Radiohead's chatbot was born over 20 years before ChatGPT

Google invented the foundation of the AI movement—but ChatGPT was a shock

For years, Google was the cutting-edge of the AI world, including the development of the Transformer—the basis of contemporary AI chatbots. But since OpenAI debuted ChatGPT in 2022, the company was had to play catch-up. This is a four-hour deep dive into Google's AI history.

Chat with famous, historical, and fantasy figures with this chatbot

Character.ai—a generative AI-based chatbot platform—allows you to have free-flowing conversations with a wide range of people. From celebrities to famous figures from the past, the platform relies on a neural language model to process huge amounts of text, learning from conversations with users to develop responses. A number of observers have referred to the platform as "making AI fun," with user time on site surpassing a whopping two hours per day.

Explore noteworthy use cases for ChatGPT

From asking the chatbot to sort grocery lists to bird-watchers using it to help identify birds, the official ChatGPT Instagram account spotlights interesting and creative use cases for the tool, especially in the days after a significant update or model has been released.

Which AI chatbot is everyone's favorite?

From OpenAI's ChatGPT to rivals like Elon Musk's Grok and Google Gemini, it feels like chatbots are everywhere now. Some of them, though, are newer and less-developed than others, and all of them have different proficiencies. This leaderboard has collected more than 400,000 votes to rank each chatbot in order of preference, and you can also add your own vote to the mix.

The journalist who let AI speak with his voice

Journalist Evan Ratliff became the object of his own story: He opted to clone his voice, feed it into an AI chatbot, and have it do the talking. What could seem like a fun experiment ended up revealing just how far the capacity of artificial intelligence can go in imitating our identities. Hear the ins and outs of how Ratliff achieved this in this fun and thought-provoking episode.

A fun analysis of Radiohead's depressive song 'Creep'

Radiohead is a highly acclaimed English rock band founded in 1985. The band has sold more than 30 million albums, and their nine full-length albums are critically appreciated. This episode of One Song goes deep into the band's very first single and by far most-listened-to hit: "Creep," a slacker anthem filled with self-loathing and anxiety. Learn the details of the hit indie song here.

Listen to the 'world's first' song made by a quantum computer and AI

UK startup, Moth, collaborated with electronic artist ILĀ to create the world's first song using quantum-powered generative AI. The technology has the potential to help create more personalized content based on input parameters, such as music or dialogue in games.

AI griefbots are controversial and could conceivably change how we mourn

"Deathbots" or "griefbots" are a particularly controversial use of AI chatbots. Mourners chat with AI chatbots that generate text or even video avatars of the dead based on inputs from loved ones to theoretically provide closure and comfort.

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

Pharmaceutical companies can use ChatGPT to improve drug development

Moderna has incorporated the tool into its workflows to accelerate analysis and identify optimal drug dosage from clinical data. The company's legal team also uses a custom GPT—Contract Companion—to break down and summarize contracts quickly.

How AI helped the Beatles win their eighth Grammy

It’s been decades since the legendary British rock band broke up, yet they still managed to snag a Grammy at the 2025 awards ceremony. This feat is thanks to AI, specifically machine-learning technology, to isolate and clean up different components of a late 1970s recording. This mini-documentary shows how the band's surviving members crafted “Now and Then” with the modern technology.

The Grateful Dead's online bulletin board system inspired the early internet

The legendary countercultural band the Grateful Dead had a popular hub on The Well, an online extension of the Whole Earth Catalog, a popular hippie magazine in the '60s and '70s. Users included Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist), Steve Case (founder of AOL), and Steve Wozniak (cofounder of Apple).

After taking a break for over a decade, Liza Minnelli released a new track using AI arrangements

In the 2026 song "Kids, Wait Til You Hear This," the singer proudly claims that the vocals are all her own, though AI generates the background music. The dance track shows Minnelli venturing into the deep house genre, straying from her traditional pop and show tunes background. The song is part of an ElevenLabs album featuring other AI-generated tunes, and shares a title with her 2026 memoir.

Apple's latest invention

Apple may be working on a robotic smart lamp. Internally called ELEGNT, it's designed to respond to music, display emotion through movement, and even serve up reminders. A new research paper details how it could work—though Apple hasn't officially confirmed a release.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

Why is Bob Dylan on Patreon?

The singer's notorious for his inscrutability, but his venture into the content subscription website might be one of his stranger choices, especially given the posted content that resembles AI-generated material. Pitchfork's Nina Corcoran surveys the site and tries to make sense.

The history of rickrolls (this isn't one)

Rickrolling describes a bait-and-switch meme in which a seemingly relevant hyperlink takes clickers to videos or gifs of Rick Astley’s 1987 single, “Never Gonna Give You Up." It's possible this seemingly ubiquitous internet prank can be traced to a 2006 segment of a radio show in rural Michigan. Erik Helwig called into the show during a listener comment segment and, without saying anything, played Astley's single for all those tuning in.

How the Martha Graham Company experiments with technology

The dance company was the first major group to livestream rehearsals and has collaborated with Google on a version of Graham's "Lamentation" that superimposes past performances on the present-day dancer.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Robert Fripp manipulated feedback to create his guitar part on David Bowie's 'Heroes'

The King Crimson guitarist placed markings on the studio floor that instructed him where to get the particular sounds he was seeking. Producer Brian Eno then ran the signal through a synthesizer and bent the sound waves with a joystick.

Brain-computer interfaces create a direct link between the brain and external devices

The technology enables users to control prosthetics, computers, or even games using only their thoughts. In 2021, a monkey played table tennis using only its brain, thanks to a Neuralink device, marking a major milestone before human trials began in 2024.

A ‘Bored Ape’ NFT was once kidnapped

An art heist in the crypto world plunges listeners of the "Search Engine" podcast into another mystery about why so many celebrities suddenly started selling the public on NFTs in 2021.

The psychedelic playlist inspired by a Johns Hopkins experiment

Dating back to 1967, the playlist is over seven hours long and organized in such a manner as to echo users’ experiences as their trips rise, crest, and fall. According to the initial creator of the playlist, the music is a “nonverbal support system” that keeps users from prematurely returning to normal consciousness.

'Potter Puppet Pals' was one of the internet’s first viral videos

Created by animator Neil Cicierega in the early 2000s, Potter Puppet Pals featured felt puppets parodying the Harry Potter characters. Its 2007 video “The Mysterious Ticking Noise” became an early YouTube sensation, amassing more than 200 million views.

Watch 'Airhead,' a short movie created by Sora and post-production FX

Using OpenAI’s video-generation tool Sora, a user can create impressive, hyper-realistic video footage from a simple text prompt. This short film features a whimsical look at a balloon-headed person navigating the world.

Many early computer viruses were not created for malicious purposes

Besides those authored in research labs as proofs of concept for self-replicating software, hobbyists would create malware that played music or displayed text and animations that intentionally revealed the infection as a means of showing off, rather than hiding their spread.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

In high school, Mark Zuckerberg rejected Microsoft's proposal to buy his music suggestion software for $950K

Mark Zuckerberg and Adam D'Angleo built a website called "Synapse," which created playlists for users based on their listening preferences and an algorithm to suggest new songs, in September 2002.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to spread in public, was written as a practical joke by Richard Skrenta, a Pittsburgh high school student.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

About 2,000 US babies are born annually without some portion of their limbs, potentially leading to a lifetime of pricey prosthetics.

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

Experimental hantavirus vaccines and therapies, still under development, have long been funded by the US military.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.