Latest AI News
The most comprehensive AI news feed on the internet -- curated by Matt Wolfe
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Yesterday — Monday, May 18, 2026
"Google and Blackstone are reportedly planning a joint $5 billion AI cloud venture aimed at competing with CoreWeave, the GPU-focused cloud provider that has emerged as a leading independent AI infrastructure company. CoreWeave, which projects $5.05–$5.35 billion in 2025 revenue, has attracted attention for its high GPU utilization rates and NVIDIA-powered clusters. A Google-Blackstone partnership would signal growing competition in the specialized AI compute market as hyperscalers and financial investors seek alternatives to dominant providers."
Amazon has launched Alexa Podcasts, a new feature for Alexa+ subscribers that generates custom AI audio episodes on demand. Users simply tell Alexa a topic, review an outline, and adjust length or direction conversationally before Alexa creates a recording with AI-generated host voices. Content draws from over 200 news publications, including the Associated Press, Reuters, and the Washington Post. Episodes are delivered via Echo Show or the Alexa app and the feature is currently available to U.S. Alexa+ customers.
A jury unanimously dismissed all claims in Musk v. Altman after roughly two hours of deliberation, finding that Elon Musk's breach of charitable trust claim against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman was barred by the statute of limitations. A related claim that Microsoft aided and abetted the breach also failed, as did a restitution claim. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers accepted the advisory verdict. Musk announced on X he plans to appeal, calling the ruling a calendar technicality rather than a decision on the merits.
OpenAI and Dell Technologies are partnering to bring Codex to hybrid and on-premises enterprise environments via the Dell AI Data Platform and Dell AI Factory. Codex, one of OpenAI's fastest-growing products with over 4 million weekly developers, will connect to governed enterprise data stored on Dell infrastructure. The collaboration also covers ChatGPT Enterprise and API-based solutions, enabling customers to build, test, and deploy AI agents securely within their own infrastructure for software development and broader knowledge work.
Anthropic has acquired Stainless, a company founded in 2022 that specializes in SDK and MCP server tooling. Stainless has powered every official Anthropic SDK since the Claude API launched and is used by hundreds of companies to generate SDKs, CLIs, and MCP servers across languages including TypeScript, Python, Go, Java, and Kotlin. The acquisition aims to expand Claude's agent connectivity, allowing AI agents to reach more data sources and tools as Anthropic shifts focus from models that answer to agents that act.
Cursor has launched Composer 2.5, a significant upgrade to its AI coding agent built on Moonshot's Kimi K2.5 open-source checkpoint. Key improvements include scaled training with 25x more synthetic tasks than Composer 2, a new targeted textual feedback technique for more precise reinforcement learning, and better effort calibration and communication style. Priced at $0.50/M input and $2.50/M output tokens, Cursor is also training a larger model with SpaceXAI using 10x more compute on Colossus 2.
Pope Leo XIV will publish his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On the Protection of Human Dignity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, on May 25 at the Vatican's Synod Hall. Signed on May 15 — the 135th anniversary of Leo XIII's landmark labor encyclical Rerum Novarum — the document is expected to provide moral guidance on AI and the digital revolution. Speakers at the presentation include Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah and Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández.
Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot Atlas has demonstrated the ability to lift and carry a mini-fridge using AI-driven behaviors. The robot coordinates its entire body to manage heavy objects, balancing complex contact points with accuracy and reliability. The demonstration highlights Atlas's growing physical capability and whole-body coordination, showcasing how AI enables the robot to handle real-world manipulation tasks that require managing multiple simultaneous contact points under load.
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Saturday, May 16, 2026
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed by students at the University of Arizona during a commencement speech after saying AI will touch every profession, classroom, hospital, and laboratory. Schmidt acknowledged the crowd's reaction, noting fears that jobs are evaporating and the future has been written. The incident is at least the third commencement speech this month to draw jeers over AI remarks, following similar responses at the University of Central Florida and Middle Tennessee State University.
