A few months ago, my doctor showed off an AI transcription tool he used to record and summarize his patient meetings. In my case, the summary was fine, but researchers cited by ABC News have found that’s not always the case with OpenAI’s Whisper, which powers a tool many hospitals use — sometimes it just makes things up entirely.

Whisper is used by a company called Nabla for a medical transcription tool that it estimates has transcribed 7 million medical conversations, according to ABC News. More than 30,000 clinicians and 40 health systems use it, the outlet writes. Nabla is reportedly aware that Whisper can hallucinate, and is “addressing the problem.”

A group of researchers from Cornell University, the University of Washington, and others found in a study that Whisper hallucinated in about 1 percent of transcriptions, making up entire sentences with sometimes violent sentiments or nonsensical phrases during silences in recordings. The researchers, who gathered audio samples from TalkBank’s AphasiaBank as part of the study, note silence is particularly common when someone with a language disorder called aphasia is speaking.

One of the researchers, Allison Koenecke of Cornel University, posted examples like the one below in a thread about the study.

The researchers found that hallucinations also included invented medical conditions or phrases you might expect from a YouTube video, such as “Thank you for watching!” (OpenAI reportedly used to transcribe over a million hours of YouTube videos to train GPT-4.)

The study was presented in June at the Association for Computing Machinery FAccT conference in Brazil. It’s not clear if it has been peer-reviewed.

OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson emailed a statement to The Verge:

We take this issue seriously and are continually working to improve, including reducing hallucinations. For Whisper use on our API platform, our usage policies prohibit use in certain high-stakes decision-making contexts, and our model card for open-source use includes recommendations against use in high-risk domains. We thank researchers for sharing their findings.

Are you tired of forgetting to send important messages at the right time?

IOS 18 brings a game-changing feature to the Messages app — the ability to schedule text messages for future delivery. 

This long-awaited addition allows you to compose messages in advance and set them to send at a specific time, ensuring you never miss an important reminder or forget to wish someone a happy birthday. Your recipient can use any device, and they won’t be aware that the message was scheduled.

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Ensure your device is updated with iOS 18

Before diving into this new feature in iOS 18, it’s essential to ensure that your device is updated to the latest operating system.

Check your current iOS version:

• Open the Settings app on your device.
• Tap General.
• Tap About. Here, you’ll see the version number next to Software Version.

Update to iOS 18:

• Go to Settings.
• Tap General.
• Tap Software Update.
• If iOS 18 is available, tap Download and Install.
• Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the update.

Steps to update to iOS 18 on iPhone. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

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How to use Send Later in Messages

Using the new Send Later feature is straightforward:

• Open the Messages app.
• Start a new conversation or select an existing one.
• Type your message as usual.
• Instead of sending immediately, tap the plus (+) sign next to the text box.
• Select Send Later from the menu (you may need to tap “More” first).
• Choose the date and time you want the message to be sent.
• Tap the send button, which is the blue up arrow, to schedule your message.
• Your scheduled message will appear in the conversation with a dashed outline, and the scheduled send time will be displayed above it.

Steps to use Send Later in iOS 18 on iPhone. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Note: Scheduled messages are encrypted and stored on Apple servers only until they are sent. Once a message is sent, it is removed from Apple servers, the message balloon becomes a solid color, and the dashed line disappears.

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Change the time to send a message

You can reschedule a message until its delivery time.

• Go to the Messages app on your iPhone.
• Go to the conversation with the message you want to reschedule.
• Tap Edit beside the date (above your scheduled message), then do any of the following:
• If you want to reschedule it, tap Edit Time, choose a new time and then tap away from the schedule to commit to the new time.
• If you want to send it immediately, tap Send Message.

Steps to change the time to send a message in iOS 18 on iPhone. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

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Edit a scheduled message

You can edit a scheduled message until its delivery time.

• Go to the Messages app on your iPhone.
• Go to the conversation with the scheduled message you want to edit.
• Touch and hold the message bubble, then tap Edit.
• Make any changes, then tap the checkmark in the blue circle to resend with edits or the X in the grey circle to revert.

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Steps to edit a scheduled message in iOS 18 on iPhone. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Delete a scheduled message

When you delete a message before its scheduled time, it’s canceled and not delivered to the recipient.

• Go to the Messages app on your iPhone.
• Go to the conversation with the scheduled message you want to delete.
• Touch and hold the message you want to cancel, then tap Delete.

Steps to delete a scheduled message in iOS 18 on iPhone. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Limitations to keep in mind

While Send Later is a great new feature, there are some limitations to be aware of:

• Messages can only be scheduled up to two weeks in advance. However, this limit might change with future iOS updates.
• The feature is only available for iMessage conversations (blue bubbles), not for SMS texts to non-iPhone users (green bubbles).
• Your iPhone needs to be online for scheduled messages to be sent. If your device is offline at the scheduled time, the message will be sent once it reconnects to the internet.

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Kurt’s key takeaways

The Send Later feature in iOS 18 is a welcome addition that brings more flexibility and convenience to iPhone messaging. While it has some limitations, particularly its restriction to iMessage conversations, it’s a powerful tool for managing your communications. Whether you’re remembering birthdays, sending timely reminders or communicating across time zones, Send Later can help you stay on top of your messaging game. As Apple continues to refine this feature, we can hope to see expanded functionality in future updates.

Can you share a specific situation where the Send Later feature would have been helpful for you? Let us know by writing us at Cyberguy.com/Contact

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Ever wondered why some of your Instagram videos tend to look blurry, while others are crisp and sharp? It’s because, on Instagram, the quality of your video apparently depends on how many views it’s getting. That’s according to a video AMA from Instagram head Adam Mosseri, in which he explained why some videos are lower-quality than others.

Here’s part of Mosseri’s explanation, from the video, which was reposted by a Threads user today:

In general, we want to show the highest-quality video we can … But if something isn’t watched for a long time — because the vast majority of views are in the beginning — we will move to a lower quality video. And then if it’s watched again a lot then we’ll re-render the higher quality video.

He continues, adding that the platform does this in order to “show people the highest-quality content we can.”

Instagram devotes more resources to videos from “creators who drive more views,” Mosseri wrote later in response to the Threads post containing the clip.

The shift in quality “isn’t huge,” Mosseri said in response to another Threads user, who’d asked if that approach disadvantaged smaller creators. That’s “the right concern,” he told them, but said people interact with videos based on its content, not its quality.

That’s consistent with how Meta has described its approach before. In 2021, the company projected it wouldn’t be able to keep up with the increasing number of videos uploaded to the platform. (Meta estimated last year that it served 4 billion video streams per day on Facebook.)

Meta wrote in a blog that in order to conserve computing resources for the relatively few, most watched videos, it gives fresh uploads the fastest, most basic encoding. After a video “gets sufficiently high watch time,” it receives a more robust encoding pass. Once it gets popular enough, Meta applies its most advanced (read: slowest, most computationally costly) processing to the video. The result, of course, is that the most popular creators tend to have the best-looking videos.