Daily AI Briefing
The latest breakthroughs in AI — aggregated from top sources and paired with original analysis.
Letterboxd’s homepage. The New York Times Company is in talks"exclusive negotations" to acquire Letterboxd, the social network for film lovers, for around $330 million, The New York Times reports. The Times Company, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and A24 were all recently rumored to be among those interested in buying Letterboxd. The negotiations with the Times Company have included the potential for Letterboxd's co-founders to stay in charge but report to a Times Company executive. Letterboxd w
The head of T-Mobile's parent company is casting doubt on SpaceX's plans to make Starlink Mobile a "major" carrier in the US. During an earnings call on Thursday, Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges says he takes the Elon Musk-owned company "super serious," but that it will cost at least $200 billion to pull off: He [Musk] has now bought 76 megahertz of spectrum. By the way, we have 400. So if you now say he can buy the spectrum prospectively, do your math. These are kind of triple-digit billions w
Airbnb says its upcoming AI agent will help travelers plan trips, compare options, manage bookings, and get assistance throughout their stay.
Perplexity is taking on OpenAI and Anthropic with its own work-focused AI agents. The startup's new always-on "Teammates" can take on multiple roles within a workspace, while pulling existing projects, skills, and memory from the Perplexity tools you already use. Teammates integrate with Perplexity Computer, an AI system that can deploy agents on your device to complete tasks. But Perplexity says Teammates "build on top" of Computer by offering the ability to collaborate and complete "ongoing, l
Salon launched 31 years ago as one of the first online-only news magazine outlets, and it announced today in an unsigned post that it's ceasing publication. The company said that the "business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly over the years," and it decided that its publishing model is "no longer sustainable." It didn't go into detail about why, but many websites are grappling with "Google Zero" and the impact of AI tools. When reached for comment, Salon genera
Context engineering, AI coding agents, and automated testing can replace the endless prompt-and-fix loop. Here’s how to build a smarter… Continue reading on Towards AI »
A week before the midterm elections, Vice President JD Vance hosted a town hall in Texas with Fox News host Jesse Watters. It was a friendly event with a friendly audience in what should have been a friendly state, and maybe that's why Vance couldn't help himself. When a college student earnestly asked how the right expected young people like her to settle down and have kids, given the ever-growing cost of living, Vance replied with a quip about Jon Husted's ass. The student, Kate White, introdu
Nearly $2tn shaved off Nasdaq value as worries of curbs to AI datacenters ripple across bourses The Nasdaq share index had its worst day in 18 months after slumping 5.5% on Thursday amid growing signs that the artificial intelligence industry will face tougher regulation because of the midterm election results. As Wall Street sustained widespread losses, the Nasdaq composite tumbled into “correction territory” – more than 10% below its recent record high – with more than $2tn shaved off its valu
Six small files that turn a coding agent from a clever stranger into a teammate who knows how your project works. Continue reading on Towards AI »
Blue Origin CEO reportedly sent a memo to staff about the new timeline. | Anadolu via Getty Images Blue Origin plans to do its next New Glenn rocket launch in January 2027, according to CNBC and the Financial Times, which cite a memo from CEO Dave Limp sent to staff. The new timeline follows a May launchpad explosion that damaged Blue Origin's New Glenn launchpad ahead of a flight that would have brought Amazon Leo satellites into space. In October, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos told Fox News
A working Python agent in 32 lines, the six things that broke once I gave it real work, and what that taught me about the tools I use… Continue reading on Towards AI »
Meta's AI agent can now take calls as a customizable animated avatar, ahead of the launch of a Tamagotchi-like wearable designed to bring Muse to life.
Android fans with a bit of iPhone Duo envy, take note: The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 is discounted to $1,599.99 at both Amazon and Best Buy, a hefty $300 markdown from its usual price, and just $50 higher than the lowest we’ve seen. Considering the device only launched a few months ago, you’re saving a significant amount of cash on the unlocked device, and you can also opt for the 512GB model, doubling the storage, for just $200 more (Amazon, Best Buy). Best Buy currently has all three colors in s
Meta warns that growing political opposition to data centers could threaten future AI investments, as communities push back against massive infrastructure projects.
OpenAI's newest cybersecurity model comes out as AI labs face scrutiny of their work to protect digital infrastructure.
Meta now lets you have voice conversations with your Muse AI agent in real time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today. The feature has been rolled out to me, and I gave it a spin on the iOS app while writing this article. As you chat with your Muse agent, the avatar at the top of your conversation animates in time with the words that it's saying. You can also change the tone of the voice by just asking your agent about what you want and letting it decide or by browsing through a bunch of options
This Road Rash screenshot rules. | Image: EA Electronic Arts is launching 25 classic games on Steam, including "Anniversary Editions" of the motorcycle racer Road Rash and six Wing Commander titles. These Anniversary Editions preserve "the original look, feel and creative intent of the game" but also have quality-of-life updates to support modern systems and controls and improve performance, according to EA. The seven new editions were "inspired" by the discovery of a "physical media vault" wi
Philippe Jaenada told French radio that he used ChatGPT to ‘play with the reader’, after the prize removed a different book from its longlist over allegations of AI use The winner of France’s most prestigious literary prize has admitted using artificial intelligence while writing his novel, barely a day after collecting an award whose jury had thrown out another book over suspected AI use. Philippe Jaenada, who won the Prix Goncourt on Tuesday for L’Inconnue du quai de Javel (The Unknown Woman o
Speaking at a Wall Street Journal tech conference on Wednesday, the executive touted how the company had been gaining ground in the enterprise market, where rival Anthropic had already successfully made inroads.
