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Artificial intelligence is changing the way we live in ways you may not even realize. Maybe you don't let AI write your e-mail replies, but you might be surprised by how many products use AI. From searching Google to find the best Thai restaurant to checking your fitness tracker for sleep data, AI isn't some far-off, futuristic technology — it's all around us.

One of the most beneficial ways to harness the intelligence of artificial intelligence is with smart-home commands. If you regularly use AI chatbots or smart home gadgets that accept voice commands, then you may already be doing this.

There are tons of smart-home-centric commands that can make your life easier. Many of them go much deeper than simply letting AI add frozen peas to your shopping list when you use the last of the bag.

So, to help you smarten up your smart home, here are some of the best ways to integrate AI assistant commands into your everyday life.

Get the right lighting

"Activate my vacation lighting schedule."

We're done with harsh overhead lighting. One of the most helpful uses for AI in your home comes from setting a lighting schedule. With smart plugs, smart lamps, smart bulbs, and smart wall light switches, you can create your own custom lighting setups and schedules.

Once you've connected your lights to your smart assistant, you'll be able to set schedules and use voice commands to turn lights on and off. That's especially useful for turning on the lights when you arrive home at night or for creating the illusion that someone is home when you're away on vacation.

Some devices even go an extra step and include an occupancy detector. This extra feature gives you the ability to turn lights on automatically when someone enters a room and then turn off once the space is unoccupied.

Set ideal wake-up and nighttime schedules

"Start my night-time routine."

We all know sleep is important, and we're repeatedly told that going to bed and waking up on a consistent schedule is useful. In theory, that sounds simple, but in practice, it's a big ask, especially when your smartphone is constantly begging for attention. Instead of scrolling mindlessly before bedtime, use technology to create a better wind-down routine.

At night, your smart home assistant can dim the lights, play calming music, and drop the temp before bed. Come morning, turn on the lights, raise the blinds, and get some music going. For extra credit, use a smart sunrise alarm clock to help wake up naturally.

Now, when it's time to sleep, simply ask your assistant to start your nighttime routine.

Ditch the paid language app

"Talk to me in Spanish."

The greatest polyglots on Earth can't compete with AI's ability to speak in almost any language. Instead of feeling guilty every time you ignore the notifications from your language app, make language learning an everyday routine with AI.

Modern smart assistants are fluent in many languages and can help you brush up on your vocabulary at any time. You can even challenge yourself by setting the default language of your smart home devices into the language you're learning. It's the next best thing to language immersion.

Get the kids on task

"Remind the kids to do their homework."

Life with kids is busy. Some of the most stressful moments come when getting ready in the morning, but AI is happy to lend a hand. With a smart speaker, parents can record messages to kids that play at a designated time each day. Let them know it's time to get out of bed, get dressed for school, make their beds, and come to the kitchen for breakfast.

Make story time better than ever

"Tell me a funny story about a lost kangaroo."

Smart assistants with AI features are usually powered by large-language models. And LLMs are excellent wordsmiths. Put that talent to good use by having it spin up a bedtime story just for your kids. You can even tailor the story to a specific reading level. Tomorrow night, you can ask your AI storyteller to pick up right where you left off.

Set the dinner menu

"Plan a dinner menu with what's left in the fridge."

It's Thursday night, and no one has been to the store since last weekend. Ingredients are running thin, and you're not in the mood to eat pasta with a jar of sauce. Instead, ask AI to create a dinner menu based on the ingredients you currently have at home.

If you don't have a smart refrigerator, simply read off a list of your ingredients to your phone or smart speaker and let the AI come up with the dinner plan. Of course, you can also get AI to add items to your shopping list and set yourself a reminder to stop by the store on the way home from work tomorrow night.

Keep your smart home safe

"Who's at the front door?"

By now, most of us have smart home safety integrations in place. Smart doorbells, security cameras, floodlights, and smart locks help us stay safe. Many of these devices will send you notifications when something unexpected happens, whether a stranger is at the front door, a loud noise has been detected, or a family of raccoons has taken an interest in your garbage cans.

Go old-school with a home intercom system

"Tell the kids to come inside at 5 p.m."

Growing up, did any of your friends' parents have an intercom system in their houses? Now, you don't have to be wealthy or live in a sprawling estate to install an intercom in your home.

So long as you have a smart speaker in each room and a video doorbell or camera on the front porch, you'll be able to make house-wide announcements. This'll be great for reminding kids it's time to come inside without hitting pause on dinner prep.

Abide by quiet hours

"Activate quiet time protocol every night at 10:55 p.m."

If you live in an apartment, dorm, or a duplex, you probably have set quiet hours. Ignoring these can come with angry neighbors or warnings from the landlord. But it's not always easy on Saturday night when belting out Britney Spears karaoke songs to keep track of the time. Instead of getting a knock on your door at 11 p.m., set your speaker or the TV to automatically lower the volume at a set time. Your party will automatically get the memo that it's time to wind down.

Ditch the doldrums

"Turn on my happy routine."

For many of us, it's been a long, cold winter. Sometimes, changing your physical environment can help with regaining some feel-good vibes. Fortunately, you can have your AI assistant of choice kick in with a "feel good" mode, turning on a pre-made playlist of joyful tunes, turning on mood lighting, or playing your favorite sitcom episodes on the TV. A combination of smart plugs, lights, and gadgets could help change the vibe.

Find a misplaced phone

"Help me find my phone!"

Is your phone permanently on silent mode? Same. Of course, this habit comes with a really obvious downside — when you misplace your phone, you can't just call it and follow the ringtone. Instead of going into panic mode, AI can help find a phone that's likely hiding in a pile of blankets.

Some smart assistants can activate a "Find My Phone" function to help with this exact emergency. Keep in mind you'll need to enable this skill before you lose your phone.

Keep a comfortable temperature

"Help me lower my energy bill."

One of the most useful smart home capabilities? Upgrading to a smart thermostat. These smart gadgets can learn your ideal temperature preferences and set schedules throughout the day that keep you comfortable and save energy.

Anyone who has considered buying a smart home gadget for the first time has probably wondered how it all works. On the surface, it’s actually pretty easy to explain. Your smart gadget connects to something like your Wi-Fi or an in-home hub, and then you can control it using your smartphone, smart display, or your smart speaker. 

It goes a bit deeper than that, but with the proliferation of things like Matter, the systems are getting smarter and simpler for consumers to understand. In the dark ages of consumer smart home tech, there was less standardization, so you had to shop around for everything to ensure that it worked with the other smart home tech you owned. You still have to do this today, but most smart home brands support the major smart home platforms like Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Apple HomeKit. 

So, if you’re buying your first bits of smart home tech and want a quick primer about how it all works, you’ve come to the right place. Every new industry comes with its own lingo, so it can be a little overwhelming if you’ve never had to deal with them before, but it’s actually not as complicated as it sounds.

What is the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things is often talked about hand-in-hand with smart home tech, but they are not the same thing. Internet of Things (often shortened to IoT) is a network of physical devices that are all connected to the Internet at all times so that they can talk to one another to perform tasks. 

For example, dumb thermostats are all manual, and some allow you to do basic things like set schedules at most. Smart thermostats add to that functionality by letting you set temperatures even when you’re not home, remind you to change your furnace filter, and some, like Google’s Nest Thermostat, have automations built-in that adjust temperatures based on whether or not you’re home, the time of day, and other factors. 

The other half of the Internet of Things is that it allows devices to talk to one another since they are always connected to the Internet, and therefore, one another. Let’s say you own a car with Alexa built-in, and you have a smart thermostat along with some smart lighting. You can leave work, tell Alexa in your car to turn on some lights and the air conditioner at your house, and it’ll all get done before you get home.

In another example, Eufy makes video doorbells that, like most, have motion sensors in them that can detect when someone is at your door. You can also buy additional motion sensors and put them in your driveway. When the motion sensor is tripped, it tells the doorbell, and the doorbell starts recording and sends you an alert to let you know that something is outside. 

In both examples, every device is connected to the Internet, and therefore, one another. This lets them talk to one another to perform tasks, collect and share data, and be in network with one another. That “network of devices” is the “Internet of Things.”

