Tag: News

• Google showcases potential killer apps for generative AI.
• The company demoed an AI agent that can help you remember where you left your glasses. 
• Google's infrastructure, talent, data, and experience makes it a strong player in developing useful AI tech.

Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in 2022, there's been no real "killer app" to get consumers embracing AI in massive numbers.

Even ChatGPT may not count: The chatbot's online traffic is still only about 2% of Google's, according to Similarweb. Other chatbots are doing much worse, leaving investors mostly focused on corporate use cases.

A killer app is an application that is so useful and so easy to use that it convinces everyday people to adopt a whole new technology en masse.

Spreadsheets and word-processing software made many individuals buy personal computers for the first time. The internet, possibly the biggest killer app of all, made us all buy smartphones, tablets, and a host of other connected devices.

So, what will be the killer app for generative AI? Put another way: My mom has never used ChatGPT, but she Googles stuff all the time. What will get this octogenarian, and everyone else, using genAI as often as they use toothbrushes?

AI killer app contenders

At its IO developer conference on Tuesday, Google showed off some pretty amazing AI killer app contenders.

These were shared mostly under the umbrella of Project Astra, an experimental Google endeavor at the leading edge of AI models and agents.

"To be truly useful, an agent needs to understand and respond to the complex and dynamic world just like people do — and take in and remember what it sees and hears to understand context and take action," Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, said. "It also needs to be proactive, teachable and personal, so users can talk to it naturally and without lag or delay."

Never forget where you left your glasses again

In a video, Google showed an employee holding up a smartphone with the camera on. She walked through DeepMind's office in London pointing the device at various things and asking questions.

The camera at one point showed a speaker and she asked what it was. A Google AI model lurking on the phone (and in the cloud) answered correctly.

Then she pointed the smartphone at a colleague's computer screen, which had a bunch of software code on it. The AI model correctly told her what that code was for, just by "looking" at the live video feed from the camera.

After a couple more examples, the DeepMind employee asked if the AI agent remembered where she left her glasses. The Google system replied that she'd left them next to an apple on her desk in the office. She walked over there and, lo and behold, there were her glasses by the apple on her desk. The AI agent "remembered" the glasses in the background of previous frames from the phone's live video feed.

If Google's AI agent can help regular people never lose their glasses ever again (or their keys or other stuff at home or at work), then I think we have a killer app.

Simple, useful, and quirky things like this can turn wonky technology into products everyone uses. For instance, famed investor Warren Buffett never bought a personal computer, until he wanted to play chess online with Bill Gates.

Returning shoes

Other Google executives discussed similarly compelling, everyday applications for genAI.

CEO Sundar Pichai said the company's AI agents can plan and execute multiple tasks — to the point where the bots will be able to return a pair of shoes you ordered online and don't want.

Calendar entries

Google VP Sissie Hsiao showed off another killer application for this new technology.

In this demo, a smartphone camera was pointed at a school flier with details of several upcoming events. The Google AI agent captured all the dates, times, and other details and automatically loaded them into the user's Google Calendar.

Rental agreements

What if you want to know how a pet might change your apartment rental situation? Do you want to actually read the 12 legal documents you skimmed and signed last year? Of course you don't.

You can now drop all these documents into Google's Gemini Advanced AI model and start asking it questions like "If I get a pet, how does this change my rental situation?"

Google's AI agent will ingest all the documents quickly and answer your questions by referencing specific parts of the agreements.

If generative AI can do annoying, boring tasks like this, a lot of regular people will start using the technology pretty quickly.

"Google was built for this moment"

When done well, these AI agent tasks will seem easy. But Google has been working behind the scenes for at least a decade to get to this point.

This type of technology requires massive computing power, lots of energy, huge data centers, muscular AI chips, lightning fast networking gear, and oodles of information to train the models. Google has all this in spades.

DeepMind's Hassabis gave a little taste of this when discussing Project Astra's ability to respond to questions during live video feeds.

"These agents were built on our Gemini model and other task specific models, and were designed to process information faster by continuously encoding video frames, combining the video and speech input into a timeline of events, and caching this information for efficient recall," he explained.

There are very few other companies with the infrastructure, talent, data, and experience to pull this off. (Maybe OpenAI and Microsoft together?)

"Google was built for this moment," Pichai said.

