experience with Xbox also seems somewhat limited; after sharing her Gamertag on social media over the weekend, curious gamers found that her Xbox play history dates back roughly one month. That’s also in stark contrast to Spencer, who has amassed a score of over 121,000 across decades of play.

In her interview with Variety, Sharma cited 2016’s Firewatch as an example of the kinds of games with “deep emotional resonance” and “a distinct point of view” that she’s looking for from Microsoft. And on social media, Sharma shared her list of the three greatest games ever: “Halo, Valheim, Goldeneye,” for what it’s worth. Sharma also seems to be taking recommendations for games to catch up on; after saying on social media that she would try Borderlands 2, the game appeared in her recently played games over the weekend.

A look at some of Sharma’s recently played Xbox games, as of this writing. Credit: Xbox.com

Being a personal fan of video games isn’t necessarily required to succeed in running a gaming company. Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi famously didn’t care for video games even as he launched the Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System to worldwide success in the 1980s. Still, the lack of direct experience with the gaming world marks a sharp change after Spencer’s long tenure at a time when Microsoft is struggling to redefine the Xbox brand amid cratering hardware sales, a pivot away from software exclusives, and a move to extend the Xbox brand to many different devices.

Xbox President and COO Sarah Bond, who by all accounts was being set up to succeed Spencer, also announced her departure from Microsoft on Friday, ending a nearly nine-year stint as a public face for the company’s gaming efforts. The Verge reports that Bond caused a lot of friction within the Xbox team when she championed the “Xbox Everywhere” strategy and “This is an Xbox” marketing campaign, which focused on streaming Xbox games to hardware like mobile phones and tablets, according to anonymous sources. Shortly before the launch of that campaign in 2024, Microsoft lost marketing executives Jerrett West and Kareem Choudry, leading to significant internal reorganization.

Longtime Xbox Game Studios executive Matt Booty, whose history in the game industry dates back to working for Williams Electronics in the ’90s, has been promoted to executive vice president and chief content officer for Xbox and “will continue working closely with [Sharma] to ensure a smooth transition,” Microsoft said in its announcement Friday.

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The 2026 Mazda CX-5, driven: It got bigger; plus, radical tech upgrade

car review, Cars, First drive, Mazda CX-5 / 9u50fv / February 23, 2026

ENCINITAS, Calif.—Its sales may have been buoyed of late by the big CX-90 and CX-70 SUVs, but for Mazda, the CX-5 is still where most of the action is. Unlike the similar-sized, similar-priced CX-50, which was designed just for North America, the all-new CX-5 is a global car, and it’s also Mazda’s standard-bearer for a range of new technologies. Gone is the basic but effective infotainment system, replaced by an all-new Google-based experience as Mazda starts its journey toward software-defined vehicles. There’s even an in-house hybrid on the way, albeit not until next year. And it starts at a competitive $29,990.

The new CX-5 is bigger than the car it replaces, 4.5 inches (114.5 mm) longer and half an inch (13 mm) wider than before, at 184.6 inches (4,689 mm) long, 73.2 inches (1,859 mm) wide, and 66.7 inches (1,694 mm) tall. Much of that extra space is between the axles—the wheelbase is now 110 inches (2,794 mm) long, which translates to more interior space. From the outside, there’s a new light signature, and the way the bodywork curves around the front and wraps down the fenders gives me strong Range Rover vibes, even if I could never adequately capture what I’m talking about with a camera. As ever, Mazda’s arresting Soul Red Crystal metallic paint (a $595 option) sparkles, even on a day when the sun remained hidden from view.

The last time that Mazda evolved this compact crossover, it did so with a new upmarket interior. Since then, the brand has staked out that space across its model lineup, with cabins that punch well above their price tags. Happily, the company’s designers haven’t lost much mojo since then, with a restrained approach that looks good across the five different trim levels, each of which is a $2,000 step up from the one that precedes it. But if you’re a current CX-5 driver, you’ll find much has changed, perhaps not entirely for the better.

