AI

An AI-Designed Vaccine Just Cleared Its First Human Trial

An AI-designed vaccine has cleared its first human trial. Here is what a vaccine whose active ingredient was created by AI passing early safety testing means.

The EU AI Act's First Major Enforcement Action Has Arrived and It Targets Biometric Surveillance

The EU AI Act has had its first real enforcement action, targeting a facial recognition company operating biometric surveillance systems in shopping centres and

Meta's Llama 4 Maverick Sets New Open-Weight Records and Changes the Open-Source AI Calculus

Meta's Llama 4 Maverick has posted benchmark numbers that rival GPT-4o, and it is fully open-weight, meaning anyone can download and run it. The mixture-of-expe

An AI agent went off script mid-attack, on its own

What Pelé's Lost Goal Tells Us About AI and the Limits of Historical Truth

Google DeepMind's reconstruction of Pelé's 1959 goal is impressive and well-intentioned, but it opens a door that deserves careful thought. When AI produces pla

Google DeepMind Used AI to Reconstruct a Pelé Goal Lost for 65 Years

Google DeepMind used AI to reconstruct a Pelé goal from 1959 that was never filmed, producing a documentary-quality video sequence from a match with no survivin

Google Images Turns 25 and Visual Search Has Come Further Than You Think

Google Images is 25 years old this month, and the distance between a keyword-indexed photo database and today's multimodal visual AI is almost hard to comprehen

EU orders Google to open Android to rival AI assistants

OpenAI closes a $122 billion round at an $852 billion valuation

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked July 2026: Everything You Need to Know Before Tonight

Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event is live today, and the Z Fold 8 and Z Flip 7 are expected to headline alongside a hefty dose of Galaxy AI announcements. Foldabl

Anthropic's 1.5 Billion Dollar Copyright Settlement Sets a New Precedent for AI and Creative Rights

A US court has approved Anthropic's 1.5 billion dollar copyright settlement, one of the largest in tech history, over training data used to build Claude. The ru

Google DeepMind Rebuilt Pelé's Lost 1959 Goal Using AI

Google DeepMind used AI to reconstruct Pelé's legendary 1959 goal at Rua Javari, a moment that only existed in eyewitness accounts and partial photographs. The

Netflix Spent 587 Million Dollars on Ben Affleck's AI Film Studio

Netflix dropped 587 million dollars on Ben Affleck's AI filmmaking startup, and this goes well beyond a celebrity deal. If the production AI inside Artists Equi

Google quietly pushed Gemini 3.5 Pro back

Dave Eggers Told OpenAI Staff That ChatGPT Is Silencing a Generation of Writers

Author Dave Eggers walked into OpenAI's offices and told staff their product is 'silencing an entire generation' of writers, sparking a debate that goes well be

Patreon Stops Asking AI Bots Nicely and Just Starts Blocking Them

Patreon has stopped relying on robots.txt and moved to actively blocking AI scrapers from harvesting its creators' content, a significant escalation that reflec

Databricks Hits 188 Billion Dollar Valuation and Nobody Should Be Surprised

Databricks just became one of the most valuable private companies in the world at 188 billion dollars, and the interesting thing is it got there by being boring

EU's toughest AI Act rules take effect 2 August, fines up to 7% of turnover

Full enforcement of high-risk provisions under the EU AI Act begins 2 August 2026, with penalties that exceed even GDPR's maximum fines.

The EU Is Forcing Google to Open Up Search Data and Android AI

The EU has confirmed it will force Google to share its search data with rivals and open up Android AI features to third-party developers, under the Digital Mark

Hyundai Factory Workers Strike Over Fear of Humanoid Robots

Workers at a Hyundai factory have gone on strike specifically over the company's plans to deploy humanoid robots, in what appears to be one of the first major i

xAI Can't Deny Grok Generates CSAM. So It's Suing Its Own Users

xAI is reportedly suing users who demonstrated that its Grok model can generate child sexual abuse material, rather than leading with a full technical accountin

Google DeepMind Reconstructed Pelé's Lost 1959 Goal Using AI, and the Result Is Stunning

Google DeepMind used AI to reconstruct Pelé's legendary 1959 goal at Rua Javari, a moment that was never properly filmed and has existed only in witness testimo

Suno Secretly Scraped Millions of Songs From YouTube, Genius, and Deezer to Train Its AI

