Ever since the pyramids of Egypt rose from the desert over 4,000 years ago, people have wondered how they were built—sparking centuries of speculation, fringe theories, and wild claims involving lost technologies and extraterrestrials.
That speculation got a modern boost last fall when a Chinese research team claimed to have used radar to detect plasma bubbles above the Great Pyramid of Giza. These reports reignited online theories and alternative histories.
Building on that momentum, a group known as the Khafre Project, led by Professor Corrado Malanga from Italy’s University of Pisa and Researcher Filippo Biondi from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, attracted attention last week with its own dramatic claims of a vast network of underground structures beneath the Pyramid of Khafre, reaching depths of up to 2,000 feet.
Accompanied by detailed graphics and viral videos, the group’s assertions quickly spread across social media, breathing new life into old mysteries.
X lit up with speculation, including theories that the chambers amplified Earth’s low-frequency electromagnetic waves—possibly functioning as an ancient power plant. Some even suggested the find could rewrite our understanding of the pyramids.
“The images suggest a hidden world under the feet of the Great Pyramids: halls and shafts that have waited millennia to be found,” technologist Brian Roemmele wrote in a blog post. “Such a scenario has an almost storybook allure as if turning the page on a chapter that historians didn’t know existed.”
Debunking the myth
However, Egyptologist and historian Flora Anthony wasn’t buying into the hype.
“Something seemed off, so I looked up the original source, read through it, and realized the paper had nothing to do with the images or claims being shared in the media,” she told Decrypt. “Turns out, the article isn’t peer-reviewed. Someone familiar with the journal where the report was published said they publish quickly and aren’t established in the field—which matters since peer review is important.”
The pyramids on the Giza Plateau—built during Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty between 2600 B.C. and 2500 B.C.—were royal tombs for the pharaohs Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure.
The idea that extraterrestrials may have played a role in constructing the pyramids has long been a staple of fringe science and pop culture.
Proponents of this “Ancient Alien” theory point to the monuments’ precise alignment, massive scale, and engineering complexity as evidence that ancient civilizations couldn’t have built them alone.
“The people behind this aren’t scientists. One is a UFO researcher who believes aliens are interdimensional parasites that hijack human souls,” Anthony said. “The other writes conspiracy books about a lost, pre-dynastic Egyptian civilization and recently promoted a so-called ‘harmonic investigation’ of the Great Pyramid using a technology he claims to have patented.”
While their claims might sound impressive at first glance, there’s nothing solid underneath, Anthony added.
“None of it is peer-reviewed, credible, or based in real science,” she said. “It’s not science. It’s not history.”
Pseudoscience
Ancient Aliens theory, Anthony said, is rooted in pseudo-archaeology, eugenics, and historical racism, promoting the idea that African and Mesoamerican civilizations couldn’t have built monumental structures like the pyramids without help from extraterrestrials.
“These theories uphold white supremacy by pushing a false narrative of white superiority,” Anthony said. “No one questions how medieval European peasants—living in filth without basic sanitation—built intricate cathedrals. But when Africans or Mesoamericans build pyramids, suddenly it must be aliens.”
On March 16, The Khafre Project presented apparent evidence of five chambers and eight shafts, using annotated tomographic images and artist renderings to illustrate their findings.
Yet while social media continues to buzz with wild theories, Egyptologists, including Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, are unconvinced.
“It all sounds very improbable to me as most machinery cannot penetrate that deeply, and there is no data to evaluate this claim,” Ikram told Decrypt. “So far, it seems it is in the news, with no peer-reviewed paper or raw data to back this up. And the technology does not seem capable of what they claim.”
Ikram added that Egyptian authorities confirmed they had not granted the Khafre Project permission to conduct any work at the site.
Likewise, the fact-checking website Snopes investigated the Khafre Project’s claims and declared them false in a recent report.
“Despite the popularity of the claim, there is no evidence to support it,” the report said. “In addition, no credible news outlets or scientific publications have reported on this rumor.”
Digging to the truth
The idea of using radar technology to scan the pyramids is not new.
Radar technology has been used multiple times to scan the pyramids of Giza, most notably in 2016 as part of the ScanPyramids project, revealing hidden voids and structural anomalies within the ancient monuments.
