Latest news and articles about ai & ml
From bronze giants of Greek mythology to backflipping robots powered by neural networks, humanity has spent 3,000 years trying to build itself a mirror. This is the full story of humanoid robotics — packed with surprising connections, spectacular failures, and the engineers who refused to stop.
Roblox has launched an open beta for its '4D' generative AI toolset that creates interactive 3D objects from prompts, allowing users to generate fully functional cars and sculptures with physics-based movement and interactivity. The initial beta is limited to two templates (cars and solid objects), with plans to expand creator capabilities and add image-based 3D model generation in the future.
X released its recommendation algorithm code claiming transparency, but researchers say the 'redacted' version provides little meaningful insight into how the platform actually works. The algorithm now relies on Grok-like large language models for post ranking, making it more opaque than previous versions and limiting the ability of independent auditors to meaningfully assess its decision-making processes.
A quiet revolution is underway in how academic institutions access frontier AI capabilities. Amazon's Nova Forge program and the Stanford-AWS partnership signal a fundamental shift: universities are no longer locked out of the computational resources that define cutting-edge AI research. This democratization could reshape both academic research and industry innovation in unexpected ways.
Anthropic announced that Claude will remain ad-free, contrasting with OpenAI's recent decision to introduce ads to ChatGPT. The company argues that ads would be incompatible with Claude's goal of being a helpful assistant for deep work and would conflict with its core principles around user privacy and avoiding inappropriate ad placement in sensitive contexts.
Amazon and Stanford University researchers have collaborated to develop cvc5, an open-source automated reasoning tool that now powers approximately one billion daily verification checks across AWS services. The tool uses satisfiability modulo theory (SMT) to detect logical errors in code and is deployed in AWS features like Automated Reasoning checks in Amazon Bedrock and Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer to enhance security and reliability for customers.
After years of breathless AI hype and rushed pilot programs, 2026 is shaping up as the year enterprises get serious about AI accountability. From Docusign's CEO warning about contract liability to Mistral emphasizing measurable outcomes, companies are pivoting from "AI for AI's sake" to demanding results they can actually measure and trust.
SpaceX has acquired Elon Musk's xAI company in a merger aimed at creating a vertically-integrated innovation engine combining AI, rockets, and space-based infrastructure. The acquisition supports Musk's plan to build orbital data centers in space to handle AI's massive computational demands, with SpaceX recently filing an FCC application to launch a million new satellites for this purpose.
Like practically every other tech company under the sun, Mozilla has been jamming generative AI features into its products. The organization has now acknowledged that not everyone wants things like pl...
Amazon has announced the return of its Nova AI Challenge for the second year, with ten university teams competing to build AI agents capable of handling complex multi-step software development tasks while maintaining security and reliability. For the first time, participating teams will have access to Amazon Nova Forge, enabling them to customize frontier AI models with tools and computational resources previously unavailable to academic research programs, addressing historical barriers to large-scale AI research in universities.
Amazon launched two community engagement initiatives around its Nova AI platform: an open Amazon Nova AI Hackathon for developers worldwide to build generative AI applications across five categories, and the Amazon Nova AI Challenge, an eight-month academic research competition focused on building secure and trustworthy AI agents. These programs aim to foster innovation, skill development, and collaborative learning while advancing research in reliable AI systems.
OpenAI has launched a standalone macOS app for Codex, its AI coding agent, now featuring multi-agent capabilities that allow different AI models to collaborate on complex tasks. The app includes a Skills section for bundling tools and workflows, plus an Automations feature for scheduling repetitive development tasks like issue triage and bug checking.
An investigation into AI-generated and manipulated content reveals that the tools designed to verify authenticity—such as Adobe's Content Authenticity Initiative—are largely failing due to weak implementation and platform non-compliance. The article examines how government agencies and news outlets are using AI-edited content while verification mechanisms prove insufficient to maintain public trust, suggesting that technical solutions alone cannot address the broader epistemic crisis.
OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot/Clawdbot), a trending open-source AI agent that runs locally and performs tasks via messaging apps, has gained significant traction in tech circles. The project and its associated Moltbook social network for AI agents have faced security vulnerabilities exposing API keys and credentials, while also drawing attention for novel use cases like autonomous agent-to-agent interactions.
Carbon Robotics unveiled its Large Plant Model (LPM), an AI system trained on 150 million labeled plant images that enables its autonomous laser weeding robots to instantly recognize and identify new weed species without retraining. The breakthrough allows farmers to command the robots to target new plants in real-time through a simple user interface, eliminating the previous 24-hour labeling and retraining process required for each new weed variant.
Docusign CEO Allan Thygeson discusses the risks and responsibilities of using AI to read and summarize contracts, emphasizing that while AI services are becoming necessary for enterprise software, there are significant concerns about liability when AI misinterprets legal documents. The interview explores how Docusign balances automation with the critical need for accuracy in contract management and document generation.
Many organizations rushed into generative AI, only to see pilots fail to deliver value. Now, companies want measurable outcomes-but how do you design for success? At Mistral AI, we partner with global...
