Keith Peiris says he started to see the generative AI writing on the wall six months ago. Peiris is the cofounder and chief executive of Tome, a San Francisco startup that makes presentation software juiced with generative AI. The company launched its product in early 2022 with a healthy cushion …

Shawn Wright worries a lot about his mom. Wright, a 50-year-old IT manager from Oklahoma City, lives more than 1,300 miles from his elderly mother in Philadelphia and stays connected with her through regular phone calls, rudimentary texting, and a security camera system. He says she’s generally hesitant to welcome …

Jason Matheny is a delight to speak with, provided you’re up for a lengthy conversation about potential technological and biomedical catastrophe. Now CEO and president of Rand Corporation, Matheny has built a career out of thinking about such gloomy scenarios. An economist by training with a focus on public health, …

At some point this weekend, Airchat cofounder Naval Ravikant had to close off new sign-ups to his app. After releasing a new version Friday, Airchat was quickly overloaded with people thirsting for a glimpse—or an audio snippet—of Silicon Valley’s newest fad. Ravikant had given a small number of users unlimited …

Late last year the messaging app Beeper raised the ire of Apple when it found a way to recreate Apple’s infamous “blue bubble” messaging on Android. Apple later hobbled Beeper, but it’s not an entirely unhappy ending: The startup has been acquired in a deal valued at $125 million. Founded …

Call it a bug zapper, not a feature. Data from Fakespot, a service owned by Mozilla that helps consumers spot fake reviews and scams on shopping sites, shows a bizarre rise in the number of listings for bug zappers on Amazon over the past three years. At the same time, …

Back in 2022 at the annual Code Conference, where tech luminaries submit to onstage interviews, an audience member asked Apple CEO Tim Cook for some tech support. “I can’t send my mom certain videos,” he said; she used an Android device, which means she can't access Apple’s iMessage. Cook’s now-infamous …

Aravind Srinivas credits Google CEO Sundar Pichai for giving him the freedom to eat eggs. Srinivas remembers the moment seven years ago when an interview with Pichai popped up in his YouTube feed. His vegetarian upbringing in India had excluded eggs, as it had for many in the country, but …

Yoel Roth has spent the past 16 months recovering from a very bad, very public breakup. For two chaotic weeks after Elon Musk took control of Twitter in October 2022, Roth clung on to his job as the platform’s head of trust and safety. He even won public praise from …

After a WIRED story last month described the sometimes ludicrous challenges heaped on tech workers applying for engineering jobs, some readers shared their own experiences with excessive test assignments and interviews. The responses in social posts and direct messages to WIRED underscore how the tech industry is undergoing a cultural …