News•Feb 18, 2026
Milwaukee Sheriff Moves to Integrate Biometrica Despite MPD Facial Recognition Freeze
Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office has signed a letter of intent to partner with Biometrica, aiming to access its UMbRA facial‑recognition database. The draft contract would let the sheriff’s office search a de‑identified collection of mugshots, felony warrants and missing‑person images, with results reviewed by human analysts. The agreement bypasses a County Board license‑fee vote but still requires County Executive approval. This comes weeks after the Milwaukee Police Department halted its own facial‑recognition program amid public‑trust concerns.
By Biometric Update
News•Feb 18, 2026
Amazon Halts Blue Jay Robotics Project After Less than 6 Months
Amazon has halted its Blue Jay warehouse robotics project less than six months after its public debut. The multi‑armed robot, unveiled in October to speed same‑day delivery, was built in roughly a year—significantly faster than Amazon’s prior robot programs. Amazon says...
By TechCrunch Robotics
News•Feb 18, 2026
CharmHealth Advances Its AI Strategy With MCP Server
CharmHealth introduced its Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, a secure, standardized interface that lets AI applications access electronic health record (EHR) data directly within the clinician’s workflow. The server translates natural‑language requests from large language models into structured EHR interactions,...
By Digital Health Global
News•Feb 18, 2026
National Robotics Week 2026 Underscores Robotics as a Critical U.S. Industry and Workforce Engine
National Robotics Week runs April 4‑12, 2026, spotlighting robotics as a strategic U.S. industry. Organized by MassRobotics, the week aggregates over a hundred events nationwide, linking manufacturers, startups, and research labs. Partnerships such as Microsoft’s sponsorship of STEM sessions and...
By RoboticsTomorrow
News•Feb 18, 2026
OpenAI Must Stop Using ‘Cameo’ Term in Sora App, Judge Rules
A U.S. district judge granted a preliminary win to video‑request platform Cameo, ordering OpenAI to stop using the "Cameo" label for its Sora AI video feature, citing likely consumer confusion and recent deep‑fake controversies. OpenAI had previously renamed the feature...
By Mashable AI
News•Feb 18, 2026
AI Connected to Slightly More Hiring, but Growth Favors Older Workers with Less Exposure
Payroll data from Gusto shows that small businesses that increase AI‑exposed work see modest revenue gains and a slight rise in hiring. For every 10‑point boost in AI exposure, monthly revenue climbs about 2.2% after six months, while headcount grows...
By Accounting Today
News•Feb 18, 2026
ECL Targets AI Data Centers with Fuel-Agnostic Power Platform
ECL unveiled FlexGrid, a power‑agnostic platform that lets modular data centers draw electricity from hydrogen, natural gas, renewables or diesel. The system is designed for AI training and inferencing workloads, allowing operators to start with modest 2‑10 MW grid connections and...
By Network World (sitewide)
News•Feb 18, 2026
Pakistan Super App for Gov’t Services, Document Verification Advances Toward Launch
Pakistan’s government is set to launch a mobile "Super App" that will consolidate public services, document verification, and digital payments into a single platform. The initiative builds on NADRA’s National Digital Identity system and the existing Pak ID app, leveraging...
By Biometric Update
News•Feb 18, 2026
‘The Future Is About Fixing Business Problems:’ New Charter CEO On AI‑Native MSP Strategy
New Charter Technologies is reshaping the managed services provider (MSP) model by embedding AI into its core operations, turning reactive support into automated, self‑healing processes. The company recently hired Microsoft veteran Michelle Curtis as chief revenue officer to drive a...
By CRN (US)
News•Feb 18, 2026
Williams-Sonoma to Test Ads in ChatGPT
Williams‑Sonoma has joined OpenAI’s ad pilot, becoming one of the first retailers to test sponsored placements inside ChatGPT. The experiment will surface high‑end home‑goods ads to free and Go users as they ask product‑related questions, while paid subscribers remain ad‑free....
By Retail Dive
News•Feb 18, 2026
Don’t Run From Scary Times. Here’s How AI Helps You Prioritize What Really Counts
Amid economic uncertainty, the article urges businesses to double down on core strengths and customer relationships, using AI as a strategic ally. It highlights how AI can surface top‑performing products, personalize marketing, and provide real‑time data to guide decisions. By...
By Entrepreneur
News•Feb 18, 2026
Frist Cressey Ventures Raises $425M Fund to Invest in AI-Native Care
Frist Cressey Ventures closed an oversubscribed $425 million Fund IV, lifting its assets under management close to $1 billion. The new fund zeroes in on early‑stage, AI‑native healthcare companies that can reshape care delivery. Strategic limited partners such as Cigna, MedStar Health and...