So how does Matter fit in?

If you’re going to have a network of devices (or an Internet of Things), then they need to be able to talk to each other, and that’s where Matter comes in. Matter is a smart home standard that hardware makers can bake into their tech that automatically makes them compatible with one another and with the major smart home platforms like Alexa, Apple HomeKit, and Google Home, all of which are Matter certified. 

Another way to think of it is like video streaming. In today’s world, virtually all streaming services use H.264 (or H.265) for their video streams, including Hulu, Disney+, and Netflix. So, if a streaming device wants to support all of the streaming services, they simply need to support H.264, and boom, they can stream just about everything. In this case, Matter is like H.264

Having a standard like Matter is extremely important because it gives all the smart home tech an easy way to talk to one another that ensures compatibility, easy setup, and reliable performance. That sounds like an advertisement, but in this case, it’s the truth. In the dark ages of smart home tech, you had to carefully read the box, watch reviews, and surf Reddit to make sure that any given product worked with any given platform. Now, all you have to do is look for the Matter symbol on the box, and you’re done.

What does Thread mean and how does it work with Matter?

I know, there are more words to learn, but I promise it’s not that bad. So, we have smart devices, that all talk to each other, and Matter, the software they all run so that they're compatible with one another. The last thing to worry about is the network over which they communicate.

Depending on the technology, this may simply be your Wi-Fi connection at home. That is how my Ecobee smart thermostat does things, and many smart home devices simply use your home’s Wi-Fi. However, when scaled up, it can get kind of crowded, which requires more power and more bandwidth. Thus, another solution needs to exist to help scale things up without bogging down your home Internet. Plus, since these things control sensitive systems inside your home, a boost of security never hurts.

That is where Thread comes in. It’s a low-powered, energy-efficient, more secure way for smart home devices to talk to each other. A Thread-compatible hub can control many Thread-compatible smart home devices over its own network, leaving your Wi-Fi free and clear to binge watch some TV or play video games.

In practice, anyone who’s used a Philips Hue product knows what this is like. Philips Hue lights connect to a Philips Hue hub, which then connects to your home network. The hub can manage dozens of lights, but it only connects to your home Internet once. You use your smartphone to connect to the hub, which then acts as a bridge to all of your lights, letting you control each light separately without connecting each light individually to your home network.

Imagine a Philips Hue hub, but instead of just lights, it also connected to your smart thermostat, video doorbell, motion sensors, and smart appliances, allowing them all to talk to each other, while only needing to connect to your home Wi-Fi with a single, easily managed connection. That’s how Thread works.

Let’s put it all together

Since Thread and Matter are two different things, they can exist without each other. However, products that are built to support both are referred to as Matter over Thread, where Matter is the software controlling everything, and Thread is the network protocol that allows them all to talk.

The combination of these two technologies is already being supported by big players like Google, Amazon, and Apple. There are also already over 140 products on the market that support it right now with more undoubtedly on the way.

That isn’t to say that there’s no competition. Zigbee was the big dog before Thread came out, and major brands like Philips Hue still use Zigbee to this day for some of their older hubs and lights. That’s changing as Philips Hue has already committed to supporting Matter over Thread anyway, but products that don’t use Matter or Thread still exist on the market.

Ultimately, the smart home ecosystem is finally adopting some widespread standards, but as is the case for these sorts of things, it’ll still be a few years before things really start to smooth out. In the meantime, should you want to buy smart home tech, anything with Matter will help futureproof your purchase, and if you can get something with Matter over Thread, that’s all the better.

Agentic AI is poised to take massive leaps in 2026. When agentic AI buzz grew in the wake of OpenAI's rise, many of the services required heavy input to deliver results to users. But with the advent of tools like OpenClaw and the continuing maturation of AI-powered services, AI that can act on your behalf is pushing agentic AI to new levels of functionality for users.

While OpenClaw's utility is unmatched by most AI agents, there are will plenty you can make use of right now. Here's a look at how they can help you with your daily life.

AI agents can help with your shopping

A major use-case for agentic AI is in researching and buying products. That makes sense — more involvement in e-commerce can only mean more money towards the builder of the agent. To be clear, we aren't quite at the fully human-free version of shopping that's likely to become more common soon. However, if you still want to keep an eye on the shopping process while cutting down on the steps you actually need to take, some of the currently available AI agents might be helpful.

Instead of forcing users to navigate individual retailer checkouts, companies are building agents that handle the purchasing logistics for you directly from the research phase. For example, Google has a "Buy for Me" feature that works on top of its existing price-tracking tools. Once you set your payment methods and shipping addresses, the agent will make the purchase directly on the retailer's website itself. Similarly, search-first platforms are integrating native checkouts. Perplexity features an "Instant Buy" tool that allows you to research and buy a product without ever leaving its interface. You simply fill out your details the first time, and the platform stores your information so the AI can manually make future purchases on your behalf.

How agentic AI can increase work productivity

Workspace agents are designed as autonomous administrators for daily tasks and scheduling. These systems can be configured to research, write, and organize projects entirely in the background. ClickUp, for example, offers workspace agents it calls Super Agents, that operate with little to no manual triggering from the user. Notion takes a similar approach by embedding AI directly into existing workflows, letting users select specific models for different tasks and set up multiple custom agents configured for distinct administrative functions — although Notion’s Custom Agents are still rolling out.

Specialized agents are also handling calendar management through dynamic automation. Platforms like Reclaim.ai analyze a user’s task list, recurring habits, and existing commitments to automatically block out focus time. As the week progresses, the agent enforces travel buffers and resolves meeting conflicts in real time, removing the need for manual schedule adjustments.

Agentic AI is here to help with more complex demands

Agentic AI is being applied to local hardware and dedicated code editors too. In fact, software development is an industry that has heavily adopted AI. 

Some open-source agents operate directly on user machines rather than through cloud-based web interfaces. For example, OpenClaw is a local agent that plugs into standard messaging platforms like Telegram and Discord. It runs continuously, connects to external language models via API, and executes tasks using direct access to local files and system commands. Because it often requires root-level execution privileges to fully function, it has some pretty huge cybersecurity risks though. You’ll probably want to contain these tools on secondary machines with limited data access to avoid issues.

Other systems focus on orchestrating multiple specialized agents. Tools like Microsoft's AutoGen use event-driven architectures that allow distinct agent personas to communicate, share memory, and execute code in isolated environments. Setting these up requires programming knowledge though, so it’s not a completely code-free tool. Without proper configuration, interacting agents can fall into conversational loops, failing to complete their objectives while continuing to consume API credits.

In software development, agents are increasingly integrated directly into the development environment. Code editors like Windsurf feature embedded agents that analyze the codebase, manage dependencies, and run code directly in the terminal to fix errors in real time. While these platforms offer access to advanced reasoning models and competitive subscription tiers for professional use, they’re not pure "no-code" solutions. Operating them effectively requires a foundational understanding of programming and software architecture.

Personal finance agents can help you hold onto your cash

The personal finance software space has moved away from static budgeting dashboards into proactive systems that actively manage your money and fight for cost savings on your behalf.

Platforms like Cleo, for example, have pushed the AI financial assistant from passive analysis into active intervention. With its Autopilot feature, the system can detect unusual spending, shifts in income, or other changes. When it finds an issue, it can automatically move money into savings to protect it, issue cash advances to prevent overdraft fees, and dynamically adjust your long-term financial roadmap — all without requiring a manual prompt.

Other platforms take a strictly analytical approach. Monarch Money has an integrated AI assistant that lets you query deep, multi-year transaction histories using natural language. You can ask it to surface spending patterns, optimize tax strategies, explain ETFs, or project net worth trajectories. Unlike Cleo, Monarch operates entirely as an advisor — it will analyze the data, but it won't autonomously move money or make trades on your behalf.

It's important to note that many AI assistants require access to sensitive information as part of their functions. Please ensure you understand and are comfortable with the data access requirements and data protection efforts of any of these services before trying them.

Smart home agents can improve your comfort

AI is playing a big role in the smart home too. Many smart home ecosystems are baking AI features in, allowing you to create automations and control devices using natural language.