An open letter to product managers, directors and non-technical heads who watched an AI build an MVP in an afternoon and quietly moved the… Continue reading on Towards AI »
Anthropic has a new pitch for managing your personal finances: let Claude do it instead, with a new Personal Finance feature that connects it to your bank and card accounts via the Plaid bank bridging platform. You can ask the chatbot "where did my money go this month," for example, and it'll create an overview with a breakdown of spending by category, including rent and utilities, shopping, and food. Claude can also answer broader questions around what bills are left before your next payday, if
With Personal Finance in Claude, users can connect their bank and card accounts through Plaid and ask questions about their finances.
As AI floods math with unchecked proofs, Axiom Math is betting on verification. The startup’s AI agents just formally verified the Stacks Project, one of the field’s biggest libraries.
The deal is expected to support the development of DBX Agent Cloud, a new storage platform aimed at developers building AI models and agents.
Albanese should tread carefully as he struggles to make case for how the new technology will benefit ordinary voters Get our daily political email, free app or daily news podcast When will Australia see the benefits of the AI and datacentre boom? So far, all we’ve seen is the possibility of changes to copyright that would hurt Australian creatives, special rules about power and water use, and the threat of mass displacement or replacement of workers, with the trade-off being a mere 10% chance
The system can supposedly answer queries four times faster, with 20% fewer errors and 90% fewer tokens used.
While frontier AI models have solved a remarkable series of outstanding mathematics problems and made progress in the life sciences, they have yet to truly plumb the complex physics in advanced materials.
Agility arrives on the Nasdaq today as the first publicly traded pure-play humanoid robotics company.
The tech industry spent big on the midterms, but it turned out to be a poor investment. Elon Musk poured a staggering $446m dollars into Republican-aligned political action committees (Pacs) and groups since last year, but his efforts didn’t pay off. Democrats won every one of the five Senate races where Musk’s America Pac spent the most money backing Republican candidates. Carter Sherman and Kai Wright are joined by the Guardian’s US tech editor, Blake Montgomery, to ask what the ‘blue tsunami’
More than 100 campaign groups will join together in 15 countries this week to call for a halt to major AI projects Protesters across Europe are planning two days of action against datacentres this week with demonstrations taking place in 15 countries. More than 100 groups are joining together for the “Stop Dirty Data Centres” events on Friday and Saturday. They are calling for a moratorium on large projects, citing environmental and social costs that “we can no longer afford”. Continue reading.
Introducing GPT‑6 Cyber, OpenAI’s cybersecurity model for finding exploitable vulnerabilities and developing fixes, trained to stay within authorized scope.
Merge uses GPT-6 Astra, ChatGPT, and Codex to review product code and support marketing. Its teams also use AI to plan executive dinners and prepare sales updates.
Delivering net zero also at risk, say MPs as they call for centralised policy and funding for mines and diversification The UK is “dangerously” dependent on China for critical raw materials needed for the military, renewable energy infrastructure and AI, a parliamentary investigation has found. MPs on the business select committee called for an urgent centralised policy and the creation of a “critical minerals finance facility” to help fund rare earth and other critical mineral mines, and deplo
OpenAI introduces its National Community Compact and Compute Campus Policy Blueprint to protect local resources, create jobs, and guide responsible AI infrastructure development.
The tokenmaxxing frenzy has been short-lived as bills for said tokens came due, and companies decided that token rationing might be a more fiscally sensible approach.
Flipsnack focused its ChatGPT Ads campaigns on getting people to try its product, growing registrations while lowering the cost per signup.
Transparency and advertising experts say trust in politics could be further eroded as a result of ‘lies, deepfakes and AI-generated politicians’ Get our daily political email, free app or daily news podcast It’s the night of Halloween and Jess Wilson has appeared on social media feeds with a warning about a scary prospect: “Americanised healthcare” under a future Liberal government. “If you had a heart attack, you would have to pay $150,000 for care,” the Victorian Liberal leader says, mid-tri
AI industry PACs spent millions influencing the 2026 midterms, with mixed results. Political groups are already looking toward the next election cycle.
With smartphone sales tanking by around 20 percent compared to 2025, Qualcomm is looking to data centers to help boost its bottom line. During its Q4 2026 earnings call, the company laid out its plans to make a splash in the AI data center business, through partnerships with companies like Amazon and Meta announced earlier this year. The company expects that portion of its business to grow quickly, forecasting around $650 million in data center revenue during the first quarter of 2027. But it an
While it's not yet clear what kind of product the smartphone startup is cooking up, Nothing's CEO said the product is designed to leverage AI for productivity gains.
![[Day 40/100] AI Agent Memory Privacy: Isolate Users, Redact PII, Delete for Real](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1672/1*MpG0R3Olb2RsIWxjsSecqA.png)
One tool argument can leak every user’s memories. How to scope identity, enforce row-level security in Postgres, keep PII out of storage… Continue reading on Towards AI »