• OpenAI has officially launched it’s first AI Agent: Operator
• It’s works within a web browser to complete tasks for you, and is out now as a limited research preview
• Operator can make a dinner reservation, fill out a form, and complete other web tasks

OpenAI is always looking for the next big thing to add to ChatGPT, and after months of rumors, including a report from earlier this week that teased a launch, the technology giant’s first AI Agent is here. Operator is designed to complete web tasks for you, all with a touch of a button.

Essentially, Operator is a Computer Using Agent (CUA) that uses GPT-4o’s visual skills to browse and search the web. This means that it can understand the context of what to search for, and thanks to its multi-modality, it understands what it sees as it searches. It’s available now as a research preview for ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the United States.

The wheels are already beginning to turn on Donald Trump’s plan to make the US into the “crypto capital of the planet” following his return to the White House.

In an executive order signed Thursday, Trump established a “working group on digital asset markets,” which will be responsible for weighing the possibility of the US forming a “strategic national digital asset stockpile,” among other things.

The promise to establish a stockpile was one of numerous commitments made by Trump to the crypto industry before he was reelected. Though the idea stumped economists, it received a rapturous reception among bitcoiners. As rumors of an impending announcement spread Thursday, the price of bitcoin climbed to $105,000 per coin, just short of the record high.

The order also requires the working group—which will comprise the leaders of various government branches, financial regulatory bodies, and the attorney general—to come up with an appropriate set of regulations and laws governing the use of crypto.

Earlier in the week, on Trump’s second day in office, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) —the US regulatory body that brought a volley of lawsuits against crypto firms under the Joe Biden administration—established a “crypto task force.” Under new leadership following the departure of former chair Gary Gensler, who was widely demonized in the cryptosphere, the SEC will develop a “comprehensive and clear regulatory framework for crypto assets,” the agency stated.

Later the same day, Trump granted clemency to Ross Ulbricht, who was serving life in prison for crimes committed while running the infamous darknet marketplace Silk Road, one of the first websites to accept bitcoin as payment. After being arrested in 2013, Ulbricht became something of a martyr in crypto circles for his part in spreading the bitcoin gospel.

These initial gestures signal Trump’s willingness to follow through on earlier campaign promises: to pass various crypto-related legislation, reform the financial regulatory apparatus in the US, and knit crypto into the US national treasury. The effects will be extensive, crypto figures believe, reverberating far beyond US shores and creating the conditions for a new golden era for the industry.

“Our technology is very powerful and transformative. We need to land it in different societies,” says Joseph Lubin, cofounder of Ethereum and chief executive at software company Consensys. “And America is a standard-setter for the rest of the world.”

Despite having previously spurned bitcoin as a “scam,” Trump now has extensive ties to the crypto industry, many high-profile members of which came out in support of his reelection campaign.

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, crypto organizations donated hundreds of millions of dollars to crypto-focused super political action committees, which spent the funds in support of crypto-friendly congressional candidates, many of them Republican.

On the campaign trail, Trump began to bill himself as the first “crypto president.” In July, in front of a rabid crowd of bitcoiners, Trump promised to turn the US into a crypto mining powerhouse and establish a national bitcoin stockpile if reelected. In the same speech, he pledged to fire Gensler, the SEC chair, prompting the most rapturous applause of the night.

Though Nintendo can technically claim it had the first big gaming news event of the year, at least Xbox’s Developer Direct actually showed off some games and let us know when we can play them. The showcase was anchored by deep dives into the biggest games coming down the green pipe like Doom: The Dark Ages and Compulsion Games’ South of Midnight, with a couple of surprises to fill out the nearly one-hour-long runtime. Here are the highlights from the show.

Xbox kicked off the Direct with the surprise reveal of Ninja Gaiden 4. The game is being codeveloped by Koei Tecmo’s Team Ninja and Bayonetta studio PlatinumGames. Ninja Gaiden 4 revives the series’ bloody, fast-paced combat and high-stakes (but often frustrating) platforming with a new face, the ninja Yakumo. Yakumo will use his unique fighting styles to defeat the Divine Dragon Order that’s turned Tokyo into a dystopian, crumbling mess. Gaiden’s former protagonist, Ryu Hayabusa, will also make an appearance as a playable character and Yakumo’s rival.

Ninja Gaiden 4 will launch in the fall of this year, but if you don’t want to wait for your bloody ninja action, you don’t have to. Xbox stealth dropped Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, a remake of Ninja Gaiden II, and it’s available right now on Xbox and Game Pass.

The developers at Compulsion Games went into detail about South of Midnight’s gameplay and story. You play as Hazel who must use her powers as a Weaver, fighting monsters and traversing the haunted landscape, to rescue her mother who gets swept away in a hurricane. With this, everything I’ve seen about South of Midnight makes it seem like it’ll be one of my games of the year. It’s got a Black protagonist, features characters and tropes that harken to Southern gothic folklore, and its stop-motion art style makes it immediately stand out. I cannot wait to get my hands on this game when it releases on April 8th.