• An AI-controlled F-16 faced off against a manned Fighting Falcon in a historic real-world dogfight.
• Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, aboard the AI-piloted jet, said it was a "roughly an even fight."
• The technology is not quite ready for the real battlefield, Kendall said, but progress is promising.

Earlier this month, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall made history, riding in the cockpit of an AI-piloted F-16 Fighting Falcon through a series of simulated close-quarters air-to-air engagements, more commonly known as "good old-fashioned dogfights." These notional scraps pitted the Air Force's most advanced "AI agents," a term used to describe the artificial intelligence models devised to pilot tactical aircraft, against highly-trained human fighter pilots with both notional 20mm cannons and close-range air-to-air missiles.

"Basically, when you're in an engagement like that, what the two pilots are trying to do to gain an advantage is fly the most optimal possible trajectory for their aircraft… so you can get a missile off, and he's trying to do the same to you," Kendall said at an AI expo event hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project in Washington, DC.

"So the skill of the pilots is really important. We were up against a pilot who had two or three thousand hours of experience. He was very good. It was roughly an even fight. But against a less experienced pilot, the AI… [and] the automation would have performed better," he added.

Saying that it was a "roughly even fight" against a pilot with some 2,000 to 3,000 hours in the cockpit of the F-16 may seem like a relatively simple comparison, but this single comment suggests an extremely high degree of capability in the AI agent.

Air Force fighter pilots optimally see between 200 and 250 hours of flight time in their aircraft per year, though those figures can be curtailed for any number of reasons. That means that a pilot with 2,000 and 3,000 hours has between 10 and 15 years of experience, if not more, since unit functions, follow-on education and training, command billets, and more often hinder flight hour accrual for even the most capable of pilots as their careers press on.

In 2014, the Air Force reported that only around 300 pilots in the world had accrued more than 3,000 hours in the F-16 Fighting Falcon since it entered service in 1978; supporting that claim, F-16.net currently lists only 311 pilots ever to achieve this distinction.

In other words, the Air Force Secretary currently places the branch's F-16-piloting AI as roughly comparable in dogfighting skill to some of the nation's most experienced and capable aviators.

Kendall rode in the front seat of the Air Force's heavily modified X-62 VISTA — a Block 30 F-16D that has previously incorporated technology, including multi-axis thrust-vector control, not found on any of the Air Force's operational Vipers. Despite its three-decade-spanning tenure as a part of the Air Force's Test Pilot School, the aircraft now sits at the forefront of America's efforts to propel air combat into an entirely new era — one where conventionally crewed aircraft are accompanied by their own formations of AI-enabled drone fighters.

Riding behind Kendall in the cockpit was one of the Air Force's few VISTA-qualified test pilots, trained to handle not just the unique capabilities of the test bed aircraft but its new AI software as well. At any point in the exercises, that test pilot could have shut down the AI agent and taken control of the aircraft if necessary for the safety of the jet or its occupants, though that has yet to occur in any of the test flights taking place since this effort made the leap to real aircraft in December 2022.

"So we did about 10 or a dozen different situations where I was in the front seat and I had a button on my stick where basically I initiated the automation," Kendall explained.

Despite the seemingly common perception of AI as inherently superior to human pilots for these sorts of combat applications, the Air Force still has a lot of work to do before this technology finds its way onto the real battlefield.

"That technology is not quite ready yet, but it's making very good progress. We got to see three different versions of it. They all performed, I think, in a way which suggests to me personally very strongly that we're on the right path and we're gonna get to where we're headed," Kendall said.

READ MORE FROM SANDBOXX NEWS

Life for a Delta Force man in an American neighborhood

Is the 'Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare' worth watching?

Combat Obscura's unadulterated authenticity still resonates today

How video games can make you a better fighter pilot

How to physically prepare for MARSOC

• One-fifth of food delivery accounts have been targets of hacking attempts, Sift found.
• The companies behind the apps use two-factor authentication less often than in other industries.
• Instacart, Walmart Spark, and other delivery services have had trouble with hackers.

Your DoorDash or other food delivery apps are a prime target for hackers.

About 20% of accounts for ordering and delivering restaurant food have been subject to an attempted account takeover by a hacker, according to Sift, a company that detects online fraud. That's much higher than the 2.5% average across all the industries Sift tracks, from cryptocurrency to transportation.

