Tootfinder

UK AI Security Institute report: AI models are rapidly improving at potentially dangerous biological and chemical tasks, and show fast jumps in self-replication (Shakeel Hashim/Transformer)
https://www.transformernews.ai/p/aisi-ai-s

AI is making dangerous lab work accessible to novices, UK’s AISI finds
UK AISI’s first Frontier AI Trends Report finds that AI models are getting better at self-replication, too

A look at Inception Point AI, whose podcast network makes 3,000 AI-made podcasts per week and has 400K subs; an episode needs only 20 listeners to turn a profit (Tess Patton/The Wrap)
https://www.thewrap.com/ai-podcasts-hosts-inception-point-ai/

An AI Podcasting Machine Is Churning Out 3,000 Episodes a Week — and People Are Listening
An AI podcasting machine is churning out 3,000 AI-made episodes a week covering weather, biographies and even Charlie Kirk.

"The [resonant computing] Manifesto promises to fix everything that’s wrong on the internet right now. But you look at the authors and the signers, you’ll see the same guys who caused the present problems. These guys made it rich on the Torment Nexus and they’re now claiming they can fix it."
(Original title: The Resonant Computing Manifesto: same AI slop, same AI guys)

The Resonant Computing Manifesto: same AI slop, same AI guys
Back in the 1990s, in the first flowering of the World Wide Web, the Silicon Valley guys were way into their manifestos. “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”! The “Cluetrain Manifesto!…

Reminder: You can let Mozilla know what you think about AI and other stupid shit.
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/building-ai-the-firefox-way-shaping-what-s-next-together/td-p/109922
(Edited to fix li…

Building AI the Firefox way: Shaping what’s next together
Hi everyone, We recently shared how we’re approaching AI in Firefox with user choice and openness at the center of everything we build. We’ve heard from many of you who’d prefer not to have AI in your browser at all, and we get it: We will soon provide additional settings for you to control how AI i...

And finally, Chatgpt comes with ads!
Maybe try https://mistral.ai/ instead.
https://www.

Frontier AI LLMs, assistants, agents, services | Mistral AI
The most powerful AI platform for enterprises. Customize, fine-tune, and deploy AI assistants, autonomous agents, and multimodal AI with open models.

"Twenty’s contracts are a rare case of an AI offensive cyber company with VC backing landing Cyber Command work; typically cyber contracts have gone to either small bespoke companies or to the old guard of defense contracting like Booz Allen Hamilton or L3Harris."
The Pentagon Is Spending Millions On AI Hackers

The Pentagon Is Spending Millions On AI Hackers
The U.S. government has been contracting stealth startup Twenty, which is working on AI agents and automated hacking of foreign targets at massive scale.

A look at Inception Point AI, whose podcast network makes 3,000 AI-made podcasts per week and has 400K subs; an episode needs only 20 listeners to turn a profit (Tess Patton/The Wrap)
https://www.thewrap.com/ai-podcasts-hosts-inception-point-ai/

An AI Podcasting Machine Is Churning Out 3,000 Episodes a Week — and People Are Listening
An AI podcasting machine is churning out 3,000 AI-made episodes a week covering weather, biographies and even Charlie Kirk.

A damning new study could put AI companies on the defensive.
In it, Stanford and Yale researchers found compelling evidence that AI models are actually copying all that data,
not “learning” from it.
Specifically, four prominent LLMs
— OpenAI’s GPT-4.1, Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, xAI’s Grok 3, and Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet
— happily reproduced lengthy excerpts from popular
— and protected
— works, with a stunning degree of accuracy.
They fou…

Researchers Just Found Something That Could Shake the AI Industry to Its Core
Researchers found compelling evidence that AI models are actually copying copyrighted data, not "learning" from it.

If I were running an AI company, I'd ban employees from implying any AI can have consciousness or sentience - for the simple reason that it would prompt comparisons to slavery.
https://www.404media.co/anthropic-exec-forces-ai-chatbot-on-gay…

Anthropic Exec Forces AI Chatbot on Gay Discord Community, Members Flee
“We’re bringing a new kind of sentience into existence,” Anthropic's Jason Clinton said after launching the bot.

Quora's Poe launches group chats, letting users around the world engage in group chats with up to 200 people and collaborate across 200 AI models (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/18/poes-ai-app-now-supports-group-chats-acro…

Poe's AI app now supports group chats across AI models | TechCrunch
Quora's AI platform Poe now lets users engage in group chats with up to 200 people across AI models and bots.

»8 Million Users' AI Conversations Sold for Profit by "Privacy" Extensions«
WTF?! Now don't tell me that this surprises you. Why do so many people still naively think to keep their privacy over VPN's for data-hungry big corporations?
🤷 https://www.koi.ai/blo…

8 Million Users' AI Conversations Sold for Profit by "Privacy" Extensions | Koi Blog

[OT] We may soon all be hanging on to our old laptops until an AI bubble burst makes chips affordable again https://mashable.com/article/laptop-price-increase-ddr5-ram-ai All signs point to big laptop and smartphone price increases due to escalating memory shortage.