At the high end, the focus is on dedicated hardware processors and localized microphones that serve as a central nervous system for complex setups. Systems like Josh.ai, for example, are installed exclusively by professional integrators and can support up to 500 controllable devices spanning AV, HVAC, and lighting. The main appeal here is privacy, since the processing all runs locally, but the downside is the cost. It definitely isn't a DIY solution.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are local smart home frameworks that require more technical knowledge but offer absolute control. Platforms like Home Assistant have improved their AI features immensely over the last year, letting users connect their homes to local large language models (like Ollama) or plug in API keys for cloud models. Paired with dedicated voice hardware, the AI can execute highly specific spatial commands, recognizing exactly which room you're in and adjusting only the relevant devices. While the initial setup is much more hands-on than mainstream alternatives, the ability to avoid corporate ecosystems altogether makes this approach a top choice for privacy-conscious users.

TL;DR: A wide range of AI courses are available to take for free on Udemy.

The world of AI is in a constant state of flux. It can feel disorientating, but there are steps you can take to feel more grounded in these shifting sands.

The good news is that there are a number of online courses you can take that dive into chatbots, AI agents, and machine learning. And better yet, a number of the best online AI courses are totally free to take on Udemy. We recommend taking some time to properly check out all the options, but to get you started, we've lined up a selection of standout courses on AI:

• 2026 AI Crash Course: Unlock the Power of AI

• A Gentle Introduction to Generative AI

• AI Art Generation Guide: Create AI Images For Free

• AI for Beginners: Learn The Basics of ChatGPT

• AI for Business and Personal Productivity: A Practical Guide

• AI for Dummies: Work Less, Earn More

• AI for Students: Boost Learning & Research with Gen AI

• AI Fundamentals: From Basics to Generative AI

• AI in Agriculture: Practical Introductory Course

• Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare

• Become an AI-Powered Engineer: Cursor, the AI-First IDE

• ChatGPT 5 and AI Agents in 60 Minutes

• ChatGPT Prompt Engineering

• ChatGPT, Midjourney, Firefly, Bard, DALL-E, AI Crash Course

• How Smart People Use AI to Think, Lead, and Grow

• Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

• Master Generative AI: GPT, LLMs, Agents, and Use Cases

• Master Generative AI for Developer Productivity With Pieces

• Prompt Engineering Mastery

• Training AI with Human Data, Explained for Annotators

• Weavy AI Beginner Course: Creative AI Workflow

• Worldbuilding AI Futures

So where's the catch? These free online courses don't include certificates of completion or direct instructor messaging, but that's it. You still get unrestricted access to all the video content and you can learn at a pace that suits you. There's literally nothing stopping you from enrolling today.

Find the best free AI courses on Udemy.

If you've ever put a job listing up and watched your inbox explode with hundreds of applications before you've even finished your coffee, you're probably already looking for ways to use new tools to help automate the process.

AI tools are stepping into that gap. There's now a series of platforms designed to help with practically every phase of hiring, starting from that initial resume screen and going all the way through to documenting interviews after they happen. None of these tools are flawless, and you should not hand over your hiring decisions to an algorithm entirely, but when you use them thoughtfully, they can claw back a surprising amount of time. They might even help you find strong candidates who would have slipped through the cracks. Here's where they actually make a difference.

Screening resumes and applications

The most obvious place to bring AI into hiring is right at the start of hiring — going through applications. Resume parsing and ranking tools pull in applications, extract the relevant details, and score candidates against whatever job description you've defined. Recruiterflow, X0PA AI, and Eightfold.ai all have offerings in this space, and while they each take a somewhat different angle on how they surface top candidates, the general idea is the same.

What actually makes the good ones stand out from a basic keyword filter comes down to semantic matching. Traditional keyword matching looks for exact terms — so if your listing mentions "project management" but a candidate's resume talks about "led cross-functional initiatives," a straight keyword search might pass on them entirely. Semantic matching brings in contextual understanding, picking up on relevant qualifications even when the wording doesn't match up perfectly. 

The benefit is speed and scale. When a tool can rank 500 applications in minutes, recruiters can redirect their energy toward candidates who genuinely deserve a deeper look instead of spending hours skimming through resumes. 

It's worth noting that these tools can absolutely miss qualified people whose backgrounds don't fit the typical mold. The more a tool depends on specific terminology boundaries, even with semantic matching in the mix, the higher the risk of false negatives. 

Analyze video interviews

AI-powered video interview platforms push things further by actually evaluating how candidates come across on camera. These tools analyze recorded or live video interviews, looking at things like facial expressions, vocal tone, what candidates actually say, and how well they communicate overall — then they output structured scores based on all of it.

HireVue is the biggest name here and has basically become the default for large employers running this kind of evaluation. It handles both recorded and live formats and generates AI-driven assessments that hiring teams can layer in alongside their own impressions. Insyder is another one, but it uses conversational AI to simulate a natural back-and-forth with candidates, essentially running 20-to-30-minute interviews at scale with behavioral science frameworks baked into the analysis. 

This is also where the ethical concerns hit hardest, though. Facial recognition and microexpression analysis have drawn serious scrutiny for potential bias against certain demographics. Researchers have raised legitimate questions about whether AI can reliably read facial cues across different cultural backgrounds, skin tones, and physical conditions. HireVue actually stopped analyzing facial expressions back in 2021 after sustained pushback, but the broader landscape of video analysis tools still varies wildly in how they handle these signals. If you're looking at a video analysis platform, it's worth looking at what measurements have been validated across diverse populations.

Test job skills

Instead of trying to guess what a candidate can do based on what's on their resume, skills-based assessment platforms just measure it directly. There are a number of AI-based platforms that can help with this.

TestGorilla has a wide library of skill tests that cover everything from language proficiency to software knowledge, which makes it a pretty solid all-around option. CodeSignal zeroes in on technical and coding assessments, and it even includes evaluations of AI literacy — something that's becoming increasingly relevant no matter what role you're hiring for. Pymetrics takes a more unconventional path, using neuroscience-driven games to measure cognitive and emotional traits, then matching candidates to roles based on what the data shows.

When you focus on demonstrated ability rather than credentials, you can reduce hiring bias. A candidate without a degree gets the same opportunity as someone who has one, as long as they can actually do the work. These tools also give employers a much clearer sense of what someone will bring to the table from day one.

The trade-offs are mostly on the practical side. Building out meaningful, role-specific assessments requires more upfront effort than just turning on a resume screener. Implementation costs run higher too, especially when you're customizing tests across multiple roles. And there's always the lingering question of whether a timed, high-pressure testing environment actually reflects how someone will perform in the real job — plenty of excellent employees just don't test well under that kind of pressure.

Automate interview documentation

This one doesn't get the same attention, but it might honestly be one of the most immediately useful ways AI shows up in hiring. Tools like Read AI join live interviews (with proper permissions) and automatically capture, transcribe, and analyze the conversation. Once the interview wraps up, they produce structured feedback, summaries, and even shortlist recommendations drawn from what was actually discussed.

Automated documentation lets interviewers actually be present with the person sitting across from them, confident that the conversation is being captured accurately. Over time, you also build up consistent institutional knowledge — searchable records of questions asked, answers given, and how candidates were evaluated. That's valuable both for refining your process and staying on the right side of compliance requirements.

The limitations are pretty straightforward. These tools don't automate the interview itself — someone still has to show up and actually have the conversation. And because recording is involved, you'll need to deal with recording permissions, which vary by jurisdiction and can feel a little awkward to bring up at the start of an interview. Most candidates are totally fine with it, but being upfront about it matters.

Best practices

AI hiring tools are genuinely helpful, but they deliver the best results when you approach them as tools for helping you make the decision, not decision-makers themselves. A few things are worth keeping front of mind.

The strongest approach is using AI to manage volume and build shortlists, then putting humans in charge of the final calls. Algorithms are great at narrowing a field; they're not great at grasping the full context of someone's potential. Keeping a human in the loop for final decisions is a practical safeguard and, honestly, it's just the right thing to do when you're dealing with something that directly affects someone's livelihood.