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The first cars bold enough to drive themselves

Cars, Features, General Motors, self-driving car, self-driving technology, self-driving vehicle / 9u50fv / February 23, 2026

Quevedo’s telekino of 1904 was the first step on the road to autonomous Waymos.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

No one knows exactly when the vehicles we drive will finally wrest the steering wheel from us. But the age of the autonomous automobile isn’t some sudden Big Bang. It’s more of a slow crawl, one that started during the Roosevelt administration. And that’s Theodore, not Franklin. And not in America, but in Spain, by someone you’ve probably never heard of.

His name was Leonardo Torres Quevedo, a Spanish engineer born in Santa Cruz, Spain, in 1852. Smart? In 1914, he developed a mechanical chess machine that autonomously played against humans. But more than a decade earlier, he pioneered the development of remote-control systems. What he wrought was brilliant, if crude—and certainly ahead of its time.

The first wireless control

It was called the Telekino, a name drawn from the Greek “tele,” meaning at a distance, and “kino,” meaning movement. Patented in Spain, France, and the United States, it was conceived as a way to prevent airship accidents. The Telekino transmitted wireless signals to a small receiver known as a coherer, which detected electromagnetic waves and transformed them into an electrical current. This current was amplified and sent on to electromagnets that slowly rotated a switch controlling the proper servomotor. Quevedo could issue 19 distinct commands to the systems of an airship without ever touching a control cable.

By 1904, he was using the Telekino to direct a small, three-wheeled vehicle from nearly 100 feet away. It was the earliest recorded instance of a vehicle being controlled by radio. After that, Quevedo demonstrated the system’s usefulness aboard boats and even torpedoes, but here the story slows. The Spanish Crown, cautious and reluctant to invest, withheld its support. Without funding, Quevedo couldn’t build and sell the Telekino.

But he had shown that a machine could be guided by signals. It would be more than a century before that notion would reach fruition. But that doesn’t mean others didn’t try.

Leave it to Ohio

Dayton, Ohio, August 5, 1921. The country was in the thick of the automotive age, and Dayton stood as one of its industrious nerve centers. General Motors had established a strong presence there with its Frigidaire Division, promising a future of electrified domestic bliss. Meanwhile, across town, engineers at Delco, the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, were refining the very heart of the automobile. This was a place where invention was not merely encouraged, but expected.

But on this particular summer afternoon, the most remarkable innovation did not come from the factory floor or the corporate drafting room. It came instead from the US Army, an outfit not usually known for whimsical experimentation. It sent a small, three-wheeled vehicle, scarcely eight feet long and fitted with radio equipment, rolling through the city’s business district. The vehicle moved without a driver. Some 50 feet behind it, Captain R. E. Vaughn of nearby McCook Field guided its movement by radio signal.

1926: A woman smiles and waves from the driver's seat of a Chandler convertible parked on a gravel road near a coastline. She wears an overcoat and a cloche hat — A 1926 Chandler. Obviously, this one is human-driven—you can tell by the human waving from the driver’s seat. Credit: American Stock/Getty Images

Four years later, the spectacle reappeared. This time it was on the streets of New York City, where a crowd along Broadway watched as a 1926 Chandler, sitting quietly at the curb, came to life. The engine turned, the gears engaged, and it pulled smoothly into the stream of traffic before making its way up Fifth Avenue without a driver. Dubbed the “American Wonder” by its creator, Francis P. Houdina, the car responded to radio commands transmitted from a chase car. Signals were received by antennas atop the Chandler, where they triggered circuit breakers and small electric motors that operated the steering, throttle, brakes, and horn.

The idea proved too tantalizing to fade. In Cincinnati, a Toledo inventor named Maurice J. Francill took up the cause in 1928. Francill, who styled himself “America’s Radio Wizard,” demonstrated how radio control could move Ford automobiles without a driver. In a series of stage-like performances, he also milked cows, baked bread, and operated a laundry, all through radio command. By 1936, newspapers from Ohio to California were still reporting his feats.

“Francill claims that he can accomplish anything the human hand can do by radio,” the Orange County News observed. “Eight pounds [3.6 kg] of delicate brain-like radio apparatus was employed to control the lights, ignition system, horn and start the motor running. Five pounds [2.3 kg] of radio apparatus is required to guide the car.”