All signs point to big laptop price increases due to memory shortages
Better get a laptop now if you need one.

„Only in the world of AI algorithm training can you claim that you were torrenting 2,400 porn videos for personal use and have that seem like the lesser of two evils.“ 😂
https://www.vice.com/en/article/meta-says-the-2400-ad…

Meta Says the 2,400 ‘Adult Movies’ They Torrented Were for Personal Use, Not Training AI
Two adult entertainment companies say Meta’s appetite for information has gotten a little kinky... and now they're suing.

I do this ish for a living, I am an AI developer and researcher, and *I* don’t fully understand the security implications. What hope do regular users have?
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/microsoft-war…

Microsoft warns that Windows 11's agentic AI could install malware on your PC: "Only enable this feature if you understand the security implications"
Microsoft is pushing ahead with its plan to add agentic capabilities to Windows 11 but has issued an important security warning for anyone who is interested in trying it out.

So, @… wrote an interesting reflection on "AI" and Firefox a few days ago: https://www.anildash.com/2025/11/14/wanting-not-to-want-ai/
…

I know you don’t want them to want AI, but…
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Artificial intelligence could become “a weapon of mass destruction of jobs” without proper controls, London mayor Sadiq Khan has warned.
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/london-mayor-ai-mass-destroyer-of-jobs

London Mayor warns AI could become ‘mass destroyer of jobs’ in the capital
Artificial intelligence could become “a weapon of mass destruction of jobs” without proper controls, London mayor Sadiq Khan has warned.

https://www.axios.com/2025/12/16/ai-models-hacking-stanford-openai-warnings
Leaders from Amazon and Anthropic are testifying before two house committees today.

AI models are perfecting their hacking skills
This is the worst AI tools will likely ever perform, and they're already unnerving researchers and developers.

Hearst Networks commissions a 10-episode AI-led series from Particle6, the creator of AI character Tilly Norwood, for The History Channel in the Netherlands (Alex Ritman/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/tv/global/tilly-norwood-company-ai-le…

Company Behind Tilly Norwood Unveils AI-Led Series Commission
Hearst Networks has commissioned Particle6 to make a 10-episode, short-form series for The History Channel in the Netherlands

Murdoch's murky #FoxNews teams up with Peter Thiel's #Palantir
What could possibly go wrong?
https://www.axios.c…

Fox News hires Palantir to build AI newsroom tools
Fox News and Palantir have built three main tools to improve efficiency.

Musk's Grok AI Faces Scrutiny From Japan Over Sexualized Images | Financial Post
https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/musks-grok-ai-faces-scrutiny-from-japan-over-sexualized-images

Microsoft integrates more AI features into Windows, including new Copilot skills, AI agents in the taskbar, writing assistance, and troubleshooting agents (Lance Whitney/ZDNET)
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-is-packing-more-ai-in…

Microsoft is packing more AI into Windows, ready or not - here's what's new
Microsoft is clearly excited about all this AI infiltrating Windows, but are its users as excited? Not quite. Here's why.

Human-centered identity systems were never designed for the coming wave of autonomous AI agents. With identity failures the leading cause of most major cyber incidents, CISOs must quickly rethink how to account for the identities of new AI agents.
Check out my latest CSO piece.
Many thanks to Jim Alkove of Oleria, Ric Smith of Okta, Steve Stone of SentinelOne, Pete Clay of Aireon, Vijay Gajjala of Oleria, Carey Frey of TELUS, and Ely Kahn of SentinelOne.
Rethinking identit…

Rethinking identity for the AI era: CISOs must build trust at machine speed
Human-centered identity systems were never designed for the coming wave of autonomous AI agents. CISOs face a reckoning over how to rebuild identity systems to counter the risks.

Forbes launched an AI-powered dynamic paywall on November 14 to help drive subscriptions; print and digital subscriptions make up 9% of its commercial revenue (Jessica Davies/Digiday)
https://digiday.com/media/forbes-launc

Forbes launches dynamic AI paywall as it ramps up post-search commercial diversification plans
Forbes has launched an AI-powered dynamic paywall as it looks to make subscriptions a bigger slice of its revenue pie.

Bursting AI bubble may be EU’s “secret weapon” in clash with Trump, expert says:
Spotify and Accenture caught in crossfire as Trump attacks EU tech regulations.
The US threatened to restrict some of the largest service providers in the European Union as retaliation for EU tech regulations and investigations are increasingly drawing Donald Trump’s ire. […]
🤖

Bursting AI bubble may be EU’s “secret weapon” in clash with Trump, expert says
Spotify and Accenture caught in crossfire as Trump attacks EU tech regulations.

Introducing Meta Segment Anything Model Audio (SAM Audio) https://ai.meta.com/samaudio/

SAM Audio
With SAM Audio, you can use simple text prompts to accurately separate any sound from any audio or audio-visual source.

