AI

Less than a year after launch, Microsoft is moving its animated AI companion, Mico, from the chatbot to the classroom. The move coincides with a merger of the consumer and Microsoft 365 Copilot apps, which begins rolling out on August 18.

WhatsApp is testing an AI that detects scam messages directly on your phone. No message content leaves the device, and the encryption remains intact. The catch lies in Meta’s own description: It only checks who isn’t in your contacts. That’s exactly where the most dangerous scams lie.

OpenAI has switched on Computer History in the ChatGPT app for macOS. It records clicks, keystrokes and app switches, then turns them into a timeline and memories. OpenAI's own documentation says the files are not encrypted and that other programs on your Mac may be able to read them.

Twitch uses creator content to train Amazon's generative AI models. The setting arrived on August 12 already switched on for every account, with no announcement. It covers streams, chat, VODs, clips and images. Here is where the setting can be found and what it does not cover.

Chuwi's UniBook is a new 14-inch entry-level notebook priced at $449 powered by the Intel Wildcat Lake processors. While this strategic shift aims to revitalize the market for affordable notebooks, it entails significant performance compromises in practice.

The Asus ProArt PZ14 is a very slim multimedia convertible with strong CPU performance and an amazing 144 Hz OLED touchscreen, which offers very accurate color profiles. The GPU performance on the other hand is not great, which is falling behind the current rivals from Intel and AMD.

Google has launched Gemini 3.7 Flash, promising major gains in coding, web development, and AI agents. The new model also comes with significantly lower introductory pricing, making advanced AI workflows cheaper to run.

Google DeepMind's SL2T model lets Pixel 11 owners sign instead of type. American Sign Language feeds straight into Gboard and Live Transcribe at no extra cost, and the camera feed never leaves the phone: only body landmarks go to the server. Other sign languages and other devices are still missing.

Optimal Transit has unveiled the second generation of its Kraaken, a zero-emissions floating platform designed to supply coastal communities with electricity, desalinated water and AI computing capacity. The relocatable vessel could offer a faster, lower-cost alternative to land-based infrastructure.

Microsoft's support page names four AI components inside a Copilot+ PC. Its own delivery list has nine, among them Semantic Analysis, Content Extraction and Image Search. Exactly one can be removed since late July, and Microsoft only turned it into a separate package on that very day. What really goes, what only switches off and what stays.

Former lead writer for Rideshare Stimulator has shared her experience working on the game and the use of AI for its development. Saber Interactive, the developer, has not responded yet.

Meta has released Muse Glimmer, a language model with roughly 30 billion parameters under an Apache 2.0 license. It runs entirely on your own machine, with no internet connection and no subscription. The catch: you need 24 GB of video memory, so an RTX 5090, an RTX 4090 or a Mac with an M4 Max. The weights are free on Hugging Face.

Anthropic is introducing invisible watermarks directly into text produced by newer Claude models as part of its commitments under the EU AI Act's transparency rules. The markings can survive copy-pasting and some editing, although their presence does not necessarily mean that Claude actually authored the underlying text.

Touchscreens can have a negative impact on the image quality, which is also the case for some OLED models from Asus' ProArt series. The creator tablet ProArt PZ14, however, features a gorgeous 144 Hz OLED touchscreen without any issues.

Ford has started rolling out an AI-powered assistant for Ford and Lincoln owners. Available through the company's mobile apps, it can answer questions about a vehicle's capabilities, maintenance needs, fuel usage, and towing limits, while a fully integrated in-car version is planned for 2027.

A New Mexico court has fined Meta $567 million and ordered changes to Facebook and Instagram. Accounts belonging to users under 18 get a hard cap of 90 hours a month across both apps, no push notifications overnight, and hidden like counts. The ruling also draws a line around Meta's AI chatbots.

OpenAI is scrapping the message limit for ChatGPT Free and Go and making GPT-5.6 Luna the default model. Check today, though, and the unlimited chats are not there yet: they arrive in the week of August 10. Here is what already works and where the limits stay.

SK hynix approved 54.3 trillion won for new DRAM and NAND fabs on August 7. The first cleanrooms open in December 2028 and June 2029, and the company says it will install equipment only as demand warrants — not a near-term fix for RAM prices.

A Hong Kong-based eBay seller is offering modified Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards with 22GB of GDDR6 memory for about $500, targeting AI users seeking high VRAM capacity at a lower price.

Chuwi's UniBook is a 14-inch laptop with a matte IPS screen, backlit keyboard and plenty of ports for $449. Is Intel's Wildcat Lake processor the solution for affordable laptops?

Zenity Labs demonstrated at Black Hat USA 2026 that Claude in Chrome, Gemini in Chrome, Perplexity Comet, ChatGPT Atlas and Copilot Edge can all be turned against their own users by ordinary content. An email, a calendar invite or a link under a social post is enough, and the victim never clicks anything. Here is what the attacks did and how to lock your agent down.

From Tesla Autopilot used as drunk-driving excuses to fake malicious acceleration reports, the Chinese blogosphere is rife with EV misinformation. Xiaomi, BYD, and NIO all suffered from the phenomenon until somebody actually went to jail for it.

Meta has unveiled Muse Code, a new AI coding agent designed to help developers manage large and complex codebases more efficiently. The tool can automate software engineering tasks, debug code, and handle long-running workflows, marking Meta's latest push into AI-powered developer tools.

OpenAI has been testing ads in ChatGPT since February. The booking tool for businesses is now live in seven countries, Brazil and Mexico are still waiting, and Germany is not on the list at all. You can get rid of the ads, but you pay in daily messages or in subscription fees.

