Daily Tech News 26 October 2025

• Clippy in the server room with a portable blender: Microsoft hopes Mico succeeds where Clippy failed as tech companies warily imbue AI with personality. (AP News)
  
  Mico is the new horrifying AI-driven mascot of Microsoft's inescapable AI-driven offense to reason, Copilot.
  
  Mico is... A grape? A purple raspberry? I don't know exactly, but kill it with fire.

  "When you talk about something sad, you can see Mico's face change. You can see it dance around and move as it gets excited with you," said Jacob Andreou, corporate vice president of product and growth for Microsoft AI, in an interview with The Associated Press. It's in this effort of really landing this AI companion that you can really feel."

  I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.

  Tech-savvy adopters of advanced AI coding tools may want it to "act much more like a machine because at the back end they know it's a machine," Reimer said. "But individuals who are not as trustful in a machine are going to be best supported - not replaced - by technology that feels a little more like a human."

  "We glued artificial fur to our woodchipper so that you will feel comfortable as we feed you into it."
   

• The ones who walk away from AImelas. (MSN)
  
  Could you live in a perfect utopia if it depended on one AI developer somewhere not getting his acai smoothie in the morning?
  
  Wait, I don't think that analogy quite works. The original story didn't hold up well to second thoughts either, so maybe it metaworks.
  
  
  
• A Baltimore high school student was handcuffed and searched by police after an AI-equipped camera mistook a bag of Doritos for a firearm. (The Guardian)
  
  Everything dumb is still dumb when you add AI, just faster.
  
  
  
• The Great SaaS Gaslighting. (Unworkable Ideas)
  
  There's a reason IBM rented its software from the early days, and it was not to save you money.
  
  
  
• Why these companies insist on a 72 hour work week. (MSN)
  
  Because you are expendable. You're barely even a consideration.
  
  
  
• Electronic Arts is partnering with the company behind Stable Diffusion to make games with AI and not in the good way. (Engadget)
  
  Computer games have been using AI for about as long as there have been computer games. Well, not the original Pong which also technically wasn't a computer game since it ran directly on TTL logic and didn't use any sort of processor. While I was looking into that I ran into this cool tidbit on the original Pong prototype:

  A few days later, the prototype began exhibiting technical issues and Gaddis contacted Alcorn to fix it. Upon inspecting the machine, Alcorn discovered that the problem was due to the coin mechanism overflowing with quarters.

  Nice problem to have.
  
  Oh, anyway, AI has had a role in computer games for about 50 years, but EA aren't planning to use AI in the game. They're planning to use AI to create the game.
  
  
  
• The glaring security risks with AI browser agents. (Tech Crunch)
  
  So, AI browsers are the big new thing. You hand over your ID and your credit cards and they can find the best deal for you online, which is much the same idea as giving your wallet, car keys, and a bottle of Everclear to a nine-year-old with severe ADHD.
  
  Or to put it differently, an 88 year old politician in the early stages of dementia.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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