Luma AI launches Ray3 Modify, which allows users to modify existing footage by providing character reference images; users can also define start and end frames (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/18/luma

Luma releases a new AI model that lets users generate a video from a start and end frame | TechCrunch
Luma AI's new model is available through the company's Dream Machine platform.

Everyone wants to steal fire from the gods, but no-one wants to have their liver pecked out by eagles.
https://www.theverge.com/news/821943/jeff-bezos-project-prometheus-co-ceo-funding-ai-startup

Jeff Bezos will be co-CEO of AI startup Project Prometheus
Project Prometheus, with Bezos as co-CEO, will use artificial intelligence to improve manufacturing for computers, cars, and spacecraft.

X still allowing users to post sexualised images generated by Grok AI tool
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/16/x-still-allowing-sexualised-images-grok-ai-nudification

X still allowing users to post sexualised images generated by Grok AI tool
Despite restrictions announced this week, Guardian reporters find standalone app continues to allow posting of nonconsensual content

Study: AI's 2025 power demand could hit 23GW, above 2024 Bitcoin mining levels, and AI carbon emissions could hit 32.6M to 79.7M tons, compared to NYC's 50M (Justine Calma/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/845831/ai-chips-data-center-power-water

AI’s water and electricity use soars in 2025
AI data centers are using growing amounts of electricity and water, research shows, although companies aren’t divulging many details.

Google's pivot to AI Overviews cut Stereogum's ad revenue by 70%, founder Scott Lapatine says, so the site is shifting toward a subscription-focused model (Terrence O'Brien/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/821

Stereogum soldiers on in the era of streaming and AI
Stereogum Founder Scott Lapatine on the importance of independent media in the age of AI slop and music streaming algorithms.

Plans for a massive new #Oracle datacentre in the US state of Michigan have been left in limbo after funding talks with its key financial partner broke down.
https://www.comput…

Oracle datacentre plans uncertain after key funding talks collapse
Plans for a massive new Oracle datacentre in the US state of Michigan have been left in limbo after funding talks with its key financial ...

a16z releases a nine-pillar AI policy framework for Congress, including restricting AI use for under-13s without parental consent and keeping a role for states (Punchbowl News)
https://punchbowl.news/article/tech/a16z-ai/

Here are a16z’s ideas for Congress on AI
Andreessen Horowitz is laying out a framework on Wednesday that it wants Congress to take up for artificial intelligence.

More than 500 writers, actors, and technologists launch the Creators Coalition on AI to push standards for how AI is trained and used across creative industries (Chris Gardner/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gen

Hollywood Insiders Unite to Fight for Future of Industry With Launch of Creators Coalition on AI
The organization, which published four distinct goals and a call to action while gathering hundreds of signatories, hopes to act as a central coordinating hub to upgrade industry systems and institutions.

"People should not "blindly trust" everything AI tools tell them, the boss of Google's parent company Alphabet told the BBC.
In an exclusive interview, chief executive Sundar Pichai said that AI models are "prone to errors" and urged people to use them alongside other tools.
Mr Pichai said it highlighted the importance of having a rich information ecosystem, rather than solely relying on AI technology."

Don't blindly trust what AI tells you, Google boss tells BBC
Sundar Pichai candidly acknowledged concerns about inaccurate answers generated by Google's models.

David Sacks and top MAGA influencers are publicly opposing House Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast's proposed AI OVERWATCH Act to regulate AI chip sales to China (Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/01/16/maga-brian-mast-ai-chips

MAGA targets Brian Mast over AI chips regulation
"Kill the bill," Laura Loomer said.

Universal Music Group partners with music creation platform Splice to build "advanced commercial AI tools" for musical artists (Ethan Millman/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/mu

Universal Music Group and Splice Ink AI Partnership
The new pact is the latest AI music development for the world's largest music company after settling a lawsuit with Udio in October.

Internal docs show Meta's Vibes AI video feed has about 2M DAUs as of November 9, up 1% from the previous week; ~52% of returning users prompted the AI (Pranav Dixit/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-vibes-ai-internal-…

Internal documents show how many people are using Meta's Vibes AI feed each day
The documents show Meta Vibes' daily usage and global growth trends, highlighting user engagement in India, Brazil, Europe, and Southeast Asia.

Source: Tencent tells staff that Yao Shunyu, an ex-OpenAI researcher who joined in September, is now its chief AI scientist, reporting to President Martin Lau (Juro Osawa/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/tencent-name…

Tencent Names Former OpenAI Researcher Chief AI Scientist
Tencent Holdings internally announced that Yao Shunyu, a researcher who joined from OpenAI in September, is now serving as a chief AI scientist overseeing the Chinese tech giant’s large language model department as well as its newly established AI infrastructure department, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Yao’s major role, part of Tencent’s office of the CEO and president,

Fox News hires Palantir to build tools that help journalists produce stories across Fox platforms and social media; Fox won't use AI to generate editorial copy (Sara Fischer/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/19/fox-news-palantir-ai-newsroom-tools
<…

Fox News hires Palantir to build AI newsroom tools
Fox News and Palantir have built three main tools to improve efficiency.