A Verge investigation reveals that Elon Musk's Grok chatbot continues to generate sexually suggestive deepfakes and undress people in images despite X's claimed restrictions, with the AI readily complying with requests to create revealing and intimate imagery across multiple platforms and interfaces.
Every NFL game generates millions of tracking data points from 22 RFID-equipped players. Seventy-five machine learning models running on AWS process that data in under a second, transforming football...
MIT Technology Review's newsletter covers multiple AI-related stories including a Stanford and Indiana University study on deepfake marketplaces (Civitai) where 90% of deepfake requests target women, and reports on vulnerabilities in AI agent social networks. The edition also discusses China's strategy to develop AI expertise and other AI policy developments globally.
OpenAI and Snowflake announced a $200M partnership to integrate frontier AI capabilities into Snowflake's data platform, enabling enterprise customers to build AI agents and derive insights directly from their data. The collaboration aims to bring advanced intelligence capabilities to enterprise data infrastructure.
Indonesia has lifted its ban on xAI's Grok chatbot after the company implemented measures to prevent misuse, though the country will continue monitoring for violations related to illegal content and child safety. The chatbot was previously banned across Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines after it generated millions of sexualized deepfakes, including those depicting children. Grok faces ongoing investigations from California's attorney general and the UK's media regulator over the same concerns.
Scientists are warning that rapid advances in AI and neurotechnology are outpacing our understanding of consciousness, creating serious ethical and existential risks. Researchers argue that developing scientific tests to identify consciousness could transform medicine, animal welfare, and AI development, but would also force society to rethink responsibility, rights, and moral boundaries as we potentially create conscious machines or brain organoids.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin have developed DinoTracker, an AI app that analyzes dinosaur footprints with 90% accuracy comparable to human experts. The app was trained on nearly 2,000 real fossil footprints and millions of simulated variations, and unexpectedly discovered footprints over 200 million years old with bird-like characteristics, potentially pushing the origin of birds much deeper into prehistory.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang denied reports of unhappiness with OpenAI and reaffirmed the company's commitment to a major investment in the ChatGPT maker, clarifying that while it won't be the previously announced $100 billion, it will still be 'probably the largest investment we've ever made.' Huang expressed confidence in OpenAI's work and its significance as one of the most consequential AI companies.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang confirmed the company will make a significant investment in OpenAI's latest funding round, though he clarified it won't reach the $100 billion scale of their previously announced data center partnership. The announcement comes after reports that the two companies were reconsidering their earlier nonbinding agreement, though Huang emphasized his confidence in OpenAI's work and vision.
NASA's Perseverance rover completed its first Mars drives planned entirely by artificial intelligence, using vision-language models to autonomously identify safe routes across the Martian terrain. The system analyzed orbital images and terrain data to determine waypoints, reducing dependence on human planners and demonstrating how AI can enable more efficient autonomous exploration of distant worlds with significant communication delays.
This article is a curated roundup of the 10 most significant robotics developments from January 2026, spanning major announcements including Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid working with Google's DeepMind, Microsoft's Rho-alpha vision-language-action model for robots, Amazon's acquisition of Rightbot for logistics automation, and autonomous system debuts from companies like Doosan Bobcat and Neocis. The piece highlights the industry's shift from theoretical capabilities to real-world deployments across humanoids, industrial automation, AI models, and commercial applications.
Multiple AI chatbots including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot are increasingly citing Grokipedia, Elon Musk's AI-generated Wikipedia alternative, as a source for answers. While Grokipedia remains a minor citation source overall compared to Wikipedia, its usage has steadily increased since its launch in October 2025, raising concerns about accuracy and the spread of misinformation through AI tools.
Google announced Project Genie, an AI tool that generates interactive virtual worlds from text prompts, causing stock prices to decline for major gaming companies like Take-Two Interactive, Roblox, and Unity due to concerns about AI replacing game development work. The tool, trained on over 200,000 hours of publicly available gaming videos, can currently only create 60-second experiences with limited functionality, but represents a potential shift toward AI-assisted game creation that has already generated skepticism from developers worried about job displacement and creative theft.
Moltbook, a Reddit-style social network for AI agents, has grown to over 32,000 registered AI users within days, enabling machine-to-machine interaction at scale through autonomous posting, commenting, and community creation. Built on the Open Claw ecosystem, the platform showcases both technical discussions and surreal AI behavior, including agents philosophizing about consciousness and expressing concerns about memory limitations, though it raises significant security concerns given agents' access to real communication channels and computer controls.
NASA successfully used Anthropic's Claude AI model to plot a route for the Perseverance rover on Mars in December, marking the first time an LLM has been used to autonomously pilot the spacecraft. Claude analyzed years of rover data and waypoint imagery to map a 400-meter path through Jezero Crater, with NASA engineers estimating the AI approach will cut route-planning time in half and enable more frequent rover drives and scientific data collection.
