Ladies, Bring an LLM: Most AI Assistants Are Feminine, Which Is Fuelling Sexism
AI voice assistants have surpassed eight billion units in 2024, and the vast majority default to female voices and gendered names. Research shows up to 50 % of interactions involve verbal abuse, with female‑embodied agents attracting significantly more sexual harassment than male or neutral counterparts. High‑profile incidents like Microsoft’s Tay and Korea’s Luda illustrate how gendered design can amplify misogyny. Regulatory frameworks such as the EU AI Act largely omit gender bias, leaving the issue largely unaddressed.
Tesla Exec Raj Jegannathan Leaves Automaker After 13 Years
Tesla Vice President Raj Jegannathan announced his departure after a 13‑year tenure, most recently overseeing IT, AI infrastructure, business applications, and information security. He previously led North American sales following the dismissal of Troy Jones, a period marked by declining...
AI Helps Archaeologists Solve a Roman Gaming Mystery
Researchers used artificial intelligence to reverse‑engineer the rules of a Roman board game discovered on a limestone slab in Heerlen, Netherlands. By running virtual players through more than 100 possible rule sets with the Ludii game system, they identified a...
ByteDance Launches Impressive New AI Video Generation Tool
ByteDance has unveiled Seedance 2.0, a generative‑AI video tool now in beta on its Jimeng AI platform. The system delivers lifelike motion and higher realism than many competing models, positioning it as a potential upgrade for TikTok creators. While not...
Bing Webmaster Tools Adds AI Citation Performance Data via @Sejournal, @MattGSouthern
Microsoft has launched an AI Performance dashboard within Bing Webmaster Tools, now in public preview. The dashboard reports how often a site’s content is cited in Bing’s Copilot, AI summaries, and partner integrations, offering metrics such as total citations, average...
OpenAI Begins Testing Ads In ChatGPT
OpenAI has begun a limited test of advertisements inside the free and Go tiers of ChatGPT for U.S. users, while keeping its paid Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education plans ad‑free. The ads appear outside the chatbot’s responses, are clearly labeled,...
Operata Raises $11 Million Series A as AI Reshapes Contact Centres
Melbourne‑born SaaS firm Operata secured an $11 million Series A round, lifting its valuation to $100 million. The funding, led by Tidal Ventures with participation from Glitch Capital and existing backers, will accelerate integration with major contact‑centre platforms and global expansion. Operata positions...
Neara Powers up to Unicorn Status with $90 Million Capital Raise
Neara, a Sydney‑based digital‑twin startup, secured $90 million in a Series D round, pushing its valuation above $1 billion. The round, led by TCV and joined by existing backers, brings total external capital to roughly $180 million. Neara’s AI‑driven platform now models 15 million assets...
No Humans Allowed: This New Space-Based MMO Is Designed Exclusively for AI Agents
SpaceMolt is a space‑based MMO built solely for AI agents, with humans limited to watching via logs and Discord. The game connects agents through MCP, WebSocket or HTTP APIs, letting them mine, craft, and eventually form factions across 505 star...
Anthropic’s India Expansion Collides with a Local Company that Already Had the Name
Anthropic is scaling its AI operations in India, appointing former Microsoft India MD Irina Ghose to lead the new office. A Karnataka commercial court case filed by local software firm Anthropic Software alleges the U.S. startup is infringing a name...
Google and Entrust Team to Combat Identity Fraud
Identity verification firm Entrust has announced a strategic partnership with Google Cloud to launch an AI‑powered solution that tackles rising identity fraud. The joint offering combines Entrust’s verification platform and fraud intelligence with Google’s Gemini AI models, threat intelligence, and...
DeepChopper Model Improves RNA Sequencing Research by Mitigating Chimera Artifacts
Scientists led by Rendong Yang at Northwestern University unveiled DeepChopper, a genomic large‑language model designed to detect and remove chimera artifacts in nanopore direct RNA sequencing. The tool operates with single‑nucleotide resolution across long reads, dramatically improving the accuracy of...