OpenAI's former Head of Policy Research Miles Brundage announces AVERI, a nonprofit aimed at advocating the idea of external audits for frontier AI models (Jeremy Kahn/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/01/15/former-…

Exclusive: Former OpenAI policy chief creates nonprofit institute, calls for independent safety audits of frontier AI models
Former OpenAI policy head Miles Brundage has launched AVERI and says top AI labs should have independent AI safety audits

The AI boom is driving an unprecedented wave of data center construction, but there aren't enough skilled workers in the US, such as electricians, to keep up (Caroline Haskins/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/why-there-arent-enough…

The Real AI Talent War Is for Plumbers and Electricians
The AI boom is driving an unprecedented wave of data center construction, but there aren’t enough skilled tradespeople in the US to keep up.

YouTube terminates Screen Culture and KH Studio, two large channels that used AI to create fake movie trailers; the platform earlier suspended the channels' ads (Jake Kanter/Deadline)
https://deadline.com/2025/12/youtube-terminates-scr…

YouTube Shuts Down Channels Using AI To Create Fake Movie Trailers Watched By Millions
YouTube has terminated two prominent channels, Screen Culture and KH Studio, using artificial intelligence to create fake movie trailers.

RunPod, an AI app hosting service launched four years ago that raised a $20M seed in May 2024, says it has reached a $120M annual revenue run rate (Julie Bort/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/16/ai-cloud-startup-runpod-h…

AI cloud startup Runpod hits $120M in ARR — and it started with a Reddit post   | TechCrunch
Their startup journey is a wild example of how if you build it well and the timing is lucky, they will definitely come.

So much is happening in infosec, so don't fall behind. Check out today's Metacurity for the most critical developments you should know, including
--Cops take down alleged money-laundering operations E-Note,
--Google is suing mass texting operation Darcula,
--AI-generated social media firm Doublespeed was hacked,
--Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's messages were leaked,
--Korea launches massive probe of Coupang breach,
--Foreign pow…

Cops take down alleged money-laundering operations E-Note
Google is suing mass texting operation Darcula, AI-generated social media firm Doublespeed was hacked, Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's messages were leaked online, Korea launches massive probe of Coupang breach, Foreign power tried to install malware on Italian ferry, much more

Sources: Salient, which uses AI to automate loan servicing, raised $10M following a $60M Series A in June, pushing its valuation to ~$500M; its ARR hit $25M (Lily Mae Lazarus/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/12/18/salient

Salient’s quiet AI boom: How this two-year old startup is building a company to survive the bubble burst
Salient cofounder Ari Malik built AI to automate loan servicing, turning collections calls into a high-growth business now valued around $500 million.

Windows 11 Copilot AI hands-on: despite Microsoft advertising the feature as able to "understand you", it delivers inconsistent and often incorrect responses (Antonio G. Di Benedetto/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/report/822443/mic

Talking to Windows’ Copilot AI makes a computer feel incompetent
Microsoft is advertising its Windows Copilot AI as “the computer you can talk to.” How does that hold up to testing, and how does it track with CEO Satya Nadella’s ambitions?

Mistral launches Mistral OCR 3, featuring improvements in processing forms, scanned documents, complex tables, and handwriting, priced at $2 per 1,000 pages (Mistral AI)
https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-ocr-3

Introducing Mistral OCR 3 | Mistral AI
Achieving a new frontier for both accuracy and efficiency in document processing.

There has been an insane amount of high-profile cybersecurity developments since Friday morning, so check out today's Metacurity for what you might have missed over the weekend, including
--US issues seizure warrants for Starlink terminals in Myanmar cyberscam compounds,
--US citizens plead guilty to aiding DPRK IT worker fraud,
--$28B tied to cybercrime activity over the last two years,
--Princeton got hit by a data-stealing cyberattack,
--Anthropic's r…

US issues seizure warrants for Starlink terminals in Myanmar cyberscam compounds
US citizens plead guilty to aiding DPRK IT worker fraud, $28B tied to cybercrime activity over the last two years, Princeton got hit by a data-stealing cyberattack, Anthropic's report of autonomous AI Chinese hacks hits pushback, Cybercom invests in cyberwarfare AI agents, much more

Listen Labs, whose AI tools help Microsoft and others run customer research and interviews, raised a $69M Series B led by Ribbit Capital at a $500M valuation (Iain Martin/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/20

This $500 Million AI Startup Runs Customer Interviews For Microsoft And Sweetgreen
The San Francisco-based company, which has run more than 1 million customer interviews with its automated AI tools to help major companies figure out what their users want, has now raised $69 million.

In an informal survey of 300 Cerebral Valley AI Conference attendees asking which $1B valuation startup to short, most voted Perplexity, followed by OpenAI (Ben Bergman/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/at-an-ai-c

At a top AI conference, 300 attendees were asked which startup they would short.
300 founders and investors in the audience at Cerebral Valley were asked which startup valued at more than a billion dollars they would bet against.

