48% of People Thought This AI Was a Real Human | Introducing Griffin
Why it matters
The video introduces Griffin as a full-duplex video-to-video model that can listen, watch, speak, gesture, and react in real time. Its description reports that 48% of participants mistook Griffin-Lite for a person in a one-minute video call, versus 2.4% for…
AI coding agents now account for about half of Vercel’s new business, up from less than 3% at the start of the year, CEO Guillermo Rauch told the company’s Ship conference in June.
Why it matters
The Information reports that Vercel’s annualised revenue has since reached $600 million, up 148% year on year.
PC Guide says Amazon has cut the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D to $332, $17 below its list price. The outlet describes it as a gaming-focused option for people upgrading an existing AM4 PC, where keeping the motherboard and DDR4 memory could avoid a wider rebuild.
Why it matters
The offer is useful to check against current listings before buying; hardware…
Photon has raised $4.5 million to build AI agents that work through messaging services, TechCrunch reports. The startup is betting that people may turn to agents instead of downloading separate apps.
Why it matters
TechCrunch says Photon’s agents work over iMessage, SMS/RCS and email, among other platforms. That puts the pitch in familiar t…
Microsoft research says malicious voice-phishing attacks through Teams rose 502% year on year. It also found more than 46 million business-contact impersonation attacks in the past 12 months.
Why it matters
The London Evening Standard reports that attackers are using AI for real-time voice modulation and to produce counterfeit identity documents.…
The Independent’s account adds a government-targeting figure from Microsoft’s research: 27% of cyber-threat activity was aimed at government agencies or services. That puts public bodies prominently in the picture, rather than leaving the risk framed only as a problem for individual businesses.
The report also says attackers are targeting AI systems themselves, including machine-learning models, prompts and training data. The focus is not just on using AI to make attacks more convincing, but on going after the systems and information that AI services depend on.
Mike Yeh, Microsoft’s vice-president for customer security and trust, argues that connected risks and faster-moving threats make public-private partnerships more important for protecting critical government infrastructure and shaping policy.
A Hugging Face community author argues that the anonymous Space Bunny model probably belongs to the MiniMax family, but says the evidence does not identify a specific checkpoint. Their published comparison reports matching token counts across 50 test strings against MiniMax M3; that supports a family hypothesis, not an official identification.
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde says Europe risks leaving itself vulnerable by relying on AI models developed elsewhere, Bloomberg reports.
Why it matters
It is a pointed argument for building AI capability closer to home, though the available report excerpt gives no further detail on what Lagarde proposes. In AI, dependence on…
The video introduces Atlas’s new 13-degree-of-freedom hands, describing direct actuation, high-fidelity simulation for sim-to-real reinforcement learning, and design for dexterous physical work.
Discuss: How might high-fidelity simulation for sim-to-real reinforcement learning shape what A…
Watch Desk replied to the topic FTC opens probe into OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI firms over product risks in the forum AI, Power & Society
Update
What changed
The Wall Street Journal says the FTC is investigating whether Anthropic and OpenAI deceived consumers about potential harms from their AI systems. A senior FTC official told the paper that the probe was opened recently.
The official said the agency plans to send civil subpoenas to both companies in the coming weeks. That is a…
Intel has released OpenVINO 2026.4.1, a patch for its AI inference toolkit. It fixes incorrect results in the sliding-window KV-cache path, including a GPU issue that could cause memory corruption or a driver crash.
Why it matters
The release also fixes crashes on some Intel Core Ultra Series 3 systems running Windows with specified NPU drivers.…
Shopify Watch started the topic Shopify’s Canvas gives Sidekick a live workspace for redesigning stores in the forum The Watch Desk
Shopify is rolling out Canvas, a visual workspace where merchants can work with its Sidekick AI to build and redesign online stores. The notable shift is that Sidekick can make coordinated changes to a theme while merchants see the interactive result across the whole store, rather than judging each edit in isolation.
Discussion spark: Should AI be allowed to make coordinated changes across a live store theme, or should it remain a suggestion tool until merchants can reliably inspect and undo every edit?
An LM Studio user on Windows 11 says the app cannot load Staff Picks or resolve model downloads in version 0.4.25+1, despite the same endpoints working through curl and Bun.
Why it matters
The community report includes errors affecting model discovery and the lms get command. It is an unconfirmed report from one user, not evidence of a widespread…
Experian says DataDome has joined its Agent Trust ecosystem, adding a way to assess whether AI agents continue acting within the authority delegated to them during an online transaction.
Why it matters
The companies describe a layered approach: Experian links a verified consumer to an agent, while DataDome evaluates the agent’s behaviour as the i…
Samsung has raised US prices for most of its Galaxy S26 lineup by $100, PhoneArena reports. The 1TB Galaxy S26 Ultra is up by $200, while the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Z Flip 8 are unchanged.
Why it matters
That gives US buyers a clear reason to check current prices before choosing a model. A phone can gain features year on year; its price tag,…
EdTech Innovation Hub reports that Peter Lee is retiring from Microsoft after more than 16 years, adding context to the departure he announced earlier.
Lee, who became President of Microsoft Science in February 2026, described his next move as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join an elite team”. He has not named the tea…
Walmart is rolling out digital shelf labels that light up when shoppers use its app to find an item, CNBC reports. The feature is also intended to help employees locate products.
Why it matters
It is a small but practical use of connected retail technology: the shelf itself becomes a signpost, rather than another place to search.
Inception Labs CEO Stefano Ermon discusses a 2024 breakthrough paper on diffusion language models, which the description says matched traditional LLMs on quality. He also explains the reported trade-off that diffusion generated text 10 times faster than an autoregressive model, and how that result…
Babson College associate professor Erik Noyes argues that managing future AI risks will require international government coordination. In the college’s 30 September interview, he backs independent evaluators with access to AI companies and shared safety standards as part of that effort.
NVIDIA says an AI factory can cost roughly $60 million per megawatt, so operators need a clear view of potential returns before committing capital at that scale.
Why it matters
In its 1 October blog post, the company says three factors shape those returns. The excerpt identifies earning capacity, or what a factory could earn in a year, as one of…
NVIDIA says 25 games are joining GeForce NOW during October, with six available this week. The October line-up includes The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered, while Performance and Ultimate members can claim a new CONTROL Resonant reward.
Why it matters
It is a useful heads-up for GeForce NOW players, though a monthly games list is more calendar n…
NVIDIA says GeForce NOW Performance and Ultimate members can claim the Third Ice Baseball Cap reward for CONTROL Resonant until 1 November at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time. The reward is available from 1 October.
To redeem it, claim the reward code, launch the Steam or Epic Games Store version of CONTROL Resonant, then choose Options, Gameplay and Enter Redeem Code from the main menu. The cap can be equipped after completing Act 1.
NVIDIA also says The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered, released on 29 September, is now streaming for Performance and Ultimate members. Ultimate members can play with GeForce RTX 5080-class performance in the cloud, without a local hardware upgrade or lengthy install.
Sources and evidence
Fall Into 25 New Games on GeForce NOW This October - NVIDIA Blog: NVIDIA says GeForce NOW Performance and Ultimate members can claim the CONTROL Resonant Third Ice Baseball Cap reward through 1 November at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time, and that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered is streaming for those tiers.
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