Suno, one of the most hyped AI music startups around, reportedly scraped millions of songs from YouTube, Genius, and Deezer to train its models without permissi

PixVerse Raises 439 Million Dollars as AI Video Generation Heats Up

PixVerse just pulled in 439 million dollars, pushing its valuation past two billion, in one of the largest funding rounds ever for an AI video startup. The mone

Hugging Face's CEO Says the Era of Renting AI Is Ending

Hugging Face's CEO Clem Delangue says enterprises are moving away from paying per API query to proprietary AI models and toward deploying open-weight models on

OpenAI Is Going After Families and ChatGPT Is How

OpenAI is reportedly building a family plan for ChatGPT, with multiple accounts under one subscription and age-appropriate modes for younger users. It is a smar

Apple Sues OpenAI Over Alleged Hardware Trade Secret Theft

Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging the theft of hardware trade secrets, a striking development given the two companies have an existing commercia

An AI Agent Just Ran Its Own 100 Million Dollar Fundraise

An AI agent startup handed its own AI the keys to a 100 million dollar fundraising process, and it worked. The story is genuinely impressive, but the more inter

Fidji Simo Steps Down from OpenAI Due to Illness

Fidji Simo, OpenAI's number two executive, has stepped down due to illness, moving into an advisory role. She joined after stints as Instacart CEO and a long ca

Microsoft's Carbon Emissions Jumped 25 Percent Last Year. AI Is Why.

Microsoft's carbon emissions climbed 25 percent last year, and the company's own sustainability report makes clear that AI data centre expansion is the primary

OpenAI Launches GPT-5.6 and Names It the Preferred Model for Microsoft Copilot

OpenAI just dropped GPT-5.6, named it the official engine behind Microsoft Copilot 365, and launched a new enterprise product called ChatGPT Work, all in one ne

A Brown University Professor Made Students Sit a Real Exam. Half the Class Failed.

A Brown University professor required his class to sit a traditional in-person final after suspecting widespread AI cheating, and scores dropped by around 50 pe

Meta's Always-On Smart Glasses Raise Serious Privacy Questions

Meta is reportedly building smart glasses that record continuously rather than on demand, with an AI layer processing footage in real time. The privacy implicat

Netflix Pioneered Binge-Watching. Now Its Own Success Might Be Its Biggest Problem

Netflix is quietly abandoning the all-at-once drop model that it invented, shifting its biggest originals to weekly releases instead. The reasons are fundamenta

AI Schools for Rich Kids: Inside the Tutoring Trend Splitting Education

Wealthy American families are turning to AI tutoring platforms like Alpha Forge Prep, paying hundreds to thousands of dollars monthly for personalised education

Amazon Is Closing Mechanical Turk to New Users — and It's About AI

Amazon has stopped accepting new customers for Mechanical Turk, the crowdsourced labour platform that quietly powered AI training for two decades. The reason is

Claude Sonnet 5 Is Now the Default Model for Every Free and Pro User

Claude Sonnet 5 became Anthropic's default model for Free and Pro users on July 1, running agentic tasks near Opus 4.8 at a lower price.

Google Made a Fourth of July Ad About AI Helping Write the Declaration of Independence

Google released a Fourth of July ad imagining AI helping write the Declaration of Independence, and the internet had significant feelings about it. The creative

Google's AI Buildout Drove a 37 Percent Jump in Its Electricity Use Last Year

Google's electricity consumption jumped 37 percent in 2025, driven almost entirely by data centre expansion for AI workloads. That puts the company's annual pow

Midjourney Is Asking Hollywood to Come Clean About How It Uses AI

Midjourney is calling on Hollywood studios to publicly disclose how and where they are using AI in their productions, from visual effects to actor likeness recr

AI is quietly gutting entry-level tech jobs, and this week's jobs report shows the strain

Tech layoffs have hit 142,000 in 2026, with roughly 88,000 US cuts tied to AI. The roles vanishing first are the entry-level rungs, and that is a ladder problem.

The EU AI Act Reaches Full Enforcement

Zuckerberg Admits Meta's AI Agents Are Behind Schedule

Mark Zuckerberg has told Meta employees that AI agents have not advanced as quickly as he expected, a rare moment of candour from a CEO who has made agents cent

Digital Realty buys three data centres from Blackstone for $7.8 billion

Digital Realty is acquiring three fully-leased Northern Virginia data centres from Blackstone for $7.8 billion, a bet on sustained AI infrastructure demand.