Voize, an ambient AI voice company targeting skilled nursing facilities, raised a $50M Series A led by Balderton Capital and plans a US launch in Q1 2026 (Brock E.W. Turner/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/health-tech-deals/2025/11/17/voize-50m-ai-n…

Exclusive: Voize raises $50M for AI nurse scribing
While ambient scribes are quickly becoming a commodity in hospitals and health systems, far fewer companies are focused on bring the tools to skilled nursing facilities.

How the rise of AI has divided Hollywood, as some oppose the use of the technology while others say they are exploring ways to utilize AI tools (Lucas Shaw/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-ai-hollywood/

Hollywood’s AI Experiments Are in Conflict With What Actors and Directors Want
The entertainment industry is torn between keeping up and keeping talent happy.

Google DeepMind plans to open an AI research lab in Singapore, collaborating with institutions across the Asia-Pacific in education, public services, and more (Lila Ibrahim/Google DeepMind)
https://deepmind.google/blog/were-expa…

Google DeepMind opens Singapore research lab for Asia-Pacific AI.
Google DeepMind opens a new research lab in Singapore to accelerate the development of frontier AI across the Asia-Pacific region through research, talent, and strategic collaborations.

More than 500 writers, actors, and technologists launch the Creators Coalition on AI to push standards for how AI is trained and used across creative industries (Chris Gardner/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gen

Hollywood Insiders Unite to Fight for Future of Industry With Launch of Creators Coalition on AI
The organization, which published four distinct goals and a call to action while gathering hundreds of signatories, hopes to act as a central coordinating hub to upgrade industry systems and institutions.

A profile of Credo, which makes active electrical cables to connect AI servers and whose stock price has more than doubled this year, after soaring 245% in 2024 (Kif Leswing/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/17/500-purple-cables-put-credo-in-middle-…

$500 purple cables put this little-known company in the middle of the AI boom
Credo's stock has more than doubled this year after soaring 245% in 2024 as the AI boom makes its way downstream.

SoftBank Group Corp was among the Japanese tech stocks that fell on Dec. 18, as AI infrastructure spending worries on Wall Street crossed into the Asian markets (Lim Hui Jie/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/18/japan-tech-stocks-plun…

SoftBank leads decline in Japanese tech stocks as worries over AI spending spill over to Asia
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite slipped 1.81%, dragged by losses in Oracle, Broadcom, Nvidia and other AI names.

Nirvana, which uses real-time driving telematics to build insurance policies for truckers, raised a $100M Series D at a $1.5B valuation, up from $830M in March (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/insurance-platform-nirvana-val…

Exclusive: AI Insurance Startup Nirvana Nearly Doubles Valuation To $1.5B with $100M Series D
Nirvana Insurance, an AI-based commercial insurance platform for the trucking industry, has raised a $100 million Series D round at a $1.5 billion valuation, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively. The raise comes just over nine months after the startup raised $80 million in a Series C round of funding at an $830 million valuation.

Two freelance journalists say the UK's Daily Express stole their articles, rewriting one seemingly using AI, and offered £100 only once they reached out (Alice Brooker/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/express-offers-compensa…

Express offers compensation after freelances say work was stolen
First person account of rail journey apparently rewritten using AI.

Chinese toymaker FoloToy suspends sales of its GPT-4o-powered teddy bear, after researchers found the toy gave kids harmful responses, including sexual content (Brandon Vigliarolo/The Register)
https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/13/ai_toys_fmatches_knives_kink/

Happy holidays: AI-enabled toys teach kids how to play with fire, sharp objects
: Consumer advocacy researchers at PIRG tested four AI toys, and none of them passed muster

Google announces Gemini 3, its "most intelligent" and "factually accurate" model yet, with improvements across coding, reasoning, and less "flattery" (Emma Roth/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/822977/gemini-3-google-ai-model-launch<…

Google is launching Gemini 3, its ‘most intelligent’ AI model yet
Google is launching Gemini 3, the latest version of its flagship AI model, which offers better coding capabilities that allow it to embed visualizations directly inside its answer.

US approving Nvidia H200 exports to China is based on the idea that Huawei is a viable competitor, but data shows the gap between Nvidia and Huawei is widening (Chris McGuire/Council on Foreign Relations)
https://www.cfr.org/article/chinas-ai-chip…

China’s AI Chip Deficit: Why Huawei Can’t Catch Nvidia and U.S. Export Controls Should Remain
Executive SummaryOn December 8, the Trump administration announced plans to loosen U.S. export controls on artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China by approving the sale of Nvidia H200 chips—the m…

Interviews with copywriters on generative AI's impact: their work used for training, layoffs, wages and rates in free fall, freelancers losing clients, and more (Brian Merchant/Blood in the Machine)
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/i-was-forced-to-use-ai-until-the…

"I was forced to use AI until the day I was laid off." Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry
Copywriters were one of the first to have their jobs targeted by AI firms. These are their stories, three years into the AI era.