Second, audit your tools on a regular basis. Even platforms that market themselves as bias-reducing need ongoing scrutiny. Training data can carry biases that aren't immediately apparent, and the only way you'll catch them is by actively looking.

And finally, be transparent about it. Candidates deserve to know how AI is being used in your evaluation process — which tools are involved, what they're measuring, and how those results factor into decisions. Beyond just being the ethical baseline, transparency actually tends to improve the candidate experience. People are generally a lot more comfortable with AI evaluation when they understand what's going on, rather than feeling like they're being judged by some invisible black box.

You’ve probably seen the articles before about people who had tens of thousands of emails and magically took it down to zero in just a couple of days with the help of various tools, methods, or just being plain old fed up with having too many emails and sitting down to do the task manually. As someone who gets loads of emails for work, it’s an interesting concept that I wanted to try myself, and I was able to get some moderate success out of it. 

Before anyone’s hopes get too high, the whole inbox zero concept doesn’t work the way you think it does. Email is a fact of life for many jobs, and keeping it at zero at all times is a Sisyphean effort. You can get your inbox to zero, but it’ll fill back up again. Even the original inventor of the inbox zero concept, Merlin Mann, says that most people get it wrong, having taken his advice from years ago way too literally, and that the point isn’t to have no emails in your inbox at all. 

Instead, the point is to sift through fluff and bloat to get to what’s really important, and that’s not only much easier, but the various tools available today make it really easy to do. Below, I’ll describe the tool I used for it, and how I configured it to help me sift through the nonsense. 

My AI-powered inbox zero method

There are a variety of AI email assistants available on the web, but the one that seemed to work best for me was Zero Email. The primary reason for this is that individual accounts can use it for free, and while I do have multiple email addresses, I only have one for my job. I have gone nearly 30 years without paying for email, and I don’t intend to start anytime soon.

What I like about this tool is that it’s a nice mix of traditional email with just a touch of AI there to help you sort through things. The free version includes an AI bot that you can ask for help 20 times per day, and you can also edit the prompt to change how the bot acts around you. The UI shows your inbox, and you can manage your emails and talk to the AI bot from one interface. 

The value in this approach is that the bot can perform tasks faster than I could through Gmail’s native interface while still giving me nearly full control. I did consider more automated approaches like Zapier, Inbox Zero, and a few others. However, Zapier has quite a learning curve for something that I only needed long enough to help me organize things, and solutions like Inbox Zero cost money out of the gate.

Trimming the fat

The first thing I needed to do was reduce the number of emails I received. This would prove to be a pretty simple task, although it did take me some time. In the old days, I would’ve used an unsubscribe service like Unroll.me, but the whole idea kind of went out of vogue when Unroll.me was found to be selling user data to Uber. Instead, I used two native Gmail features and a little creativity. 

Credit: Google screenshot

I started by creating a label within Gmail called “Junk E-mail.” The name is arbitrary, but the goal was to funnel emails into this label for me to manually sort later. Then, I created a filter in Gmail that would identify any email that had the word “unsubscribe” in it, mark them as read immediately, and ship them off to the Junk E-Mail label for me to sort through later. 

This works because all mailing list emails are required by law to have a clearly listed link to unsubscribe from emails. So, with these two simple things, almost every mailing list email was sent to one folder where I could manually inspect and unsubscribe from email lists. The only ones that squeaked through are ones that used an unsubscribe graphic instead of a word, but they were easy enough to weed out manually. 

I did this step first and let it percolate for a while before I did anything else. The results were immediate and effective. As a tech writer, I have signed up for hundreds of services over the years so that I could talk about them in articles, so the first few days of this was harrowing. Eventually, the emails slowed down and eventually became manageable, and then finally, a non-issue. Email lists I wanted to stick with were moved back to the Inbox for future processing.

Preparing the inbox

The next step was email preparation. Most of my emails fall into a handful of categories, and so preparing the inbox was an essential part of the plan. This part is doable manually, but AI can do it much faster. 

So, my first task was getting rid of every label I didn’t want or use. This was easy enough. I asked the AI to delete them, and it did. I then came up with a list of labels I believed would help me get through my emails faster, like Press Emails, a label for each of my freelance clients, and generic ones like Shopping. Another prompt to the AI, and the labels were immediately created. 

Credit: Zero Email screenshot

AI handled this entire process and it only took a couple of minutes. The longest part was figuring out what labels I wanted to make and which ones I wanted to delete. From there, the AI handled the rest.

Putting the emails where they belong

The final step was by far the hardest, which made me eternally grateful that the AI could do it all for me. This took a few days because of Zero Email’s daily limits, but the process was pretty much cut and dry. 

I started by asking the AI to create filters to put various contacts into various labels automatically. This process would’ve taken many hours to do myself as a function of having to bounce between browser tabs and Gmail’s filter’s UI. Instead, all I had to do was ask the bot to do it for me. This includes things like sorting Amazon emails into the Shopping label and non-work emails into a Personal label. 

The only part that was difficult to figure out initially was press emails. I get these from random companies all the time, and not all of them are in my contacts list. For this problem, the solution I came up with was similar to the one I used for junk emails above. I had the AI create a filter to sort any email that includes common press email words and phrases like “announce,” “launch,” and “embargo.” This filter required manual tuning over the course of a couple of weeks as more phrases and words were identified, but it has mostly worked well. 

Once this was done, the number of emails in my inbox without a label very nearly dropped to zero. The benefit here is that I could click through my labels to view the emails I wanted to deal with at the moment, and the rest could be largely ignored until I checked the label later. 

The benefits are palpable, and clicking into a label to see a handful of emails all from the same senders or regarding the same general topics was immediately less stressful than sorting through a completely disorganized inbox.

Clean up

Aside from some fine tuning, which I was perfectly capable of doing manually, the process was completely done and I was satisfied with my results after a couple of days of testing with everything in place. The last step was cleanup. 

To start, I had the AI go through every email in my entire Gmail account and label them with the above rules applied, just to make sure everything got sorted appropriately. The AI did struggle with this one a little bit but eventually did what I asked it to do. Everything was now where I needed it to be.

This concluded my business with Zero Email, and so the next step was removing it from my account. I get emails with non-disclosure agreements and embargoed information all the time, and while Zero Email’s privacy policy doesn’t raise any immediate red flags, this is information that people would be displeased to have leaked, and so, I try to keep the number of services connected to my Gmail at a minimum, even if the company promises it’s not reading my data. 

In any case, once everything was disconnected and the emails were all cleaned up, my new system was in place and ready to go.

Credit: Google Gmail screenshot Asking AI for help when needed

Gmail and Outlook both have AI built-in already, Gmail with Gemini and Outlook with Copilot. These AIs aren’t great at managing emails (yet). However, they are adept at helping you write them. You may have noticed to this point that I haven’t talked much about constructing emails

If you asked someone 10 years ago if they liked their robot vacuum, most answers would fall somewhere on the "not really" to "hell no" scale. Many old robot vacuums seemed to have no logical cleaning path and no protective instincts to keep them from getting stuck, often becoming more trouble than they were worth. But brainpower of the best robot vacuums in 2026 is in a different league. Most of that competency can be attributed to AI features.

It can feel like some home appliances are being superfluously AI'd, without any real call from consumers for that level of automation from their fridge. But automated self-sufficiency has always been at the core of the robotic vacuum cleaner. Plus, current AI robot vacuum features are still pretty utilitarian, merely focusing on making navigation more nimble, obstacle avoidance more perceptive, and cleaning performance more thorough — all fundamental parts of the robot vacuum experience. Here are the three main ways robot vacuums are using AI in 2026:

AI-powered obstacle avoidance

Probably the most heavily advertised AI robot vacuum element, AI obstacle avoidance is a make-or-break feature in homes with floors that aren't 100 percent tidy 100 percent of the time. As someone who legitimately considers vacuuming by hand a form of catharsis, I take small obstacle avoidance very seriously. Outside of my official robot vacuum testing, I'll rarely choose a robot vacuum over my Dyson stick vacuum unless the robovac is smart enough to not require babysitting.