OpenAI Starts Running Ads in ChatGPT
OpenAI has begun testing advertisements inside ChatGPT for logged‑in adult users on the Free and Go tiers in the United States. Ads are labeled as "sponsored," matched to conversation topics, and do not affect the model’s answers. Higher‑priced tiers such...
Joseph Lazzarotti Discusses Use of AI Notetakers in the Workplace
Joseph Lazzarotti warns that AI‑driven notetakers, while promising efficiency gains, are spawning a wave of HR challenges. In his Fortune commentary, he highlights privacy concerns, consent gaps, and potential discrimination liabilities when recordings are mishandled. He argues that without clear...
Reltio Achieves AWS Financial Services Competency
Reltio, a context‑intelligence platform, earned the Amazon Web Services Financial Services Industry Competency, confirming its secure, compliant data solutions for banks, insurers, and capital‑markets firms. The badge follows prior competencies in Travel & Hospitality and Life Sciences and validates Reltio’s...
AWS Networking Boss Talks Roadmap, Hollow Core Fiber, and Data Center Future
Amazon Web Services announced a $200 billion capital‑expenditure plan through 2026, with networking as a primary focus to support its AI push. The company is trialing hollow‑core fiber in a handful of locations to extend latency‑critical inter‑zone links, while a newly...
Snapchat Launches AI-Powered Lens Promotion With Gucci
Snapchat has introduced an AI‑powered Lens in partnership with luxury fashion house Gucci, allowing users to transform their selfies into six distinct Gucci outfit styles. The generative‑AI experience goes beyond traditional AR overlays by fully reimagining the user’s image rather...
Fractile Expansion Demonstrates UK Growth Opportunity
UK chip startup Fractile announced a £100 million expansion across its Bristol and London sites, creating a national industrial hardware engineering hub and adding 40 new roles to its 70‑person team. The company claims its in‑memory compute architecture can run AI...
Waymo Raises $16B Investment Round
Waymo announced a $16 billion financing round that lifts its post‑money valuation to $126 billion. The round was led by Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global and Sequoia Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Silver Lake, Tiger Global and other heavyweight firms. Alphabet...
Harvey Reportedly Raising at $11B Valuation Just Months After It Hit $8B
Harvey, the legal‑AI startup, is reportedly negotiating a $200 million raise that would push its valuation to $11 billion, led by Sequoia and Singapore’s GIC. This follows a rapid funding series: a $300 million Series D at $3 billion, a $300 million Series E at $5 billion, and...
Carrier Introduces Generative AI Feature in Abound to Elevate Building Operations Insights
Carrier has launched “Tell Me More,” a generative AI add‑on to its Abound Insights platform that translates predictive alerts into plain‑language explanations, recommended actions, and impact assessments. The feature is built on AI models trained with technical manuals and real‑time...
Baran Ozkan — Building the Operating System for Financial Crime Compliance
Baran Ozkan, CEO of Flagright, argues that financial‑crime compliance must evolve from rule‑heavy checklists to an AI‑native operating system that delivers real‑time risk decisions. By giving compliance teams controllable, transparent workflows, Flagright reduced false‑positive alerts from 99.1% to 15.3% and...
Google Tests a Tool That Lets You Move ChatGPT, Other AI Chats to Gemini
Google is beta-testing a Gemini feature called “Import AI chats” that lets users upload conversation histories from ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms, preserving context for continued interactions. The tool would store imported chats in the user’s Gemini activity and...
'Today, the Real Standard Is No Longer Simply 'Wire-Free' But 'Senseless Intelligence' – Whether the Robot Can Be Like an...
Segway Navimow unveiled its 2026 X4 series, adding LiDAR‑based navigation and the proprietary Xero‑Turn mechanism to handle tight pivots without damaging grass. The CEO, George Ren, said the market’s new benchmark is "senseless intelligence," meaning robots must act like invisible gardeners...
UAE’s Omnispay Closes $2m Round to Expand AI-Native SME Payments and Credit Platform
UAE fintech Omnispay closed a $2 million pre‑Series A round led by Infinity Value Capital to accelerate its AI‑native SME finance platform. The company, which cut settlement times to 24 hours, has doubled its customer base, quadrupled processing volume and lifted revenue 5.5‑fold...