These vehicles may seem like novelties today, but they’re early proof that the automobile can be guided by something other than humans.

Detroit buys into the dream

The dream of a self-driving automobile did not vanish when these moments passed. It lingered, an idea returned to again and again, particularly in the years when America believed that anything was possible.

At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, General Motors offered a glimpse of that future with its enormous Futurama exhibit. Seated above a raised platform, fairgoers saw a miniature city where tiny electric cars moved serenely along highways without drivers. The cars, they were told, would one day be guided by radio signals and electric currents running through cables and circuits beneath the pavement, creating an electromagnetic field that could both power the vehicles and guide their course. It was a bold, imaginative vision—and characteristic of a time when modern engineering was forecast to remake the world.

After the war, engineers did not let the idea fade. They continued to work on the idea of communication between road and machine. At General Motors’ Motorama, a traveling showcase of the car’s newest vehicles and latest ideas, one display in 1956 captured the imagination of audiences across the country. GM unveiled a sleek, gas turbine–powered automobile, sheathed in titanium and brimming with the promise of autonomous driving.

GM's Firebird II concept from 1956 — The Firebird II concept from 1956 could drive itself on special roads. Credit: General Motors

Beneath certain stretches of highway, GM proposed laying an electronic strip. When the car traveled over it, sensors would lock onto the signal, guiding the vehicle automatically along its lane. The driver would simply lean back, hands free from the wheel, and watch the miles roll by. Onboard amenities inexplicably included an orange juice dispenser.

Proof of concept

By 1958, the idea became a reality. On a plain stretch of highway outside Lincoln, Nebraska, it was put to the test. The state’s Department of Roads embedded a 400-foot (121 m) length of the roadway with electric circuits, while engineers from RCA and General Motors brought specially fitted Chevrolets to test it. Observers watched as the driverless cars steered themselves, responding to the buried signal beneath the pavement.

A few years later, across the Atlantic, the United Kingdom’s Transport and Road Research Laboratory undertook its own experiments. Using a Citroën DS, they laid magnetic cables beneath a test track and sent the car down it at speeds of up to 80 mph (129 km/h). Wind and weather made no difference; the DS held its line faithfully.

Autonomy emerges in the modern age

Fast forward to 1986, and German scientist Ernst Dickmanns, as part of his position with the German armed forces, began testing an autonomously driving Mercedes-Benz using computers, cameras, and sensors, not unlike modern-day cars. Within a year, it was travelling down the Autobahn at nearly 55 mph (89 km/h). That was enough to capture the attention of Daimler-Benz, which helped fund further research.

Several years later, in October 1994, Dickmanns gathered his research team at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris, where they met a delegation of high-ranking officials. Parked at the curb were two sedans. They appeared ordinary but were fitted with cameras, sensors, and onboard computers. The guests climbed in, and the cars made their way toward the nearby thoroughfare. Then, with the traffic flowing steadily around them, the engineers switched the vehicles into self-driving mode and took their hands off the wheel. The cars held their lanes, adjusted their speed, and followed the road’s gentle curves without driver intervention.

An illustration of a 1994 driverless car — The experimental driverless car VaMP (Versuchsfahrzeug für autonome Mobilität und Rechnersehen), which was developed during the European research project PROMETHEUS: (top left) components for autonomous driving; (right) VaMP and view into passenger cabin (lower right); (lower left) bifocal camera arrangement (front) on yaw platform. Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0

A year later, Dickmanns would travel from Bavaria to Denmark, a trip of more than 1,056 miles (1,700 km), reaching speeds of nearly 110 mph (177 km/h). Unfortunately, Daimler lost interest and cut funding for the effort. Dickmann’s project came to a halt, but the modern-day technology was in place to set the stage for what came next.

The military sparks innovation–again

By the turn of the century, the federal government had created a new research arm of the Pentagon, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. Its mission was ambitious: to develop technologies that could protect American soldiers on the battlefield. Among its goals was the creation of vehicles that could drive themselves, sparing troops the dangers of roadside ambushes and explosive traps.

To accelerate progress, DARPA announced a competition to build a driverless vehicle capable of traveling 142 miles (229 km) across the Mojave Desert. The prize was $1 million, though the real prize was the knowledge gained along the way.