One reason: food delivery apps use two-factor authentication — like those codes texted to you before you can log in — less often than other kinds, Sift found. Just 3.5% of log-ins on food delivery apps asked for that kind of verification, making it easier for hackers to get in. Across all the apps that Sift tracks, that number was 10%.

"I know I have a few apps on my phone for food delivery, and none of them forced me to do any kind of step-up authentication," Brittany Allen, trust & safety architect at Sift, told Business Insider.

"For your bank, you're happy to have to show your fingerprint, get a text, enter a code, and go through a couple of steps," she said. Food delivery companies don't always ask the same when their customers log in, Allen added, though the accounts often contain valuable things for hackers, such as account balances and loyalty points.

Hackers also target food delivery accounts since many customers only use them periodically — meaning they're less likely to notice if someone takes control. "If you're not a power user, that's something that is even more attractive" to hackers, Allen said.

Once they have control, hackers can use the accounts to place orders or mine them for loyalty points. They can also sell them. Allen showed BI several channels on messaging app Telegram that purported to sell accounts for DoorDash, Instacart, and other delivery services.

Accounts are also advertised for sale on social media platforms like Meta's Facebook and Instagram, though some of the posts are running a different kind of scam: Taking buyers' money, then not sending anything in return, BI reported previously.

Increasingly, fraudsters don't need deep knowledge of technology or fancy equipment to steal accounts, Allen said. Many use a regular computer or smartphone. "You don't need a specialized tool or any kind of high-powered configuration," she said.

Hackers are nothing new for many of the delivery apps. Some hackers have been able to gain entry to some Instacart customers' accounts, for example, and then use them to obtain gift card codes without paying for them.

Gig workers' accounts are also a target. Some drivers for Walmart's Spark delivery service have had their accounts hacked. The accounts have then been used by others to shop and deliver orders through the service, drivers have told BI.

The apps have taken some steps to improve security. Last fall, for instance, Walmart started requiring Spark drivers to periodically verify their identity with a selfie — though the feature has malfunctioned for some legitimate drivers, kicking them off of the app.

Do you work for DoorDash, Instacart, Uber Eats, or another gig delivery service and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com

• Bryan Sansivero has spent the past decade photographing America's abandoned homes. 
• He describes each home as a time capsule, often brimming with dusty antiques and faded artwork.
• His book, "American Decay: Inside America's Forgotten Homes," is a collection of his haunting photos.

Bryan Sansivero's haunting photography career all started when he stumbled upon an abandoned home in rural Pennsylvania.

Bryan Sansivero was driving on a long, windy road about 45 minutes outside Philadelphia when a dilapidated home caught his eye.

 "I was so intrigued," he told Business Insider in 2021.

Sansivero pulled over in an apple orchard and made the trek up to the stone home, which he estimates was built in the 1700s.

He recalls peering through the only open window of the house. Among the crumbling and decaying walls, he spotted an elegant piano. 

"This is so strange, and it's beautiful," Sansivero remembers thinking. 

Naturally, he stepped inside to snap a few photos.  

That was more than 10 years ago. Today, Sansivero said he's photographed hundreds of abandoned houses and buildings across the US.

Sansivero said he's always gravitated toward the eerie and unfamiliar. 

In college, he majored in filmmaking where he made a documentary about an abandoned hospital. 

The house in Pennsylvania reignited his interest, he said.

"Naturally, I was just drawn to wanting to photograph and explore things off-the-beaten-path or the not-typically-seen kind-of-things," he said.

Sansivero has captured everything from decaying houses to pristine homes that feel like they're frozen in time.

Sansivero takes inspiration from other photographers on Instagram. When it comes to finding an abandoned space, he said he relies on Google Earth, word of mouth, and aimless driving trips in different parts of the US.

Sansivero describes each home as a "time capsule." They're filled with clothing, antiques, furniture, and toys that give a glimpse into what life was like decades ago.

When Sansivero arrives at an abandoned house, he usually finds antiques, such as CRT TVs, phonographs, and old chandeliers. 

He said it's often obvious that other photographers have visited the homes when objects are staged and furniture has been moved around.

If that's the case, Sansivero said he might do a bit of his own staging before shooting — propping up a photograph or moving a lamp into the shot — but he says he keeps staging to a minimum.

