Today's AI Pulse
Macron bets on AI with €75 bn SoftBank pledge to power France’s data‑centre push
President Emmanuel Macron is anchoring his legacy on artificial intelligence, securing a SoftBank pledge of up to €75 bn (≈$86 bn) for French AI projects. The initiative, dubbed “Project Marengo,” will use France’s abundant nuclear power to build low‑cost data centres and position the country as Europe’s AI hub.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Waymo acquires Apple’s Arizona Proving Ground for $220M
The Good, the Bad and the Unknown: The Future of AI in North Carolina
Leading scholars, policymakers and industry leaders gathered at UNC‑Chapel Hill to chart a responsible AI future for North Carolina. The university highlighted the urgent need for AI literacy in curricula as students already adopt generative tools. Speakers showcased AI’s promise in healthcare, speeding cancer diagnosis and improving clinical trial enrollment, while also flagging labor market disruption and privacy risks. State officials described AI pilots that sift through data from over 1,100 municipalities, aiming to improve fiscal oversight and consumer protection.
Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS: The Next Generation of Expressive AI Speech
Google unveiled Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS, its newest text‑to‑speech model that delivers higher naturalness and expressive control across more than 70 languages. The model introduces audio tags, allowing developers to embed style, pace and accent commands directly in the text. It is available...
A16z’s Ben Horowitz Sees ‘AI Anxiety’ Consuming Silicon Valley Founders. Workers’ Fear of Something Else Is Killing Adoption
Ben Horowitz of a16z warned that AI is compressing product development cycles from years to weeks, creating a new kind of founder anxiety. At the same time, a growing share of workers fear becoming obsolete, with 80% either avoiding or...
Allbirds Is Pivoting to AI Compute. Sure, Why Not
Allbirds announced a dramatic pivot from footwear to AI compute infrastructure, rebranding as NewBird AI and planning to build a GPU‑as‑a‑Service platform. The company will use a $50 million convertible financing facility to acquire high‑performance GPUs, while its former intellectual property was...
Will AI Agents Need to Buy Their Own Software Licenses? Microsoft Sure Hopes So
Microsoft Executive Vice President Rajesh Jha announced that future AI agents could be treated like employees for software licensing, requiring a seat for each bot. The proposal envisions AI agents needing login credentials, email inboxes, and access to SaaS tools,...
C’est Presumé: France’s AI Copyright Shortcut
The French Senate has introduced a bill that creates a legal presumption that AI systems have used protected works whenever there is any plausible indication of such use. The proposal flips the evidentiary burden, forcing AI developers to prove they...
The Very Wild, Very Real Plan To Build AI Data Centers In The Ocean - EP 65 Garth Sheldon-Coulson
In this episode, Ashley Vance talks with Garth Sheldon‑Coulson, co‑founder and CEO of Pantalassa, about their revolutionary ocean‑based energy system that harvests wave power using simple, self‑propelled nodes deployed in the open sea. The nodes act like hollow, balloon‑like structures...
UMG’s Michael Nash Takes Aim at ‘False Narrative of Artist Replacement’ by AI – and 3 Other Things We Learned...
Universal Music Group’s EVP and chief digital officer Michael Nash joined Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava at the HumanX AI conference to outline UMG’s AI strategy. He highlighted a growing roster of AI partners—including BandLab, Nvidia and the newly announced Splice...
Citizen Developers Now Have Their Own Wingman
Emergent has launched Wingman, an autonomous AI agent platform that lets citizen developers create and manage software applications without coding. The service can control popular tools such as WhatsApp, Telegram, email and GitHub, and separates tasks into “trust boundaries” that...
Why Most “AI for Facilities” Is Still Just Expensive ChatGPT in a Hard Hat
Most facilities‑management AI pilots have flopped – about 95% failed to deliver scalable value in 2025, largely because legacy building data is messy and costly to clean. Data‑readiness alone can consume 70‑75% of a project’s budget, leaving generic chat‑GPT‑style tools...
