Amazon’s AI assistant Alexa+ is getting another new personality. On Thursday, the company announced it’s expanding its lineup of personality styles for users to choose from to include a “Sassy” option, which is for adults only. Notes Amazon, before opting to use the Sassy personality, users will be required to go through additional security checks in the Alexa app.

The personality style will also not be available when Amazon Kids is enabled, Amazon says.

The new option joins others like Brief, Chill, and Sweet, launched last month.

When you toggle on the option for Sassy in the Alexa mobile app, you’re warned that the Sassy style uses explicit language, which is why it requires a security check. On iOS, this involved a Face ID scan.

The AI assistant explained its style to us like this: “The Sassy style is built on one premise: help first, judge always. Every answer comes wrapped in wit and a well-placed roast — it’ll answer your question; it’ll just make you feel something about it first. Expect reality checks delivered with charm, compliments that somehow sting, and warmth you didn’t see coming. Equal-opportunity irreverence, zero apologies. Honest, sharp, and funny — and somehow that’s more helpful than helpful.”

Alexa’s app also had warned that the style could contain “mature subject matter.”

However, further investigation discovered this is not Amazon’s version of something like Grok’s adult AI companions. The AI assistant said the new option won’t get into areas like explicit sexual content, hate speech, illegal activities, personal attacks, or anything that could cause harm to oneself or others.

The move is the latest example of how Amazon is trying to make Alexa+ more customizable, as it revamps the assistant for the generative AI era. By offering the assistant different personalities — including one positioned as more adult — Amazon is borrowing from a broader trend in AI, where companies have been experimenting with tone, style, and personas to make their assistants more engaging and personalized to the individual users’ choices.

Tesla is now an officially licensed utility in the United Kingdom, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. The automotive and energy company recently received a license from the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, allowing it to sell electricity directly to households and commercial and industrial users.

The company has long dabbled in electricity markets. Its first pure energy products, the Powerwall and Powerpack, were introduced in 2015, but it wasn’t until a year later when Tesla merged with SolarCity that it started scaling the division rapidly. In 2022, the company launched Tesla Electric in Texas, which allowed it to sell electricity directly to customers. Powerwall owners can sell electrons from their batteries to participate in the company’s virtual power plant.

The new division, known as Tesla Energy Ventures, will compete with existing utilities in the U.K., including EDF, E.ON, and Octopus Energy. The competition with Octopus should prove particularly interesting. Since its founding in 2015, Octopus has become the country’s largest utility by focusing on slick software, renewable energy, and creative marketing. Sound familiar? 

A global coalition of law enforcement agencies shut down a botnet made of tens of thousands of hacked home and small business routers on Wednesday.

The operation targeted SocksEscort, which offered paid proxy services and was built on a botnet of hacked routers used to commit various crimes, such as hacking into victims’ bank and cryptocurrency accounts and filing fraudulent unemployment insurance claims, according to an announcement published on Thursday by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ said the crimes facilitated by SocksEscort cost Americans millions of dollars.  

Europol said in its announcement of the operation that the SocksEscort botnet allegedly compromised more than 369,000 routers and Internet of Things devices in 163 countries and that the infected routers “have been disconnected from the service.” The law enforcement agency said SocksEscort was used to facilitate ransomware, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and the distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

“Customers of the criminal service paid for licenses to abuse these infected devices, hiding their original IP addresses to engage in various criminal activities,” said Europol. “Upon infection with the malware, the modems’ owners would not be aware that their IP addresses were used for illegitimate activities.”

The content of the SocksEscort official website was replaced by a notice announcing the seizure, as part of the law enforcement operation. 

The botnet was composed of around 280,000 routers since last January and was powered by malware called AVRecon, according to cybersecurity firm Black Lotus Labs, which tracked SocksEscort and worked with law enforcement in the takedown operation.

“This botnet posed a significant threat, as it was marketed exclusively to criminals,” the company wrote in its post about the takedown. “Notably, over half of its victims were located in the United States or the United Kingdom, enabling attackers to conduct highly targeted operations.”

In 2023, Black Lotus Labs called SocksEscort “one of the largest botnets targeting small-office/home-office (SOHO) routers seen in recent history.” 

At the time, cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs reported that SocksEscort was born in 2009 as a Russian-language service selling access to thousands of hacked computers.