When a robot vacuum approaches a small or flat object, AI acts as a live set of eyes to detect the obstacle and clean around it in real time. These vacuums tell the difference between common items that would've tripped any older robot vacuum up, like charging cords or a slipper or pet waste. The most vigilant robot vacuums to come out of CES 2026 can recognize between 200 and 300 different pesky obstacles.

The Roborock Qrevo Curv 2 Flow cleaned around a cord and a shoe. Credit: Screenshot / Roborock The Roborock Qrevo Curv 2 Flow recognized the cat tree in the corner. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

These items aren't permanent fixtures on the floor like furniture is — a random sock or pet toy could be laying somewhere that the robot vacuum has never seen it before, so these vacuums really need to be on their toes. Small obstacle avoidance cameras rely on AI to react in real time, adapting the cleaning pattern on the spot to avoid a run in.

But pet recognition has to be the most fun development in robot vacuums' AI recognition capabilities. Many premium robot vacuums nowadays have some sort of "find my pet" function — you can even have the robot vacuum snap some photos of your pet throughout the day, or follow along via live video to see what the robot vacuum sees as it's checking under furniture. As extra as it sounds on its face, the livestream camera has become such a comforting tool for checking on my cats when I'm not at home.

SEE ALSO: Dreame doesn't just want to be a top vacuum brand. It wants to be a top everything brand.

The ability to pick up obstacles in the way is the next evolution of AI obstacle avoidance. In spring 2025, Roborock was the first mainstream brand to throw a robot vacuum with a mechanical arm into the ring. But the Roborock Saros Z70's AI-powered obstacle removal tech was undercooked in one way or another — the arm's variety of grab-able items was already limited, and it took forever to pick anything up. (You know the AI is a flop when it's faster for you to just do the task yourself.) Dreame showcased its version of a robot vacuum with an arm at CES 2026. On paper, the Dreame Cyber 10 Ultra sounds much more competent than the Saros Z70. Only time will tell.

AI-powered mess detection

Older robotic vacuum cleaners weren't very thorough cleaners, and not just because they couldn't muster the suction power that we're used to today. They also just had little awareness of the type of mess they were dealing with, leaving most cleaning overgeneralized.

Some level of human-esque discernment feels necessary for a truly precise clean. AI dirt detection uses a mix of sensors and cameras to assess the mess at hand in real time and customize settings like suction power and scrubbing intensity or water flow accordingly.

The Roborock Qrevo Curv 2 Flow vacuums slower from multiple angles when heavy debris is detected. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

These AI cleaning features get more nitty gritty than iRobot's old, basic Dirt Detect feature that "works harder" on dirtier areas, and even an automatic suction boost feature when a robot vacuum senses carpet. Narwal's Intelligent Dirt Detection tech monitors the floor with infrared, acoustic, optical, and pressure sensors to scan the floor to distinguish between dry and liquid spills and different types of debris (down to the particle size). Dyson's newest robot vacuum, the Spot+Scrub Ai, takes before and after photos of detected spills to ensure that the stain has been sufficiently scrubbed away.

Many premium robot vacuums also use intel from past cleaning sessions to create AI-driven cleaning plans for a more efficient clean in specific rooms going forward. If one area of the home is consistently dirtier than the others (like in the kitchen or near the front door), AI modes like Roborock SmartPlan, Narwal Freo, and Dreame CleanGenius will remember that for next time.

AI-supported smart mapping

The introduction of LiDAR smart mapping in the 2010s transformed the way that robot vacuums get around our homes. Instead of playing bumper cars with furniture and hoping for the best, LiDAR robot vacuums bounce laser pulses off of walls and large objects to create a precise 3D map of your home. This was the breakthrough that brought us room-by-room cleaning, zone cleaning, and no-go zones without those ugly physical barrier strips.

LiDAR is the most common smart mapping tech, and its navigational efficiency gets even better with the help of AI. During the initial mapping run, AI fills in the furniture arrangements in each room for more agile cleaning. All AI robot vacuums that I've tested know that a toilet is a toilet and that a TV stand is a TV stand. Many models have even pinpointed my cat tree and automatic litter box with their own little icons, automatically triggering more detailed cleaning in areas with high pet traffic.

SEE ALSO: The Shark vs. Roomba debate is old news. Here's how both robot vacuum brands got dethroned.

Robot vacuums with "climbing" capabilities also use AI to better determine which obstacles they can (and should) actually try to scale, and which they should stay away from. The Dreame X60 Max Ultra Complete and Roborock Qrevo Curv 2 Flow both have retractable legs that can hoist the vacuum's chassis a few inches up and over various thresholds. Using AI to make a game-time decision, these smart vacs know which small barriers to smoothly drive over (thick floor type changes or door saddles, sliding door tracks into another room or closet, or chair legs that lay flat across the floor) and which small barriers to steer around (like shoes.) AI-powered robot vacuums have a better concept of where they can fit in general, making them much less likely to get stuck.

Is it dangerous for robot vacuums to use AI?

Before buying a robot vacuum, you'll want to dig into the brand's policies about AI usage, camera usage, and personal data usage.

For instance, Roborock's policy is particularly transparent and easy to understand. It directly states that none of your data is collected or uploaded without your explicit permission. (The Dreame and Roborock apps check with you before sharing obstacle images to the company as feedback for misrecognition.) You can read an extended explanation of privacy protection for specific features like obstacle photos, video calls, and Pet Snaps, all of which are encrypted and processed in data centers located in your country.

SEE ALSO: ChatGPT caricature trend: What to do if OpenAI clearly knows too much

Obstacle photos can be toggled off completely, and a passcode or pattern lock is required to activate the video camera on all robot vacuums I've tested with that feature. When a robot vacuum is in live video mode, they'll loudly announce that remote viewing is activated every 30 seconds or so, ensuring anyone at home is aware that someone on the other end is using the vacuum's camera.

I can't say that I wouldn't understand being sketched out by the idea of a WiFi-connected machine with AI-powered live stream cameras freely roving around your house. (Remember when Amazon almost bought iRobot and had access to data about the insides of millions of homes?) If an AI-powered robot vacuum has a dark aura to you, I have a handful of good cordless stick vacuum recommendations for you.

SAVE $20: As of March 2, the Fire Stick 4K Plus is on sale for $29.99 at Amazon. That's a 40% discount on the list price.

Opens in a new window Credit: Amazon Amazon Fire Stick 4K Plus $29.99 at Amazon
$49.99 Save $20.00   Get Deal

Amazon has a range of discounts across its Fire Stick range right now, including the Fire Stick 4K Plus. As of March 2, this model is down to just $29.99, a saving of $20 on list price. If you're familiar with Amazon's Fire Sticks, the Plus may sound new, but it's actually just a rebrand of the 4K model. Same high quality streaming device, different name.

This Fire Stick has improved performance optimized for 4K TVs, so you can expect high-quality movie nights and gaming. You'll also get 4K Ultra HD, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and Dolby Atmos audio, so everything looks and sounds great at all times.

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The setup is simple too (plug the Fire TV Stick into your TV's HDMI port and power it at an outlet), and it comes with an Alexa voice control remote. The remote is neat and easy to use, and it can also control your TV's volume as well as power, so this becomes the only remote you'll need.

Gamers are catered for with support for cloud gaming via Xbox Game Pass. This lets you stream a wide range of titles without a console or controller. And not to mention, for streaming you'll have access to all the big platforms, from Netflix to HBO Max.

This is a limited-time deal at Amazon, so don't miss out.

TL;DR: The Pokémon TCG: First Partner Illustration Collection — Series 1 is available for preorder at Target for $15.99 or Amazon for $69.99 — with a March 20, 2026 release date.

Pokémon TCG: First Partner Illustration Collection Series 1 Best Target Deal Pokémon TCG: First Partner Illustration Collection Series 1 $15.99 at Target Pre-Order Here Best Amazon Deal Pokémon TCG: First Partner Illustration Collection Series 1 $69.99 at Amazon Pre-Order Here

If you missed the first wave of Pokémon’s 30th-anniversary-style products, this could be your last chance to grab these special trading card collections before their market value goes up. As of March. 3, Target still has preorders of the Pokémon TCG: First Partner Illustration Collection available for $15.99, and for when those go out of stock, Amazon is selling units for $69.99 — still under its market price on TCGplayer.