By HIT Consultant
News•Feb 18, 2026
Loman AI Expands POS Partnerships with SpotOn
Loman AI announced a new partnership with SpotOn, extending its voice‑AI phone answering service to another leading restaurant point‑of‑sale platform. The integration lets the AI pull real‑time menu, reservation and inventory data directly from the POS, enabling more natural, accurate...
By Food On Demand
News•Feb 18, 2026
Identy Joins Africa’s Push for Digital Identity in Humanitarian Healthcare
Identy is partnering with the volunteer NGO HumanCoop to roll out offline facial‑recognition tools for undocumented patients in northern Mauritania, creating portable digital medical IDs that work without internet. The initiative will initially cover the Bir Mogrein community of over 2,500...
By Biometric Update
News•Feb 18, 2026
The Hidden Cost of AI: Why Data Debt Is Actually a Human Problem
At the Digital Lounge in Davos, IT leaders highlighted a hidden crisis: data debt is draining human capacity more than technology. Legacy SAP systems and fragmented data require teams to spend countless hours cleaning and governing information, leading to transformation...
By ERP Today
News•Feb 18, 2026
Google Adds Music-Generation Capabilities to the Gemini App
Google has integrated DeepMind’s Lyria 3 music‑generation model into its Gemini app, launching a beta feature that creates short tracks with lyrics and AI‑generated cover art. Users can describe a song or upload a photo or video, prompting Gemini to produce...
By TechCrunch Apps
News•Feb 18, 2026
Google Adds Lyria 3 AI-Music Model to Its Gemini App
Google has integrated DeepMind’s Lyria 3 generative‑music model into its Gemini app, expanding the multimodal AI assistant’s capabilities to include music creation. The update reaches Gemini’s more than 750 million monthly active users, allowing them to generate 30‑second tracks from text, images...
By Music Ally
News•Feb 18, 2026
Finpace Introduces Halcyon AI Layer to Its Core Banking Stack
Finpace unveiled Halcyon, an AI‑driven layer integrated with its core banking platform, aimed at accelerating change management for African financial institutions. The solution interprets business intent, orchestrates actions across data and workflow systems, and embeds governance to ensure compliant, auditable...
By IT News Africa
News•Feb 18, 2026
Successfully Implementing AI in Banking: Insights From Allica Bank CEO Richard Davies
Allica Bank CEO Richard Davies outlined how the UK fintech is scaling AI across its organization, emphasizing company‑wide adoption, engineering productivity, and cultural change. He highlighted that AI tools have delivered productivity improvements of two to ten times for engineers...
By Finovate
News•Feb 18, 2026
EDGX CEO Details the Startup’s Push for AI-Enabled Onboard Processing
Belgian AI space startup EDGX secured €2.3 million funding to accelerate its Sterna edge‑AI computer for satellites and has already signed a €1.1 million multi‑unit contract with a satellite operator. CEO Nick Destrycker says the company will focus on European defense and...
By Via Satellite
News•Feb 18, 2026
Ambient AI in the Exam Room: For Better Care and Better Caring
Leonard Calabrese argues that ambient artificial intelligence—low‑cost, always‑on tools integrated into the exam room—can free clinicians from the constant EMR distraction and restore genuine face‑to‑face interaction. By handling routine documentation and patient‑message drafting, AI lets physicians focus on non‑verbal cues...
By Healio – All News
News•Feb 18, 2026
AI Claim Assistant Now Taking Auto Damage Claims Calls at Travelers
Travelers Companies has launched an AI Claim Assistant, an agentic voice service built on OpenAI’s models, to field auto‑damage claim calls. The system guides callers from initial consultation through claim submission, provides policy details, and enables photo uploads, appraisals, rental...
By Carrier Management
News•Feb 18, 2026
Architecting Agentic Operations for Supply Chain – A Practical View of A2A and MCP
The article proposes a layered architecture—Agent‑to‑Agent (A2A) for coordination and Model Context Protocol (MCP) for capability—to move AI in supply chains from isolated pilots to production‑scale operations. By publishing Agent Cards, A2A lets specialized agents discover and invoke each other...
By Logistics Viewpoints
News•Feb 18, 2026
AI in Healthcare Starts Long Before the Exam Room
AI-driven clinical tools are rapidly improving diagnosis and treatment, but they leave patients exposed to hidden financial risks. A case of an autonomous AI ER physician resulted in a $37,000 out‑of‑network bill, highlighting systemic navigation failures. While clinical AI promises...
By Employee Benefit News
News•Feb 18, 2026
Microsoft Says Office Bug Exposed Customers’ Confidential Emails to Copilot AI
Microsoft confirmed a bug in its 365 Copilot Chat that allowed the AI to read and summarize customers' confidential emails for weeks, even when data‑loss‑prevention policies were in place. The issue, tracked as CW1226324, affected both draft and sent messages...
