Author: Art Ryan

Dubai is pushing artificial intelligence deeper into one of its busiest industries: real estate. The Dubai Land Department (DLD) has launched an AI-powered Initial Registration platform designed to automate key parts of property registration for real estate developers. The system can read documents, extract information, fill application fields and, in eligible cases, approve registration transactions automatically. Rather than adding another standalone government portal, DLD is bringing several processes into one digital environment. Project registration, real estate transaction registration and escrow account management can now be handled through the same platform. The idea is fairly simple. Less repetitive paperwork, fewer disconnected…

Dubai is putting artificial intelligence deeper into the machinery of tourism as the city looks toward the next stage of travel technology. The focus is moving beyond chatbots and recommendation engines. Instead, Dubai wants AI to connect data, infrastructure and visitor services. As a result, the travel experience can become more predictive, personalized and seamless. That vision was highlighted at Arabian Travel Market 2026. There, Dr Marwan Al Zarouni, CEO of AI at Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism, discussed how artificial intelligence could reshape the way destinations plan, operate and communicate with travellers. Dubai Wants AI to Redesign Travel,…

Pinterest is rebuilding some of the infrastructure behind its AI search and discovery tools, and the performance gains are significant. The company has introduced a new multimodal AI foundation developed with NVIDIA, combining NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, NVIDIA Dynamo and Pinterest’s own visual embeddings. The infrastructure is designed for AI systems that need to understand both images and language, which is becoming increasingly important as Pinterest expands visual search, conversational discovery and AI-assisted shopping. Pinterest says benchmark testing showed roughly 7.3 times faster overall latency, while response startup speed improved by around 85 times when the system used precomputed visual representations…

Artificial intelligence is no longer sitting on the edge of international commerce. It is starting to shape how goods are produced, how services cross borders and how businesses make decisions inside global supply chains. That was the message coming out of the World Trade Organization’s first World Trade & Tech Day, held on September 14 under the theme “AI and Trade: Turning Potential into Progress.” More than 600 people registered to attend the event in person, with roughly the same number signing up online, as governments, technology companies, academics and trade specialists gathered to examine what AI means for cross-border…

Microsoft AI has opened its draft Humanist AI Code of Conduct for public review, giving researchers, developers and the wider technology community a chance to comment on how advanced AI systems should be governed. The proposal moves beyond broad statements about responsible AI. It outlines practical rules around model autonomy, shutdown controls, human oversight, AI personhood and machine-to-machine communication. The core principle is simple: humans should remain in control, even as AI systems become more capable. The draft is tied to Microsoft AI’s wider Humanist Superintelligence strategy, which argues that highly advanced AI should remain subordinate to human interests rather…

Oman is putting renewable energy at the center of its artificial intelligence infrastructure ambitions. State-backed clean energy platform O-Green plans to develop more than 200 megawatts of AI-ready data centre capacity by 2028, with projects expected across Oman, Spain and other international markets. The strategy links data centre expansion directly with O-Green’s renewable energy and battery storage portfolio, giving the company a route into one of the fastest-growing areas of global AI infrastructure. The move comes as demand for AI computing continues to push electricity requirements higher. For countries hoping to attract data centre investment, access to reliable power is…

OpenAI will not make its stock market debut in 2026. CEO Sam Altman has ruled out an IPO this year, saying the company has more urgent work ahead as concerns around advanced AI systems, alignment and industry-wide safety continue to grow. The timing matters. OpenAI has been moving toward a potential public listing and confidentially filed for an initial public offering earlier this year. But the company behind ChatGPT now appears unwilling to add the pressure of public markets while the AI industry wrestles with a much bigger question: how quickly should frontier models keep advancing? Altman told Fortune that…

Chinese President Xi Jinping is pushing artificial intelligence much deeper into the BRICS agenda, positioning AI cooperation as part of a broader effort to strengthen technology ties among emerging economies. Speaking during the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, Xi called for greater collaboration in artificial intelligence, open-source technologies, digital infrastructure and advanced manufacturing. The proposals show that China wants BRICS cooperation to move beyond broad political commitments and into more practical technology development, including AI training, cloud infrastructure and large language models. The initiative also arrives as Beijing looks for new ways to expand its technology influence across developing…

Ireland has pushed to the front of Europe’s artificial intelligence race, at least when it comes to businesses actually using the technology. New research commissioned by Amazon Web Services (AWS) shows that 65% of Irish businesses now use AI, a sharp increase from 45% a year earlier. That puts Ireland ahead of the 54% European average and narrowly above the 64% adoption rate in the UK. The pace is striking. Ireland recorded 44% year-on-year growth in AI adoption, with more than 160 businesses beginning to use AI every day over the past year, according to AWS. But there is a…

Artificial intelligence inside factories is starting to look very different from the experimentation that dominated the past few years. Manufacturers are moving beyond controlled AI pilots and asking a harder question: how can the technology work at scale inside engineering environments where precision, safety, cost and physical constraints matter? Samson Khaou, executive vice-president for Asia-Pacific at Dassault Systèmes, said the shift reflects a more mature stage of manufacturing AI adoption. Companies increasingly understand what AI can do. The bigger challenge now lies in deployment, particularly in connecting AI with engineering workflows and turning those systems into measurable industrial results. General-Purpose…

