Science and Technology (old posts, page 202)

OpenAI takes down mentions of Jony Ive’s io amid trademark row

ChatGPT developer forced to act after receiving legal complaint from earbud maker iyO

OpenAI has taken down online content related to its recent deal with Sir Jony Ive’s hardware startup, io, after a trademark complaint.

The artificial intelligence company has removed promotional materials including a video where Ive – the former Apple designer behind the iPhone – and OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, discuss the $6.4bn (£4.8bn) transaction. However, the nine-minute film can still be viewed on YouTube.

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Economists sceptical over UK Spending Review's partly AI-driven 10% budget cuts

MPs hear doubts over efficiency savings that are reliant on speculative gains from IT, machine learning

Leading economists have questioned how the UK government's Spending Review can determine exactly 10 percent cuts to admin budgets — partly powered by AI and digital transformation — across central departments when they are starting from different places and have different projects to manage.…

Starwatch: the meeting of a star, the planet Mars and our moon

Watching the night sky, the time it takes for light from these celestial objects to reach Earth is vastly different

Following last week’s conjunction between Regulus and Mars, the moon now gets in on the act. This meeting of a star, a planet and a moon takes place on 29 June. The chart shows the view looking west from London at 22:15 BST that day.

Red planet Mars has moved on from its close pass of blue-white star Regulus, giving enough space for a waxing crescent moon to slip in between them. The moon will be 4.7 days old, and heading towards its first quarter (half-moon) phase. Just over 22% of its visible surface will be illuminated.

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‘We were all pretty privileged’: Allison Williams on Girls, nepo babies and toxic momfluencers

She made her name in Lena Dunham’s landmark series, then starred in Get Out. As she returns in M3gan 2.0, the sequel to the hit horror about a murderous AI doll, she talks about parenting in an age of smartphones, Botox and her famous father

If you had wandered the set of the film M3gan 2.0 last year, chances are you would have stumbled into M3gan, the terrifying humanoid doll, staring lifelessly while she waited to be called for her next scene. Sometimes she would stand in the corner of the soundstage, says Allison Williams with a nervy laugh. “The dilemma is: do you turn her around so she’s facing the wall, or do you let her face the room? Both answers are wrong.”

In the sequel to the sci-fi horror M3gan, Williams resumes her role as Gemma, a roboticist who has become a crusader against rampant and reckless AI development after her creation – developed for her orphaned niece – became murderous. (She is also a producer on the second film.)

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AI, out-of-the-box!

Elastic AI features in Elastic Security, Observability, and Search are now enabled by default in Elastic Cloud.

Getting started with generative AI (GenAI) shouldn’t be a project in itself. Too often teams encounter organizational friction that slows adoption of AI-based features, from third-party contracts and external API keys, to additional terms of service and billing management. With the Elastic Managed LLM, you can sidestep these blockers and get powerful AI features for automatic ingest, threat detection, problem investigation, root cause analysis, and more, ready to go from day one.

Prefer your own model? We’ve got you covered there, too, with the ability to integrate any popular third-party LLM of your choosing.

https://static-www.elastic.co/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/blt5a6df87d39574ae5/685103294c53c84bece8879e/attack-discovery.png,attack-discovery.pngOut-of-the-box AI for SREs: Accelerated problem resolution

All AI features in Elastic Observability are ready to use out of the box — no setup required. Teams can accelerate root cause analysis, streamline incident response, and start getting value from generative AI on day one. For organizations that need more control, connecting a preferred LLM is still fully supported.

The Elastic Managed LLM powers all generative AI capabilities in Elastic Observability, including:

  • AI Assistant for Observability: The AI Assistant combines generative AI with RAG to reduce hallucinations and improve accuracy by grounding responses in your organization’s knowledge, including runbooks, past incidents, trouble tickets, documentation, and GitHub issues. It helps SREs troubleshoot faster by generating queries, dashboards, and visualizations to surface relevant data and enables natural language investigation across logs, metrics, and traces. In addition to conversational guidance, the AI Assistant also delivers embedded contextual insights directly in the UI, explaining log messages and APM errors without requiring a chat session.

