UN’s digital agency launches an initiative to make AI agents trustworthy
UN’s digital agency launches an initiative to make AI agents trustworthy

The United Nations’ digital agency has decided that AI agents are moving faster than anyone’s ability to trust them, and it wants to do something about it. On 9 July, the International Telecommunication Union used its AI for Good Summit in Geneva to la…

News outlets ask a judge to sanction OpenAI in their landmark copyright fight
News outlets ask a judge to sanction OpenAI in their landmark copyright fight

A group of news publishers has asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on OpenAI. The New York Times, the Daily News, and others allege the ChatGPT maker is concealing evidence central to their copyright case, the Associated Press reports. A filing o…

New Jersey could ban Tesla’s Robotaxi with one line about sensors
New Jersey could ban Tesla’s Robotaxi with one line about sensors

For more than a decade, the biggest fight in self-driving cars has played out in boardrooms and engineering labs. New Jersey now wants to settle it in law. A bill moving through the state legislature would force any company running fully driverless car…

AI’s land rush is reaching Native American reservations
AI’s land rush is reaching Native American reservations

The scramble to build AI data centres is pushing developers toward Native American land. Indigenous-led group Honor the Earth says it is tracking more than 100 proposed projects on or near tribal and rural territory. The appeal for developers is practi…

AI companies are spending hundreds of millions on the midterms, and they want one thing
AI companies are spending hundreds of millions on the midterms, and they want one thing

AI companies and their backers are pouring vast sums into the 2026 US midterms through super PACs. The spending runs into the hundreds of millions across the sector, CNBC reports, and their central demand is remarkably consistent. They want a single na…

EU Parliament revives a ‘zombie’ child-abuse scanning bill it rejected in March
EU Parliament revives a ‘zombie’ child-abuse scanning bill it rejected in March

The European Parliament has voted to advance a bill letting tech companies legally scan for child sexual abuse material. On Thursday in Strasbourg, lawmakers sent the proposal to EU member states for approval, Politico reports. The twist is that Parlia…

OpenAI releases GPT-5.6 to everyone after the US government signed off
OpenAI releases GPT-5.6 to everyone after the US government signed off

OpenAI has made GPT-5.6 publicly available after receiving approval from the Trump administration. The release ends weeks in which the model was restricted to a small group of government-vetted partners, CNBC reports. The model family comes in three ti…

A four-year-old has seen more of the world than ChatGPT. Yann LeCun is betting $1bn on that
A four-year-old has seen more of the world than ChatGPT. Yann LeCun is betting $1bn on that

Yann LeCun is not a natural contrarian, but he is playing one right now. The man often called a godfather of AI built the convolutional neural network in the late 1980s. That design still powers phone cameras, medical scans, and driver-assistance syste…

The John Deere repair win isn’t about tractors. It’s about software lock-in
The John Deere repair win isn’t about tractors. It’s about software lock-in

John Deere owners can finally fix their own machines. The US Federal Trade Commission and five states have reached a settlement with the tractor giant that forces it to share the software and tools needed for repairs, the Associated Press reported. It …

France plans to triple penalties for AI-driven election disinformation
France plans to triple penalties for AI-driven election disinformation

French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu has announced a bill to sharply increase penalties for spreading false content during elections. He set out the plan in the Senate on 8 July, according to Public Sénat, in response to a question about AI in the c…