One of Canada's greatest curlers has been hired to improve the United States' gold-medal chances at the next two Olympic Games.
Brad Gushue, who recently brought his decorated playing career to an end, will take over as high-performance director at USA Curling, it announced Wednesday.
USA Curling said the addition of Gushue, who skipped Canada to Olympic gold in Turin in 2006, would “further elevate high-performance efforts in the next quadrennial and on the road to the 2034 home Games in Salt Lake City.”
“This role felt like a natural fit, and positions like this don’t come along all that often in the sport of curling," Gushue said in a USA Curling statement.
“It is an opportunity to stay close to the sport and make a meaningful impact in a new way.”
The U.S. is coming off winning silver in the mixed doubles at the Milan Cortina Games in February. The men's team won gold in 2018 and bronze in 2006, while the women's team has never won an Olympic medal, placing fourth this year.
Gushue also skipped Canada to Olympic bronze in 2022, the world title in 2017, and was a seven-time national champion, USA Curling said.
The national body said Gushue will work closely with athletes in the men's and women's programs, identify talent, advance coach education and build a “high-performance culture that delivers podium results at world championships and Olympic Games.”
USA Curling CEO Dean Gemmell said Gushue had "extensive experience as a manager of business operations and as a leader of teams both on and off the ice.
“We are thrilled to welcome him,” Gemmell added, "as we work to achieve the kind of international success that builds the sport at every level.”
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
FILE - Brad Gushue, skip of Team Newfoundland and Labrador-Gushue, delivers his stone during Draw 17 at the Montana's Brier Canadian men's curling championship in St. John's, N.L., March 5, 2026. (Paul Daly/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
LONDON (AP) — Meta Platforms said Wednesday it's rolling out an “incognito” mode for WhatsApp users to have private conversations with its AI chatbot, a move intended to ease privacy concerns about sensitive information that users share in chats.
The social media company said in a blog post that incognito chat mode provides a way to have private, temporary conversations with Meta AI, its artificial intelligence assistant that's been available on WhatsApp for a few years.
Messages will be processed in a “secure environment" that even Meta can't access, won't be saved by default and will disappear when exiting a session, Meta said.
Generative AI systems have been dogged by privacy concerns because the large language models that underpin these systems are trained on vast troves of data, sometimes including personal information provided by users themselves in their conversations with AI chatbots.
Rival chatbot makers already have some privacy features. Google's Gemini chatbot has the option to disable chat history and opt out of allowing one's data to be used in training its AI models. ChatGPT has similar controls.
Meta says it's rolling out incognito chats because users often ask chatbots sensitive questions or include private financial, personal, health or work data in their questions.
“We’re starting ask a lot of meaningful questions about our lives with AI systems, and it doesn’t always feel like you should have to share the information behind those questions with the companies that run those AI systems,” Will Cathcart, Meta’s head of WhatsApp, told reporters.
Incognito chat mode has safety features to prevent the chatbot from answering questions about harmful topics, Cathcart said.
It will “steer the user towards helpful information if it can and then refuse (to answer) and eventually even just stop interacting with the user completely,” Cathcart said.
Users will only be able to type in questions and get text responses; they won't be able to upload or generate images. They'll also have to confirm their age because Meta doesn't allow users under 13 on its platforms.
FILE - A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)