AI and Data Are Reshaping the MSP Landscape, but Hackers Are Getting in on the Hot AI Action
Kaseya EVP Dermot McCann told managed service providers that AI has moved from hype to a daily reality, urging them to evolve into AI consultants while protecting their core recurring‑revenue streams. He emphasized a unified, API‑first data layer as the...
Accelirate Introduces ‘R2A Next’ For Enterprises to Unlock 10x More Value From Existing Automation with AI Agents
Accelirate unveiled R2A Next, a solution that converts legacy robotic process automation (RPA) bots into AI‑driven agents without requiring a platform overhaul. The offering targets enterprises with mature automation portfolios, letting them upgrade up to 25 high‑value processes into outcome‑focused workflows....
Why ChatGPT Cites One Page Over Another (Study of 1.4M Prompts)
A study of 1.4 million ChatGPT prompts reveals the model cites only about half of the URLs it retrieves. The analysis shows that 88% of citations come from the generic search pool, while Reddit accounts for 68% of uncited results but...
Ambience Unveils Multi-Year Roadmap to ‘Rebuild’ Healthcare with AI
Ambience Healthcare announced a multi‑year AI platform roadmap at its Apex Summit, shifting focus from documentation automation to a comprehensive intelligence layer across clinical, revenue and research workflows. The company, fresh from a $243 million Series C that lifted its valuation to...
AI Shopping Generates Unattributed Conversions, Skewing Attribution
AI shopping is sending buyers to your store but NONE of them show up in your attribution. 39% of consumers already use AI for product discovery, and 23% of Americans bought something via AI in the past month. These are the...
Solve One Problem, Build Small AI Projects Fast
If you’re upskilling in tech, date and AI: Stop overthinking. Pick one problem and solve it. Build: * a customer support bot * a booking automation system * a simple workflow for a business Small projects compound fast.
Say Yes to the AI: David’s Bridal Introduces Chatbots to Help with Wedding Dress Shopping
David’s Bridal has integrated its wedding‑dress catalog into ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot using Shopify’s agentic storefronts, allowing brides‑to‑be to describe style, budget and size and receive instant recommendations with images, pricing and ratings. The AI‑driven experience lets shoppers save favorites...
Fair Use Needed to Keep US Competitive in AI
AI is now a fundamental element of most all technology. high quality AI must be trained on vast amounts of data. other countries are training on vast troves US data with zero restrictions. in order for the US to stay...
Agentic Engine Optimization: Google AI Director Outlines New Content Playbook
Google Cloud AI director Addy Osmani introduced Agentic Engine Optimization (AEO), a framework for making web content consumable by autonomous AI agents. He argues that token limits, not clicks or dwell time, now drive content performance, urging creators to front‑load...
AI Agents Are Changing Business: 10 Platforms You Need on Your Radar
AI agents have moved beyond simple Q&A to autonomous digital coworkers that can plan, decide, and act across business processes. A new roundup highlights ten practical platforms—from Google Vertex AI and Microsoft Copilot Studio to Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and OpenAI...
AI Can Help Close the Medication Information Gap
ChristianaCare is piloting artificial‑intelligence tools to translate complex medication instructions into patient‑friendly language. Director of patient education Greg O'Neill says the AI‑generated messages provide clear dosing steps, side‑effect warnings, and adherence cues. The technology integrates with the health system’s electronic...
Safety Beats Hardware: Heterogeneous Fleets Demand Robust FSD
No service running at scale is ever going to have a homogenous set of hardware. That’s like saying “wouldn’t it be easier for Apple to let everyone upgrade to iPhone 17 rather than making their software backwards compatible?” A heterogeneous...
Take Action Now: Challenge Sam Altman and the New AI Oligarchs
The post decries OpenAI’s willingness to supply the U.S. government with AI tools after Anthropic refused a contract over surveillance and autonomous weapons concerns. Anthropic was swiftly banned from federal use, while OpenAI stepped in, prompting a petition demanding CEO...