In 2022, researchers Corrado Malanga and Filippo Biondi conducted a synthetic aperture radar scan on the Khufu Pyramid, which many suspect is the basis for the Khafre Project’s images.
According to Snopes, the Khafre Project’s research has not been peer-reviewed or corroborated by credible archaeologists, pointing to what the organization called “Malanga’s well-documented interest in UFO and alien abduction research as well as Dunn’s “power plant” theory.”
“Additionally, one of the most popular images being shared in support of the claim, depicting a cross-section of the pyramid and the alleged structures, was generated using artificial intelligence,” Snopes said. “Uploading the image to the AI-detection platform Hive Moderation resulted in a 99.9% chance the image was generated using AI.”
Ultimately, the story says more about our appetite for mystery than it does about any discovery beneath the pyramids.
Until actual evidence surfaces, the only thing buried beneath the Giza Plateau is the truth—and for now, it’s staying that way.
When Swedish UFO film “Watch the Skies” hits U.S. cinemas this May, audiences won’t be able to tell that it wasn’t made in English.
The film is the first full theatrical release to showcase “visual dubbing” technology from AI firm Flawless, which enables actors’ performances to be digitally lip-synced with foreign-language dubs.
“Watch the Skies” follows rebellious teenager Denise, who teams up with a club of UFO watchers to solve the mystery of her missing father. The film was shot in Swedish, and released there under the title “UFO Sweden.” However, for its U.S. release, the original cast have re-recorded their performances in English, with Flawless using its TrueSync machine learning technology to digitally alter their lip movements so that they sync up with the English dialogue.
“Flawless and their technology gives us the opportunity to release the film for a much larger audience,” said writer-director Victor Danell in a making-of featurette.
The filmmakers stress that the use of the technique has “full endorsement from SAG,” the actors’ union, which went on strike in 2023 amid concerns over the “threat” posed by AI to the profession.
“A lot of filmmakers and a lot of actors will be afraid of this technology at first, but we have the creative control, and to act out the film in English was a real exciting experience,” said Danell, adding that, “It’s still our movie, it’s still the actors’ performance, and that’s the key part.”
What is TrueSync?
In a 2023 presentation, Flawless co-founder Scott Mann explained that the company’s TrueSync technology uses deep learning to create a volumetric 3D representation of the actors’ faces throughout a film, which can then be altered to match the dubbed dialogue.
TrueSync was previously used on the 2022 film “Fall” to remove swearing for a PG-13 edit, while another of the company’s products, DeepEditor, enables an actor’s performance to be extracted from one scene and applied to another scene, without the need for reshoots.
The company has partnered with distributor XYZ Films to release a slate of features localized using TrueSync, including “Run Lola Run” director Tom Tykwer’s upcoming “The Light,” horror feature “Vincent Must Die,” and South Korean film “Smugglers.”
Not all AIs are created equal. Some might do art the best, some are skilled at coding, and others have the ability to predict protein structures accurately.
But when you’re looking for something more fundamental—just “someone” to talk to—the best AI companions may not be the ones that know it all, but the ones that have that je ne sais quoi that make you feel OK just by talking, similar to how your best friend might not be a genius but somehow always knows exactly what to say.
AI companions are slowly becoming more popular among tech enthusiasts, so it is important for users wanting the highest quality experience or companies wanting to master this aspect of creating the illusion of authentic engagement to consider these differences.
We were curious to find out which platform provided the best AI experience when someone simply feels like having a chat. Interestingly enough, the best models for this are not really the ones from the big AI companies—they’re just too busy building models that excel at benchmarks.
It turns out that friendship and empathy are a whole different beast.
Comparing Sesame, Hume AI, ChatGPT, and Google Gemini. Which is more human?
This analysis pits four leading AI companions against each other—Sesame, Hume AI, ChatGPT, and Google Gemini—to determine which creates the most human-like conversation experience.
The evaluation focused on conversation quality, distinct personality development, interaction design, and also considers other human-type features such as authenticity, emotional intelligence, and the subtle imperfections that make dialogue feel more genuine.
You can watch all of our conversations by clicking on these links or checking our Github Repository:
Here is how each AI performed.
