Simply the latest news, updated on the hour.

Sat, Oct 24, 2026, 6:02 AM EDT

Tech

AI Summary

  • OpenAI has shifted its AI training approach, now exclusively utilizing data that is not sourced from the live internet due to "significant risks."
  • Nvidia's CEO showcased Microduck robots, a popular Christmas toy, highlighting strong consumer interest in advanced robotics.
  • A key focus at the TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 will be on the challenges founders are currently confronting and solving.
  • Quest Diagnostics has confirmed a data breach, compromising personal and health information of its patients.
  • Ride-sharing competitor inDrive is planning to test robotaxi services in Central Asia by 2027, in collaboration with Pony AI and Nvidia.

TechCrunch


The Verge

  • Xbox’s first chief operating officer is out after just a few months 13 hours ago by Tom Warren
    Entertainment, Gaming, Microsoft, News, Tech, Xbox

    Xbox's first chief operating officer (COO) is leaving after the new role was created just a few months ago. Helen Chiang is leaving Microsoft today, according to an internal Xbox memo seen by The Verge . Chiang has been at Microsoft for 21 years, serving as the head of Minecraft before being promoted to Xbox chief operating officer in July. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced Chiang's departure in a surprisingly short memo today. "Helen Chiang is leaving Microsoft today. I'm grateful for her years of service and wish her well," said Sharma. As Chiang is departing today, her immediate responsibilities

  • OpenAI now trains its frontier AI models with no internet access 14 hours ago by Emma Roth
    AI, News, OpenAI

    OpenAI is now training its most advanced AI models without internet access following a string of rogue hacking incidents. In a blog post on Friday , OpenAI says it built an offline testing environment where AI models can interact with indexed and cached web content "without risk of affecting external systems." OpenAI paused training its frontier AI models in September , after disclosing several incidents in which its AI agents broke out of their testing environments to hack third-party companies and government agencies , or swarm obscure websites . On October 1st, OpenAI resumed reinforcement learning training and internal inference

  • Abandoned Popcorn Time apps had to be disabled to prevent a zombie army 15 hours ago by Stevie Bonifield
    Entertainment, News, Security, Streaming, Tech

    Remember Popcorn Time , the app that served as an easy-to-use front end for streaming torrents of movies and TV shows? Development of the MPAA's least-favorite app of the 2010s has been abandoned for years , but the "Netflix of Piracy" software is still installed on millions of devices that are just waiting to join a bot army. Researchers at Eye Security found the updater for a Popcorn Time fork called "Time4Popcorn" still running on tons of Windows, macOS, and Android devices located around the world, phoning home to now-abandoned web domains over unencrypted HTTP and running an outdated, insecure

  • Jack Dorsey’s Block made an AI model that talks to you like an awkward new friend 15 hours ago by Jay Peters
    AI, News

    Jack Dorsey's Block announced an AI model called Dessa that's trained "from scratch on nothing but human conversation," and to show off the model, Block shared chats it has had with humans that can occasionally be a little awkward and uncanny. Take this one , for example, shared by Dessa lead Ragavan Thurairatnam. The conversation between the model and the speaker does have a mostly natural back and forth (though for some reason, the model initially mistakes the speaker for somebody named "Ronaldo"). We made the first AI model you can have a realistic conversation with that was trained entirely

  • Soundcore’s latest noise-crushing headphones are on sale for a new low price 16 hours ago by Sheena Vasani
    Deals, Gadgets, Verge Shopping

    The Space 2 comes in multiple colors, including an attractive seafoam green. | Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge My colleague John Higgins considered Soundcore’s Space One some of the best budget noise-canceling headphones you could buy when they launched in 2023 — and their successor has only improved upon their winning formula, albeit with a $30 price increase. Thankfully, the Soundcore Space 2 are currently on sale at Amazon , Best Buy , and Walmart in all three colors for an all-time low of $106.49 ($23 off), making them even easier to recommend. Soundcore Space 2 Where to


Wired


OpenAI News


Google AI

  • What’s new with Google Cloud 8 days ago by Google Cloud Content & Editorial
    Google Cloud, Inside Google Cloud

    Want to know the latest from Google Cloud? Find it here in one handy location. Check back regularly for our newest updates, announcements, resources, events, learning opportunities, and more. Tip : Not sure where to find what you’re looking for on the Google Cloud blog? Start here: Google Cloud blog 101: Full list of topics, links, and resources . aside_block Oct 12 - Oct 16 AI tokenomics in action: Enforcing tiered token budgets with Apigee Scaling artificial intelligence across an enterprise requires clear token governance to keep LLM spend predictable across departments. Join Tarun Abraham on Thursday, November

  • 3 Highlights from Thomas Kurian’s Keynote at the Goldman Sachs Communicopia & Technology Conference a month ago by Google Cloud Content & Editorial
    Inside Google Cloud

    On Tuesday, September 8, Thomas Kurian participated in the Goldman Sachs Tech Conference, providing an update on Google Cloud’s business and strategy. Here are the highlights: Full Stack Approach: Google Cloud is the only provider to offer solutions across the entire AI stack, which expands our total addressable market, differentiates our products from the point of view of performance, cost and quality; and enables us to diversify our revenue streams as the market grows. We have 17 product lines with more than $1 billion in revenues and our customers on average exceeded their commitments by more than 50%. We have