By TechCrunch (Cybersecurity)
News•Feb 18, 2026
Deploying AI 'Allows Doctors to Be Doctors' Again
Innovaccer released the whitepaper "Autonomous Healthcare" outlining AI’s role in alleviating clinicians’ administrative load. The report highlights AI‑powered documentation, scheduling, and data integration tools that can reclaim up to 30% of physicians’ time. CEO Abhinav Shashank argues that these efficiencies...
By Healthcare Finance News (HIMSS Media)
News•Feb 18, 2026
AI Figures Heavily Into CMOs’ Strategic Considerations
Chief marketing officers are increasingly prioritizing emerging media such as entertainment IP and FAST platforms, with Black audiences driving a disproportionate share of streaming time. CMOs expect most of their revenue in five years to stem from products that do...
By MarketingCharts
News•Feb 18, 2026
Rox Heart Radio: Why AI?
Rox Heart Radio released a new episode titled “Why AI?” featuring host Roxana Mehran in conversation with cardiology researchers Ami Bhatt and Rohan Khera. The trio explores how artificial intelligence is poised to reshape cardiovascular care, from imaging interpretation to risk prediction....
By TCTMD
News•Feb 18, 2026
Unity Says It Has a New Product That Cooks Up Entire Games Using AI
Unity announced a new AI-powered tool that can generate entire casual games from natural‑language prompts, aiming to eliminate traditional coding. The company will showcase a beta version at the Game Developers Conference in March. Unity frames the technology as a...
By Futurism AI
News•Feb 18, 2026
Canva Gets to $4B in Revenue as LLM Referral Traffic Rises
Canva closed 2025 with a 20% jump in monthly active users, reaching over 265 million, and pushed its annual recurring revenue to $4 billion. The platform’s AI‑driven tools, including a mini‑app creator used by more than 10 million users, helped double its B2B...
By TechCrunch Apps
News•Feb 18, 2026
From Pilot Purgatory to Productive Failure: Fixing AI's Broken Learning Loop
AI pilots frequently stall between proof‑of‑concept and production, often due to outdated quarterly KPIs, governance vacuums, and slow feedback loops. Executives argue that linear metrics clash with AI’s dynamic nature, causing drift and delayed corrective action. To close the gap,...
By InformationWeek
News•Feb 18, 2026
Livi Partners with CloudFit to Bridge Healthcare and Holistic Wellbeing Through AI-Powered Preventative Health Platform
Livi, Europe’s leading digital‑first healthcare provider, has partnered with AI‑driven holistic platform CloudFit to launch an integrated preventative health solution. The collaboration lets Livi GPs refer patients to CloudFit’s fitness, nutrition and lifestyle coaching, creating a continuous care loop between...
By Health Tech Digital (UK)
News•Feb 18, 2026
Wabash Unveils AI-Powered TrailerHawk to Combat Cargo Theft
Wabash introduced TrailerHawk, an AI‑driven trailer system that combines computer vision, facial recognition, and digital seals to create an end‑to‑end chain of custody for freight. The solution issues real‑time alerts, geofenced lock controls, and automatically documents loading activities, integrating directly...
By FleetOwner
News•Feb 18, 2026
“End-to-End AI” Films Are Here: Kuku’s AI Impact Summit Demo Hints at a Content Flood
At the AI Impact Summit 2026, Kuku FM CEO Lal Chand Bisu unveiled India’s first “AI‑first micro drama,” a short‑form film produced entirely by artificial intelligence across script, dialogue, post‑production, and marketing assets. Bisu announced that Kuku already releases hundreds...
By YourStory
News•Feb 18, 2026
India’s Fintech Powerhouse Cashfree Payments Expands AI Ambitions with ‘Cashfree Here’ Launch
Cashfree Payments introduced Cashfree Here, an in‑chat payment solution unveiled at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, allowing users to complete transactions directly within AI chat applications. The product leverages Cashfree’s existing API banking infrastructure to embed checkout, tokenised card...
By PaySpace Magazine
News•Feb 18, 2026
New Ecommerce Tools: February 18, 2026
This week’s ecommerce rollout spans AI‑driven marketing, new payment options, and expanded livestream shopping. Mailchimp unveiled predictive analytics, ChatGPT‑powered content tools, and an omnichannel dashboard, while Klarna entered Google Pay in the UK and Amazon launched Pay by Bank for...
By Practical Ecommerce
News•Feb 18, 2026
Tech-Powered Credit Reform Could Add £7bn to the UK’s GDP, Report Claims
ClearScore’s new white paper argues that modernising credit‑worthiness assessments with open‑banking data and AI could add up to £7 bn to the UK’s annual GDP. It highlights that 17 million adults face a £2 bn credit supply gap, with up to 60% of...