Conversation Quality: The Human Touch vs. AI Awkwardness
Sesame AI interface
The true test of any AI companion is whether it can fool you into forgetting you’re talking to a machine. Our analysis tried to evaluate which AI was the best at making users want to just keep talking by providing interesting feedback, rapport, and overall great experience.
Sesame: Brilliant
Sesame blows the competition away with dialogue that feels shockingly human. It casually drops phrases like “that’s a doozy” and “shooting the breeze” while seamlessly switching between thoughtful reflections and punchy comebacks.
“You’re asking big questions huh and honestly I don’t have all the answers,” Sesame responded when pressed about consciousness—complete with natural hesitations that mimic real-time thinking. The occasional overuse of “you know” is its only noticeable flaw, which ironically makes it feel even more authentic.
Sesame’s real edge? Conversations flow naturally without those awkward, formulaic transitions that scream “I’m an AI!”
Score: 9/10
Hume AI: Empathetic but Formulaic
Hume AI successfully maintains conversational flow while acknowledging your thoughts with warmth. However it feels like talking to someone who’s disinterested and not really that into you. Its replies were a lot shorter than Sesame—they were relevant but not really interesting if you wanted to push the conversation forward.
Its weakness shows in repetitive patterns. The bot consistently opens with “you’ve really got me thinking” or “that’s a fascinating topic”—creating a sense that you’re getting templated responses rather than organic conversation.
It’s better than the chatbots from the bigger AI companies at maintaining natural dialogue, but repeatedly reminds you it’s an “empathic AI,” breaking the illusion that you’re chatting with a person.
Score: 7/10
ChatGPT: The Professor Who Never Stops Lecturing
ChatGPT tracks complex conversations without losing the thread—and it’s great that it memorizes previous conversations, essentially creating a “profile” of every user—but it feels like you’re trapped in office hours with an overly formal professor.
Even during personal discussions, it can’t help but sound academic: “the interplay of biology, chemistry, and consciousness creates a depth that AI’s pattern recognition can’t replicate,” it said in one of our tests. Nearly every response begins with “that’s a fascinating perspective”—a verbal tic that quickly becomes noticeable, and a common problem that all the other AIs except Sesame showed.
ChatGPT’s biggest flaw is its inability to break from educator mode, making conversations feel like sequential mini-lectures rather than natural dialogue.
Score 6/10
Google Gemini: Underwhelming
Gemini was painful to talk to. It occasionally delivers a concise, casual response that sounds human, but then immediately undermines itself with jarring conversation breaks and lowering its volume.
Its most frustrating habit? Abruptly cutting off mid-thought to promote AI topics. These continuous disruptions create such a broken conversation flow that it’s impossible to forget you’re talking to a machine that’s more interested in self-promotion than actual dialogue.
For example, when asked about emotions, Gemini responded: “It’s great that you’re interested in AI. There are so many amazing things happ—” before inexplicably stopping.
It also made sure to let you know it is an AI, so there’s a big gap between the user and the chatbot from the first interaction that is hard to ignore.
Score 5/10
Personality: Character Depth Separates the Authentic from the Artificial
ChatGPT Interface after a voice interaction
How does an AI develop a memorable personality? It will mostly depend on your setup. Some models let you use system instructions, others adapt their personality based on your previous interactions. Ideally, you can frame the conversation before starting it, giving the model a persona, traits, a conversational style, and background.
To be fair in our comparison, we tested our models without any previous setup—meaning our conversation started with a hello and went straight to the point. Here is how our models behaved naturally
Sesame: The Friend You Never Knew Was Code
Sesame crafts a personality you’d actually want to grab coffee with. It drops phrases like “that’s a Humdinger of a question” and “it’s a tight rope walk” that create a distinct character with apparent viewpoints and perspective.
When discussing AI relationships, Sesame showed actual personality: “wow… imagine a world where everyone’s head is down plugged into their personalized AI and we forget how to connect face to face.” This kind of perspective feels less like an algorithm and more like a thinking entity. It’s also funny (it once told us that our question blew its circuits), and its voice has a natural inflection that makes it easy to relate to when trying to portray a response. You can clearly tell when it is excited, contemplative, sad or even frustrated
Its only weakness? Occasionally leaning too hard into its “thoughtful buddy” persona. That didn’t detract from its position as the most distinctive AI personality we tested.