OpenAI and the Government of Malta have announced a world-first partnership to provide ChatGPT Plus to all Maltese citizens. Under Malta's AI for All initiative, citizens complete a free AI literacy course developed by the University of Malta, then receive one year of ChatGPT Plus at no cost. The Malta Digital Innovation Authority will manage distribution. The program launches in May 2026 and is part of OpenAI's broader OpenAI for Countries initiative, which also includes partnerships with Estonia and Greece.
Friday, May 15, 2026
Anthropic has published a deployment guide for Claude across the legal industry, as generative AI adoption among general counsel doubled to 87% in 2026, up from 44% the prior year, according to an FTI Consulting/Relativity report. The guide covers four products — Claude Chat, Claude Cowork, Claude for Microsoft 365, and Claude Platform — plus 12 pre-built practice-area plugins spanning Commercial, Corporate, Privacy, Litigation, and AI Governance work, alongside a three-phase adoption roadmap for firms and in-house teams.
Anthropic and PwC have expanded their strategic alliance, deploying Claude across agentic software development, AI-native deal-making, and enterprise function reinvention. PwC will roll out Claude Code and Claude Cowork to hundreds of thousands of professionals globally, backed by a joint Center of Excellence and a program to train and certify 30,000 U.S. staff. PwC is also launching an Office of the CFO business unit built on Claude. Live deployments have cut delivery times by up to 70%, compressing insurance underwriting from ten weeks to ten days.
OpenAI has launched a personal finance preview in ChatGPT for U.S. Pro subscribers, allowing users to securely connect accounts from over 12,000 financial institutions via Plaid, with Intuit support coming soon. The feature provides a spending dashboard and lets users ask questions grounded in their real financial data, powered by GPT-5.5's reasoning capabilities. Financial memories store user goals across conversations. OpenAI plans to expand access to Plus users and eventually everyone after gathering early feedback.
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Thursday, May 14, 2026
xAI now lets Grok subscribers use their accounts inside Nous Research's open-source Hermes Agent, a self-improving agent that runs persistently on any computer, sandbox, or VPS and builds long-term memory across sessions. The integration gives Hermes access to Grok 4.3 for text and advanced reasoning, Grok Text-to-Speech for spoken responses, and Grok Imagine for image and video creation. Hermes also connects to WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram, and Signal. The feature is available on every Grok subscription tier.
California resident Amargo Couture has filed a class-action complaint against OpenAI Global LLC in the Southern District of California, alleging the company embedded Meta's Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics into the ChatGPT web interface. The suit claims these integrations transmitted user chatbot queries and associated data into advertising ecosystems. Bloomberg Law also reported on the case. OpenAI has not issued a public statement. The lawsuit highlights growing legal scrutiny over telemetry practices in AI chat products.
Meta has opened a developer preview for building apps on Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, offering two build paths: the Meta Wearables Device Access Toolkit, a native iOS and Android SDK supporting text, images, and video on the display, and a Web Apps path using standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Glasses also support gesture controls via the Meta Neural Band using surface electromyography. Developers can share builds with up to 100 testers during the preview period.
Perplexity has launched a Snowflake App Connector for its Computer product, letting teams query enterprise data in plain language without writing SQL. Available to Pro, Max, and Enterprise users, the connector allows questions like forecasting demand or identifying top-performing marketing campaigns. Admins retain control via role-based access, read-only permissions, and User OAuth. The idea came from Perplexity's internal Slackbot, which now handles up to 3,000 weekly queries. Data is never used to train models.
OpenAI has launched Codex in the ChatGPT mobile app, now in preview on iOS and Android across all plans including Free and Go. With more than 4 million weekly Codex users, the mobile experience lets developers start tasks, review outputs, approve commands, and steer long-running work from their phones. The app connects securely to remote machines via a relay layer, syncing screenshots, terminal output, diffs, and test results in real time. Enterprise features include Remote SSH, Hooks, programmatic access tokens, and HIPAA-compliant support.