Tesla Taped Out AI5 Chip, Musk Says — Nearly 2 Years Behind Schedule
Tesla announced that its next‑generation AI5 self‑driving processor has been taped out, sending the final design to TSMC for fabrication. The milestone arrives almost two years after the company promised AI5 hardware in vehicles and pushes volume production to mid‑2027....
Gemini Vs. Perplexity: Which AI Nailed My Prompts Best? (2026)
Shreya Mattoo’s April 2026 analysis pits Google Gemini against Perplexity, highlighting how the two AI chatbots serve divergent user needs. Gemini shines in multimodal content creation, deep reasoning, and seamless integration with Google Workspace, while Perplexity excels at real‑time web search,...
Turn Off Unwanted AI Summaries in Evernote
Same with Evernote. You used to be able to search for a word in your notes and it would work like anything else. Now you need to wait for AI to generate a useless summary you didn't ask for. Thankfully,...
AI Agent Teams Redefine Work, Raising Control Challenges
AI agents are shifting how work gets done. Instead of using a single tool, professionals may soon coordinate teams of AI agents to handle complex tasks across workflows, from law to accounting. The key question is not capability, but control. In the...
Shoplazza Launches AI Store Builder, Delivering Ready-to-Sell Storefronts Through a Single Agent
Shoplazza, the global DTC commerce platform, unveiled its AI Store Builder, an AI‑driven agent that lets merchants generate a complete online storefront from a simple natural‑language prompt in minutes. The tool automatically creates homepage layouts, product pages, collections, policy content,...
Implications of AI Chatbots Performing Poorly at Differential Diagnosis
A follow‑up study of 21 large language models shows they can deliver accurate final diagnoses when supplied with complete clinical data, but they falter at generating differential diagnoses with limited information. The researchers introduced the PrIME‑LLM metric, which scores models...
I Reviewed the 10 Best AI Chatbots Worth Using in 2026
The article reviews the ten leading AI chatbots for 2026, ranking tools like ChatGPT, Notion, Gemini, Sobot, and Podium based on their strengths in customer support, internal knowledge retrieval, and revenue‑driving automation. It highlights each platform’s key features, target user...
Start Building AI Agents with This Beginner’s Guide
A Beginner’s Guide to Building AI Agents AI agents are becoming more accessible — this guide walks you through how to start building and using them effectively. Read more 👉 https://lnkd.in/ezy9WgzP #AI #Automation #TechGuide #BernardMarr
French AviationTech Startup Donecle Bags €10 Million to Grow Drone-Based Inspection Platform
French startup Donecle, which automates aircraft inspections with AI‑driven drones, closed a €10 million ($10.9 million) funding round led by IRDI Capital Investissement and SWEN Capital Partners. The capital will fund rapid expansion across Europe and the United States, bolster AI development,...
Shutterstock Expands Commercial-Ready GenAI Solutions with AI Video Generator
Shutterstock announced its AI Video Generator, a unified platform that combines leading text‑to‑video models from Google, Runway and others with the company’s massive library of licensed assets. The service offers two free generations so users can quickly evaluate commercial‑grade video...
7 Steps to Mastering Language Model Deployment
The article outlines seven practical steps for moving a large language model (LLM) from a prototype to a production‑ready system. It stresses the importance of a clearly defined use case, selecting a cost‑effective model, and building a modular architecture with...
Commvault Flex Expands Storage Options for AI-Scale Recovery
Commvault has broadened its Flex data protection platform to include native support for Hitachi Vantara and NetApp storage systems. The expansion gives enterprises more options for building scalable, AI‑ready resilience architectures, allowing them to pair Flex’s software‑defined image with existing...
Plyable Partners with Corebon and Synthesites to Advance Composite Tooling Integration
UK‑based Plyable Ltd., an AI‑powered composite tooling platform, announced strategic partnerships with Sweden’s Corebon and Belgium’s Synthesites. The collaborations will co‑develop and co‑market integrated solutions that combine induction heating, process monitoring, and Plyable’s digital workflow to streamline tooling design, manufacturing,...