"There's plenty of photos in my book where I literally walked in and that's what it looked like," he said. 

"It's almost like a treasure hunt looking at my pictures," he said. Nostalgia oozes from some images while others leave a lingering, eerie impression.

Sansivero's images are often teeming with color. Old, peeling floral wallpaper might be a focal point in one image and colorful '60s clothing might fill the frame in the next. 

Sansivero said he loves color, noting that he was wearing a tie-dye T-shirt and rainbow-striped shorts while speaking with BI.

But even with bright colors, his images are unsettling. 

One year, he photographed an abandoned home with a surprising twist: The entire second story was circus-themed.

One of the most famous houses Sansivero photographed was nicknamed the "Catskill Clown House" in upstate New York. 

The home was filled with white-and-red carnival stripes, a canopy circus ceiling, and harlequin patterns covering the walls.

According to Sansivero, the home previously belonged to a circus family, but it's since been updated and renovated.  

A hunter's house in the Catskills in New York is one of Sansivero's favorite places to photograph.

Sansivero and a friend explored this abandoned house in upstate New York, arriving before sunrise to photograph the home. 

The photographer said the room was pitch black when they got there, but that as the sun rose and the light came in they started to see the details inside, including a tiger rug, old rifles, and an animal head mounted to the wall. 

Sansivero admits that not every house has been unusual, strange, or odd. But every now and then, he said he finds something completely unique. And often, he'll dig into the history behind the abandoned places he finds.

Sansivero said he looks for abandoned homes that have stories and that he searches for certain items — it could be a dollhouse or portrait above the mantel — that paint some type of picture about the people who used to live there.

Often, Sansivero said he'd find a letter or old piece of mail with the name of a former resident. He uses that information to track down the owner's family and learn more about the house's history.

The abandoned buildings often have a sad backstory, according to Sansivero. One home he photographed was deserted after the owners were convicted of animal abuse, he said in an Instagram caption, while others remain brimming with antiques but no heirs.  

Ultimately, Sansivero doesn't have all the answers to his audience's questions about each home, but their questions leave them with a lasting impression of his work.

On his Instagram account, Sansivero shares glimpses of the history and families who once lived inside the decaying structures he photographs.

An image of sunlight streaming through an American flag takes on an entirely new meaning when Sansivero explains in a caption on Instagram that the home belonged to a WWII veteran and prisoner of war who died decades ago. 

As abandoned houses piled up on Sansivero's hard drive, he compiled his images into a photography book, which he titled "American Decay: Inside America's Forgotten Homes."

After wanting to put a book together for years, Sansivero published the first edition of his book, "American Decay: Inside America's Forgotten Homes," in 2021.

Sansivero said he wants readers to feel like they're stepping into a home when they look at his book; as they flip through the pages, they enter different abandoned rooms.

"My photographs can be interpreted differently by different people," Sansivero said. 

He added that he wants "American Decay" to be a book that people revisit.

"Not a book that just sits there," he said. "But a book that you can go through and see something new each time."

While Sansivero's book focuses on homes, he's explored an array of abandoned locations.

In the past decade, he's captured abandoned churches, nursing homes, hospitals, schools, trailers, and more. 

Everything from abandoned nursing homes to boat graveyards fills Sansivero's collection.

As Sansivero continues photographing abandoned houses, he said he plans to focus on kitchens, which are at the heart of so many homes. 

Many of the homes Sansivero has photographed have been torn down, sold to new owners, or vandalized, he said.

Sansivero estimates that half of the houses in his book are no longer in the same standing condition.

Many of them have been destroyed by fires or vandalized with spray paint, he said. But that doesn't take away from his experience of photographing these homes.

"Just to know that I was there and lucky enough to photograph it is really cool," he said.

• OpenAI announced a new AI model, GPT-4o, on Monday.
• It can do things like translate in real time, make sense of your physical surroundings, and even sing (kind of).
• Here's a look at some of the wildest things it can do.

OpenAI revealed its latest flagship AI model on Monday, GPT-4o, and showed off what ChatGPT can do when powered by it.

The new AI model, with an "o" standing for omni, can handle a combination of text, audio, and images as either inputs to respond to or outputs it can generate.

But seeing is believing in this case, and thankfully OpenAI did some live onstage demos — with even more examples published on social media.