The biggest hook of this collection is the chase for exclusive promo cards of starter Pokémon. Series 1 includes a special booster pack that gives you three of nine illustration rare-style promo cards, all centered on first partner starters from Kanto, Sinnoh, and Alola. 

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That means you’re not getting a full set in one box — you’re pulling a subset, which is exactly the kind of market hype that’s seeing these sell out rather fast.

Beyond the promos, the collection also comes with two additional Pokémon TCG booster packs (Mega Evolution and Phantasmal Flames) and a sticker sheet featuring first partner Pokémon. At $15.99, we expect the Target preorders to sell out soon, with Amazon’s $69.99 listing looking like a consolation prize until more resellers pop up.

Amazon is still selling Pokémon TCG: Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Boxes for under $120. You can also still grab the Pokémon TCG’s new Mega Charizard Y and X Tins for under $45 at Amazon. 

"Hey, you know what would be cool," a Nothing marketing person probably said at a recent meeting. "If we just posted a photo of our upcoming Nothing 4a online."

"Great idea," Nothing's head of marketing probably answered. "That will give our fans something to chew on as they wait for the official reveal on March 5. And it totally won't spoil the surprise."

We have no proof that the conversation above actually happened, but we do imagine something of the sort did take place, as Nothing decided to post a photo of its upcoming Nothing 4a smartphone, scheduled for a March 5 launch, more than a week ahead of time. Here it is.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"Built different," the company tweeted, without revealing any additional details.

The image shows the phone from the rear, displaying Nothing's trademark industrial/semi-naked design. It also reveals a new type of Glyph Bar, next to the camera bump, with nine mini-LEDs, likely offering even more customization options.

SEE ALSO: MWC 2026: What to expect at the world's largest phone show

On March 5, the company will likely reveal the rest of the phone, alongside a more powerful option, the Nothing Phone 4a Pro. Both phones will likely come with Snapdragon 7-series chips, while the Pro variant will probably pack a more powerful camera.

The Mini is a bite-sized version of The New York Times' revered daily crossword. While the crossword is a lengthier experience that requires both knowledge and patience to complete, The Mini is an entirely different vibe.

With only a handful of clues to answer, the daily puzzle doubles as a speed-running test for many who play it.

So, when a tricky clue disrupts a player's flow, it can be frustrating! If you find yourself stumped playing The Mini — much like with Wordle and Connections — we have you covered.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable SEE ALSO: How to play Pips, the newest NYT game

Here are the clues and answers to NYT's The Mini for Monday, March 2, 2026:

Across"Yeah, why not!"

• The answer is Sure.

Collector's ___

• The answer is Item.

Worker who frequently takes off

• The answer is Pilot.

Stressful way to run

• The answer is Late.

Crossed (out)

• The answer is Exed.

DownTiny drink

• The answer is Sip.

Useful ... or a useful draw in Scrabble when you have a "Q"

• The answer is U tile.

Chill

• The answer is Relax.

Be expressive with one's feelings

• The answer is Emote.

TV's "___ Lasso"

• The answer is Ted.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to the latest Mini Crossword.

TL;DR: The Magic: The Gathering Bloomburrow Play Booster Box has dropped to $137.99 at Amazon, undercutting its $139.70 market value and taking $65.41 off its $203.40 list price.

Opens in a new window Credit: Magic: The Gathering Magic: The Gathering Bloomburrow Play Booster Box $137.99 at Amazon
$203.40 Save $65.41 Get Deal

We’ve seen plenty of Magic: The Gathering boxes slide down in price lately, but Bloomburrow just hit a sweet spot that’s hard to ignore: it’s 32% off and now below market value. As of March 2, the Bloomburrow Play Booster Box is available for $137.99 at Amazon, with a $65.41 cut from its original $203.40 list price — and is now the lowest we’ve seen this year, according to price tracker camelcamelcamel.

Bloomburrow is also one of MTG’s easiest recommendations for draft nights, thanks to its cozy woodland fantasy vibe — with mice, frogs, bats, birds, squirrels, and other critters stepping up as the Valley gets rocked by elemental chaos.

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You get 36 Play Boosters (504 trading cards total). Each pack includes 14 cards with 1-4 Rares or higher, plus the usual mix of uncommons and commons, and at least one Traditional Foil. There’s also the chance of foil lands, Borderless mythics (rarely), and Play Booster-only Art cards — making this box both a solid Limited pickup and a fun rip. At roughly $3.83 per pack, it’s an incredibly strong value offering.

As for more MTG deals, you can still grab six Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy booster packs for only $49. Meanwhile, preorders on MTG Marvel Super Heroes Play Booster Boxes are $20 at Amazon. 

TL;DR: Pokémon TCG Mega Evolution Elite Trainer Boxes have dropped to $88.95 at Walmart, dipping under $90 and undercutting Amazon’s price of up to $103.86.

Opens in a new window Credit: The Pokémon Company Pokémon TCG Mega Evolution Elite Trainer Box (Mega Gardevoir or Mega Lucario) $88.95 at Walmart
  Get Deal

If you’ve been trying to grab a Mega Evolution ETB without paying the usual $100+ markups, Walmart just helped out your trading card budget. 

As of March 2, the Pokémon TCG Mega Evolution Elite Trainer Box is listed for $88.95 at Walmart (sold by Rares Market, fulfilled by Walmart), which is only $5 shy of the TCGplayer market value and up to $14.91 cheaper than Amazon. Mega Lucario and Mega Gardevoir editions are randomized at Walmart, but it’s still a fantastic deal if you simply want a Mega Evolution booster pack with an ETB’s usual extras.

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Mega Evolution Elite Trainer Boxes include:

• 9 Mega Evolution booster packs

• 1 full-art foil promo card (Riolu with the Mega Lucario version or Alakazam with Mega Gardevoir version)

• 65 card sleeves

• 40 Energy cards

• Player’s guide

• Dice, coin-flip die, plastic coin, dividers, storage box

• Pokemon TCG Live code card

Comparatively, the Mega Gardevoir version only goes as low as $99.99 on Amazon and $199.99 on TCGplayer. Meanwhile, the Mega Lucario version at Amazon is priced even higher at $103.86, with no listings at TCGplayer currently available.

For more decent Pokémon TCG prices, you can still get the Ascended Heroes Elite Booster Boxes for under $120 at Amazon. Also, the 30th Anniversary Pokémon Day 2026 Collection is still available at Amazon for just under $40.

SAVE $20: As of March 2, the Amazon Fire Stick 4K Max is on sale for $29.99 with the code MAX4KFTV at Amazon. That's $30 off the list price.

Opens in a new window Credit: Amazon Fire Stick 4K Max $29.99 at Amazon
$59.99 Save $30.00 use code MAX4KFTV Get Deal

If you want a high quality streaming device with plenty of storage, you need the Amazon Fire Stick 4K Max. It offers incredible 4K streaming and 16GB of storage for plenty of apps and games, and as of March 2 it's on sale at Amazon. Right now you can save $30 with the code MAX4KFTV. Get the Fire Stick 4K Max for $29.99 right now at Amazon.

Let's break down exactly what you're getting with this Fire Stick. Quality-wise, it's seriously impressive, with support for 4K Ultra HD with Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and Dolby Atmos for detailed picture quality and great sound. You'll also get cloud gaming, letting you stream titles through Xbox Game Pass or play via Amazon Luna without needing a console.

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As you'd expect, it has Alexa built-in, so you can do things like search for content using voice commands, speak to other smart home devices, or ask Amazon to search something online.

This model also features the Fire TV Ambient Experience, a feature that lets you display a wide range of artwork and photography on your screen when not in use. And when you are using it, you'll get access to over 1.8 million movies and TV episodes from streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, and more.

Pick up this streaming deal from Amazon while it's still live.

If you’ve even so much as dipped your toes in the online dating world, you’ll be aware of AdultFriendFinder. After all, it was founded all the way back in 1996 and managed to become one of the 100 most popular sites in the U.S. by the late 2000s. But despite its obvious popularity, it’s never managed to break into mainstream consciousness like Tinder or Hinge.

