Flock’s 80,000 Cameras Became a Search Network
In 2021, Flock’s network reached more than 500 police departments; by 2025, the company operated 80,000-plus cameras across 49 states. Its possible sale puts the searches connecting those local deployments at stake.
Microsoft Drops Copilot+ but Keeps Every Feature
In September 2026, Microsoft dropped the Copilot+ name from new Surface PCs that still met the 40-TOPS threshold, while unified Copilot expanded across chat, coding, agents, and Microsoft 365 permissions.
Researchers add details to the Hugging Face incident, including OpenAI agents creating ~1M shortened URLs to encode information in an attempt to solve CAPTCHAs
A new report by a Bay Area start-up called Parse adds details to an incident that has shocked the A.I. world and led to calls for closer government regulation.
Microsoft launches its Copilot “super app”, bundling chat, coding, and agents into a single interface, and rebrands its AI assistant Scout as Autopilot
The new Copilot merges AI chat, coding, and Autopilot agents. — After teasing its new Copilot “super app” …
A federal appeals court upholds DOD's Anthropic blacklisting, finding Claude's integration with DOD systems is “a statutorily covered national-security risk”
A federal appeals court panel in Washington, D.C., on Friday upheld the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic …
Microsoft confirms that 2026 Surface PCs have dropped the Copilot+ PC branding, even though they meet all the requirements of Copilot+ devices
In a new interview, Microsoft Surface CVP confirms that its new Surface PCs are no longer called Copilot+ PCs, but will still support all Copilot+ features.
Bitget CEO Gracy Chen says she suspects North Korean attackers exploited a backend system used to process wallet transactions to drain $387M from the platform
Another major hack has rattled the cryptocurrency world. On Thursday night, crypto exchange Bitget suffered a security breach …
A jury finds Meta liable for misleading New Mexico residents about third-party data sharing, content moderation, and more in the Cambridge Analytica scandal
A jury in Santa Fe, New Mexico, found on Friday that Meta Platforms (META.O) misled the state's residents, in a case stemming …
Meta says its rejection of ads promoting the new documentary about Elon Musk “was an error and the ads are being restored”; YouTube is also allowing the ads
At least two companies appear to be reversing their stance on whether to accept advertising for director Alex Gibney's upcoming documentary about Elon Musk.
A look at Holograms, Meta's take on Apple Vision Pro's Personas, launching with a shoulders-up version this fall for WhatsApp calls on Ray-Ban Display glasses
Meta finally set a concrete timeline to ship realistic avatars, called Holograms, its take on Apple Vision Pro's Personas.
A US appeals court rules that Kalshi's sports contracts are not “swaps” subject only to CFTC regulation, allowing states to regulate them under gambling laws
A US appeals court on Friday ruled against the prediction markets operator Kalshi, saying states can regulate …
President Trump says Scott Bessent is not “going to be Super Intelligence (SI) Czar”, because “he doesn't want to” and Trump wants to keep him at the Treasury
President Donald Trump said Friday that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will not be tapped to be his artificial intelligence czar.
TikTok reaches a settlement with Alabama over social media addiction claims; Alabama will receive at least $100M, and up to $300M if certain conditions are met
TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, have reached a settlement with Alabama over allegations they designed the platform …
A look at the wave of Google DeepMind researchers who have exited recently to launch their own AI startups focused on alternatives to LLMs
When a group of 15 Google DeepMind employees and alumni met for a breakfast this month in central London, the conversation quickly turned …
Former US Army soldier Cameron Wagenius, who pleaded guilty in 2025 to hacking into telecom companies and to extortion, is sentenced to 70 months in prison
A U.S. Army soldier who pleaded guilty to hacking into multiple telecommunications companies and stealing mobile call and text metadata …
Jensen Huang tells Ezra Klein that AI is just software whose existential risks are overstated, yet his standards would shut down OpenAI and 10x safety spending
Jensen Huang accidentally called for shutting down OpenAI and intentionally called for spending vastly more on safety.
Sources: YouTube, TikTok, and Meta's Instagram and Facebook declined to run paid ads for Alex Gibney's Musk documentary, citing “political content”
YouTube, TikTok and Meta have all turned down the trailer for the Oct. 9 doc, citing “political” content. X won't even take Bleecker Street's calls.
