Google’s new AI ‘world model’ is already hitting the games industry, but it’s everything I hate about artificial intelligence

Is AI good for gaming? That may be in doubt based on Google’s Project Genie causing video game company stock prices to fall.
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ICYMI: the week’s 7 biggest tech news stories from Samsung teasing a major S26 upgrade to Garmin’s leaked Whoop clone

Here are the biggest tech news stories from Whoop, Netflix, Samsung, OpenAI, and more for January 31, 2026.

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‘Time to cancel’: OpenAI sparks fresh fury by retiring GPT-4o model again as it claims ‘we didn’t make this decision lightly’

OpenAI is retiring GPT-4o again after reinstating it just months ago, and some users aren’t happy.

‘This project is a glimpse at what thoughtful, creative, artist-led use of AI can look like’ — George Washington meets Google DeepMind, as Darren Aronofsky’s AI history series hits YouTube

Time is releasing Darren Aronofsky’s On This Day… 1776, a YouTube series that dramatizes key Revolutionary War moments using AI-generated visuals
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Moltbot briefly becomes the internet’s favorite AI chatbot after chaotic rebrand

Open-source personal AI assistant Moltbot went viral after a chaotic rebrand to offer proactive automation

‘It’s an awesome robot. It looks like a human. People could be easily confused that it’s a human’ — Tesla exec on why Optimus 3 is a game changer

Tesla makes big shift to focus on AI and robotics, promising a very human-like Optimus 3 by March — but what does that really mean?
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Napster’s back — and its new AI-first app wants you to help create the music, not just listen to it

Napster is back and this time as an AI-powered music platform betting that the future of audio is co-creation, not passive listening.
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ChatGPT’s new age-detection feature is misfiring — and adult users are getting stuck in teen mode

OpenAI’s age verification AI is annoying adults mistakenly placed in teen mode and pressured to verify their age

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Google brings AI Plus to the U.S. with creative tools and shared storage — and it might be the ‘just-right’ AI subscription deal

Google has launched its AI Plus subscription in 35 countries, including the U.S., bundling enhanced AI tools, cloud storage, and video generation features.
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We ‘want to encourage other people in our generation to be the types of people who do not even want to have an AI friend’: Appstinence founder on the fight to help people step back from tech and reconnect with real life

Appstinence Founder Gabriela Nguyen on how the organization is helping people disconnect from addictive apps, platforms, and technologies, and why AI is the fight’s next front.
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