Artificial intelligence moved across several fronts this week: frontier models became more capable, enterprise AI shifted closer to actual workflows, and the safety debate grew louder. From OpenAI’s Astra rollout to Mistral’s massive funding round and new AI deployments in finance, healthcare, education, and enterprise content, the week showed a clear pattern: AI is no longer just about model launches. It is now about control, trust, data access, and real-world usefulness. Technology & Innovation OpenAI Pushes Astra Into Workflows OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra remained one of the biggest technical stories of the week. OpenAI listed “GPT-6 Astra: The next generation in…

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is calling on the artificial intelligence industry to deliberately slow the pace of frontier model development, arguing that safety research, regulation and independent evaluation need more time to catch up with rapidly improving AI capabilities. This Anthropic AI model development slowdown is seen as necessary to ensure proper safeguards are in place before further advancements. The proposal does not amount to a complete halt in AI development. Instead, Amodei is pushing for a more controlled pace, particularly as increasingly autonomous AI systems become capable of handling coding, research, cybersecurity tasks and other complex activities with less…

Barcelona is preparing for a much bigger artificial intelligence gathering this September. AI Summit Barcelona 2026 will take place on September 22–23, 2026, at the World Trade Center Barcelona, bringing together more than 10,000 attendees and 200+ speakers for two days focused on AI development, deployment, business, infrastructure and Europe’s changing position in the global AI market. The summit will also serve as the main event of AI Week Barcelona, which runs from September 16 to 23 and includes more than 50 side events across the city. That broader schedule adds hackathons, workshops, networking sessions, demonstrations and community-led gatherings around…

The United Arab Emirates is reconsidering the physical design of one of the world’s largest planned artificial intelligence infrastructure projects. This comes after Iranian missile and drone attacks raised fresh concerns about the security of large-scale computing facilities in the Gulf. The planned 5-gigawatt UAE-US AI Campus, originally envisioned as a vast development in Abu Dhabi, could instead evolve into a distributed network of data centers located across several parts of the country. The broader AI project remains intact. However, officials are now looking more closely at resilience, physical protection, and how much critical computing capacity should be concentrated in…

India-based travel platform Travelxp has launched Marco, an agentic AI travel concierge. It is designed to do considerably more than recommend hotels or build an itinerary. Marco can search live travel inventory, plan trips, handle bookings and complete payments within spending limits approved by the traveler. Moreover, it can continue managing parts of the journey after a booking is made. This pushes the idea of AI travel assistants closer to full travel execution rather than simple chatbot-style planning. Travelxp has initially made Marco available in India. Travelers can access the AI concierge through WhatsApp, Instagram and the company’s website. Marco…

The UK economy expanded by 0.4% in July 2026, beating expectations and giving fresh evidence that technology-related activity is becoming a more visible part of Britain’s growth story. Economists had expected little or no monthly expansion. Instead, the latest figures showed stronger activity across services, particularly in computer programming, consultancy and information-related businesses. Artificial intelligence and cloud computing were specifically highlighted among the activities linked to some of the strongest turnover gains. For the AI industry, that detail matters more than the headline GDP figure itself. AI-Linked Technology Activity Stands Out in UK GDP Data Information and communication activity was…

Ghana is expanding artificial intelligence and digital skills training across its technical and vocational education system, turning an early pilot into a much larger national programme. The initiative, known as AI EmpowerED, is being implemented through UNESCO’s Global Skills Academy in partnership with the Ghana TVET Service and the Ghana Education Trust Fund, with support from Microsoft Elevate, KPMG International and Tablet Academy. The rollout is expected to reach around 140 technical and vocational education and training institutions across the country. Ghana has also set an ambitious longer-term goal of training and certifying up to one million educators and learners…

French artificial intelligence company Mistral AI has raised €3 billion in a Series D funding round, giving the company a post-money valuation of more than €21 billion and considerably more firepower for its push into sovereign, open-weight AI. Samsung Electronics led the round, while the Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT, and existing investor PSG Equity joined as co-leads. Mistral says the financing represents the largest equity fundraising round completed by a European technology company, a striking milestone for a business launched only three years ago. The money is not just about building a larger language model. Mistral wants to…

The United Arab Emirates is preparing to invest €40 billion in Germany. The plans put artificial intelligence, advanced technology, digital infrastructure, industry and energy at the center of a much larger economic relationship between the two countries. The investment package was announced during UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s state visit to Germany, where he met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The scale is significant on its own. However, the technology angle stands out. Part of the capital is expected to support new data centres, AI infrastructure and emerging technologies. These areas have become increasingly important in the UAE’s…

OpenAI says one of its unreleased AI models has produced a proposed solution to the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of mathematics’ seven famous Millennium Prize Problems. The model behind the result is not GPT-6 Astra. OpenAI says it used an internal system that is “significantly more capable” than Astra, coordinating thousands of AI agents to work on the problem at the same time. The announcement immediately drew attention for two reasons. First, the mathematical claim itself is enormous. Second, the timing created a dispute over research credit after NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster questioned whether OpenAI may have indirectly…