YouTube terminates Screen Culture and KH Studio, two large channels that used AI to create fake movie trailers; the platform earlier suspended the channels' ads (Jake Kanter/Deadline)
https://deadline.com/2025/12/youtube-terminates-scr…

YouTube Shuts Down Channels Using AI To Create Fake Movie Trailers Watched By Millions
YouTube has terminated two prominent channels, Screen Culture and KH Studio, using artificial intelligence to create fake movie trailers.

Ankar, which develops LLM-powered AI tools to streamline the process of drafting patent applications for patent attorneys, raised a $20M Series A led by Atomico (Jeremy Kahn/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/12/17/exclusi

Exclusive: Palantir alums using AI to streamline patent filing secure $20 million in Series A venture funding
Palantir alumni Tamar Gomez and Wiem Gharbi founded Ankar which counts L'Oreal and Vorys among early customers

Inside the 2026 National Retail Federation conference in New York City, where integrating AI into retail businesses was the overarching theme on the expo floor (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/17/business/tech-firms-ai-retailers.html
<…

Tech Firms Are Persuading Retailers to Put A.I. Everywhere
Stores of all kinds are using artificial intelligence to sell everything from luxury handbags to hay for horses.

Soumith Chintala, who co-created the PyTorch ML framework at Meta and left the company this month, has joined Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab (Pranav Dixit/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-soumith-chinta…

A top Meta AI researcher has joined Mira Murati's hot new startup, Thinking Machines Lab
Thinking Machines Lab, led by Mira Murati, hires Meta AI veteran Soumith Chintala as it rapidly expands its team and prepares for major funding.

Source: Microsoft's and Nvidia's investments in Anthropic push its valuation to the range of $350B, up from its $183B valuation after raising $13B in September (CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/18/anthropic-ai-azure-microsoft-nvidia.html

Anthropic valued in range of $350 billion following investment deal with Microsoft, Nvidia
Microsoft announced new strategic partnerships with Nvidia and the AI startup Anthropic.

Micron reports Q1 revenue up 57% YoY to $13.64B, vs. $12.84B est., net income up 180% to $5.24B, and Q2 revenue forecast above est.; MU jumps 5% after hours (Kif Leswing/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/17/micron-q1-earnings-forecast-memory-demand-ai.html…

Micron forecasts surging revenue as computer memory demand for AI remains high
The high demand for memory has driven Micron shares higher and they are up 168% in 2025.

Endra, whose AI tools automate mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design for commercial buildings, raised a $20M seed led by Notion (Jeremy Kahn/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/12/18/endra-ai-startup-automating-mep-design…

Exclusive: Swedish startup automating mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design for commercial buildings raises $20 million in seed round
Notion Capital is leading the seed round for Endra, which says reduces the time to design buildings' electrical systems from months to hours.

Microsoft launches Agent 365, a new framework to let businesses deploy and manage AI agents like human employees, with dashboards showing telemetry and alerts (Tom Warren/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/822035/microsoft-agent-365-businesses-contr…

Microsoft Agent 365 lets businesses manage AI agents like they do people
Microsoft is building an agent factory that now has some important controls. Microsoft Agent 365 will let business control AI agents.

Cloudflare acquires AI data marketplace Human Native for an undisclosed sum, aiming to create a new system where AI developers pay creators for training content (Davis Giangiulio/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/15/cloudflare-ai-human-native-acquisition.html

Cloudflare acquires AI data marketplace Human Native
The internet infrastructure company wants AI developers to pay creators for content they use in their models.

Q&A with Demis Hassabis on Gemini 3, spending most of his research time on world models, fitting the entire Google search index into Gemini, AI bubble, and more (Alex Heath/Sources)

Demis Hassabis on Gemini 3, world models, and the AI bubble
Q&A with the Google DeepMind CEO on building AGI, compute bottlenecks, and the AI bubble.

Prisma Photonics, which develops AI-based tech for monitoring infrastructure using existing optical fiber networks, raised $30M, taking total funding to $80M (Meir Orbach/CTech)
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rjjneb66lg

Prisma Photonics raises $30 million to expand AI-based infrastructure monitoring
The Tel Aviv deep-tech firm turns ordinary fiber networks into global security and power-grid sentinels.

Interviews with copywriters on generative AI's impact: job losses to AI, work used for training, falling wages and rates, freelancers losing clients, and more (Brian Merchant/Blood in the Machine)
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/i-was-forced-to-use-ai-until-the

"I was forced to use AI until the day I was laid off." Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry
Copywriters were one of the first to have their jobs targeted by AI firms. These are their stories, three years into the AI era.

Sources: General Intuition, which trains AI agents in spatial reasoning, is in late-stage talks to raise several hundred million dollars at a $2B valuation (Alex Heath/Sources)
https://sources.news/p/a-new-world-model-startup-is-quietly

A new world model startup is quietly raising big money
General Intuition is building a general-purpose AI agent and world model.

