Technologies

I Just Posted to Instagram Using Only an AI Agent. I’m Not Sure I Would Again

At Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii,, I got a glimpse of how I’ll interact with my phone in the future. Unfortunately, the future is not quite ready for us yet.

The big promise of AI agents is that they’ll be able to handle tasks for you — using their knowledge and understanding of you and what’s stored in your phone to suggest, predict and automate what you need, to ease the burden on you.

For the most part, the situations in which we’d use AI agents in our day-to-day lives have so far been largely hypothetical. But at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, I got a first-hand look at how we might use an agent to complete a routine task: uploading content to social media.

Using a prototype phone packing Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, I asked the device, using my voice, to find all pictures of beaches stored in the Photos app. A large language model (LLM) running on the device picked up what I was saying and interacted with a vision model that classifies all the photos on the phone. It pulled up two options.

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«I like the second option,» I told the agent. «Please post it to Instagram with the hashtag #lovethecolor.» Without my touching the screen, the agent opened the Instagram app on the phone and posted the photo as a Reel (which is what it had been preprogrammed to do). Again, the LLM kicked in, but rather than sending a command to the photo classifier, this time it sent the command to the Instagram API.

After posting, the agent also asked me if I’d like to check for new comments. I’m pretty sure this is what notifications are for, but this was just an example to show how proactive the agent was able to be.

In fact, the whole demo was just an example of how an agent could assist you in your daily phone business. In the US, most social platforms, including Instagram, don’t currently allow access to their APIs that would make this process possible. Qualcomm built the demo together with AI company ModelBest and is going to launch it in China on the popular social site Weibo.

After my demo, I’m not in a particular rush to engage the services of an agent to upload to Instagram for me. I appreciated the image classification tool most of all, since being able to describe a photo in your camera roll to post rather than having to scroll to find it was a definite time saver. But posting to Instagram is already a pretty slick and seamless process that I’m not sure warrants automating.

I’d also want the option to post to either Stories, Reels or the main grid, and give more complex instructions about editing, filters and captions before I’d be willing to hand over the reins to an agent.

For now, I’m happy to continue uploading to Instagram under my own steam, but I’m keen to see how agentic AI evolves to be able to handle more complex tasks and commands over time.

Qualcomm and many other tech companies are convinced that agents are gradually going to become the de facto way we interact with our technology. The jury’s still out for me, but I’ll keep an open mind.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Nov. 16, #889

Here are some hints — and the answers — for the NYT Connections puzzle for Nov. 16, #889.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is a fun one. As a pop-culture junkie and game lover, I enjoyed the purple category. If you need help sorting the answers into groups, you’re in the right place. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Different strokes for different folks.

Green group hint: Ho-hum.

Blue group hint: Flags often qualify.

Purple group hint: Do not pass Go.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Technique.

Green group: Run-of-the-mill.

Blue group: Stripy things.

Purple group: Words on Monopoly squares.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is technique. The four answers are approach, method, philosophy and school.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is run-of-the-mill. The four answers are banal, everday, humdrum and pedestrian.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is stripy things.The four answers are barcode, IBM logo, rugby shirt and zebra.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is words on Monopoly squares. The four answers are avenue, parking, railroad and tax.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Nov. 16 #623

Here are hints — and answers — for the NYT Strands puzzle for Nov. 16, No. 623.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is tough. It’s a weird theme, and some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Around it goes.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: They’re often on a roll.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

CARE, SCARE, CRASS, SWAT, PELL, HELL, SCAR, HALT, STENT, HALTS, TENT, POLL, LOTS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

FOIL, SCARF, SHAWL, STOLE, FLATBREAD, CELLOPHANE

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is THATSAWRAP. To find it, start with the T that’s three letters up from the bottom of the far-left row, and wind down, over and then up.