Sandfall Interactive was founded in Montpellier, France, in 2020 with a team led by former Ubisoft developers. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the studio’s first game — a turn-based RPG with a compelling narrative hook. The world has been ravaged by a being known as the Paintress. Every year, she writes down a number, and everyone older than that number disappears. Expeditions are sent out to stop the Paintress, and the game will follow Expedition 33 in their attempt to save humanity. In addition to an interesting Persona 5-style take on turn-based combat, Expedition 33 features some serious voice acting talent, starring Charlie Cox, Jennifer English, Ben Starr, and Andy Serkis. Can’t wait to hear them perform when Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launches on April 24th.

To close out the Direct, Xbox gave us another look at Doom: The Dark Ages, the prequel to id Software’s 2016 Doom reboot and Doom Eternal. It will, of course, feature all the ripping and tearing a Doom enjoyer could want, along with an interesting focus on narrative — something the series isn’t really known for. But I suspect folks are far more interested in piloting a 30-story Doomguy-shaped mech suit when the game releases on May 15th.

JetBrains, the company behind coding tools like the IntelliJ IDE for Java and Kotlin (and, indeed, the Kotlin language itself), on Thursday launched Junie, a new AI coding agent. This agent, the company says, will be able to handle routine development tasks for when you want to create new applications — and understand the context of existing projects you may want to extend with new features.

Using the well-regarded SWEBench Verified benchmark of 500 common developer tasks, Junie is able to solve 53.6% of them on a single run. Not too long ago, that would have been the top score, but it’s worth noting that at this point, the top-performing models score more than 60%, with Weights & Biases “Programmer O1 crosscheck5” currently leading the pack with a score of 64.6%. JetBrains itself calls Junie’s score “promising.”

But even with a lower score, JetBrains’ service may have an advantage because of its tight integration with the rest of the JetBrains IDE. The company notes that even as Junie helps developers get their work done, the human is always in control, even when delegating tasks to the agent.

• Phishing campaign mimics CAPTCHA to deliver hidden malware commands
• PowerShell command hidden in verification leads to Lumma Stealer attack
• Educating users on phishing tactics is key to preventing such attacks

CloudSek has uncovered a sophisticated method for distributing the Lumma Stealer malware which poses a serious threat to Windows users.

This technique relies on deceptive human verification pages that trick users into unwittingly executing harmful commands.

Pocketpair, the company behind last year’s viral game Palworld, has a new venture: publishing indie games. Its first project, scheduled for release later this year, will be an as-yet-unnamed horror game from Surgent Studios, the developer behind 2024’s Tales of Kenzera: Zau.

Palworld, jokingly referred to as “Pokémon with guns,” was a breakout success last year, drawing in more than 25 million players in its first few months. The company’s step into publishing comes at a turbulent time for video games, especially smaller studios; last year, Among Us developer Innersloth announced its own move into publishing to help push projects forward. Pocketpair’s Palworld success, it seems, is allowing them to do the same.

“As the games industry continues to grow, more and more games find themselves struggling to get funded or greenlit,” John Buckley, head of Pocketpair Publishing, said in a press release announcing the new division. “We think this is a real shame, because there are so many incredible creators and ideas out there that just need a little help to become incredible games.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Pocketpair would work with Surgent Studios, which has struggled to find funding following the release of Zau. The developer put its team on hiatus last year as it sought a partner for its next Kenzera game, currently known as Project Uso.

Surgent’s deal with Pocketpair is separate from Uso, founder Abubakar Salim tells WIRED. Unlike the Afrofuturism of Zau, it’ll be a horror title meant to introduce players to something new. “We’re taking a little detour from the Tales of Kenzera universe,” Salim says.

Salim adds that the horror genre “is a fascinating space that taps into primal emotions, immersing audiences in a reality that’s removed from their own yet strikes something deep and dark within us all.” Pocketpair and Surgent gave few details about the game in Thursday’s announcement, other than to describe it as “short and weird.”

“The world is so raw right now, and it feels natural to craft an experience that reflects and feeds off that intensity,” Salim says.

Pocketpair Publishing has not announced any other future projects. The company has been embroiled in legal drama since last year, when Nintendo filed a lawsuit in Tokyo claiming Palworld infringed on its copyright. Nintendo did not respond to a request for comment. When asked if the lawsuit was of any concern to Surgent, Salim says the studio isn’t worried. “We’re really excited to be working with their new publishing wing to bring this game to life,” he says.

Meta and YouTube aren’t the only platforms looking to benefit from TikTok potentially disappearing — Substack wants in on the action, too.

