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Microsoft AI launched its first in-house models last month, adding to the already complicated relationship with its OpenAI partner. Now, Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman says the company is making "significant investments" in the compute capacity required to Microsoft's own future frontier models. "We should have the capacity to build world class frontier models in house of all sizes, but we should be very pragmatic and use other models where we need to," said Suleyman during Microsoft's employee-only town hall on Thursday. "We're also going to be making significant investments in our own cluster, so today MAI-1-preview was only trained…

In the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's fatal shooting, some political figures are threatening a crackdown on free speech - a cause Kirk claimed to fight for. Members of Congress, the State Department, and President Donald Trump have all attacked people who celebrated Kirk's death online or criticized him while he was alive, in some cases saying they'll use the government's authority to punish statements almost certainly protected by the First Amendment. While it remains unclear who killed Kirk or why at a college campus in Utah Wednesday, Republican political figures all the way up to Trump have threatened…

Anthropic will now let its Claude AI chatbot “remember” the details of previous conversations without prompting. The feature is only rolling out for Team and Enterprise users for now, allowing Claude to automatically incorporate someone’s preferences, the context of the project they’re working on, and their main priorities into each of its responses. Anthropic rolled out the ability for paid users to prompt Claude to remember past chats last month, but now the chatbot can pull up these details without Team and Enterprise users having to ask. Claude’s memory also carries over to projects, a feature that lets Pro and…

Earlier today, the FBI shared two blurry photos on X of a person of interest in the shooting of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. Numerous users replied with AI-upscaled, “enhanced” versions of the pictures almost immediately, turning the pixelated surveillance shots into sharp, high-resolution images. But AI tools aren’t uncovering secret details in a fuzzy picture, they’re inferring what might be there — and they have a track record of showing things that don’t exist. Many AI-generated photo variations were posted under the original images, some apparently created with X’s own Grok bot, others with tools like ChatGPT. They vary in…

Charlie Kirk, the influencer and activist who co-founded right-wing group Turning Point USA, has died at the age of 31 after being shot while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University, according to his spokesperson Andrew Kolvet, speaking to the New York Times. Deseret News had earlier reported Kirk’s death, according to Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, and President Donald Trump said Kirk is dead in a post on Truth Social at 4:40PM ET. At a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Utah Governor Spencer Cox said that “we have a person of interest in custody,” minutes after FBI Director…

Horrifying videos of influencer and right-wing activist Charlie Kirk being fatally shot were widely available on social media platforms. We’ve reached out to some of the platforms to ask how they will be treating the videos and charged posts about the shooting. So far, we’re aware of responses from Bluesky, Meta, Reddit, and YouTube. Bluesky: “Glorifying violence or harm violates Bluesky’s Community Guidelines,” Bluesky said on its Bluesky Safety account. “We review reports and take action on content that celebrates harm against anyone. Violence has no place in healthy public discourse, and we’re committed to fostering healthy, open conversations.” Meta:…

OpenAI and Oracle signed a deal “to purchase $300 billion in computing power over roughly five years,” one of the largest cloud computing deals ever, reports the Wall Street Journal. In July, the two companies revealed their partnership to build data centers worth 4.5 gigawatts of power as part of the broader Stargate project they announced with Softbank and President Trump, without explaining how much OpenAI planned to pay for the datacenters. OpenAI’s contract will begin in 2027, according to the report.  OpenAI, which reportedly expects $12.7 billion in revenue this year, is also likely behind another $10 billion contract…

The new glasses would go beyond Amazon’s Echo Frames. Amazon, like Meta, Google, Samsung, and Snap, is working on a new pair of augmented-reality (AR) glasses, according to a report from The Information. The AR glasses, codenamed Jayhawk, could reportedly come with a full-color display in one eye, along with built-in microphones, speakers, and a camera. The report comes just before Meta is expected to reveal its “Hypernova” smart glasses at its Connect event. Meta’s glasses are rumored to be a step above its Ray-Ban smart glasses, offering a small display for mini apps and alerts on the right lens,…

On Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz introduced legislation to create a regulation "sandbox" that would allow artificial intelligence companies to experiment with minimal federal oversight. The SANDBOX Act, if passed by Congress, would allow companies to apply for modifications to or waivers from any "obstructive regulations" to the testing and deployment of products or services that use or contain "in whole or in part" at least one AI system. In return, companies would be required to disclose plans to mitigate consumer safety and financial risks. The waivers would last for two years at a time, up to 10 years, harkening back…

It’s less noticeable than a thinner profile or trick camera lenses, but Apple is pointing out another upgrade in the iPhone 17 family of phones that it says is part of “the most significant upgrade to memory safety in the history of consumer operating systems.” Explicitly targeting the spyware industry that produces exploits for tools like Pegasus to hack on targeted devices, a series of changes in Apple’s chips, OS, and development tools are part of what it calls Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE). With the introduction of the iPhone 17 lineup and iPhone Air, we’re excited to deliver Memory Integrity…