There’s a very good reason for that.

AFF, as it’s known among members, is explicitly an “adult” dating site — a badge it wears proudly, but one that also has hindered its mainstream reach.

But what if you’re curious about how it works, whether it works, or who it works for? What if you’ve always wondered whether you’re missing out on the best-kept online dating secret and want to join the party? Or maybe you’re worried it’s more hype and chatbots than organic, spicy fun. We did the work for you, breaking down the AdultFriendFinder experience and what you can realistically expect if you decide to dip your toes into these naughty waters.

Opens in a new window Credit: AdultFriendFinder AdultFriendFinder   Learn More AdultFriendFinder isn’t a traditional dating site

If you sign up for AdultFriendFinder expecting a traditional online dating experience, you’ll need to adjust your expectations — fast. It’s not that AFF members aren’t interested in serious dating; it’s that sex and sexuality are placed front and center, with everything else emerging from there.

That much is obvious almost from the moment you log in. Unlike mainstream dating sites, which ban nudity from profile photos, AFF allows it — meaning conventional dating-app selfies sit side by side with full-frontal nudity and live webcam feeds. There is a content filter, accessible in your profile settings, but it defaults to "off," so if you would rather not see any nudity, or only see it when you deliberately choose to click on a NSFW picture, you should navigate to this setting ASAP.

For some people who aren't looking for a bare-all experience, this might be off-putting, but to those who are looking for exactly that, it’s refreshing. Unlike traditional dating apps, where early conversations often revolve around figuring out what the other person actually wants, AFF members tend to be refreshingly upfront and transparent (wink wink) about their intentions.

How to meet people on AdultFriendFinder

Every online dating site lives or dies by its algorithm, with new platforms constantly rolling out novel ways to connect singles. AdultFriendFinder, however, takes a maximalist approach to interacting with strangers.

You can search for members the conventional way, using specific criteria like gender, sexual orientation, age, location, and more, but you can also jump into themed chat rooms or follow members’ live streams. Through the “Who’s Hot” tab, which highlights popular members as well as trending photo and video uploads, you can easily discover someone you might otherwise never have come across.

One thing you’ll notice quickly, however, is the presence of obviously fake profiles. When I searched for singles near me, I encountered a surprising number of stunningly beautiful women in a small rural town near my city — all with airbrushed photos and vague, AI-sounding profile descriptions.

SEE ALSO: How to cancel your Tinder subscription

AFF makes it extremely easy to sign up and create a profile, requiring little more than a username, password, and basic personal information. The upside is that it lowers the barrier to entry; the downside is that scammers can exploit that same simplicity.

To counter this (aside from relying on common sense), AdultFriendFinder offers a blue checkmark verification system and even incentivizes users to complete it by boosting their visibility. Verification requires a government-issued ID, which AFF uses to confirm your age, photo authenticity, location, and gender. It's an optional step, but one worth completing since it helps you signal to others that you are who you say you are.

If avoiding scammers and catfishers is a priority, looking for that blue checkmark before engaging is a smart move.

What kind of success rate can you expect from AdultFriendFinder?

So far, so good, but there is a catch. While you can browse and explore AFF for free, meaningful one-on-one interaction requires a paid Gold membership, available in one-month ($39.95/month), three-month ($26.95/month), or one-year ($19.95/month) packages, all of which renew automatically.

Understandably, most people hesitate to pay for a dating site without a clear proof of concept. And because AFF places many of its best features behind a paywall, there’s undeniably a leap-of-faith element here. That said, the premium membership largely justifies its price.

With an AFF Gold membership, you unlock unrestricted messaging, high-resolution member videos and webcam streams, expanded profile galleries, and advanced filters that make narrowing down potential matches far easier.

Does paying guarantee attention from everyone you message? Of course not. The usual dating-app dynamics still apply — heterosexual men, for instance, should expect to work harder for responses than heterosexual women. Being attractive, fit, or witty helps, and being all three helps even more.

SEE ALSO: A beginner's guide to sexting

What works in your favor is the sheer breadth of the AFF community. Members span a wide range of ages, body types, orientations, and interests, making it easier to find someone — particularly if you’re looking for something casual and fun rather than long-term commitment.

Based on my personal experience, as well as the limited statistics AFF has released, the platform skews male (roughly 60:40 in my area) and slightly older. That male/female ratio mirrors most dating sites. The older skew can actually be an advantage if, like me, you prefer connecting with people closer to your own age.

One final piece of advice: don’t ignore AFF’s broader community features. If you rely solely on search results and direct messages, you’ll face roughly the same odds as any other dating app. But if you explore the themed chat rooms — covering everything from erotic fiction to body modification — you’re far more likely to stumble into the kind of connection you’re actually looking for.

Maybe you’ve found your special someone and want to demonstrate your commitment by officially delisting yourself as a single person, or maybe you just need a break from online dating in general — whatever your motivation, AdultFriendFinder makes it easy to delete your account and scrub your profile data for good.

First, understand that deleting your account is a distinct action from cancelling your Gold membership. If you want to continue using AdultFriendFinder for free, or just want to stop your monthly payments, you can do so without deleting your entire account. The action of account deletion is considerably more permanent. You’ll lose all of your profile info, all of your chat history, and all of your settings.

SEE ALSO: The best sexting apps for discreet NSFW chats

If you still want to proceed, you can choose whether to delete your account via a web browser or on your phone. The steps are different but the result is the same. But one big heads up for phone users: merely deleting your AFF app is not enough to delete your account.

Opens in a new window Credit: AdultFriendFinder AdultFriendFinder   Learn More How to cancel your AdultFriendFinder Gold subscription

If you have a Gold subscription, you’re going to want to cancel that membership before you undergo the steps necessary to delete your account:

Total Time

• 2 minutes

What You Need

• AdultFriendFinder account

Step 1: Log in to your account as usual, using your username and password credentials

Step 2: Navigate to the "My Account" section in the top right and select "Settings"

Step 3: If you are a Gold member, you will see a "Billing History & Credit Card" info section

Step 4: Turn the auto-renew switch to "Off"

Step 5: Verify that your subscription was cancelled by checking your email for confirmation

How to delete your AdultFriendFinder account on the web

If you primarily use AdultFriendFinder on a web browser, here are the steps you’ll need to follow:

Total Time

• 2 minutes

What You Need

• Web browser

Step 1: Log in to your account as usual, using your username and password credentials

Step 2: Navigate to the "My Account" section in the top right and select "Settings"

Step 3: Under the "Manage My Account" heading, select "Close Account"

Step 4: You’ll be prompted with a confirmation message offering alternatives to account deletion, including hiding your profile or turning off email notifications

Step 5: Select "Please Delete My Account"

Step 6: You’ll be prompted to enter your password one last time, to confirm your identity and intention

How to delete your AdultFriendFinder account on your phone

AFF doesn’t have an official app in either the Apple App or Google Play store, owing to their NSFW content, but lots of AFF users still use phone-based workarounds for AdultFriendFinder, often via a web-based shortcut on their home screens. 

Simply deleting your AFF app icon will not delete your account and the data and history pertaining to it. To delete your account via your phone, follow these steps:

Total Time

• 2 minutes

What You Need

• Smartphone

Step 1: Log in to your account as usual, using your username and password credentials

Step 2: Navigate to the "My Account" section in the top right and select "Settings"

Step 3: Under the "Manage My Account" heading, select "Close Account"

Step 4: You’ll be prompted with a confirmation message offering alternatives to account deletion, including hiding your profile or turning off email notifications

Step 5: Select "Please Delete My Account"

Step 6: You’ll be prompted to enter your password one last time, to confirm your identity and intention

Account deletion is final and irrevocable, so be sure that you’re prepared to lose all of your contacts, chat history, and profile information permanently before you click that final confirmation. And if, for any reason, the above steps haven’t worked for you, you can always visit the AFF Help Center, where they have visual guides for common on-site activities, including account deletion.

