Meta has hired five founding members of Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab in a systematic talent raid
Meta has hired five founding members of Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab in a systematic talent raid

In summary: Meta has hired five founding members of Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup built by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, after she rejected a reported $1 billion acquisition offer. The most expensive individual hire, co-founder Andrew Tulloch,…

Clarifai says it deleted 3 million OkCupid user photos and the facial-recognition models trained on them
Clarifai says it deleted 3 million OkCupid user photos and the facial-recognition models trained on them

The AI company received the photos from OkCupid in 2014 without users’ knowledge, in a data transfer that breached OkCupid’s own privacy policy. The FTC’s late March settlement with OkCupid and Match Group brought no financial penalties. Clarifai was n…

Trump wants to stop states from regulating AI. States and Congress keep saying no.
Trump wants to stop states from regulating AI. States and Congress keep saying no.

In short: The Trump administration is waging a multi-front campaign to prevent states from regulating AI, using a DOJ litigation task force, Commerce Department evaluations of “burdensome” state laws, and a legislative framework urging Congress to pree…

Stanford’s AI Index finds China has nearly closed the performance gap with the US despite spending 23 times less
Stanford’s AI Index finds China has nearly closed the performance gap with the US despite spending 23 times less

In short: Stanford’s 2026 AI Index Report finds the performance gap between the best American and Chinese AI models has collapsed to 2.7%, down from 17.5-31.6 percentage points in May 2023, despite the US spending 23 times more on private AI investment…

Anthropic’s Amodei meets Wiles and Bessent at the White House in first step toward resolving Mythos standoff
Anthropic’s Amodei meets Wiles and Bessent at the White House in first step toward resolving Mythos standoff

In short: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday in what the White House called “productive and constructive” talks over access to Mythos, the frontier AI model capable of fi…

Anthropic’s Amodei heads to the White House as Washington fights over Mythos access
Anthropic’s Amodei heads to the White House as Washington fights over Mythos access

Summary: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is meeting White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on Friday to negotiate access to Mythos, a frontier AI model that can identify and exploit thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities across every major operating system a…

Spotify is selling physical books now, and it makes more sense than you think
Spotify is selling physical books now, and it makes more sense than you think

In short: Spotify has launched physical book sales in the US and UK through a partnership with Bookshop.org, letting users buy print copies via affiliate links on audiobook pages within the app. The feature sits alongside Page Match, which now works in…

A US judge ruled that a fraud defendant’s AI chats with Claude are not privileged
A US judge ruled that a fraud defendant’s AI chats with Claude are not privileged

In a February ruling described as the first of its kind in the US, Judge Jed Rakoff found that Bradley Heppner’s conversations with Anthropic’s Claude about his legal exposure stripped away both attorney-client privilege and work-product protection, be…

US utilities plan to spend $1.4 trillion by 2030 to power the AI boom
US utilities plan to spend $1.4 trillion by 2030 to power the AI boom

A report analysing capital spending plans from 51 investor-owned utilities finds the $1.4 trillion figure is double what was invested in the prior decade. More than 30 utilities cited data centres as a top growth driver. Average residential electricity…

The Trump administration blacklisted Anthropic – and is now telling banks to use its AI
The Trump administration blacklisted Anthropic – and is now telling banks to use its AI

In short: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Fed Chair Jerome Powell are urging Wall Street’s biggest banks to test Anthropic’s Mythos AI model for cybersecurity vulnerabilities, even as the Pentagon fights Anthropic in court after branding it a supp…