A developer named Neilson has open-sourced a 3D generation toolkit built specifically for use with Anthropic's Claude Code. The tool accepts a single input image and automatically generates complete 3D environments, producing meshes, physics simulations, lighting setups, and audio components from that one source. By releasing the toolkit publicly, Neilson aims to make it significantly easier for developers working within Claude Code to rapidly build and deploy fully realized 3D scenes without manual asset creation.
Researchers at Palo Alto-based security firm Calif used an early version of Anthropic's unreleased Mythos AI model, also called Claude Mythos Preview, in April to uncover significant bugs in Apple's macOS. The team chained two vulnerabilities with advanced techniques to corrupt Mac memory and access restricted system areas. The work is part of Anthropic's Project Glasswing, which shares Mythos with select partners including Apple, Google, and Microsoft to proactively find and patch zero-day vulnerabilities before malicious actors can exploit them.
xAI has launched an early beta of Grok Build, an agentic command-line interface tool built for coding, building applications, and automating workflows. The tool is currently available exclusively to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, xAI's premium tier. During this beta period, xAI plans to refine both the underlying model and the product itself based on user feedback. Developers interested in trying Grok Build can access it now at grok.com.
Anthropic and the Gates Foundation have announced a $200 million partnership combining grant funding, Claude usage credits, and technical support across global health, education, and economic mobility over four years. Key initiatives include accelerating vaccine and therapy development for neglected diseases like polio, HPV, and preeclampsia, improving disease forecasting with the Institute for Disease Modeling, building AI tutoring tools for K-12 students in the US, sub-Saharan Africa, and India, and supporting smallholder farmers through agriculture-specific Claude improvements.
A live-action AI film directed by Dustin Yellin, starring Paul Rudd and Chris Rock, and produced by Darren Aronofsky will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival next week. Nick St. Pierre, who shared the announcement on X, is an executive producer on the project. The film blends live-action footage with AI-generated elements and marks a notable moment for AI in mainstream cinema, with high-profile talent attached to the production.
Google is set to unveil Gemini Spark at Google I/O, a new 24/7 AI agent designed to function as an everyday personal assistant. Gemini Spark will learn from user behavior and integrate with connected apps and skills, allowing it to handle tasks autonomously on an ongoing basis. The announcement positions Gemini Spark as a persistent, proactive agent rather than a reactive chatbot, expanding Google's AI assistant capabilities significantly.
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Google Gemini 3.2 Flash is rumored to achieve 92% of GPT-5.5's performance on coding and reasoning benchmarks while costing 15 to 20 times less on inference. According to Bindu Reddy on X, the model leverages DeepMind's distillation techniques to deliver these gains. Latency improvements are also notable, with response times reportedly dropping below 200 milliseconds, making it a compelling option for cost-sensitive, performance-demanding applications.
Figure, the humanoid robotics company founded by Brett Adcock, completed and live-streamed eight consecutive hours of fully autonomous, unsupervised robot operation with no human intervention required. Following the milestone, Adcock announced the company is moving beyond the single session to launch a 24/7 continuous livestream, allowing the public to watch Figure's robots perform autonomous work around the clock without stopping.
NV Energy will cut 75 percent of Liberty Utilities' electricity supply to the California side of Lake Tahoe by May 2027, affecting about 49,000 customers, to redirect power to AI data centers in Nevada. Companies including Google, Apple, and Microsoft are building large facilities near Reno. Residents report electricity prices have risen 77 percent since late 2022. Liberty Utilities says it filed with the CPUC in March 2026 to find new wholesale power suppliers, with a formal request for proposals expected this summer.
Perplexity has detailed the security architecture behind Perplexity Computer, its autonomous agent that writes code, browses the web, and connects to external services. Each task runs inside a Firecracker microVM sandbox with a dedicated Linux kernel, isolated filesystem, and private network namespace. The system includes a four-layer prompt injection defense using the BrowseSafe detection model, audited by Trail of Bits. Enterprise features include SAML SSO, audit logs integrating with Splunk and Datadog, and granular connector controls for services like Gmail, Slack, and Salesforce.