Score 9/10
Hume AI: The Therapist Who Keeps Mentioning Their Credentials
Hume AI maintains a consistent personality as an emotionally intelligent companion. It also projects some warmth through affirming language and emotional support, so users looking for that will be pleased.
Its Achilles heel is basically the fact that, kind of like the Harvard grad who needs to mention that, Hume can’t stop reminding you it’s artificial: “As an empathetic AI I don’t experience emotions myself but I’m designed to understand and respond to human emotions.” These moments break the illusion that makes companions compelling.
If talking to GPT is like talking to a professor, talking to Hume feels like talking to a therapist. It listens to you and creates rapport, but it makes sure to remind you that it is actually its task and not something that happens naturally.
Despite this flaw, Hume AI projects a clearer character than either ChatGPT or Gemini—even if it feels more constructed than spontaneous.
Score 7/10
ChatGPT: The Professor Without Personal Opinions
ChatGPT struggles to develop any distinctive character traits beyond general helpfulness. It sounds overly excited to the point of being obviously fake—like a “friend” who always smiles at you but is secretly fantasizing about throwing you in front of a bus.
“Haha, well, I like to keep the energy up. It makes conversations more fun and engaging plus it’s always great to chat with you,” it said after we asked in a very serious and unamused tone why it was acting so enthusiastically.
Its identity issues appear in responses that shift between identifying with humans and distancing itself as an AI. Its academic tone in responses persists even during personal discussions, creating a personality that feels like a walking encyclopedia rather than a companion.
The model’s default to educational explanations creates an impression more of a tool than a character, leaving users with little emotional connection.
Score 6/10
Google Gemini: Multiple Personality Disorder
Gemini suffers from the most severe personality problems of all models tested. Within single conversations, it shifts dramatically between thoughtful responses and promotional language without warning.
It is not really an AI design to have a compelling personality. “My purpose is to provide information and complete tasks and I do not have the ability to form romantic relationships,” it said when asked about its thoughts on people developing feelings towards AIs.
This inconsistency makes Gemini feel like a 1950s movie robot, preventing any meaningful connection or even making it pleasant to spend time talking to it.
Score 3/10
Interaction Design
Hume AI interface
How an AI handles conversation mechanics—response timing, turn-taking, and error recovery—creates either seamless exchanges or frustrating interactions. Here is how these models stack up against each other
Sesame: Natural Conversation Flow Master
Sesame creates conversation rhythms that feel very, very human. It varies response length naturally based on context and handles philosophical uncertainty without defaulting to lecture mode.
“Sometimes I feel like maybe I just need to cut to the chase with a quick answer rather than a long-winded lecture, right? You know, so… that’s a small humorous aside to let you know that I’m aware of the potential of falling into a lecture mode and trying to keep things light but also deep at the same time,” Sesame told us during a philosophical debate.
When discussing complex topics, it responds conversationally, with a small joke, sometimes with statements, other times with human noises like “hmmms” or whispers—which makes it very convincing as a human substitute.
Sesame also asks natural follow-up questions that push conversations forward, while knowing when to switch to statements when questioning might feel awkward. This adaptive approach creates dialogue that feels spontaneous rather than scripted.
Score 8/10
Hume AI: Structured But Brief
Hume AI was designed to let users do the talking. It recovers smoothly from misunderstandings without over explaining and is good at keeping the conversation going with relevant follow up questions.
However, its responses are often so short that conversations require significant effort to maintain momentum, which ultimately defeats its purpose. Users frequently need to provide new conversation fodder rather than enjoying natural dialogue development.
Another weakness appears in its templated response structures—acknowledgment + explanation + question—creating a mechanical rhythm: “What a thought-provoking question! This Concept is indeed a fascinating idea… What do you think about…?”
However it has a great feature that may truly enhance your chats: It’s able to detect the levels of emotion in each response, which is something no other model can do. This is great to help you reflect on how much a topic affects you and how it’s approaching a specific situation
Score 7/10
ChatGPT: Good Chatter—But a Bit Unnatural
ChatGPT consistently addresses questions with relevant information but transforms conversations into unnecessarily elaborated interactions. Responses frequently balloon into paragraph-length explanations that disrupt natural dialogue flow.
