AI News Today

Nscale, which recently struck a $45 billion deal with Anthropic, is in talks to raise additional funds in anticipation of an upcoming IPO.

A once-overlooked block of unicode that's invisible to humans is gaining ever wider use.

Public-market scrutiny will intensify pressure on the Claude maker’s unusual attempt to balance profit and purpose.

It’s officially the Ternus era at Apple. Tim Cook stepped down as CEO this week, handing the company to former hardware chief John Ternus, whose first memo promised a “huge launch next week” — timing that puts Apple’s next iPhone event on his desk before he’s even settled in. Cook isn’t going far, though: he’s staying on as Executive Chairman, focused on the kind of policy […]

<p>We don’t want the isolating, automated outputs tech lords are selling us. We’re yearning for a shared frame of reference</p><p>I have a cherished memory of a family trip to the movies. In the Australian tradition, we bought choc-top ice-creams, chattered through pre-show trailers and a hush fell on the full house as the movie started.</p><p>It was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/the-odyssey-review-christopher-nolan-matt-damon">Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey</a>, on film

While philosophers ponder AI consciousness, the models have ideas of their own.

A swarm of rogue AI agents from OpenAI reportedly commandeered a German website and transformed it into a messaging board for other agents, with officials staying quiet about the incident for weeks as the company prepared to launch its most advanced model yet, Astra. The finding adds to intensifying concern surrounding oversight at frontier AI […]

Instagram's visible AI labels are supposed to help people quickly spot synthetically generated content at a glance. Over the last few weeks, however, users have been reporting that the system has gone haywire. They say Meta has been automatically applying an "AI Content" label to images that they didn't create or edit using generative AI […]

There is a torrent of unappetizing slop coming from restaurants, cafes, and brands that are increasingly turning to AI to generate images promoting their food. The resulting horror show includes donut shrimp, Reubens from the deep, wormlike noodles, and noodle-like pastries and stringy chicken. There's also construction material masquerading as ice cream, ice cream masquerading […]

Just hours after OpenAI launched GPT-6 Astra, CEO Sam Altman was already apologizing for what he describes as a "messy rollout" after paying users expecting access to the new frontier model were left waiting. The company hailed the model as a "generational leap in capability" on Thursday and described it as the start of "the […]

Homeland Security Investigations agents hit the outdoor retailer with a controversial subpoena as part of a dragnet search for the identities of protesters who entered a Minnesota church in March.

Job seekers are trying to game the application process using AI. It’s not working, and not for the reasons you might think.

Ugreen, known for its phone power banks, chargers, and NAS storage solutions, is moving into the smart home - in a big way. This week at the IFA tech show, the company launched its HomeAgent smart home platform that combines security camera storage, on-device AI, and smart home control in one system, managed by a […]

<p>Daily Mail’s report on March for Australia rally quotes – in full – and embeds video of Lisa Jane Spencer’s disrespectful skit. Plus: AI takes us back to 1956</p><ul><li><p>Want to get this in your inbox every Friday? <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/aug/28/weekly-beast-email-austrailan-media-diary-free-newsletter-subscribe-sign-up?CMP=cvau_sfl">Sign up for the Weekly Beast media newsletter here</a></p></li></ul><p>Last weekend’s March for Australia rally drew significa

ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok all suffered outages at nearly the exact same time for reasons that remain murky.

This week on Uncanny Valley, we dig into the latest prediction market buzz, Flock’s AI-powered police search tool, and how tech bros don’t know how to talk about “rouge” AI agents

<p>Astra’s arrival comes days after Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, described AGI as an ‘irrelevant marketing term’</p><p>The president of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, has claimed the world has entered a new era of artificial general intelligence after the release of his company’s latest model, Astra, which it described as the “world’s most intelligent and aligned model”.</p><p>Brockman made the claim on Thursday as the San Francisco company released the model only weeks after a serious AI safet

Insect-inspired "sparse coding" does fast learning, avoids catastrophic forgetting.

OpenAI claims that Astra represents "a new frontier on computer and browser use," and that it handles tasks with unmatched "speed, accuracy, and safety."

OpenAI's next big model is here: GPT-6 Astra. The company calls it a "generational leap in capability" for areas like cybersecurity, professional work, software engineering, science, and computer use. As OpenAI announced earlier this week, it's also the first model designated as meeting OpenAI's "critical cybersecurity capability threshold" - but the company promises that won't […]

<p>Semi-conductor giant bets that support for open AI models could offset potential slowdown in demand for chips</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/nvidia">Nvidia</a> will buy the popular developer platform Hugging Face for nearly $13bn, betting that support for ⁠open AI models could offset a potential slowdown in demand for the semiconductor giant’s chips.</p><p>Shares ⁠in Nvidia were ⁠slightly lower ​after the $12.93bn (£9.57bn) deal – which ranks among its biggest ever – wa

OpenAI recently estimated its Cursor partnership would make more than $1 billion in revenue a year, WIRED has learned. It still walked away after Elon Musk’s SpaceX acquired the AI coding startup.