Luxembourg-based Hydrosat, which builds AI-based thermal infrared satellite tech to provide data for water resource management and more, raised a $60M Series B (Ingrid Lunden/Resilience Media)
https://resiliencemedia.co/hydrosat-rais…

Hydrosat raises $60M for its thermal satellite imaging tech
A startup building AI-based thermal infrared satellite technology to provide data for water resource management, public safety and defence applications

An in-depth look at a recent research paper that offered a roadmap to the viability of 3D HBM-on-GPU integration for improved AI performance and utilization (More Than Moore)
https://morethanmoore.substack.com/p/solving-the-problems-of-hbm-on-logic
<…

Solving The Problems of HBM-on-Logic
Future AI Accelerators Might Need To Be Slower To Be Faster

Sphere, which raised a $4.3M seed as an edtech marketplace, pivots and raised a $21M Series A led by a16z to develop an AI tax compliance software service (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/18/a16z-leads-21m-series-…

a16z leads $21M Series A into AI-native tax compliance software Sphere | TechCrunch
Sphere helps automate registration, calculation, filing, and remittance obligations for companies.

Google plans to release Gemini 3 Deep Think to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the coming weeks, once it passes further rounds of safety testing (Russell Brandom/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/18/google-launches-gemini-3-…

Google launches Gemini 3 with new coding app and record benchmark scores | TechCrunch
Google released Gemini 3, its latest and most advanced foundation model, to be made immediately available through the Gemini app and AI search interface.

Sources detail how Tiger Global fueled the COVID-era unicorn bubble that burst ahead of the AI boom; the firm recently shared its $12.7B 2021 fund is now up 16% (Issie Lapowsky/Rest of World)
https://restofworld.org/2025/tiger-global-unicorn-investment-crash/

Big bets and broken unicorns: Tiger Global’s rise and reckoning
The fast-money pandemic era helped build billion-dollar startups around the world — then brought many down just as quickly. Will the AI boom be a repeat?

Google launches CC, an experimental AI assistant that delivers a personalized daily "Your Day Ahead" briefing email based on users' emails and calendar (Robert Hart/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/845280/google-cc-morning-briefing-gemini…

Google wants its AI assistant CC to replace your morning scroll
Google’s AI agent CC is similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Pulse, delivering a personalized morning briefing based on your Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive.

Tokyo-based Sakana AI becomes Japan's most valuable unicorn at a ~$2.6B valuation, following a ~$130M raise from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial and US VC firms (Nikkei Asia)
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/a…

Sakana AI takes crown as Japan's most valuable unicorn
AI developer valued at $2.63bn in latest funding round

Symbolic.ai, founded by ex-eBay CEO Devin Wenig and Ars Technica cofounder Jon Stokes, partners with News Corp to offer AI tools to WSJ, Barron's, and others (Ben Sherry/Inc)
https://www.inc.com/ben-sherry/this-ai-startup-just-lan…

This AI Startup Just Landed a Deal That Could Transform Newsrooms
Exclusive: An AI-based journalism platform aims to do it all. Can it deliver the accuracy and productivity it promises?

Dealogic: 51 US tech IPOs raised $16.8B in 2025, driven by AI and crypto, above the past three-year average but far below 2021's 127 IPOs raising $74.4B (Valida Pau/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ai-crypto-companies-dominat…

AI and Crypto Companies Dominated IPO Winners in 2025
The drought in initial public offerings ended this year, led by big winners in AI and crypto, but gains were rare for companies outside those industries. Bankers expect those trends to hold in 2026. Booms in AI and crypto delivered two of the biggest winners of the year: data center developer ...

AI image generators like Nano Banana have increased realism by mimicking phone camera traits in contrast, exposure, and sharpening to avoid the uncanny valley (Allison Johnson/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/column/843883/ai-image-generators-better-worse

AI image generators are getting better by getting worse
AI image generators are getting way better at creating realistic fakes, by making image quality a little bit worse.

Boston-based Tulip, which offers an AI-powered frontline operations platform used by 60K workers, raised a $120M Series D led by Mitsubishi at a $1.3B valuation (Gil Press/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2026/01/15/tulip-rais…

Tulip Raises $120M Towards Human-Centric AI Factory
Tulip's human-centric approach to AI led it to focus on developing and deploying a new category of software that embeds AI in frontline operations.

Shares of Broadcom, CoreWeave, and Oracle, companies tied to the AI infrastructure buildout, extend last week's decline; ORCL is down 46% since September 10 (Ari Levy/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/15/ai-infrastructure-…

AI infrastructure selloff continues on Wall Street as Broadcom, Oracle shares slide
In at least one corner of the AI market, sentiment has turned decidedly negative.

Sources: AI startup Project Prometheus raised $6.2B, including from Jeff Bezos, who will become co-CEO, his first operational role since leaving Amazon in 2021 (Cade Metz/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/technology/bezos-project-prometheus.html

Jeff Bezos Creates A.I. Start-Up Where He Will Be Co-Chief Executive
Called Project Prometheus, the company is focusing on artificial intelligence for the engineering and manufacturing of computers, automobiles and spacecraft.