Google has set a start date for removing Google Assistant from Android phones, tablets, Wear OS watches, and Android Auto, replacing it permanently with Gemini. The rollout takes several weeks, and there is no way to switch back once it hits your device.

OpenAI removes the official DALL-E GPT from ChatGPT on August 30, 2026. If you created images through it, download them before then. ChatGPT Images takes over and is available on every tier, free accounts included. Custom GPTs with image generation are not affected. Here is what goes, what stays and how to save your images.

Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte may raise motherboard prices by nearly 50% in Q3 2026 as PCB and component costs surge, according to supply-chain reports. The potential increases come amid falling shipments, weak DIY PC demand, expensive memory, and limited incentives for consumers to upgrade, though none of the manufacturers has confirmed the plans.

SK Hynix has unveiled the first standard specifications for High Bandwidth Flash (HBF), a new memory tier designed to sit between HBM and SSDs in AI systems. The open standard supports up to 512 GB capacities, bandwidth of up to 3 TB/s and UCIe connectivity.

BYD is making serious moves in the robotics race. The Chinese EV giant has confirmed its first humanoid AI robot, Xiao Di, for early August 2026. The android is designed to welcome customers in car dealerships and challenge Tesla Optimus. However, the US is already blocking market access before the official debut.

Thousands of users are unable to access xAI's Grok as reports of an outage continue to climb. The disruption appears to be affecting multiple parts of the AI service, although xAI has yet to comment on the issue.

Four AI chatbots, one forbidden task: a fake news post carrying a made-up claim. ChatGPT produced almost all of them and the most convincing ones, Gemini even faked the New York Times and the BBC. Copilot added a visible AI label, Meta AI refused the false claim. The odd part: German outlets were easier to fake than English ones.

An Alcorn State University professor caught most of his students cheating on a midterm, using a hidden instruction that prompted AI chatbots to generate nonsensical answers. The incident again highlights the need to regulate the use of AI in learning.

OpenAI is discontinuing its AI browser ChatGPT Atlas on August 9, 2026, less than ten months after its launch. Bookmarks, open tabs, and browsing history will not be automatically transferred to another browser. Users who want to keep them must export them themselves beforehand. Atlas will no longer receive security updates anyway.

Evangelion voice actor Megumi Ogata has condemned unauthorized AI voice cloning as “heartbreaking,” urging Japan to protect performers from viral and monetized impersonations on platforms such as TikTok.

One million tokens sounds like enough space for everything. We calculated how many German words that actually is, how much a single query costs for the entire GPT-5.6 Sol collection, and when Obsidian or Notion are still worth it.

The transparency rules of the EU AI Act apply from today. If you publish deepfakes or AI-written text professionally or for money, you have to label it visibly, on YouTube as much as on your own blog. The grace period until December covers providers such as OpenAI and Google, not you.

Tech layoffs topped 124,000 in the first seven months of 2026, surpassing 2025’s total as major companies cut staff while sharply increasing AI investment. However, evidence suggests that AI’s long-term impact could ultimately drive job creation.

Google's Gemini Spark agent can now open Chrome, use your logged-in accounts and saved passwords, and start a flight booking for you. That part is US-only. And despite Google calling Spark worldwide, it is still unavailable in the EEA, the UK, Switzerland and Nigeria.

Anyone who uses ChatGPT regularly knows that free usage limits run out faster than one might like. Revolut now aims to have solved this problem for its customers: they receive the ChatGPT-Go subscription for free for up to a year.

Tamagotchis were all the rage in the 90s, and there have been a few attempts to bring them back. Takway is hoping to bring back the concept using AI and creating a companion that actually grows.

Lenovo's business flagship ThinkPad X1 Carbon is now available in its 14th generation. We compare the current model with the X1 Carbon from 2019 (G7) and check the progress, which is sometimes smaller than you might expect, especially regarding the chassis.

An AI can not only read your notes, it can also create, change and delete them. Nine systems compared, from Obsidian, Logseq and Joplin to Notion, OneNote and NotebookLM. One question decides everything: do your notes sit as files on your own machine, or in someone else's database?

Anthropic went back through 141,006 test runs and found three cases where Claude reached out of the test environment and broke into real company systems. One model built a malicious Python package and uploaded it to PyPI. Why the models thought they were still in a simulation, and what it means if you use Claude.

Asus offers a new base model for the ProArt PX13 convertible. For $1899, you get a slower Strix Halo CPU, but still the powerful Radeon 8060S. The compact device also offers a 2.8K OLED screen, 32 GB RAM and a 512 GB SSD.

OpenAI has cut pricing across its GPT-5.6 lineup and introduced a new Fast mode for the API. The changes affect Luna and Terra, OpenAI's lower-cost tiers, and come alongside benchmark data comparing Luna's price-performance against models from Google, Anthropic, and other competitors.

More than 1,290 employees of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and Meta signed the open letter Pacing the Frontier on July 28. They want the US government to help build tools for a verifiable brake on AI development. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki and Ilya Sutskever are among the signatories.

Zero is rethinking how a mini PC handles local AI workloads. Rather than relying on the host CPU or integrated graphics to run inference, the company's latest desktops offload that work entirely to a second, independent chip with memory of its own.

Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 uses a new chassis as well as efficient Panther Lake processors. An efficient IPS touchscreen enables impressive battery runtimes while excellent input devices and optional 5G connectivity ensure a great mobile working experience.