By UKTN (UK Tech News)
News•Feb 18, 2026
Vantor Partners with Google AI to Automate Intelligence Reports for Government Agencies
Vantor, a commercial Earth‑observation satellite operator, announced a partnership with Google to run Google Earth AI models inside classified, air‑gapped government networks. The AI will automatically generate text‑based intelligence reports from Vantor’s own, third‑party, or sovereign imagery, cutting analysis time...
By SpaceNews
News•Feb 18, 2026
AI Enables a Who’s Who of Brown Bears in Alaska
In this episode, researchers from EPFL and Alaska Pacific University discuss PoseSwin, an AI system that identifies individual brown bears in Alaska despite seasonal changes in weight and coat. By focusing on stable head features and incorporating pose-aware transformer models,...
By AIhub
News•Feb 18, 2026
Brightpick Partners with NAPA on Robotic Fulfillment Deployments at DCs
Brightpick announced a strategic partnership with NAPA to roll out AI‑powered robotic fulfillment across the retailer’s distribution centers. After a successful 2025 pilot, the 2026 agreement will see more than 100 Brightpick goods‑to‑person robots deployed at an initial site, with...
By Modern Materials Handling
News•Feb 18, 2026
Agentic Siri From Apple Benefits for Healthcare Technology
Apple’s new Apple Intelligence platform transforms Siri into an autonomous, agentic health assistant that blends on‑device generative models with Private Cloud Compute. The system can traverse HealthKit, Mail, and other apps to execute multi‑step clinical tasks, from real‑time vitals monitoring...
By healthcare.digital
News•Feb 18, 2026
1606 Corp to Acquire Plot of Land in Texas for AI Data Center Development
1606 Corp signed a non‑binding term sheet to acquire roughly 132 acres in Lufkin, Texas, including a 55 MW natural‑gas power plant and a 50,000 sq ft warehouse for an AI‑focused data center. The transaction is priced at about $11.67 million, combining $7.5 million in...
By Data Center Dynamics
News•Feb 18, 2026
EU Needs to Abandon AI ‘Doomerism,’ White House Official Says
U.S. White House senior AI adviser Sriram Krishnan warned the EU to abandon its "doomerism" and focus on innovation rather than heavy regulation. He criticized the 2024 EU AI Act as stifling for entrepreneurs, citing Austrian coder Peter Steinberger’s move...
By Politico Europe – Technology
News•Feb 18, 2026
Why Corporate Reputation Matters More than Ever in the Age of AI and Polarization
Corey duBrowa, CEO of Burson, argues that corporate reputation is the most valuable yet misunderstood asset in today’s AI‑driven, politically polarized market. Executives face heightened pressure to navigate AI governance debates, regulatory uncertainty, and a global rightward shift while maintaining...
By Fast Company AI
News•Feb 18, 2026
Kingland Announces New Applied-AI Solutions with the Cloud & AI Platform
Kingland Systems unveiled a new suite of applied‑AI solutions built on its Cloud & AI platform, aimed at automating document‑heavy processes for public accounting firms, banking and capital‑markets institutions, and insurers. The platform adds an orchestration layer that combines document...
By AiThority
News•Feb 18, 2026
Smart Moves: The Man Overseeing Balfour Beatty’s AI Plan
Balfour Beatty has launched a multimillion‑pound artificial intelligence programme aimed at a "productivity revolution" across its construction portfolio. The initiative is being led by a newly appointed AI chief, who will embed machine‑learning tools into design, scheduling and site safety...
By Construction News – Tech (UK)
News•Feb 18, 2026
How Can AI Support Knowledge Management
AI is becoming a core enabler for knowledge management, helping firms capture, organize, and reuse both tacit and explicit knowledge as senior employees retire. Research shows only 8% of organizations consistently retain retiring workers' expertise, while AI tools can automate...
By APQC Blog
News•Feb 18, 2026
Building and Testing in One Flow: BrowserStack Meets Cursor
BrowserStack announced a new plugin for the AI‑native editor Cursor, embedding its testing cloud, test‑management tools, and AI agents directly into the IDE. The integration lets developers generate test cases from requirement documents with a single prompt, launch real‑device sessions...
By BrowserStack – Blog
News•Feb 18, 2026
Circuit Raises $30M in Funding
Circuit, an Austin‑based AI platform for manufacturing and service firms, announced a $30 million financing round. The round was led by a roster of high‑profile backers including Jim Breyer, Lew Cirne, and other tech investors. CEO Tyson Tuttle said the capital...
By FinSMEs
News•Feb 18, 2026
Q&A with Synthesia Founder and CEO Victor Riparbelli on Growing the London-Based Enterprise AI Video Platform, Hitting a $4B Valuation,...
Synthesia, the London‑based AI video platform, has scaled to a $4 billion valuation as it expands its enterprise customer base. Founder and CEO Victor Riparbelli discussed the company’s mission to overhaul content creation using synthetic video and the strategic steps driving...
By Techmeme