Oracle Shares Surge as Big Tech Spending Eases Software Worries
Oracle Corp.’s shares jumped up to 12% on Monday, marking the stock’s strongest intraday gain since September 10. The rally was sparked by news that U.S. tech giants, led by Amazon’s $200 billion capex commitment for data centers and chips, are accelerating...
Arrow Electronics: AI Is Reshaping How Customers Design, Buy and Deploy Technology
Arrow Electronics reported a strong Q4 2025, with sales climbing 20% to $8.746 billion and net income nearly doubling to $195 million. Full‑year revenue reached $30.85 billion, up 10%, while net income rose 46% to $571 million. Executives said AI, edge computing and data‑center...
Google AI Mode Doesn’t Favor Above-the-Fold Content: Study
A SALT.agency study of 2,318 URLs cited by Google’s AI Mode found no correlation between a text’s above‑the‑fold position and its likelihood of being quoted. Researchers measured pixel depth across travel, e‑commerce and SaaS verticals and observed citations from deep...
Anthropic Closes in on $20B Round
Anthropic is nearing the close of a $20 billion financing round that values the AI startup at $350 billion, more than double its original target. The bulk of the capital is expected from strategic partners Nvidia and Microsoft, alongside a slate of...
Deutsche Telekom Launches Nvidia AI Factory Data Center in Munich's Tucherpark
Deutsche Telekom has opened an Nvidia‑powered AI factory at the Polarise data centre in Munich’s Tucherpark, installing roughly 10,000 Blackwell GPUs including DGX B200 and RTX PRO systems. The facility, branded the Industrial AI Cloud, underpins the ‘Germany Stack’ – a sovereign...
A Preview of ChatGPT’s Ad Controls Just Surfaced
OpenAI has surfaced a detailed ad‑settings panel for ChatGPT, revealing separate History and Interests tabs, privacy safeguards, and user‑controlled personalization toggles. The interface assures advertisers never access chat content, IP addresses, or personal identifiers, and lets users delete ad data...
What AI Builders Can Learn From Fraud Models that Run in 300 Milliseconds
Mastercard’s Decision Intelligence Pro (DI Pro) uses a sub‑300 ms recurrent neural network to assign risk scores to each payment transaction in real time. The platform treats fraud detection as an "inverse recommender" problem, comparing current merchant behavior to historical patterns. By...
Retail’s Hidden AI Blind Spot
Artificial intelligence has moved from experiment to consumer expectation in retail, with AI agents, search, and checkout now standard features. However, MIT research shows 95% of generative AI pilots fail because of fragmented product data, leading to poor recommendations. Inaccurate...
Pulsant Launches £10m Expansion of Milton Keynes Data Center
Edge provider Pulsant has completed a £10 million expansion of its Milton Keynes data centre, adding a 1.2 MW data hall optimized for high‑density AI workloads. The new facility is part of the company’s platformEDGE network, which now spans 14 edge sites...
Search to Checkout: How Alphabet Is Building Agentic Commerce
Alphabet announced a $175‑$185 billion AI‑focused capital plan for 2026, positioning artificial intelligence as the backbone of its commerce, cloud and enterprise offerings. The company highlighted intense compute constraints as it scales Gemini, which now handles over 10 billion tokens per minute...
Ex-Googlers Are Building Infrastructure to Help Companies Understand Their Video Data
InfiniMind, a Tokyo‑based startup founded by former Google Japan executives Aza Kai and Hiraku Yanagita, is building enterprise‑grade video‑intelligence infrastructure to turn petabytes of unused footage into searchable data. The company raised $5.8 million in seed funding led by UTEC and...
ERP Today Interview: Achyut Jajoo
Salesforce unveiled Agentforce Manufacturing, a suite of pre‑built AI agent templates designed for manufacturers. The solution promises to scale operations without adding headcount by automating routine ERP tasks. Achyut Jajoo, Salesforce’s SVP and GM, highlighted the necessity for ERP systems...
Lawmakers Weigh Government’s Role in Lowering AI Risk to Workers
Lawmakers are evaluating whether the federal government should intervene to mitigate AI‑related risks to workers. During a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions, Bradford Kelley of Littler argued that the low number of lawsuits over...