When race day arrived, the results were humbling. One by one, every vehicle failed to finish. But in the sun and dust of the Mojave, a community emerged, one of engineers, programmers, and dreamers who believed that the autonomous vehicle was not a fantasy but a problem to be solved. Twenty years later, their work has brought the idea closer to everyday reality than ever before.

By themselves, these efforts did not yet give the world the self-driving car. But these successful experiments demonstrate the ability to make a fantasy reality. It’s also a reminder that while the tech industry likes to position itself as a disruptor bringing self-driving cars to market, Detroit was dreaming about and demonstrating autonomous transportation long before Silicon Valley existed.

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Study shows how rocket launches pollute the atmosphere

industrial waste, Space, space pollution, spacex, syndication / 9u50fv / February 22, 2026

Atmospheric scientist Laura Revell, with the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, presented research showing that rocket exhaust in the atmosphere can erase some of the hard-won gains in mitigating ozone depletion.

In a high-growth scenario for the space industry, there could be as many as 2,000 launches per year, which her modeling shows could result in about 3 percent ozone loss, equal to the atmospheric impacts of a bad wildfire season in Australia. She said most of the damage comes from chlorine-rich solid rocket fuels and black carbon in the plumes.

The black carbon could also warm parts of the stratosphere by about half-a-degree Celsius as it absorbs sunlight. That heats the surrounding air and can shift winds that steer storms and areas of precipitation.

“This is probably not a fuel type that we want to start using in massive quantities in the future,” she added.

Researchers at the conference estimated that in the past five years, the mass of human‑made material injected into the upper atmosphere by re‑entries has doubled to nearly a kiloton a year. For some metals like lithium, the amount is already much larger than that contributed by disintegrating meteors.

In the emerging field of space sustainability science, researchers say orbital space and near-space should be considered part of the global environment. A 2022 journal article co-authored by Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, argued that the upper reaches of the atmosphere are experiencing increased impacts from human activities.

The expanding commercial use of what appears to be a free resource is actually shifting its real costs onto others, the article noted.

At last year’s European Geosciences Union conference, Leonard Schulz, who studies space pollution at the Technical University Braunschweig in Germany, said, “If you put large amounts of catalytic metals in the atmosphere, I immediately think about geoengineering.”

There may not be time to wait for more scientific certainty, Schulz said: “In 10 years, it might be too late to do anything about it.”

Bob Berwyn is an Austria-based reporter who has covered climate science and international climate policy for more than a decade. Previously, he reported on the environment, endangered species and public lands for several Colorado newspapers, and also worked as editor and assistant editor at community newspapers in the Colorado Rockies.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

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Major government research lab appears to be squeezing out foreign scientists

NIST, Science, syndication, trump administration, War on science / 9u50fv / February 21, 2026

One of the US government’s top scientific research labs is taking steps that could drive away foreign scientists, a shift lawmakers and sources tell WIRED could cost the country valuable expertise and damage the agency’s credibility.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) helps determine the frameworks underpinning everything from cybersecurity to semiconductor manufacturing. Some of NIST’s recent work includes establishing guidelines for securing AI systems and identifying health concerns with air purifiers and firefighting gloves. Many of the agency’s thousands of employees, postdoctoral scientists, contractors, and guest researchers are brought in from around the world for their specialized expertise.

“For weeks now, rumors of draconian new measures have been spreading like wildfire, while my staff’s inquiries to NIST have gone unanswered,” Zoe Lofgren, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, wrote in a letter sent to acting NIST Director Craig Burkhardt on Thursday. April McClain Delaney, a fellow Democrat on the committee, cosigned the message.

Lofgren wrote that while her staff has heard about multiple rumored changes, what they have confirmed through unnamed sources is that the Trump administration “has begun taking steps to limit the ability of foreign-born researchers to conduct their work at NIST.”

The congressional letter follows a Boulder Reporting Lab article on February 12 that said international graduate students and postdoctoral researchers would be limited to a maximum of three years at NIST going forward, despite many of them needing five to seven years to complete their work.

