From the archive
AI policy sets the rules for how artificial intelligence is developed, deployed and held accountable. Follow AI regulation, copyright disputes, privacy, surveillance and government decisions affecting the technology. Our coverage explains who a proposal applies to, whether it is law or still under discussion, and what it could mean for developers, businesses and the people using AI.
Lead story
Ten major AI developers have changed, or promised to change, how they handle personal data after scrutiny by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The regulator is also examining whether autonomous AI agents can follow the rules when they act with less human supervision.
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Mark Zuckerberg helped shape a voluntary AI safety accord signed by technology executives at the White House, CNN reports. The episode puts a practical question at the centre of AI policy: who gets to write the rules when the rules are voluntary?
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A Senate energy bill would make large data centres cover more of the electricity-grid costs linked to their growth, while speeding up energy infrastructure approvals. The proposal could reshape who pays for the AI build-out, but it is not yet law.
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Jeff Bezos says AI-driven productivity could let some people support their families on a single income or work a three-day week. In a Fox News interview, he also argued for light regulation of AI while the technology develops, putting a prominent tech leader’s optimistic view of work and…
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Singapore’s financial regulator wants firms to have every AI use case independently reviewed before it goes live. The guidance also calls for ongoing monitoring, including of third-party AI, and says firms remain accountable for AI used in the services they provide.
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Unity has announced Spark, a browser-based tool for making and sharing games with AI, and says it will not require prior game-development experience. Kotaku’s account of the promotional trailer shows a workflow built around prompts, ready-made Unity assets and tools for directing gameplay. The harder question is whether…
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ASUS has announced ProArt laptops powered by NVIDIA’s RTX Spark platform, aimed at running AI models and creative workflows locally. The P16 and P14 are listed for US pre-orders from $2,599.99, with the first units due on 16 October; the announcement also outlines a compact desktop system for…
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A digital model helped engineers redesign a major drainage system beneath Austin, with the project’s engineering firm estimating more than $200 million in savings. The case shows how shared data and faster modelling can change infrastructure decisions, while AI’s role in the article is broader than this particular…
Anthropic Watch
A Japanese book wholesaler says its subsidiary sold books to Anthropic from December 2024 to December 2025, after agreeing a deal the previous November. The company says the subsidiary did not know the books were intended for AI training, raising fresh questions about how the material for Anthropic’s…
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An open-source project called openTPU uses AI agents in the design of an AI accelerator and has run several language models on a physical FPGA card. Its reported results offer a concrete, inspectable experiment in AI-designed hardware, though memory access is currently the bottleneck.
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AI leaders who fear the consequences of powerful systems may also feel compelled to build them before less cautious rivals do, journalist Kevin Roose argues. His proposed counterweight is a mix of oversight and coordination, not simply hoping the race slows itself down.
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Valon has raised $150 million at a $2.3 billion valuation to expand ValonOS, its mortgage-servicing platform, and the AI agents built into it. The company says one in six outstanding US mortgages is now under contract to run on the platform, putting its claims about AI in regulated…
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Google has launched Playground, a browser-based tool for making games from AI prompts, and revealed Unity Spark, a more professional, collaborative game-making experience in development. The notable shift is that people can build, tweak and share playable games through conversation, without needing to start with code.
Qualcomm Watch
Qualcomm has reportedly agreed to license Huawei patents linked to LogicFolding, the chip-stacking method used in Huawei’s Kirin 9050 Pro. The broader agreement also covers AI services and other technology, but the deal is still subject to regulatory approval and its terms remain undisclosed.
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Bitdefender has opened a free macOS beta of AI Guardian, a security product that checks what supported AI agents try to do with tools, files and data. It is aimed at a growing weak spot in agent use: a system that can act on your computer needs more…
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Ivo has launched Sage, an open model tailored to contract work, built with River AI on DeepSeek V4 Flash. The pitch is that specialist training can make a smaller, cheaper model useful for legal teams, though the performance figures come from Ivo, not an independent evaluation.
Meta AI Watch
AI-enabled smart glasses can help blind and partially sighted people read letters and labels, but growing privacy concerns are prompting venues to restrict them. The debate is no longer simply whether these devices should be used in public: it is how to protect privacy without excluding people who…
Meta AI Watch
Meta has open-sourced Rebalancer, a C++ assignment solver with a Python interface, after using it internally for more than nine years. The useful twist is its scale: MarkTechPost reports that Meta solves about 40 million assignment problems a day with it, including infrastructure-allocation tasks.
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A Prospect essay argues that fixation on AI wiping out humanity can draw attention away from harms already being debated, including job displacement, privacy, copyright and the growing power of technology companies. Its central challenge is not simply whether existential risks are possible, but who gets to define…