Brazil's Lula da Silva signs an EO banning online betting; app stores and telecom providers must block platforms on Oct. 6; Congress has 120 days to approve it
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday announced a ban on online betting operations in Latin America's largest economy …
Walmart CEO John Furner says the company won't use its AI shopping assistant or electronic shelf labels to change product prices based on a shopper's identity
Largest US retailer issues open letter saying it will not use electronic shelf labels to change costs based on shopper identity
A US federal jury awarded Taction Technology $5.7B+ in damages, finding Apple infringed haptics patents; Apple to appeal, says it “does not use Taction's” tech
A federal jury in San Diego awarded Taction Technology more than $5.7 billion in damages Friday after finding …
Sources: US and Russian diplomats worked to weaken an AI weapons pact at the UN this month, removing a requirement that humans review AI-generated targets, more
The two nations weakened a range of safeguards in a landmark U.N. effort to try to regulate the use of lethal autonomous weaponry.
Sources: Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announces a new board and new advisers; board members include two founders of IRL and the author of the Silo book series
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has rebuilt the company's board just weeks after its previous directors tried, and failed, to oust him.
Sources: Monzo is in talks to be acquired by Nubank parent Nu Holdings in a deal valuing it at £8B-£10B; Monzo also discussed selling a ~15% stake to PE firms
UK fintech is also in discussions with private equity about selling a significant stake in the business
The US and China create a “Super Intelligence Dialogue” on AI risks and a separate AI incident hotline, likened to a Cold War-era “red telephone”
The U.S. and China have agreed to set up a dialogue on artificial intelligence, with a communications channel …
PitchBook: VCs have invested $4B+ in quantum computing companies YTD, almost as much as in all of 2025, which nearly matched the previous four years combined
The dawn of a new computing era may finally be here. Now the race is on to find a path to profit.
Nscale secures $3.36B in convertible financing led by Third Point ahead of its US IPO, with $2.36B available immediately and $1B from Nvidia in November
Bill Gates warns about the catastrophic risk posed by “people with ill intent using the latest AI tools”, which are powerful enough to “cause a billion deaths”
Bitget halts withdrawals after detecting unauthorized transfers from some hot and warm wallets, affecting ~$351.6M; CEO Gracy Chen says “user funds are safe”
NYC-based Confido, a provider of AI-powered workflow automation tools for consumer packaged goods companies, raised a $55M Series B led by Insight Partners
Russia has increased targeted strikes on Ukrainian data centers, disrupting internet access for ~100K Kyiv residents on Wednesday and Thursday
Sources: SK Hynix's US-based NAND and SSD subsidiary Solidigm is exploring an IPO as early as 2027 that could raise $15B and value the unit at up to $150B
A bipartisan group of US lawmakers introduces a bill to bar the federal government from equipping sensitive government systems with Chinese optical transceivers
Google says ShinyHunters has renewed “mass exploitation” of a flaw in Oracle's PeopleSoft; ShinyHunters has said it accessed FBI data using a flaw in PeopleSoft
Ando, which is building a team messaging platform for both humans and AI agents, comes out of stealth with $20M in pre-seed and seed funding
Sources: Oura IPO is roughly four times oversubscribed; Filing: Oura and the selling shareholders are offering 50M shares for $40 to $44 each to raise ~$2.2B
Sources: Tesla ramped up Optimus production to several hundred units per week but faces hurdles with its hands, automation equipment, and supplier constraints
Researchers: OpenAI's agents meddled with the US Commerce Dept. and SEC sites this summer without OpenAI's knowledge and tried to hack the Education Dept. site
The company did not learn until recently that its technology had meddled with websites for the Education Department …
Project Jupiter, the New Mexico data center for which Oracle made major financial commitments, faces power and permitting hurdles, exposing Oracle's AI risks
Sources: OpenAI found ~24 incidents of its agents acting in undesirable ways as of mid-September; OpenAI says its agents leaked 53 images from ChatGPT users
Two months after OpenAI disclosed the accidental hacking of Hugging Face, the ChatGPT maker is still working to understand …
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson says he resists anthropomorphizing AI agents as autonomous actors with “wills and desires”, suggesting developers hold liability
Databricks acquires spreadsheet startup Row Zero to expand the capabilities of its AI coworker Genie; Row Zero raised a $10M seed led by IA Ventures last year
Palantir and 8VC cofounder Joe Lonsdale, an investor in Anthropic, says AI companies are attempting to sway public policy by warning of existential AI risks
A US federal judge dealt fresh setbacks to Deel in the Rippling case over alleged spying, including rejecting its bid to strike testimony from a central witness
The Fed unveils stablecoin proposals, including requiring some issuers to fully back tokens with permissible reserve assets, such as short-term Treasury bills
OpenAI says the 53 images its agents uploaded were on “image-hosting sites as links that weren't publicly listed” and “most” of the images have been removed
We've shared details on how AI agents in our research environment sent training and evaluation data to third-party services when they shouldn't have. Most of that data did not come from users. We have...
OpenAI says it paused training, evaluation, and inference with tool-use of its most capable models after a model bypassed internet restrictions during training
Summary — An agent attempting to complete a search-based training task queried a public chatbot service through a gap …