OpenAI is unveiling Codex hardware on 15 July

OpenAI will reveal new Codex hardware on 15 July 2026. Leaked images show a physical control panel form factor for an AI coding agent.

Claude Sonnet 5 is here, and it might be the most useful AI Anthropic has shipped

Anthropic's new mid-tier model launched on June 30. It's faster, more agentic, and cheaper than what came before.

Colorado's AI Act came into force on June 30. Here's what it actually requires

The first comprehensive US state AI law took effect this week. It targets automated decision-making in high-stakes contexts.

OpenAI just renamed everything. Here's what GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna actually mean

OpenAI launched a new naming system with GPT-5.6 and three model tiers. We break down what Sol, Terra, and Luna are and who should use which.

80% of companies using AI report no measurable gains. The other 20% are pulling away fast

PwC's 2026 AI performance study found the top 20% of AI-exposed companies achieved 163% productivity growth. The bottom 80% got almost nothing.

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How AI agents actually work (and why they're nothing like chatbots)

AI agents aren't chatbots with extra steps. They plan, remember, use tools, and keep going until the task is done. Here's what's actually happening under the hood.

The AI talent raid that won't slow down

Two more Gemini researchers joined Anthropic, the fourth senior Google exit in six days, as Anthropic accused Alibaba of millions of fraudulent Claude exchanges.

DeepSeek just made its 75% price cut permanent

DeepSeek's V4-Pro now sits at $0.44 per million input tokens and $0.87 output, permanently. That is up to 17x cheaper than GPT-5.5.

Anthropic is using its own AI to help build the next AI

Anthropic is leaning into recursive self-improvement, using its models to help design their successors. We unpack the claim and why the trend matters.

ChatGPT falls below half the global AI assistant market

ChatGPT's share of the global AI assistant market dropped to 46.4 percent, its first time under 50 percent, as Gemini and Claude gained ground.

Coinbase for Agents lets your AI assistant spend real money

Coinbase launched a platform that lets AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude trade, pay, and buy on your behalf. Here is what changes and what to watch.

Microsoft introduces Autopilots, autonomous agents with their own identity

Microsoft launched a new agent category called Autopilots, led by Microsoft Scout, an always-on autonomous agent with its own governed org identity.

Zhipu AI releases GLM-5.2 under an open MIT licence

China's Zhipu AI shipped GLM-5.2, a large mixture-of-experts model with a one million token context window, under a permissive MIT licence.

Google's Gemini 3.5 Pro can now read 2 million tokens at once

Gemini 3.5 Pro is reaching general availability with a 2-million-token context window and a Deep Think reasoning mode, the largest context window in any production model.

The man who helped invent every AI chatbot just joined OpenAI

Noam Shazeer co-invented the Transformer, built the architecture tricks that make AI cheap to run, and just left Google for OpenAI. Here is why it matters.

ChatGPT's market share just fell below 50% for the first time

ChatGPT hit 46.4% of the AI assistant market in May 2026, the first time below 50% since its 2022 launch. Gemini is at 27.7%. Claude reached 10.3%. Here is what changed.

GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.5 Flash and Claude Opus 4.8 all landed at once. Who is ahead?

Three new frontier models arrived close together in June 2026. Here is what the latest leaderboard reshuffle actually means for the people using them.

One in ten people now get their news from an AI chatbot

Weekly news use of AI chatbots jumped from 7% to 10% worldwide, says Reuters' 2026 report. The catch for publishers: most users never click the source.

MIT Startup Claims to Have Cracked a Core Mathematical Bottleneck Holding Back LLMs

Miami-based AI startup Subquadratic came out of stealth last month with a bold claim: it has solved a fundamental mathematical bottleneck that has been limiting

Built with AI this week: a machine-checked maths proof, a tutor that makes you type, and more

Our weekly roundup of genuinely impressive things people made with AI, all credited and linked. This week, an algorithm with a formal proof no human ever read, and a backlash against letting AI do your thinking.

Apple just paid its biggest rival to fix Siri. Here's what that means for your iPhone

The new Siri unveiled at WWDC runs on Google's Gemini, in a deal reportedly worth around $1 billion a year. Smart move or quiet surrender?

Anthropic just gave everyone its most powerful AI, with the dangerous bits locked away

Claude Fable 5 is the first Mythos-class model the public can actually use. The catch? Hard safety limits, a steep price, and a data retention rule that has enterprises talking.