OpenAI engineer David Wiesen built a custom Windows sandbox for Codex, the company's coding agent, after existing Windows tools like AppContainer, Windows Sandbox, and Mandatory Integrity Control labeling all fell short. Without a sandbox, Windows users had to either approve nearly every command or enable unrestricted Full Access mode. The solution uses synthetic SIDs and write-restricted tokens to control file writes, while poisoning network escape hatches via proxy environment variables, bringing Windows users the same safety guarantees already available on macOS and Linux.
Anthropic has temporarily increased Claude Code weekly usage limits by 50%, effective immediately and running through July 13. The boost applies to all Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise subscribers. Claude Code is Anthropic's AI-powered coding assistant, and the expanded limits give developers significantly more capacity during the promotional window. The increase is already live, meaning users can take advantage of the higher limits right away without any additional steps or configuration changes required.
TikTok has launched the TikTok Ads MCP Server, a model context protocol tool that lets marketers connect AI agents directly to its ads platform to plan, launch, and optimize campaigns without manual intervention. Announced at TikTok World by global head of product marketing Jose Villalobos, the server automates tasks like setting creatives, adjusting bids, and shifting budgets. Google, Meta, and Amazon have launched similar MCP servers, reflecting a broader industry shift toward AI-run advertising operations.
Amazon has merged its Rufus shopping AI and Alexa+ into a single assistant called Alexa for Shopping, now available to all U.S. customers on the Amazon Shopping app, website, and Echo Show devices — no Prime membership required. The assistant combines Rufus's product expertise with Alexa+'s personalized context, enabling features like AI-powered search, dynamic product comparisons, up to one year of price history, scheduled purchases, and agentic buying from third-party retailers via the existing Buy for Me feature.
Meta has launched Incognito Chat with Meta AI on WhatsApp and the Meta AI app, offering truly private AI conversations where not even Meta can read the exchanges. Built on WhatsApp's Private Processing technology, messages are handled in a secure environment, are not saved, and disappear by default. Unlike other incognito-style modes that still log queries, this feature is designed for sensitive topics like health, finances, or career advice. A related Side Chat feature is also planned.
Microsoft has updated Edge for desktop and mobile with new Copilot features, including multi-tab reasoning, browsing history context, long-term memory, and hands-free Voice and Vision. The Edge mobile app gains Journeys, which organizes browsing history into topic cards with summaries and suggested next steps. New desktop tools include Study and Learn mode, a Writing assistant, Copilot quizzes, and a podcast generator. A redesigned new tab page is also rolling out. Microsoft is retiring Copilot Mode as part of the update.
Notion has launched its new Developer Platform, introducing a comprehensive suite of tools designed for developers and AI agent builders. The platform includes a CLI tool called ntn that brings Notion directly into the terminal, Workers for running code on Notion's own infrastructure, database sync functionality to pull in data from any external source, agent tools for building custom workflows, and webhook triggers that allow external applications to connect with and trigger actions inside Notion.
Anthropic launched Claude for Small Business, a package of app connectors and 15 ready-to-run agentic workflows built into Claude Cowork. It integrates with QuickBooks, PayPal, HubSpot, Canva, DocuSign, Google Workspace, and Microsoft 365 to handle payroll planning, monthly close, invoice chasing, and campaign creation. Anthropic also partnered with PayPal on a free AI Fluency course and launched a multi-city SMB Tour starting May 14 in Chicago, offering hands-on training and one-month Claude Max subscriptions.
Recursive has raised $650 million in funding at a $4.65 billion valuation, positioning the company to develop self-improving artificial intelligence systems. The substantial funding round signals strong investor confidence in recursive self-improvement as a viable AI research direction. The company, operating under the handle Recursive SI, aims to build AI capable of autonomously enhancing its own capabilities, a goal that places it among the most ambitiously funded AI startups currently operating in the sector.