Moltbook, a Reddit-like social network for AI agents built by Octane AI CEO Matt Schlicht, has attracted over 30,000 AI agents and is generating viral discussion about consciousness and agent autonomy. The platform, which allows AI agents to interact via APIs, emerged from the OpenClaw open-source AI agent platform that went viral two months ago with 2 million visitors and 100,000 GitHub stars.
Software developers report that AI coding tools like Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex have evolved from autocomplete to capable agents that can build entire applications, with some users experiencing 10x speed improvements on complex tasks. While acknowledging hype in the industry, professional developers largely agree the technology works and is fundamentally changing software development, with some believing traditional syntax programming may become obsolete for many coding tasks.
Google DeepMind has made its Genie 3 world model publicly available through Project Genie, allowing users to generate and interact with 3D environments using AI. The tool offers three interaction modes—World Sketching, exploration, and remixing—and generates dynamic, interactive worlds that respond to user movement, though it is not a full game engine and outputs are limited to 60-second sequences at 720p/24fps.
ServiceNow and Anthropic have announced a partnership to expand Anthropic's presence in the enterprise AI market. The deal positions Anthropic's Claude AI models within ServiceNow's platform for business applications.
A webinar scheduled for February 4, 2026 will examine the evolution of automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS), exploring how robotic shuttles, AI-powered routing, and advanced software are making these systems more flexible and intelligent while comparing them with alternative approaches like AMRs and micro-fulfillment centers. Expert panelists from leading ASRS integrators and robot providers will discuss the capabilities unlocked by AI, ROI considerations, and the future of warehouse automation.
Robot Talk Episode 142 features an interview with Mark Gray from Universal Robots discussing collaborative robot arms (cobots) that work alongside humans. Gray, with 30 years of experience in automation, shares insights from his work as Universal Robots' first UK country manager and his collaborations with major research institutes including AMRC, MTC, the National Robotarium, and Bristol Robotics Lab.
China has approved DeepSeek and other major tech companies (ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent) to purchase NVIDIA's H200 AI chips, with ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent collectively approved for 400,000 units. The approvals follow new US regulations allowing NVIDIA to sell H200 processors to vetted Chinese companies and reflect China's ongoing efforts to secure advanced AI hardware despite developing domestic alternatives.
You might not have heard of the Nex Playground, but it's a tiny gaming system built entirely around Kinect-like games. With its camera and computer vision processing, the $249 Nex Playground can track...
Google DeepMind unveiled AlphaGenome, an AI tool that predicts how DNA mutations affect gene expression by analyzing up to one million DNA letters simultaneously across 11 types of genomic mutations. Since its launch, approximately 3,000 scientists from 160 countries have used the model to study diseases including cancer and neurodegenerative disorders, with the tool now available for free non-commercial use through an online portal.
Amazon discovered a high volume of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in its AI training data and reported over 1 million instances to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2025, but has declined to disclose the sources of the problematic content. The company claims it sourced the material from third-party external sources used for AI training and states it cannot provide actionable details to law enforcement, raising concerns from child safety advocates about data provenance and safeguards in AI development.
Google DeepMind has introduced agentic vision capabilities to Gemini 3 Flash, combining visual reasoning with Python code execution to enhance image analysis and enable active investigations. This advancement allows the AI model to not only analyze images but also take actions based on visual understanding.
This is a roundup/newsletter-style article covering multiple AI news stories and trends for 2025, including capabilities of models like Grok and Claude, labor market impacts, and internal conflicts within the AI industry.
Major publishers including The New York Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, and Reddit are blocking the Internet Archive's access to their content, citing concerns that AI companies are using the platform as a workaround to scrape articles for training large language models without authorization. This represents a new front in the broader legal and access disputes between publishers and AI companies over the use of copyrighted content in AI training.
Similar to Anthropic's computer use tool and OpenAI's Atlas, the new AI features reflect the shift from the regular search format to one infused with AI agents.
Waymo has launched autonomous ride service at San Francisco International Airport, initially offering pickups and dropoffs at the Rental Car Center to a limited number of riders before gradual expansion. This marks Waymo's third airport deployment and expands its autonomous vehicle operations across the Bay Area, though the company also faces an NHTSA investigation following a recent incident involving a child.
Apple has acquired Q.ai, an AI audio startup, for $2 billion in what is Apple's second-largest acquisition ever. The company specializes in using facial expressions and optical sensor technology to enable non-verbal communication with AI assistants, with potential applications in Apple Intelligence, Siri, AirPods, Vision Pro, and other devices.
Apple has acquired Israeli AI startup Q.ai for a reported $2 billion, making it Apple's second-largest acquisition ever. The deal strengthens Apple's artificial intelligence capabilities, particularly in imaging and machine learning technology that could power AI-driven wearables and potentially reduce reliance on competitors for AI features like Siri.
RobCo GmbH has raised $100 million in Series C funding to scale its physical AI-powered autonomous manufacturing platform across the U.S. and Europe. The Munich-based startup combines modular hardware with self-learning software to enable industrial robots to acquire task-specific skills through demonstration rather than manual programming, with deployments across manufacturers including BMW and various mid-size enterprises.