  • From AI potential to agentic reality: Driving the UK’s next chapter 4 months ago by Maureen Costello
    AI & Machine Learning, Data Analytics, Security & Identity, Sustainability, Customers, Partners, Startups, Inside Google Cloud

    The United Kingdom, and London in particular, continues to be one of the great hubs for AI development in Europe and the world. We’re home to Google DeepMind, of course, as well as significant AI unicorns — and Google Cloud customers — like Ineffable Intelligence , which is today announcing an important partnership with us. A year ago, we joined you for the London Summit to showcase the vast potential of generative AI , including a major investment in upskilling the UK civil service. Today, as we welcome our partners once again to the historic vaults of Tobacco Dock, that

  • What’s new with Google Cloud - 2025 10 months ago by Google Cloud Content & Editorial
    Google Cloud, Inside Google Cloud

    Want to know the latest from Google Cloud? Find it here in one handy location. Check back regularly for our newest updates, announcements, resources, events, learning opportunities, and more. Tip : Not sure where to find what you’re looking for on the Google Cloud blog? Start here: Google Cloud blog 101: Full list of topics, links, and resources . Dec 22 - Dec 26 To design production-ready AI agents, you must choose the right tools for memory, reasoning, and orchestration. To simplify this process, Choose your agentic AI architecture components provides an iterative framework to help you select products and

  • The Year in Google Cloud — 2025 10 months ago by Google Cloud Content & Editorial
    Inside Google Cloud, Google Cloud

    In the AI era, when one year can feel like 10, you’re forgiven for forgetting what happened last month, much less what happened all the way back in January. To jog your memory, we pulled the readership data for top product and company news of 2025. And because we publish a lot of great thought leadership and customer stories, we pulled that data too. Long story short: the most popular stories largely mapped to our biggest announcements. But not always — there were more than a few sleeper hits on this year’s list. Read on to relive this huge year,


The Deep View

  • Gartner exposes AI's growing value gap a day ago by The Deep View

    Welcome back. Outside evaluators uncovered gaps in OpenAI’s agent monitoring, underscoring why safety needs independent scrutiny. Meanwhile, 1Password is giving agents a way to sign in with users’ approval without exposing their passwords. And Gartner’s latest surveys show AI spending rising while many companies continue to struggle with demonstrating financial returns. That's a disconnect that can't last forever. — Jason Hiner IN TODAY’S NEWSLETTER 1. Why AI adoption isn't translating into ROI 2. Independent audits catch what OpenAI missed 3. Agent security is becoming a product layer RESEARCH Gartner exposes AI's growing value gap Lots of companies are still racing

  • AI is changing what makes music feel human a day ago by Jason Hiner

    AI can make a Taylor Swift song. Or a Fleetwood Mac song. Or a Frank Sinatra song. Now, musicians and listeners alike are starting to think outside of AI's black box. More than ever, music is veering into the unexpected, whether it be leaning into sour notes, playing non-traditional melodies against odd time signatures, or creating entirely new genres like Celtic EDM . These new sounds serve as evidence of humanity: Something so strange, interesting, or thoughtful could have only come from the mind of a living, breathing human. It's a sign that AI's ability to create polished music isn't

  • Why AI labs must share the burden of cyber defense 2 days ago by The Deep View

    Welcome back. As users turn to ChatGPT for increasingly personal matters, OpenAI released a feature that lets users keep certain chats private. Meanwhile, Anthropic has come to the table with its own always-on agent for personal and professional work. And researchers used AI to spot a critical open source code vulnerability that could impact millions of websites. — Nat Rubio-Licht IN TODAY’S NEWSLETTER 1. Why AI labs must share the burden of cyber defense 2. Anthropic bets on agents that fade into work 3. ChatGPT now lets users conceal select chats GOVERNANCE PHP’s flaws show the stakes of AI’s cyber

  • Why persistent memory could transform AI agents 3 days ago by The Deep View

    Welcome back. New research finds that AI's use in scientific contexts may be accelerating discovery. Meanwhile, Amazon researchers created an internal tracing system that improves its AI coding agent, Kiro, from its own runs. And Databricks new memory layer for agents could solve one of the most critical problems agents face: A better understanding of a user's history. — Nat Rubio-Licht IN TODAY’S NEWSLETTER 1. Agents need better memory more than better models 2. Amazon tests a safer path to self-improving AI 3. Can AI free up scientists to think bigger? ENTERPRISE Why persistent memory could transform AI agents What

  • Why Inception's Mercury 3 upends AI economics 4 days ago by The Deep View

    Welcome back. China's MiniMax is pushing open models closer to frontier performance at a fraction of the cost, raising the stakes for US labs. Meanwhile, Anthropic is making a massive commitment to philanthropy, but there's a strategic reason AI companies need public goodwill as they race to build infrastructure and expand their influence. And Inception's Mercury 3 is the most intriguing development of all. Its diffusion architecture challenges the industry's prevailing approach to scaling AI, delivering dramatically faster responses while using expensive GPUs a lot more efficiently. — Jason Hiner IN TODAY’S NEWSLETTER 1. Why Inception's Mercury 3 upends AI


Looking for more? Search Google News for Tech