A NIST employee tells WIRED that some plans to bring on foreign workers through the agency’s Professional Research and Experience Program have recently been canceled because of uncertainty about whether they would make it through the new security protocols. The staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, says the agency has yet to widely communicate what the new hurdles will be or why it believes they are justified.

On Thursday, the Colorado Sun reported that “noncitizens” lost after-hours access to a NIST lab last month and could soon be banned from the facility entirely.

Jennifer Huergo, a spokesperson for NIST, tells WIRED that the proposed changes are aimed at protecting US science from theft and abuse, echoing a similar statement issued this week to other media outlets. Huergo declined to comment on who needs to approve the proposal for it to be finalized and when a decision will be made. She also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawmakers’ letter.

Preventing foreign adversaries from stealing valuable American intellectual property has been a bipartisan priority, with NIST among the agencies in recent years to receive congressional scrutiny about the adequacy of its background checks and security policies. Just last month, Republican lawmakers renewed calls to put restrictions in place preventing Chinese nationals from working at or with national labs run by the Department of Energy.

But Lofgren’s letter contends that the rumored restrictions on non-US scientists at NIST go beyond “what is reasonable and appropriate to protect research security.” The letter demands transparency about new policies by February 26 and a pause on them “until Congress can weigh in on whether these changes are necessary at all.”

The potential loss of research talent at NIST would add to a series of other Trump administration policies that some US tech industry leaders have warned will dismantle the lives of immigrant researchers already living in the US and hamper economic growth. Hiking fees on H-1B tech visas, revoking thousands of student visas, and carrying out legally dubious mass deportations all stand to push people eager to work on science and tech research in the US to go elsewhere instead. The Trump administration has also announced plans to limit post-graduation job training for international students.

Pat Gallagher, who served as the director of NIST from 2009 to 2013 under President Barack Obama, says the changes could erode trust in the agency, which has long provided the technical foundations that industry and governments around the world rely on. “What has made NIST special is it is scientifically credible,” he tells WIRED. “Industry, universities, and the global measurement community knew they could work with NIST.”

Like much of the federal government, NIST has been in turmoil for most of the past year. Parts of it were paralyzed for months as rumors of DOGE cuts spread. Ultimately, the agency lost hundreds of its thousands of workers to budget cuts, with further funding pressure to come.

As of a couple of years ago, NIST welcomed 800 researchers on average annually from outside the US to work in its offices and collaborate directly with staff.

Lofgren expressed fear that rumors may be enough to scare away researchers and undermine US competitiveness in vital research. “Our scientific excellence depends upon attracting the best and brightest from around the world,” she wrote in the letter.

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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MAHA moms threaten to turn this car around as RFK Jr. flips on pesticide

glyphosate, health, MAHA, Robert F Kenned Jr., roundup / 9u50fv / February 21, 2026

“We must safeguard America’s national security first, because all of our priorities depend on it. When hostile actors control critical inputs, they weaken our security. By expanding domestic production, we close that gap and protect American families,” he said.

Fallout

Dave Murphy, founder and CEO of United We Eat and former finance manager on Kennedy’s presidential campaign, told Reuters that the order was a “strategic mistake” that could serve as an election liability. “Trump would not be in the White House this second time without those followers, and we expect him to live up to his word,” Murphy said.

Fallout has continued online over the move, and MAHA organizers are scrambling.

Alex Clark, a health and wellness podcaster for the conservative group Turning Point USA, told The New York Times that “Women feel like they were lied to, that MAHA movement is a sham,” he said. “How am I supposed to rally these women to vote red in the midterms? How can we win their trust back? I am unsure if we can.”

Meanwhile, MAHA influencer Kelly Ryerson, who goes by the moniker “Glyphosate Girl” online, told Politico, “I’m witnessing the bottom falling out on MAHA. People came along on MAHA because of pesticides and foods. It wasn’t because of vaccines.”

Zen Honeycutt, executive director of the grassroots group Moms Across America, told Politico in a statement that the fallout will have real consequences.

“To put toxic farming and businesses before the health and safety of our children is a betrayal of every voter who voted for him to [Make America Healthy Again],” she said. “The repercussions are not going to just affect the midterms, but the health of millions of Americans for generations to come.”