Here are some of the most impressive demos we've seen so far.

• US officials have expressed doubt over Israel's ability to completely eliminate Hamas.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains firm on the goal to defeat Hamas.
• President Biden has threatened to cut off weapon shipments if Israel assaults Rafah.

US government officials are skeptical Israel can actually achieve its goals and completely eliminate Hamas in Gaza.

"Sometimes when we listen closely to Israeli leaders, they talk about mostly the idea of some sort of sweeping victory on the battlefield, total victory," Deputy US Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told CNN at the NATO Youth Summit. "I don't think we believe that that is likely or possible."

When TV personality Phil McGraw, also known as Dr. Phil, asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview on May 9 whether Israel still plans on eliminating Hamas as its goal in the Israel-Hamas war, Netanyahu confirmed that this plan hasn't changed. He argued that "we have to achieve victory and that means that we have to destroy all these battalions, which we will."

Netanyahu has been adamant that in order to meet this goal and win the war, Israeli forces must assault Rafah, a densely populated city in southern Gaza where about one million Palestinian refugees have fled.

The US has provided Israel with support throughout its war, but President Joe Biden has warned that he would cut off weapon shipments to Israel if it moves forward with an attack on the city.

"Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers," Biden told CNN last week. "I made it clear that if they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem."

There is currently a Republican-led effort in Congress to force the provision of weapons shipments, but the White House is in firm opposition.

The current US view of what victory looks like in this war appears different than that of Israel. Other members of the Biden administration have weighed in on Israel's progress and plan to defeat Hamas.

"We're seeing parts of Gaza that Israel has cleared of Hamas where Hamas is coming back including in the north, including in Khan Younis," US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in an interview with CBS's Margaret Brennan on Sunday.

If the Israelis hit Rafah with a tough offensive, he predicts that "they may go in and have some initial success, but potentially at an incredibly high cost to civilians." And any success they have, he said will likely be "one that is not durable, one that is not sustainable."

"And they will be left holding the bag on an enduring insurgency because a lot of armed Hamas will be left no matter what they do in Rafah," Blinken said. The alternative isn't much better though.

"If they leave and get out of Gaza, as we believe they need to do, then you're going to have a vacuum, and a vacuum that's likely to be filled by chaos, by anarchy, and ultimately by Hamas again," he said.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Monday that ultimately, Israel will make its own decisions on strategy and how it will end the war.

"With the question of a strategic endgame, I don't think that's really a question about American influence," he said. "That's a question about Israel's strategy and what Israel chooses to do."

• Donald Trump is on trial in NY in relation to a hush-money payment to a porn star.
• Despite his wife Melania Trump's absence, various GOP elites have shown their support in court.
• They include: Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Johnson, Rick Scott, J.D. Vance, Eric Trump and Lara Trump.

Former President Donald Trump has still not had the courtroom support of his wife Melania Trump at his New York trial on criminal charges related to a hush-money payment made to a porn star.

And though the former first lady has been a no-show since the trial began more than four weeks ago, a long roster of GOP elites and dignitaries have lined up — literally — to rally behind Trump in a chilly 15th-floor downtown Manhattan courtroom.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee had his largest posse yet on Tuesday, as his defense team readied to cross-examine his attorney-turned-nemesis Michael Cohen — the prosecution's star witness in the case.

Ex-GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, House Speaker Mike Johnson, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, Rep. Cory Mills of Florida, as well as Donald Trump's son, Eric Trump, and his wife and RNC cochair, Lara Trump, were among the Republican allies to join the former president at the courthouse Tuesday.

Donald Trump has welcomed all the support from his advocates who have flocked to the grimy criminal courthouse.

"I do have a lot of surrogates, and they are speaking very beautifully, and they come from all over Washington, and they're highly respected, and they think this is the greatest scam I've ever seen," Trump told reporters in the courtroom hallway Tuesday morning as his entourage stood several feet behind him.

Outside the courthouse, Johnson slammed the trial and Cohen, saying, "No one should believe a word he says today."

Johnson said prosecutors had Trump "tied up here in this ridiculous prosecution" as he is "soon to be officially the nominee of one of the major parties in our country."

"That is not about justice, it's all about politics, and everybody can see that," the house speaker said.

