Why it matters: Love them or hate them, there's little escaping YouTube reaction videos. Clips of people reacting to other content are incredibly popular, but a federal court ruling could have massive legal ramifications for those making a living from this trend.
A teen is suing Meta, TikTok, and YouTube over algorithmic harm – and thousands more cases are waiting
Why it matters: When jurors in Los Angeles walk into a courtroom this week, they'll confront a question technology companies have long sidestepped: can a line of code, an algorithmic feed, or a design pattern cause psychological harm? The case, K.G.M. v. Meta et al., marks the first personal-injury trial to test whether social media platforms themselves – not just the people who use them – bear responsibility for the mental-health fallout of the digital age.
The technology could redefine how machines express emotion and interact with people
Something to look forward to: Inside a Columbia University engineering lab, a humanoid robot has learned to move its lips with previously unseen realism. The project, led by the Creative Machines Lab, represents the first time an autonomous system has acquired natural lip movement for speaking and singing through visual learning alone.