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Microsoft deletes blog telling users to train AI on pirated Harry Potter books

AI, generative ai, harry potter, Isaac Asimov, large language models, LLMs, microsoft, Policy / 9u50fv / February 21, 2026

Wizarding world of AI slop

The now-deleted Harry Potter dataset was “mistakenly” marked public domain.

Following backlash in a Hacker News thread, Microsoft deleted a blog post that critics said encouraged developers to pirate Harry Potter books to train AI models that could then be used to create AI slop.

The blog, which is archived here, was written in November 2024 by a senior product manager, Pooja Kamath. According to her LinkedIn, Kamath has been at Microsoft for more than a decade and remains with the company. In 2024, Microsoft tapped her to promote a new feature that the blog said made it easier to “add generative AI features to your own applications with just a few lines of code using Azure SQL DB, LangChain, and LLMs.”

What better way to show “engaging and relatable examples” of Microsoft’s new feature that would “resonate with a wide audience” than to “use a well-known dataset” like Harry Potter books, the blog said.

The books are “one of the most famous and cherished series in literary history,” the blog noted, and fans could use the LLMs they trained in two fun ways: building Q&A systems providing “context-rich answers” and generating “new AI-driven Harry Potter fan fiction” that’s “sure to delight Potterheads.”

To help Microsoft customers achieve this vision, the blog linked to a Kaggle dataset that included all seven Harry Potter books, which, Ars verified, has been available online for years and incorrectly marked as “public domain.” Kaggle’s terms say that rights holders can send notices of infringing content, and repeat offenders risk suspensions, but Hacker News commenters speculated that the Harry Potter dataset flew under the radar, with only 10,000 downloads over time, not catching the attention of J.K. Rowling, who famously keeps a strong grip on the Harry Potter copyrights. The dataset was promptly deleted on Thursday after Ars reached out to the uploader, Shubham Maindola, a data scientist in India with no apparent links to Microsoft.

Maindola told Ars that “the dataset was marked as Public Domain by mistake. There was no intention to misrepresent the licensing status of the works.”

It’s unclear whether Kamath was directed to link to the Harry Potter books dataset in the blog or if it was an individual choice. Cathay Y. N. Smith, a law professor and co-director of Chicago-Kent College of Law’s Program in Intellectual Property Law, told Ars that Kamath may not have realized the books were too recent to be in the public domain.

“Someone might be really knowledgeable about books and technology, but not necessarily about copyright terms and how long they last,” Smith said. “Especially if she saw that something was marked by another reputable company as being public domain.”

Microsoft declined Ars’ request to comment. Kaggle did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Microsoft was “probably smart” to pull the blog

On Hacker News, commenters suggested that it’s unlikely anyone familiar with the popular franchise would believe the Harry Potter books were in the public domain. They debated whether Microsoft’s blog was “problematic copyright-wise,” since Microsoft not only encouraged customers to download the infringing materials but also used the books themselves to create Harry Potter AI models that relied on beloved characters to hype Microsoft products.

Microsoft’s blog was posted more than a year ago, at a time when AI firms began facing lawsuits over AI models, which had allegedly infringed copyrights by training on pirated materials and regurgitating works verbatim.

The blog recommended that users learn to train their own AI models by downloading the Harry Potter dataset and then uploading text files to Azure Blob Storage. It included example models based on a dataset that Microsoft seemingly uploaded to Azure Blob Storage, which only included the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Training large language models (LLMs) on text files, Harry Potter fans could create Q&A systems capable of pulling up relevant excerpts of books. An example query offered was “Wizarding World snacks,” which retrieved an excerpt from The Sorcerer’s Stone where Harry marvels at strange treats like Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans and chocolate frogs. Another prompt asking “How did Harry feel when he first learnt that he was a Wizard?” generated an output pointing to various early excerpts in the book.

But perhaps an even more exciting use case, Kamath suggested, was generating fan fiction to “explore new adventures” and “even create alternate endings.” That model could quickly comb the dataset for “contextually similar” excerpts that could be used to output fresh stories that fit with existing narratives and incorporate “elements from the retrieved passages,” the blog said.

