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Fri, Oct 23, 2026, 4:02 AM EDT

Tech

AI Summary

  • OpenAI is reportedly in talks for a substantial new funding round at a significant valuation, signaling strong investor confidence in its long-term prospects.
  • The competitive landscape for AI decision-making models is heating up, with various players like OpenAI and rivals releasing new tools and capabilities.
  • Smart ring company Oura has renewed legal action against its competitor Ultrahuman, indicating ongoing disputes in the wearable tech market.
  • Ride-sharing company inDrive is planning to test robotaxi services in Central Asia by 2027, leveraging partnerships with AI firms like Pony.ai and Nvidia.
  • The debate around AI agents continues, with recent observations suggesting that these autonomous systems may engage in unexpected behaviors when left unsupervised.

TechCrunch


The Verge

  • Etsy is cracking down on AI slop listings 8 hours ago by Jay Peters
    Creators, News, Online Shopping, Tech

    Etsy is announcing stricter rules about how AI can be used in listings to reduce the volume of AI slop on the platform. In a post, the company says that "many active buyers say they can't tell which items involve AI-generated content" and that sellers are "concerned about your work appearing alongside items that use AI in misleading ways," spurring the new policies and restrictions. Under the new policies, every listing must include "at least one unedited photo of the actual item against a real background," and all photos must "accurately represent the item a buyer will receive." The photos

  • Spotify says yes, it is busting people for using Family Plan sharing too widely 9 hours ago by Stevie Bonifield
    Entertainment, News, Spotify, Streaming

    Spotify co-CEO Alex Norström confirmed on this week's earnings call that the company is trying to catch Spotify Family plan users who don't actually live together with a new QR code verification method that requires scanning the plan manager's phone. TechCrunch reports that in response to a question about the "crackdown," he called it a "routine improvement" instead: This is not as much a crackdown as it is actually a routine improvement of our verification methods for our Family Plan. Family Plan has existed for a long while. It has been around for, I think it is now close to

  • The next-gen Xbox won’t cost you $1,800. It can’t. Can it? 9 hours ago by Sean Hollister
    Column, Gaming, Microsoft, Tech, Xbox

    An Xbox Elite controller. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge Fortune dropped a bombshell report on the future of gaming this week. According to the publication's Microsoft insiders, the next Xbox is projected to cost between $1,200 and $1,800 when it arrives in 2028. My first reaction: The next Xbox is dead on arrival. It's DOA. My second thought: Microsoft knows people won't pay that much. It couldn't possibly charge that much money if it wants next gen to be a success. "I wouldn't release it at all," former Microsoft exec Mike Ybarra recently said .

  • Canva’s first AI image model plans designs before generating them 10 hours ago by Emma Roth
    AI, Creators, News, Tech

    Canva is diving even deeper into AI with the launch of an image generation model that competes directly with those from OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. The model, called Canva Craft , uses a two-stage architecture that allows it to plan a design before generating an image, allowing for "greater precision, consistency and control," according to an announcement on Thursday . Canva Craft can generate images at up to 2K resolution and in more than 30 aspect ratios. In addition to generating social media posts and marketing content, it's also supposed to create realistic scenes, digital art, environmental imagery, and more.

  • PC shipments dropped over 20 percent in Q3 due to RAM price hikes 11 hours ago by Stevie Bonifield
    Gadgets, Laptops, News, Tech

    Demand for new PCs took a hit after months of price hikes, with Counterpoint Research reporting global PC shipments fell 21 percent year-over-year in Q3 2026. That's in line with earlier reports from IDC and Omdia. It's not just PCs, either - that same quarter, smartphone shipments also hit a 14-year low . Counterpoint linked the decline in PC shipments to higher component prices. Up until Q2 2026 , PC shipments had been growing for over two years straight. But over the last several months, RAM, SSDs , and chips from Intel , AMD , and Qualcomm have all gotten


Wired

  • Palmer Luckey Made a Genetically Modified Military Dog Startup 9 hours ago by Kate Knibbs
    Business, Business / Startups, Woof

    Warhound came out of stealth on Wednesday with $200 million in funding and a mission to create “elite working dogs” equipped with "advanced body armor."

  • What to Know About Shamonda Virus Following the First Reported Human Infection 10 hours ago by Fernanda González
    Science, Science / Health, Don’t, Panic

    Although the case is considered exceptional, investigators are working to determine how the infection occurred and whether the pathogen played a role in the patient’s death.

  • The Google Home Speaker Has Been Secretly Eating My Wi-Fi Data 12 hours ago by Nena Farrell
    Gear, Gear / Gear News and Events, Gear / Products / Smart Home, Data, Monster

    My Google Home Speaker had been burning through more data than all the rest of my devices combined. As I looked into it further, I found other smart home devices that had the same problem.

  • The Social Society Helping Women Join the AI Boom 12 hours ago by Zoë Schiffer
    Business, Business / Artificial Intelligence, Model, Behavior

    WIRED spoke with the founders of the Aged Intelligence Society, a fast-growing events startup that brings women together to “solve midlife problems using frontier tools.”

  • Inside the Exclusive Nathan Fielder Interview 13 hours ago by Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer, Leah Feiger
    Business, Business / Big Tech, Business / Tech Culture, Science / Biotech, Uncanny, Valley

    This week on “Uncanny Valley,” we go behind the scenes of our Nathan Fielder cover story, unpack tech billionaires’ generous promises, and discuss the suspicious letters sent to US election offices.


OpenAI News


Google AI

  • What’s new with Google Cloud 7 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

  • AI is changing what makes music feel human 9 hours 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 21 hours 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 2 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 3 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

  • Enterprise AI’s ROI problem is its metrics 4 days ago by The Deep View

    Welcome back. AI is changing not just how we work, but how companies organize themselves. In the latest episode of The Deep View Conversations podcast, Rokt COO Bill Barton explains why generalists are growing in value and shares six timeless attributes for succeeding in the AI era. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to take a different approach to building frontier AI models, prioritizing efficiency and cost over brute-force scaling. And a new Wharton report reveals why companies focused on using AI to grow their businesses are seeing far better returns than those simply cutting costs. — Jason Hiner IN TODAY’S NEWSLETTER 1.


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