Eric Trump has been the only Trump kid to show up in court

So far, Eric Trump has been the only one of Donald Trump's children to attend his father's trial. The younger Trump has made a handful of courtroom appearances.

On Monday, while seated in the front row of the courtroom, he took the opportunity to live-tweet as Cohen was questioned by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger.

"I have never seen anything more rehearsed!" Eric Trump posted on the social media site X about Cohen's testimony.

With the courtroom packed on Tuesday, Eric Trump gave up his coveted front-row seat to Donalds.

A day earlier, when Cohen first took the witness stand Monday, Donald Trump had the courtroom support of other right-wing loyalists, including Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall.

"Does any reasonable, sensible person believe anything that Michael Cohen says? I don't think that they should," Vance told reporters outside the courthouse.

Florida Sen. Rick Scott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have also backed Trump in the courtroom.

"They might as well just convene the GOP convention here," MSNBC's Katie Phang, who was also there, quipped in a post on X on Tuesday.

Conservative media personalities, including Fox News host Jeanine Pirro and Andrew Guiliani, the son of Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, have made courtroom appearances as well.

High-profile left-leaning media figures, like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell, have graced the courtroom, too.

CNN's Anderson Cooper has also attended the trial.

Legal experts have told Business Insider that it's Melania Trump's presence at her husband's trial that could be the most "powerful." It remains to be seen if she'll show up.

The prosecution is expected to rest its case later this week.

Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office allege Donald Trump illegally disguised records reimbursing Cohen for a $130,000 hush-money payment made to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election.

The payment, prosecutors say, was to buy Daniels' silence over a one-time sexual encounter the porn star says she had with Donald Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel suite in 2006 during a celebrity golf tournament. Donald Trump has denied having sex with Daniels.

Prosecutors hope Cohen's testimony will bolster their argument that Donald Trump orchestrated the payment to Daniels as part of an illegal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.

"There was no crime," Donald Trump railed Tuesday as he spoke to reporters in the courtroom hallway. "Everybody is saying there's no crime. But I've been here for almost four weeks in an icebox — I call it the icebox — listening to a judge who's totally corrupt and conflicted."

• Google's big summer conference, Google IO, kicks off today at 1 p.m. ET.
• AI is expected to be a major theme.
• Business Insider will be in attendance and covering the biggest announcements — follow along below.

Google is minutes away from revealing what it's been quietly working on.

CEO Sundar Pichai is expected to take the stage on Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET to kick off Google IO, the company's annual developer conference.

Google is expected to show off the latest on its AI models — with the company teasing some sort of virtual assistant on social media — along with updates to its search product and Android 15, the newest version of its popular mobile operating system.

The keynote will be a chance for Google to respond after its rival, OpenAI, seemingly tried to upstage the company with an event of its own the day before, where it showed off a new flagship model, GPT-4o, and the improvements it brings to ChatGPT.

We might also get an update on Google's Gemini AI image generator after a debacle in which it spat out inaccurate images of historical people when prompted. Google's CEO said the company "got it wrong," and Google turned off Gemini's ability to generate images of people after the backlash while it worked to fix the issue.

Business Insider will be in attendance at Google IO and covering the biggest announcements when the event kicks off — keep scrolling for the latest.

Imagery of battlefields and violence have permeated the news cycle as armed conflicts rage around the globe, particularly in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Rarely, however, do we see inside the multibillion-dollar industry behind the weapons that cause its destruction.

In his new book, "Nothing Personal: The Back Office of War," photographer Nikita Teryoshin lifts the veil on the global arms trade, capturing defense exhibitions worldwide.

"These [defense] fairs are the opposite of what you imagine when you think of arms and war," Teryoshin said in an interview with Business Insider.

Through the colorful, bright, yet uncanny depictions of the defense industry, "Nothing Personal" portrays a world that is the complete opposite of the battlefield it profits from, highlighting the sobering reality of war as a business and economic incentive.

From 2016 to 2023, Teryoshin documented defense fairs in 14 countries, including the United States, China, France, Abu Dhabi, and Russia. Closed to the public, his series offers a rare inside look into the lucrative global arms industry.

Teryoshin's photos depict the showy display of tanks, drones, missiles, air shows, and war shows at various defense exhibitions. He described the fairs as "an oversized playground for adults with wine, finger food, and shiny weapons."