  • Automatic Import: By automating the development of bespoke ingest pipelines, the Automatic Import feature extends Elastic’s 400+ out-of-the-box integrations with support for custom use cases. It reduces ingest time required from several days to less than 10 minutes and significantly lowers the learning curve for onboarding unstructured data. It builds a custom ingest pipeline based on sample data that accurately maps raw data into Elastic Common Schema (ECS) and custom fields, populates contextual information, and categorizes events. 

AI for developers: Prototype and test GenAI capabilities from day one

With the default Elastic Managed LLM, AI Playground and the Search AI Assistant are ready to use out of the box, without need for additional setup or API keys for an external model. Playground offers a low-code interface for rapidly prototyping RAG workflows with your own data. Now, you can test the latest GenAI capabilities and start building instantly — no model configuration needed. If you prefer your own model, you still have the flexibility to use the open inference API to connect any provider or custom endpoint of your choice.

https://static-www.elastic.co/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/blt4a907834a226efc3/6851051280eb856f0140cd90/Ai-playground.png,Ai-playground.pngElastic’s unique approach to AI

Elastic delivers AI where it matters most, natively integrated with your data, workflows, and use cases. With a default managed LLM enabled out of the box, teams can start using AI immediately, without setup or third-party contracts. For more flexibility, developers can also connect to public LLMs using Elastic’s open inference API.

What truly sets Elastic apart is how it combines Search AI capabilities for security and observability:

  • Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) is built in using Elastic’s native vector database with embeddings sourcing relevant context from your environment. AI features can reference your internal knowledge bases (runbooks, incidents, documentation, GitHub issues, etc.) to enable relevant and grounded responses.

  • Unified access to all your data means AI isn’t limited to predefined datasets. With 400+ integrations combined with other organizational knowledge sources, Elastic can enrich AI insights with logs, metrics, traces, runbooks, and more, all indexed and searchable in one place.

  • Search and analytics leverage Elastic’s platform strengths: fast query execution, aggregations, and built-in functions — ensuring AI-driven insights are grounded in real-time data and provide accurate and actionable results.

With the default LLM, you get:

  • A model tested and evaluated by Elastic.

  • Integrated billing and platform governance — linked to your Elastic subscription with no separate accounts, terms of service, or compliance gaps. Data is handled securely and adheres to the privacy and security controls you’ve already put in place.

  • Single-vendor support, so your team isn’t stuck chasing third parties.

  • Zero config in most cases — AI is simply ready when you are.

Whether you need speed, control, or customization, Elastic gives you a flexible, production-ready AI stack designed for how modern teams work.

You thought Elastic only did SIEM? Think again!

Elastic Extended Security, born from the acquisition of Endgame, brings years of battle-tested EDR and threat prevention expertise directly into Elastic’s Search AI Platform. This isn’t a bolt-on or third-party integration; it’s a native, deeply embedded component that redefines what’s possible with XDR. 

As data volumes grow exponentially, traditional EDR tools hit walls. Elastic doesn’t. Only Elastic can deliver true XDR: natively correlating endpoint, network, user, and cloud telemetry at search speed, across petabytes of data, all in a single platform. 

But Elastic goes further: 

  • Best-in-class endpoint built in: Our agent protects Windows, macOS, and Linux with the award-winning prevention and detection capabilities originally pioneered at Endgame and evolved into a scalable platform for modern threats. Advanced malware, behavioral, memory, and ransomware defenses are included out of the box. 
  • Hybrid endpoint, real-world ready: Most enterprises rely on multiple endpoint vendors, and Elastic meets them where they are. Elastic Security’s vendor-agnostic platform seamlessly operationalizes data from third-party EDR tools alongside Elastic Extended Security’s own endpoint agent — all within a unified detection and response workflow. No silos. No pivoting.
  • Unlimited deployment model: With Elastic, every user gets unlimited agents. Scale up during incidents. Deploy widely during mergers and acquisitions. Build a resilient baseline across thousands of machines — without hidden per-endpoint pricing. Elastic delivers a mission-ready platform that protects today’s infrastructure and scales to meet tomorrow’s complexity. This is XDR the way it was meant to be: flexible, powerful, and unified.
https://static-www.elastic.co/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/bltd08d36a01c7e0da8/6852dd938e72c43e21691e17/blog-elastic-attack-discovery.png,blog-elastic-attack-discovery.pngAI-driven fixes at your fingertips

Endpoint security is essential, but it can sometimes introduce system slowdowns or conflicts that affect performance. Troubleshooting these issues manually is complex and time-consuming, often delaying the deployment of security tools and creating critical visibility gaps across your environment.

