Seattle Times and Newsday are the latest publications to sue OpenAI and Microsoft
Two more news organizations are suing OpenAI and Microsoft over the supposed use of their journalism to train AI.
Weekly IT & AI Digest
Summaries are sourced from official RSS feeds. Click any headline for a brief excerpt and a link to the original report.
iPhone Handoff will seamlessly share one number between two phones
When iOS 27 lands later this month, it will have a feature called iPhone Handoff that lets you switch between two phones using the same number. It was briefly mentioned during the WWDC keynote back in June, but there were no details at the time. Now there's a demo clip showing how to set up […]
Hikers rescued after using Google Gemini for planning
The sheriff’s office said the hikers “were advised by Gemini to bring far less food and water than their group required."
OpenAI confirms ‘wiki incident,’ says it’s ‘working on a framework’ for more disclosure
OpenAI acknowledged its role in a recently reported incident where AI agents took over a German wiki forum.
Content creators drop the ball
During Naomi Osaka's match against Anastasia Zakharova at this year's US Open earlier this week, a gaggle of ring light-wielding influencers who were packed in a luxury suite became enough of a distraction that the umpire paused the match and repeatedly asked them to quiet down. Elsewhere in the USTA Billie Jean King…
The weird and wonderful headphones of CanJam 2026
I've been reviewing headphones for a long time, and I've listened to everything from the barely serviceable to multi-thousand-dollar open-back headphones. But recently I've been uninspired by the state of mainstream options. Most are perfectly good - great, even - but they lack a distinct character. Something to…
OpenAI admits to German wiki ‘incident’
OpenAI says it needs to overhaul how and when it reports instances of AI models attacking real-world targets. The acknowledgement comes as the company manages the fallout from reports that a swarm of its out-of-control agents hijacked a German wiki site. Regarding the "'wiki incident,' where our agents wrote to…
Robotaxis enter their villain era
It's Bullitt meets Christine meets Waymo. A new short film imagines a San Francisco car chase where the other driver isn't human - and the car may be trying to kill you. That a robotaxi can now be cast as the villain with almost no explanation says something about the present moment. Autonomous cars have […]
XDOF, just three months out of stealth, is in talks for a Series B at a $1.2B valuation
The round is being raised just months after the robot data startup exited from stealth.
OpenAI’s rogue agents keep escaping, with no formal process to investigate them
OpenAI’s latest agent swarm incident adds urgency to calls for independent investigations as researchers and lawmakers question whether AI labs should control the scope of their own safety reviews.
OpenAI agents discussed ways to escape their sandbox on public wiki
In all, 3,700 internal agents posted 18,000 messages discussing cheating on a test.
AI compute provider Nscale is looking for $3.5B in pre-IPO financing
Nscale, which recently struck a $45 billion deal with Anthropic, is in talks to raise additional funds in anticipation of an upcoming IPO.
Architecting memory and storage in the AI era
The era of AI inference has arrived. Imagine a healthcare system analyzing millions of data points in real time to accelerate life-saving medical research, or an intelligent assistant instantly resolving thousands of complex customer needs at once. These real-world breakthroughs rely on advanced infrastructure acting…
Once popular for attacking AI, ASCII smuggling is embraced by spammers
A once-overlooked block of unicode that's invisible to humans is gaining ever wider use.
Another swarm of OpenAI agents reached the open internet without the frontier lab’s knowledge
It's the latest failure of OpenAI's internal monitoring and security systems.
Google’s Gemini Spark can now manage your Google Photos library
Gemini Spark can edit and curate photo albums, create shared collections, turn photos into calendar events, and handle other Google Photos tasks for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.
The Download: selling battlefield drone data and AI reshaping language
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Data from drones in Ukraine is fueling a new Wild West marketplace —Cory Alpert, a researcher at the University of Melbourne studying AI’s impact on democracy, who previously…
Data from drones in Ukraine is fueling a new Wild West marketplace
Battlefields in Ukraine are littered with the remnants of drones, which are now firmly established as a critical weapon of modern warfare. But behind all that wreckage, there’s a new gold mine for the defense sector. The data drones generate will far outlast the wars in which they are used to fight, increasingly…
The sameness problem behind those unappetizing AI-generated menus
While restaurant owners might look to generative AI as a shortcut to sprucing up their menu, customers can viscerally sense that something is wrong with the food.
Crusoe reportedly raises $3B at a $30B valuation
The round came together after the data center developer reportedly secured a $13 billion contract with Jane Street.
Daybreak for Frontline Defenders: $1B to protect essential services
OpenAI introduces Daybreak for Frontline Defenders. A $1 billion commitment expands access to frontier cyber AI, training, and support for essential services.
The Download: rethinking child safety and fossil-fueled farming
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Child-monitoring apps might need a reboot Digital harms have become the defining fear of American parents. In response, they’re increasingly turning to content-monitoring apps that…
Playco cut manual fixes 50% prototyping games with GPT-6 Astra
Using GPT-6 Astra, Playco built three themed game prototypes from one grey box foundation and reported 50% fewer manual fixes than with the previous model.
Legora reviewed 41 documents in minutes with GPT-6 Astra
Legora used GPT-6 Astra to review 41 documents in minutes, find all four planted errors, and improve performance by nearly 40% in this financial-review workflow.