"Dead bodies here are mannequins or pixels on screens of a huge number of simulators," he wrote in his book. "Bazookas and machine guns are plugged into flatscreens and war action is staged in an artificial environment in front of a tribune full of high-ranked guests, ministers, heads of state, generals, and traders."

Teryoshin's images are striking — a bright flash in each image tying together the bizarre display of weapons with abstracted figures of anonymous delegates. A colorful array of canapés and a bright floral dress are set in a scene with a sleek gray model of a naval gun looming in the background.

"I think it's the key visuals in the project where you see food and waitress serving wine and juice, and in the background, you see all these war machines," Teryoshin said.

In 2019, Teryoshin attended the International Defense Exhibition & Conference in Abu Dhabi, where he said guests were enjoying a cake decorated with a mini tank, jet fighters, and missiles.

"Special guests and generals started to eat the cake with little forks out from the pallet directly, and then I thought it looked like a real battlefield," Teryoshin said. "There was an explosion and a tank and a plane and jet fighters were flying little toys that were flying around this explosion, and it was totally weird."

He added: "The alliance of UAE and Saudi Arabia were flying strikes against the Houthis and bombing hospitals, schools, and houses of normal people, and at the same time, 1,000 kilometers away, they are eating this cake with an explosion."

With elements of dark humor and absurdity in every image, the photographer's distinctive visual style emphasizes the jarring juxtaposition of the luxury and celebration at defense fairs and the destructive weaponry and firearms the industry produces.

Large, metallic-gray missiles frame a half-empty coffee mug sitting on the edge of a display table. The camera's flash casts imposing shadows of the missiles around the mug — the everyday object normalizing the display of dangerous weaponry.

Teryoshin alluded to the look of crime scene photography when discussing the use of flash in his series. The cold, harsh flash highlights the environment's ominousity through a pointedly cynical perspective.

After the construction and the oil and gas sectors, the global arms trade is one of the most corruption-prone sectors in the world, according to Transparency International. By contrast, the international trade of bananas is more tightly regulated than the arms trade, according to the introductory note of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.

With the weaponry in the forefront, the fairgoers in the series remain anonymous — the figures of traders and politicians are all faceless and undetectable.

"I deliberately don't show you the faces of the businessmen," Teryoshin said in his artist statement. "It is not my intention to fix everything upon a certain person."

The anonymity of the figures adds mystery to each photograph and portrays the photographer's intention of showcasing the global arms industry as a monolith.

"I also didn't want to blame any special country, manufacturer, or person but to show it just as a phenomenon," he said.

Here, war is simply a universal means of commerce — the convention space secluded from the real terror of conflict.

Military spending worldwide amounted to $2.44 trillion in 2023. In the US, it was estimated that the average taxpayer contributed $5,109 to the US military and its support systems in 2023. While the average American contributes thousands of dollars to the military, the general public is not privy to the inner workings of war profiteering — something Teryoshin hopes to change through his photography.

Teryoshin shows the irony behind arms company slogans, such as "70 years defending peace" by Kalashnikov Group or "Engineering a better tomorrow" by Lockheed Martin, by showing viewers the opposite of a violent and terrifying battlefield: the people in business attire who profit from window shopping for war machines with champagne in hand.

• I took a tour of Long Island's Oheka Castle, an hour west of Manhattan.
• It's the second-largest private home in the US and was built in 1919.
• It's now a residence, hotel, restaurant, and events venue.

If you've ever read or seen "The Great Gatsby," you know 1920s New York was home to extravagant mansions with owners who hosted lavish parties.

One of those owners was financier Otto Hermann Kahn, who built Oheka Castle — named after its owner (Oh-He-Ka) — on Long Island in 1919.

Kahn's wife used to call the home "Otto's zoo," and that seemed to be an accurate description. A-listers of the time used to party at the 109,000-square-foot home, with Kahn as a Gatsby-like figure entertaining all his guests.

But Oheka's journey didn't end there. After Kahn's death in 1934, the property changed hands numerous times until it was abandoned in the '80s. Fires, vandalism, and theft devastated it.

According to Oheka Castle, land developer Gary Melius then purchased the estate and spent $40 million restoring it to its former glory.