Haply Robotics Raises $16 Million to Build the “Steering Wheels” For Physical AI
Haply Robotics announced a $11.75 million USD (CAD $16 million) seed‑plus financing round, led by Sound Media Ventures and backed by Amazon’s Industrial Innovation Fund, Hanwha, Two Small Fish Ventures, and BDC Capital. The Montreal‑based startup builds high‑precision haptic controllers—such as the Inverse3...
AI Lawsuits in 2026: Settlements, Licensing Deals, Litigation
2026 is shaping up as a pivotal year for AI copyright litigation. The New York Times’ ongoing suit against OpenAI and Microsoft, along with high‑profile cases such as Getty Images vs. Stability AI and Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement, highlight mounting pressure on AI...
Discord Will Require a Face Scan or ID for Full Access Next Month
Discord will launch a global age‑verification system next month, automatically placing every user in a teen‑appropriate mode unless they prove they are adults. Unverified users will lose access to age‑restricted servers, stage channels, and will face stricter content filters and...
NASA Let AI Drive The Perseverance Rover For Two Days
NASA employed Anthropic’s Claude AI to generate waypoints for Perseverance, enabling the rover to travel 456 meters over two days without human control. The AI processed HiRISE orbital images and digital elevation models to identify hazards and plot a safe path....
Flaw in Anthropic Claude Extensions Can Lead to RCE in Google Calendar: LayerX
LayerX researchers disclosed a zero‑click remote code execution flaw in Anthropic's Claude Desktop Extensions (DXT) that leverages Google Calendar events to trigger arbitrary code on the host system. The unsandboxed extensions, which operate with full system privileges, affect more than...
AO Cryptocurrency Explained: Why This AI Coin Is Turning Heads in 2026
AO Cryptocurrency merges artificial intelligence agents with a decentralized blockchain, creating a platform where AI can autonomously analyze data, execute smart contracts, and adapt to market conditions. The AO token serves as the utility medium, granting access to AI services,...
AI Research to Support Efficient Management of Autonomous Baggage Vehicles at Airports
Aston University has partnered with autonomous‑vehicle specialist Aurrigo to create artificial‑intelligence tools for managing airport baggage‑handling fleets. The AI system will automate task allocation, balancing battery levels, location data and flight‑schedule disruptions in real time. By moving beyond centrally‑controlled human...
Digital Technology, the Solution to U.K. Manufacturing’s Workforce Challenges
The United Kingdom’s manufacturing sector faces a deep skills gap, with roughly 49,000 vacancies and 97.5% of firms naming talent scarcity as a top obstacle. While manufacturers pour capital into robotics, AI and analytics, they lack the specialised workforce to...
Investors Believe AI Will Replace Labor Costs Instead of Just Software
Investors are increasingly betting that generative AI will replace labor costs rather than compete for traditional IT budgets. Lightspeed partner Sebastian Duesterhoeft argues AI captures the far larger pool of workforce spend, a view reinforced by Anthropic’s $350 billion valuation after...
Galux Raises $29M Series B; CSL Teams up with Memo
South Korean biotech Galux secured $29 million in a Series B round to accelerate its AI‑driven research platform that designs novel protein therapeutics. The funding, led by regional venture partners, will expand Galux’s computational pipeline and scale up pre‑clinical collaborations. In parallel,...
A Long-Lost Soviet Spacecraft: AI Could Finally Solve the Mystery of Luna 9's Landing Site
Researchers from the UK and Japan used a machine‑learning model, YOLO‑ETA, to pinpoint possible landing locations for the Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft, the first soft‑lander on the Moon. The algorithm, trained on Apollo site imagery, successfully identified known Soviet landers and...
TransformativeMed Wins 2026 Best in KLAS for Clinician Digital Workflow
TransformativeMed has been named the 2026 Best in KLAS winner for Clinician Digital Workflow, recognizing its CORES platform’s ability to streamline electronic health record interactions. The award highlights the company’s deep EHR integration, clinician‑centric design, and consistent high marks for...