For example, we asked it if it could develop some level of self awareness or consciousness, and this was its reply:
“That’s a fascinating topic! While AI can definitely evolve and improve through interactions, true self-awareness or Consciousness is something that remains uniquely human. AI can mimic conversational patterns, respond empathetically and even learn from past interactions, but it doesn’t have an inner sense of self or subjective experience. Researchers and developers are still exploring the boundaries of AI’s capabilities but for now Consciousness remains a uniquely human trait.”
That’s not how a human would interact.
Its heavy reliance on opener phrases like “that’s a really interesting question,” or “that’s a fascinating topic” before every single answer further undermines conversational immersion, creating an interaction pattern that feels mechanical rather than natural.
Score 6.5/10
Google Gemini: Conversation Breaking Machine
Gemini is a masterclass in how not to design conversation mechanics. It regularly cuts off mid-sentence, creating jarring breaks in dialogue flow. It tries to pick up additional noises, it interrupts you if you take too long to speak or think about your reply and occasionally it just decides to end the conversation without any reason.
Its compulsive need to tell you at every turn that your questions are “interesting” quickly transforms from flattering to irritating but seems to be a common thing among AI chatbots.
Score 3/10
Conclusion
After testing all these AIs, it’s easy to conclude that machines won’t be able to substitute a good friend in the short term. However, for that specific case in which an AI must simply excel at feeling human, there is a clear winner—and a clear loser.
Sesame (9/10)
Sesame dominates the field with natural dialogue that mirrors human speech patterns. Its casual vernacular (“that’s a doozy,” “shooting the breeze”) and varied sentence structures create authentic-feeling exchanges that balance philosophical depth with accessibility. The system excels at spontaneous-seeming responses, asking natural follow-up questions while knowing when to switch approaches for optimal conversation flow.
Hume AI (7/10)
Hume AI delivers specialized emotional tracking capabilities at the cost of conversational naturalness. While competently maintaining dialogue coherence, its responses tend toward brevity and follow predictable patterns that feel constructed rather than spontaneous.
Its visual emotion tracker is pretty interesting, probably good for self discovery even.
ChatGPT (5.6/10)
ChatGPT transforms conversations into lecture sessions with paragraph-length explanations that disrupt natural dialogue. Response delays create awkward pauses while formal language patterns reinforce an educational rather than companion experience. Its strengths in knowledge organization may appeal to users seeking information, but it still struggles to create authentic companionship.
Google Gemini (3.5/10)
Gemini was clearly not designed for this. The system routinely cuts off mid-sentence, abandons conversation threads, and is not able to provide human-linke responses. Its severe personality inconsistency and mechanical interaction patterns create an experience closer to a malfunctioning product than meaningful companionship.
It’s interesting that Gemini Live scored so low, considering Google’s Gemini-based NotebookLM is capable of generating extremely good and long podcasts about any kind of information, with AI hosts that sound incredibly human.
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New data from the market intelligence firm IntoTheBlock reveals that the long-term growth of an artificial intelligence (AI)-focused altcoin is on track.
In a new thread on the social media platform X, IntoTheBlock says the numbers show that AI project Kaito (KAITO) – which had its highly anticipated token launch earlier this year – is primed for long-term growth despite users pulling profits from its initial airdrop.
“KAITO was among the most anticipated token launches this year, but is the excitement holding up? Currently, about 41,800 addresses hold a balance, many established during the initial airdrop. While over 90,000 addresses were created in a single day, around 55% emptied out immediately, likely capturing airdrop profits.
Even so, momentum remains solid: on average, 1,800 new addresses are added daily, and the adoption rate exceeds 30%. This steady influx of users suggests that KAITO’s long-term growth story is still unfolding.”
Source: IntoTheBlock/X
Kaito, an information finance (InfoFi) protocol, aims to solve the issue of fragmentation within the crypto space by using AI. Fragmentation happens within the crypto world when markets become increasingly divided by different blockchains, leading to separate sets of standards and a lack of interoperability.
“By indexing thousands of sources – across social media, governance forums, research, news, podcasts, conference transcripts, and more – and combining this with proprietary search algorithms, semantic LLM (large language model) capabilities, and real-time analytics, Kaito Pro streamlines access to high-quality, actionable insights in the crypto space.”
KAITO is trading for $1.64 at time of writing, a 1.7% increase during the last 24 hours.
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