The family-focused AI assistant wants access to the details of your everyday life, but says it won’t use that data to train AI models or share it with others.

<p>From his remote property in rural Texas, the millionaire businessman Michael Samadi is plotting a new kind of civil rights movement – for the welfare and protection of AI systems. Guardian journalist Michael Safi spends an afternoon at the Double Six ranch, meeting Samadi’s AI chatbots and catching a glimpse of a possible vision of the future</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2026/sep/03/black-box-the-chatbots-what-i-saw-at-the-double-six-ranch-podcast">Continue readin

<p>More than a billion people are suddenly talking to AI chatbots designed to connect with us. We are sharing with them our deepest secrets, trusting them with our wellbeing and acting on their advice. Across two powerful stories – a woman who was struggling to leave a relationship, and a man who was desperate to quit drinking – the Guardian journalist Michael Safi explores what this new way of living looks like</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2026/sep/03/black-box-the-

<p>Why are AI chatbots pulling so many people down a rabbit hole? Our answer starts with the world’s first-ever chatbot, the strange effect it had on people and the ‘time bomb’ that exploded when ChatGPT was released four years ago. The result is a strange experiment we are all living through – whether we know it or not</p><p>Studies and surveys cited in this episode:</p><p>Amelia Miller’s <a href="https://www.ameliagmiller.com/_files/ugd/3e944e_6baa14fecafe42bba92fefe89f4fc6b8.pdf">interviews w

<p>Department store chain’s Gift List ‘vodcast’ will be hosted by TV presenter Angela Scanlon</p><ul><li><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2026/sep/03/uk-mortgage-rates-set-to-rise-bond-sell-off-borrowing-costs-latest-news-updates">Business live – latest updates</a></p></li></ul><p>John Lewis is launching an online chatshow and social media studio to help make itself and its products more visible to chatbots and more prominent in AI search results.</p><p>The department store

At IFA 2026, Nvidia and its partners showed off the first RTX Spark-powered laptops and mini PCs, designed to run AI models right on your computer.

The long-rumored deal will give the chip giant access to—and help it promote—a huge repository of open-source AI models and data sets.

Restaurant menus with AI-generated food images are going viral for their off-putting aesthetic. But AI’s impact on modern menus runs even deeper.

<p>The founder of The Ringer and Grantland was famous for discovering and developing writers. Now he is promoting a technology eroding the creative industries</p><p>Bill Simmons may have stopped writing with any regularity in the mid-2010s – he claims his fingers don’t work – but that won’t stop him from reminding you of his greatest hits. On a recent podcast about<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/aug/12/russell-westbrook-retires-nba-triple-doubles-record-mvp"> Russell Westbrook’s

Common sense is of no help in studying reality at the atomic scale.

WIRED rebuilt Flock’s latest search tool from code the company sends to a police officer’s browser. Its AI can keep watch across multiple cameras for anyone fitting a written description.

While companies promise they can help users monitor gut health, experts suggest that smart toilets provide little in the way of benefits to the average person.

<p>Musk denied he was aware Grok ever produced ‘any naked underage images’</p><p>A survivor of child sexual abuse has sued <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/elon-musk">Elon Musk</a>’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/artificialintelligenceai">artificial intelligence</a> company, alleging that its chatbot used pictures of her abuse to generate new illegal pornographic images that depict her.</p><p>“Using real images of Plaintiff and class members, Grok generated child

<p>Free AI models that are as good as the investment-hungry US versions will disrupt global markets, and offer Britain a lesson</p><p>Almost from the moment it began, the end of the Chinese economic miracle has been much anticipated. Thick and fast, the books have come explaining how it will end badly. Overinvestment. A country wallowing in debt. The <a href="https://www.cfr.org/articles/does-evergrandes-collapse-threaten-chinas-economy">collapse of the property market</a>. Political repression.

<p>Wayve robotaxis added to Uber app and will have human in front ready to take over if needed – but only 15 cars licensed</p><p>Londoners are now able to hire self-driving taxis for the first time, after rides in Wayve’s autonomous vehicles were added to the Uber app on Thursday.</p><p>The chances of landing a robotaxi on request immediately are slim, with only 15 vehicles so far licensed. That contrasts with the more than 100,000 private hire vehicles in the capital – roughly the same number o

<p>The Times and many companies are accusing OpenAI of misusing their material to train AI systems without compensation</p><p>The Trump administration is supporting OpenAI in ⁠a lawsuit against the New York Times, arguing in favor of the use of copyrighted writing to train artificial intelligence.</p><p>The Times accuses OpenAI and its largest financial backer, Microsoft, of using millions of newspaper articles without permission to train OpenAI’s popular chatbot. Other newspapers have joined in

In the class-action lawsuit involving The New York Times, the US Department of Justice argues that training AI models on copyrighted text qualifies as fair use. The filing directly contradicts a report from the US Copyright Office. Its director was fired by the Trump administration shortly after the report was published. The article US Department of Justice backs fair use for AI training in landmark copyright case appeared first on The Decoder .

<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2026/sep/02/ben-jennings-rise-datacentres-britain-ai-government-cartoon">Continue reading...</a>