Elastic’s Automatic Troubleshooting uses AI to automatically identify third-party antivirus and security software causing endpoint performance issues and slowing your users down. We even help you fix these conflicts, with fast one-click exclusions.

This gives security teams fast, clear insights and guided steps to resolve performance problems — helping you maintain strong security without sacrificing endpoint performance or user experience.

https://static-www.elastic.co/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/blt4bda86335de149b1/6852de90ec913838476ad687/blog-elastic-event-collection.png,blog-elastic-event-collection.pngDigging deeper: Investigate threats without data limits

Speed and context are everything in security investigations — and that means having all your data, instantly accessible, whenever you need it. Elastic Security is built to handle security telemetry at scale, so you can retain, search, and analyze vast amounts of data without compromise.

With searchable snapshots and flexible data tiers, Elastic lets you keep months or years of endpoint, cloud, and infrastructure data searchable — without blowing your budget. No more choosing between retention and performance.

Paired with powerful investigation tools like Timeline, Session View, and an interactive process analyzer, analysts can quickly trace events, pivot between related activity, and uncover the full scope of an incident. The result: faster investigations, deeper insights, and decisions based on complete, reliable data. And thanks to our vendor-agnostic approach, these investigative workflows work seamlessly whether telemetry comes from Elastic, a third-party EDR, or a mix of both — ensuring investigations stay efficient and comprehensive, no matter what tools you’re running.

https://static-www.elastic.co/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/bltad0ea4716f7bc444/6852dec069746a16382d085d/blog-elastic-event-analyzer.png,blog-elastic-event-analyzer.pngOpen and transparent security

At Elastic, we know SOC analysts rely on transparency and trust to Extended Security against evolving threats. That’s why we made our protections-artifacts repository fully open, sharing the exact detection logic behind Elastic’s endpoint security — including YARA signatures and rules for Windows, macOS, and Linux. This level of visibility lets you understand what’s running under the hood, customize detections to fit your environment, and collaborate with the community to sharpen protections. 

Openness isn’t just about sharing code — it’s about empowering you to stay ahead of attackers and keep your organization secure. Elastic also runs a public bug bounty program that covers EDR behavior detection rules, rewarding researchers for identifying ways to bypass detections. This helps security teams strengthen Elastic Extended Security’s protections and stay ahead of evolving attack techniques.

https://static-www.elastic.co/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/bltc58cc85e657dd94f/6852df230a2918f94ca05d53/blog-elastic-response-console.png,blog-elastic-response-console.pngJust how good are Elastic Extended Security protections?

We think Elastic Extended Security is one of the best protection engines in the industry — but don’t just take our word for it. Independent third-party testing continues to validate the strength of our endpoint security capabilities.

In the latest AV-Comparatives Business Security Test (April–May 2025), Elastic Extended Security achieved a 100% protection rate against 200+ advanced attack scenarios and 1,000+ real-world malware samples. That’s top-of-the-table performance in one of the industry's most rigorous evaluations.

And it doesn’t stop there. Elastic Extended Security also earned a Grade A certification from VB100, following its intensive real-world malware and false positive testing.

These results reinforce what our customers already experience: Elastic Extended Security consistently delivers reliable, high-fidelity protection against today’s most sophisticated threats — while staying lightweight and easy to manage as part of the Elastic Security platform.

https://static-www.elastic.co/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/blt9d6aa2b38ad0a8fb/6852df5b419e5446071c3619/blog-elastic-av-comparatives.png,blog-elastic-av-comparatives.pngGet started with Elastic Security

Join the growing number of businesses that trust Elastic Security to protect their organization against attacks. Experience the peace of mind that comes with knowing your endpoints — and organization as a whole — are secure against the latest threats. Start your Elastic Security free trial and discover the difference that our protection can make. Visit elastic.co/security to learn more and get started.