OpenAI has entered a deal with the U.S. Department of War (DOW), providing its AI tools for military use in "classified environments." Announcing the partnership on Saturday, the ChatGPT developer claims it includes guardrails prohibiting the use of its technology for mass domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. However, contract excerpts shared by OpenAI appear to leave significant loopholes.

SEE ALSO: Anthropic's Claude overtakes ChatGPT in App Store

News of OpenAI's deal with the DOW came just one day after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. government will no longer use tech from OpenAI rival Anthropic, including its AI model Claude. Posting about the split on Truth Social, Trump had objected to Anthropic's insistence that the DOW abide by the company's terms of service. 

Exactly which terms of services Trump took issue with were revealed in a statement from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Thursday. In it, he claimed that the DOW demanded Anthropic remove safeguards against use of its tech for mass surveillance in the U.S. and fully AI-controlled weapons. Amodei stated that such use may technically be lawful, however "this is only because the law has not yet caught up with the rapidly growing capabilities of AI."

"[I]n a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values," wrote Amodei. "Some uses are also simply outside the bounds of what today’s technology can safely and reliably do."

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OpenAI's terms are apparently more to the Trump administration's liking, with the company stepping in to supply the U.S. military with AI technology in Anthropic's place. Yet despite this, OpenAI claims that its agreement with DOW not only has similar guardrails which prohibit use of its technology for mass domestic surveillance or directing autonomous weapons, but even adds a third: "No use of OpenAI technology for high-stakes automated decisions (e.g. systems such as 'social credit')." 

"We retain full discretion over our safety stack, we deploy via cloud, cleared OpenAI personnel are in the loop, and we have strong contractual protections," read OpenAI's announcement. "This is all in addition to the strong existing protections in U.S. law."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

According to OpenAI, the limitations it has imposed are more enforceable than Anthropic's because it will only provide the DOW with its technology via the cloud, rather than installing it directly on hardware. OpenAI personnel will also be kept involved so that they can see how the DOW is using its technology. This will allegedly allow the company more oversight and control of its AI systems. 

"We don’t know why Anthropic could not reach this deal, and we hope that they and more labs will consider it," wrote OpenAI.

However, an excerpt of the contract shared by OpenAI indicated that its technology will only be barred from use in autonomous weapons or to surveil U.S. citizens where such use is illegal. In fact, the agreement appears to lay out circumstances where OpenAI's tech would be allowed for these purposes, such as where human control over weapons isn't required by DOW policy or law.

"The Department of War may use the AI System for all lawful purposes, consistent with applicable law, operational requirements, and well-established safety and oversight protocols," the contract reads, per OpenAI. "[A]ny use of AI in autonomous and semi-autonomous systems must undergo rigorous verification, validation, and testing to ensure they perform as intended in realistic environments before deployment."

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Responding to concerns in a post on LinkedIn, OpenAI head of national security partnerships Katrina Mulligan merely reiterated that its usage policies aren't the only safeguards in place, re-emphasising its cloud deployment and involvement of its personnel. 

"[The DOW's] position was, build the model however you want, refuse whatever requests you want, just don't try to govern our operational decisions through usage policies," wrote Mulligan. 

Still, doubts remain regarding the effectiveness of these ostensible safeguards, particularly considering OpenAI's reluctance to take an ethical stand.

Sam Altman speaks on OpenAI's deal with Department of War This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman conducted a Q&A on X in an attempt to assuage users' concerns about the DOW deal, to little apparent success. Conceding that the deal "was definitely rushed, and the optics don't look good," Altman claimed that they'd hoped it would de-escalate tensions between the DOW and the AI industry.

"I think a good relationship between the government and the companies developing this technology is critical over the next couple of years," wrote Altman. 

The deal might have brought OpenAI and the U.S. government closer together, but it seems to have simultaneously alienated ChatGPT's civilian users.

Responding to a question about whether permitting all lawful use allows mass surveillance, Altman shared a post by U.S. Under Secretary of War Emil Michael in which he claimed that "The DoW does not spy on domestic communication of U.S. people (including via commercial collection) and to do so would be unlawful and profoundly un-American."

Unsurprisingly, few seem inclined to take the DOW's word for it. In 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed mass surveillance of U.S. citizens conducted by the DOW's (then called the Department of Defense) National Security Agency (NSA). This program was found to be illegal, and included people's telephone records. Human Rights Watch also accused the then-Department of Defense of surveilling U.S. citizens without warrants in 2017. 

"The government already has broken the law and illegally surveiled [sic] US citizens," replied X user @bolts6629. "A milquetoast statement from an undersecretary in an administration famous for lying is good enough for you?"

Altman did state that he would refuse to use OpenAI's technology for mass domestic surveillance "because it violates the Constitution," and expressed discomfort with the idea of an amendment that would allow such use. However, some social media users cast doubt on this claim, noting that he has gone back on other promises before.

"Other things you've said you wouldn't do: overrule the OpenAI board, remove the nonprofit structure, put ads in ChatGPT," noted @Laneless_.

Further, OpenAI's CEO also indicated that the company is reluctant to draw ethical lines, preferring to abdicate responsibility and follow the government's directions rather than take any sort of stand itself.

"[W]e are not elected," wrote Altman. "We have a democratic process where we do elect our leaders. We have expertise with the technology and understand its limitations, but I think you should be terrified of a private company deciding on what is and isn't ethical in the most important areas."

"Following orders is not an excuse for unethical behavior," responded @MagisterLudiX. "Either you have strong red lines or you see it as purely transactional, depending on political context."

"AI is a tool. A hard limit on it, is a limit like any other tool has," wrote @genericrohan. "It's not deciding what the military can do, it is about setting a limit that the military can plan for."

In response to the news of OpenAI and the DOW's partnership, many ChatGPT users are reportedly cancelling their subscriptions to the AI chatbot. Several are instead turning to Anthropic's AI chatbot Claude, which has since dethroned ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app in the U.S. Apple App Store.

"OpenAI just made a deal with a devil and lost this customer of 2 years," Reddit user r/boomroom11 posted on subreddit r/ChatGPT. The post has over 26,000 upvotes at time of writing. "The company (originally non profit) that told us they existed to build AI safely for humanity is now taking Pentagon contracts. Sam Altman decided defense money was more important than every principle the company was founded on."

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

Being an effective board chair now demands more time, coordination, and judgment than ever before. To succeed, you need to shape how your board learns, decides, and supports management in a volatile environment. Here are four strategies to focus on.  Create a culture of learning. Make psychological safety nonnegotiable. Debrief meetings, give individual feedback, and commission […]

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The Full Moon is just a day away, so there's no surprise that it's big and bright in the sky tonight. There's a lot to see, without or without visual aids, so keep reading to find out what exactly you can spot.

What is today’s Moon phase?

As of Monday, March 2, the Moon phase is Waxing Gibbous. According to NASA's Daily Moon Guide, 98% of the Moon will be lit up tonight.

With just your naked eye, tonight you'll be able to see the Mares Vaporum and Crisium, as well as the Aristarchus Plateau. If you have binoculars, you should also catch a glimpse of the Endymion Crater, Grimaldi Basin, and the Archimedes Crater. For those with a telescope, including the Apollo 16 landing spot, the Rima Hyginus, and the Caucasus Mountains.

When is the next Full Moon?

The next Full Moon will be on March 3. The last Full Moon was on Feb. 1.

What are Moon phases?

According to NASA, the Moon takes about 29.5 days to orbit the Earth. Over the course of this period, it moves through eight recognisable phases, what we call the lunar cycle. While the same side of the Moon always faces us, the amount of its surface lit by the Sun changes as it continues along its path. The shifts in sunlight create the different appearances we see from Earth, ranging from a fully illuminated Moon to a thin sliver or near darkness. The eight phases are:

New Moon - The Moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it's invisible to the eye).

Waxing Crescent - A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).

First Quarter - Half of the Moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-Moon.

Waxing Gibbous - More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.

Full Moon - The whole face of the Moon is illuminated and fully visible.

Waning Gibbous - The Moon starts losing light on the right side. (Northern Hemisphere)

Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) - Another half-Moon, but now the left side is lit.

Waning Crescent - A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.