The company announced Thursday it’s launching a $20 million “creator accelerator fund,” promising content creators they won’t lose revenue by jumping ship to Substack. Creators in the program also get “strategic and business support” from Substack, and early access to new features.

“We established this fund because we’ve seen creators who specialize in video, audio, and text expand their audience, revenue, and influence on Substack, where the platform’s network effects amplify the quality and impact of the work they’re doing,” the company said in a blog post.

This pivot on Substack’s part has been in the works for a while — for months, the company has been marketing itself not as a newsletter delivery service but as a creator platform similar to Patreon.

“On Substack, [creators] can build their own home on the internet: one where creators, not platform executives or advertisers, own their work and their audience,” the blog post reads. The post also cites “bans, backlash, and policies that change with the political winds” as a reason creators can’t depend on traditional social media services.

That’s all fine (we at The Verge have been saying this for a while). But creators focusing on Substack are also subject to ebbs and flows depending on what the company is prioritizing: first, it was newsletters, then it was tweet-like micro blogs, followed by full-on websites and livestreaming. For some, Substack’s initial stated mission of giving more freedom to independent writers is fading. And TikTok creators looking to move to Substack will need to rebuild their following all over again — you obviously can’t export your TikTok followers.

The $20 million fund isn’t the first time Substack has offered a pool of money meant to entice creators. Under a program called Substack Pro, the company poached top media talent from traditional newsrooms with higher pay, health insurance, and other perks. That program ended in 2022, with Substack cofounder Hamish McKenzie saying the deals weren’t employment arrangements but “seed funding deals to remove the financial risk for a writer in starting their own business.” In other words, welcome to Substack. Now that you’re here, you’re on your own — which is more or less the deal other platforms offer.

In an announcement perhaps timed to divert attention away from OpenAI’s Operator, Anthropic Thursday unveiled a new feature for its developer API called Citations, which lets devs “ground” answers from its Claude family of AI in source documents such as emails.

Anthropic says Citations allows its AI models to provide detailed references to “the exact sentences and passages” from docs they use to generate responses. As of Thursday afternoon, Citations is available in both Anthropic’s API and Google’s Vertex AI platform.

As Anthropic explains in a blog post with Citations, devs can add source files to have models automatically cite claims that they inferred from those files. Citations is particularly useful in document summarization, Q&A, and customer support applications, Anthropic says, where the feature can nudge models to insert source citations.

Citations isn’t available for all of Anthropic’s models — only Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3.5 Haiku. Also, the feature isn’t free. Anthropic notes that Citations may incur charges depending on the length and number of the source documents.

Based on Anthropic’s standard API pricing, which Citations uses, a roughly-100-page source doc would cost around $0.30 with Claude 3.5 Sonnet, or $0.08 with Claude 3.5 Haiku. That may well be worth it for devs looking to cut down on hallucinations and other AI-induced errors.

• Sextortion scams evolve with personalized tactics and heightened intimidation.
• Threat actors exploit invoicing platforms to bypass email security filters.
• Robust email filters and training help counter sextortion threats effectively.

Sextortion scams are becoming more complex and personal as the scams now frequently target individuals across different sectors with greater precision creating a sense of immediate threat.

Cofense Phish Defense Center (PDC) recently observed a notable evolution in sextortion scams, which unlike earlier versions, which relied primarily on generic scare tactics, now use more sophisticated strategies, often bypassing traditional security measures.

While Meta lures TikTok creators to Instagram and Facebook with cash bonuses, its X competitor Instagram Threads is now making things easier for creators, brands, and others who need more professional tools to manage their presence on the app. On Thursday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced a small handful of new features coming to Threads, including a way to schedule posts and view more metrics within Insights.

In a post on the social network, Mosseri shared that users would now be able to schedule posts on Threads and view the metrics for individual posts within the Insights dashboard which offers a way for Threads users to track trends including their views, number of followers and geographic demographics, number and type of interactions, and more, for a given time period.

In addition, he said that Threads is adding a new feature that allows users to “markup” a post they’re resharing so they include their own creative take. While Mosseri didn’t elaborate on what that means or share an example, earlier findings from tech enthusiast Chris Messina indicate that Threads will add a new icon next to the buttons for adding photos, GIFs, voice, hashtags, and more that provide access to this feature.

The squiggle icon, when clicked, takes users to a screen where they can choose between tools like a highlighter pen or arrow tool, that would allow them to draw directly on a Thread post. This feature was also spotted last week by Lindsey Gamble, who posted on Threads to show the feature in action.

It’s an odd sort of addition for Threads, given that users are more often sharing something clipped from the web, like a news article, where they’ve added a highlight or underline in a screenshot. There hasn’t been much consumer demand for a tool to mark up Threads’ posts directly.

However, the feature does offer Threads users something unique, when compared with social networking rivals like X, Bluesky, and Mastodon — and that could be the point.