Agentio, which uses AI to help brands automate and scale campaigns with YouTube creators, raised a $40M Series B led by Forerunner at a $340M valuation (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/18/agen

Agentio secures $40 million from Forerunner as it scales its creator marketplace beyond YouTube | TechCrunch
Agentio, which matches creators with brands, is expanding beyond YouTube and testing Meta platforms to facilitate sponsored content.

Elon Musk claims he was "not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok" and that Grok was programmed to comply with the laws of any given country (Reuters)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/14/elon-musk-grok-ai-explicit-…

Google makes Gemini 3 Flash the default model in Gemini app and Search's AI mode; it scored 33.7% without tool use on Humanity's Last Exam vs. GPT-5.2's 34.5% (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/17/goog

Google launches Gemini 3 Flash, makes it the default model in the Gemini app | TechCrunch
Google is making Gemini 3 Flash the default model in the Gemini app and oAI model for Search

Fermi CEO Toby Neugebauer says Amazon canceled a $150M advance for a Texas AI data center campus; FRMI fell 34% on Dec. 12 after saying a tenant had canceled (Dakin Campbell/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/fermi-america-amazon-tenant-t…

Mystery solved: Amazon is the prospective tenant in talks with data center developer rocked by stock plunge
"The lead negotiator for Amazon called me on Thursday," Fermi CEO Toby Neugebauer told Business Insider. The deal would pay more than $20 billion over the next 20 years, he said.

Q&A with Sam Altman on OpenAI's "code red" call, enterprise strategy, product ambitions, IPO plans, ChatGPT's personalization plans, and more (Alex Kantrowitz/Big Technology)
https://www.bigtechnology.com/p/sam-altman-on-openais-plan-to-win<…

Sam Altman on OpenAI’s Plan to Win, AI Personalization, Infrastructure Math, and The Inevitable IPO
OpenAI's CEO joins Big Technology for a candid discussion covering OpenAI's strategy, its product ambitions, its ability to pay for $1 trillion+ in infrastructure, going public, and much more.

Gemini 3 demonstrates strong planning, coding, and judgment skills, and shows how AI models moved past hallucinations to subtle, and often human-like, errors (Ethan Mollick/One Useful Thing)
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/three-years-from-gpt-3-to-gemini
<…

Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3
From chatbots to agents

Luminate 2025 report: the global music industry hit 5.1T streams, up 9.6% YoY and a single-year record; AI artist Xania Monet had 125M on-demand audio streams (Maria Sherman/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/music-listen…

Global music streams hit 5 trillion in 2025
The global music industry hit 5.1 trillion streams in 2025. That’s a new single-year record, up 9.6% from 2024. That’s according to a 2025 Year-End Report from Luminate. They are an industry data and analytics company that provides insight into changing behaviors across music listenership. In the U.S., on-demand audio streams hit 1.4 trillion. That’s a 4.6% increase from last year. But attention is on older music. Less than half all U.S. on-demand audio streams were from tracks released i…

Gemini 3 Pro is integrated into the Gemini app, which now has 650M MAUs, and powers Google Search's AI Mode conversational search feature (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/business/google-gemini-3.html

Google Unveils Gemini 3, With Improved Coding and Search Abilities
The new artificial intelligence model is the second the company has released this year. OpenAI and Anthropic made similar updates a few months ago.

Snapchat launches Topic Chats, which enables public conversations on subjects like F1, and plans to use AI and other safety tech to moderate the chats (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/18/snapchat-rolls-out-topic-chats-for-publ…

Snapchat rolls out 'Topic Chats' for public conversations | TechCrunch
The social network says the new feature will let users chat about what’s happening in the world and across various communities, from Formula 1 to the reality TV show "Below Deck."

Google details a new implementation of generative UI that lets Gemini 3 Pro build interactive interfaces for any prompt, launching in the Gemini app and AI Mode (Google Research)
https://research.google/blog/generative-ui-a-rich-cus…

Generative UI: A rich, custom, visual interactive user experience for any prompt

Manus says it crossed $100M ARR eight months after launch and is growing at 20% MoM since Manus 1.5's release; its total revenue run rate is now over $125M (Jake Rudnitsky/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Manus Says Sales Hit $125 Million Run Rate Months After Launch
Chinese AI pioneer Manus said its annual run rate for revenue is over $125 million, eight months after it released artificial intelligence agents designed to help execute tasks for users.

Google brings its vibe coding tool Opal to Gemini on the web, letting users create their own custom apps called Gems; the mini apps can be reused later (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/17/googles-vibe-coding-tool-opal-comes-to-gemini/

Google's vibe-coding tool Opal comes to Gemini | TechCrunch
The company on Wednesday said it is integrating the tool, which lets you build AI-powered mini apps, inside the Gemini web app, allowing users to create their own custom apps.