Today, it's the second-largest private home in the US, behind only Biltmore House in North Carolina. It's a popular venue for weddings, a restaurant, and a hotel, and has been featured in movies, TV shows, and music videos. Taylor Swift even filmed the "Blank Space" video there.

You can also tour the grounds for $30.

I took the tour and was astonished by the beauty of Oheka Castle. Here's what it was like to visit.

Oheka Castle was built in 1919 by German-American financier Otto Hermann Kahn.

He paid approximately $11 million, or over $158 million in today's currency, for 443 acres of land in West Hills, New York.

Oheka Castle has been through a lot in its 100-plus years of history, and for anyone who wants to learn more, there are tours offered twice daily.

So, I decided to visit. All I knew about Oheka was that Kevin Jonas got married there and Taylor Swift filmed the "Blank Space" music video there.

But Oheka has a rich history. I learned all about it on a beautiful April afternoon.

When you drive to the entryway, it's a bit intimidating. There's someone working the gate who must let you in.

Then comes a long driveway. I felt like I was going back in time to the Gilded Age.

My first look at the main house was astounding — and yes, I mean house. Oheka Castle is the second-largest private residence in the US.

It's also on the National Register of Historic Places. It was added in September 2004.

When Kahn built this house, he had three requirements: He wanted to be high up, he wanted a view of the water, and he needed the house to be fireproof.

His previous house in New Jersey had burned down in a fire. Oheka, in contrast, is built entirely out of stone.

I went inside and waited in front of a grand staircase with the rest of my group for our tour to begin.

When it began, we saw photos of what the house looked like before it was restored by its current owner. We'd learn more about this later.

The first room we entered was this beautiful entryway with a mural of the sky on the ceiling.

The house itself is 109,000 square feet and has 127 rooms.

Many of the rooms are dedicated to showing off the home's history, like the Chaplin Room.

Charlie Chaplin was just one of the many '20s A-listers who hung out at Oheka. This photo shows Chaplin (right) with Kahn (center) and actor Douglas Fairbanks (left).

In fact, according to my tour guide, Jay Gatsby's wild parties in "The Great Gatsby" were inspired by what was going down at Oheka in the '20s.

This was Kahn's wife Adelaide's favorite room. Adelaide wasn't as big of an entertainer as her husband, but this sunny room was perfect for guests.

This ballroom is the only room that's not original to Kahn's time inside Oheka today.

But as you can see from the ballroom's windows, Oheka met Kahn's requirement for a view of the water. He used to dock his yacht there.

Kahn, who was Jewish, also built a golf course on his property — country clubs at the time wouldn't admit Jewish people or allow them to play.

After Kahn's death in 1934, the property was shuffled between owners. From 1948 to 1979, it was the Eastern Military Academy.

During those days, what is now the breakfast room was used as a gym.

From that room, we made our way to this huge library.

A portrait of Kahn hung above the fireplace.

Our final stop on the first floor was this room, which also houses a bar. Press clippings about Oheka adorned the walls.

Among the displayed articles was Danielle and Kevin Jonas' wedding spread in People. They got married at the estate in 2009.

Then we went upstairs to check out the hotel and bridal suite.

The bridal suite, which is on the fourth floor, opens with this mural-covered entryway.

A beautiful open room with windows allows wedding parties to take in the view of Oheka's well-manicured grounds.

The gardens at Oheka are breathtaking from above.

Here's the main bedroom of the bridal suite.

The primary bathroom has a bathtub and shower.

Then it was time to check out the gardens — and to learn what happened to Oheka.

When the Eastern Military Academy went bankrupt and vacated its premises in 1979, Oheka was left abandoned.

Residents who lived nearby were concerned about vandalism. One neighbor even took this statue for safekeeping and returned it when Oheka was restored in the '80s.

Land developer Gary Melius purchased Oheka in 1984 and spent $40 million restoring it to its former glory.

The gardens were originally designed by the Olmsted Brothers, best known for helping with Central Park.

Melius used those original sketches to restore Oheka.

These statues were tracked down at an auction and are thought to date back to the Renaissance.

Now, it's a beautiful wedding venue, hotel, restaurant, and home — Melius keeps an apartment on the third floor.

As I left the grounds, I got one more look at the restaurant and its courtyard.

I would highly recommend taking a tour of Oheka. As I viewed its stunning surroundings and learned about its unique history, I felt like I was traveling back in time.