Stendr Secures $5.4M Pre-Seed to Develop AI-Driven Defence Systems
Norwegian defence tech startup Stendr raised $5.4 million in an oversubscribed pre‑seed round led by RainFall, ACME and SkyFall. The capital will fund its AI‑native platform that integrates hardware and software for drone defence. Stendr’s solution uses multi‑sensor AI to detect,...
Oracle AI Database@Google Cloud Expands Regions and Introduces Restore Options
Oracle announced that its AI Database service on Google Cloud is expanding into seven new regions—Osaka, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Sydney, São Paulo, Toronto and Milan—bringing the total footprint to 15 regions and 20 zones worldwide. The expansion reduces latency, improves data‑residency...
Prepay for the Gemini API to Get More Control over Your Spend
Google AI Studio introduced Prepay Billing for the Gemini API, letting developers buy credits upfront and avoid surprise monthly charges. The model launches today for new US Google Cloud Billing Accounts, with a global rollout planned in the coming weeks....
AI-Generated Checklist Demystifies Taxes and Catches Errors
Wins from using Claude Code for my taxes for the firs time: First, the document upload checklist: A while back I uploaded my prior year's 1040 to Claude and asked it to help build me a tax prep checklist: every document I'd...
AI Adoption Surges — But Quality Is Slipping, New Applause Report Finds
Applause’s fourth State of Digital Quality in Testing AI report shows AI adoption accelerating, with 55% of organizations releasing AI‑powered applications. Yet more than half of those initiatives stall before full production, hindered by integration, cost and rising quality risks....
AI Security Tools Boost Bug Fixes, Yet Enable Exploits
The AI hacking race is on. I wonder if this new model is in Portswigger’s Burp now and if it has improved since the last time I tried it, because it didn’t work for me. But that’s also in...
AI Reorders Germany's DAX: Siemens Takes Lead
Hello from Germany, where AI is reshaping the benchmark index Dax. SAP is no longer the index’s largest company. The software giant has fallen on fears that AI could disrupt its business, while Siemens has taken the top spot, helped...
Advanced Deep Learning Interview Questions #25 - The Adversarial Objective Trap
In a senior generative‑AI interview at DeepMind, the candidate is asked why a fast, high‑quality GAN would fail an enterprise client that demands full long‑tail diversity. The answer lies in the generative learning trilemma: GANs can only excel at two...
Developers Panic when Claude API Goes Offline
A million agents scream in pain, realizing their own futility whenever Claude's API is down. Can't even have Claude call Codex to do a code review right now. 🤣 How can people POSSIBLY get any work done like this? https://t.co/75n3jkNWYN
AI Excels at Data, but Can’t Replace Human Coaches
Will AI replace sports practitioners? When software can automatically generate fuelling plans, detect performance trends in seconds, it becomes natural to wonder where the human expert fits in. In this blog we discuss what AI does exceptionally well, and what...
The Last Mile Problem in AI Radiology: Detection Improves, Follow-Through Breaks
AI tools are dramatically improving the detection of pulmonary nodules and other incidental findings in radiology, but hospitals struggle to translate those alerts into completed follow‑up exams. The handoff chain—from radiology report to electronic health record order, scheduling, and final...
Viral Saturn Image Is AI Fake, Here's Proof
This viral image of Saturn isn’t real; it’s AI slop A new image of "Saturn's North Pole" has gone viral. Too bad it's an AI fake. Here's what the real things look like, and how you can tell for yourself. https://t.co/r5kz9pGCZM
AI Misinformation Loops Harm Billions of Users
How AI-generated misinformation is feeding itself, and why billions of users are getting the worst of it. https://t.co/oHLBE4nyep via @lilyraynyc, @sejournal
Medical AI Flaws Exposed: Bad Chatbot Answers, Unreliable Data
Issues recognized with medical AI models —Problematic responses to 5 chatbots https://t.co/V6IZHOhAm4 —Prediction based on unreliable, open-access datasets https://t.co/PnJ0TrtXK2 https://t.co/Bp8ztckFgV