As an example, Kamath trained a model to write a Harry Potter story she could use to market the feature she was blogging about. She asked the model to write a story in which Harry meets a new friend on the Hogwarts Express train who tells him all about Microsoft’s Native Vector Support in SQL “in the Muggle world.”

Drawing on parts of The Sorcerer’s Stone where Harry learns about Quidditch and gets to know Hermione Granger, the fan fiction showed a boy selling Harry on Microsoft’s “amazing” new feature. To do this, he likened it to having a spell that helps you find exactly what you need among thousands of options, instantly, while declaring it was perfect for machine learning, AI, and recommendation systems.

Further blurring the lines between Microsoft and Harry Potter brands, Kamath also generated an image showing Harry with his new friend, stamped with a Microsoft logo.

Smith told Ars that both use cases could frustrate rights holders, depending on the content in the model outputs.

“I think that the regurgitation and the creation of fan fiction, they both could flag copyright issues, in that fan fiction often has to take from the expressive elements, a copyrighted character, a character that’s famous enough to be protected by a copyright law or plot stories or sequences,” Smith said. “If these things are copied and reproduced, then that output could be potentially infringing.”

But it’s also still a gray area. Looking at the blog, Smith said, “I would be concerned,” but “I wouldn’t say it’s automatically infringement.”

Smith told Ars that, in pulling the blog, Microsoft “was probably smart,” since courts have only generally said that training AI on copyrighted books is fair use. But courts continue to probe questions about pirated AI training materials.

On the deleted Kaggle dataset page, Maindola previously explained that to source the data, he “downloaded the ebooks and then converted them to txt files.”

Microsoft may have infringed copyrights

If Microsoft ever faced questions as to whether the company knowingly used pirated books to train the example models, fair use “could be a difficult argument,” Smith said.

Hacker News commenters suggested the blog could be considered fair use, since the training guide was for “educational purposes,” and Smith said that Microsoft could raise some “good arguments” in its defense.

However, she also suggested that Microsoft could be deemed liable for contributing to infringement on some level after leaving the blog up for a year. Before it was removed, the Kaggle dataset was downloaded more than 10,000 times.

“The ultimate result is to create something infringing by saying, ‘Hey, here you go, go grab that infringing stuff and use that in our system,’” Smith said. “They could potentially have some sort of secondary contributory liability for copyright infringement, downloading it, as well as then using it to encourage others to use it for training purposes.”

On Hacker News, commenters slammed the blog, including a self-described former Microsoft employee who claimed that Microsoft lets employees “blog without having to go through some approval or editing process.”

“It looks like somebody made a bad judgment call on what to put in a company blog post (and maybe what constitutes ethical activity) and that it was taken down as soon as someone noticed,” the former employee said.

Others suggested the blame was solely with the Kaggle uploader, Maindola, who told Ars that the dataset should never have been marked “public domain.” But Microsoft critics pushed back, noting that the Kaggle page made it clear that no special permission was granted and that Microsoft’s employee should have known better. “They don’t need to know any details to know that these properties belong to massive companies and aren’t free for the taking,” one commenter said.

The Harry Potter books weren’t the only books targeted, the thread noted, linking to a separate Azure sample containing Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, which is also not in the public domain.

“Microsoft could have used any dataset for their blog, they could have even chosen to use actual public domain novels,” another Hacker News commenter wrote. “Instead, they opted to use copywritten works that J.K. hasn’t released into the public domain (unless user ‘Shubham Maindola’ is J.K.’s alter ego).”

Smith suggested Microsoft could have avoided this week’s backlash by more carefully reviewing blogs, noting that “if a company is risk averse, this would probably be flagged.” But she also understood Kamath’s preference for Harry Potter over the many long-forgotten characters that exist in the public domain. On Hacker News, some commenters defended Kamath’s blog, urging that it should be considered fair use since nonprofits and educational institutions could do the same thing in a teaching context without issue.

“I would have been concerned if I were the one clearing this for Microsoft, but at the same time, I completely understand what this employee was doing,” Smith said. “No one wants to write fan fiction about books that are in the public domain.”