Author: Art Ryan

AI-powered coding tools have become so popular over the past few months that almost every major tech company is either using one or making its own. Makers of these so-called “vibe-coding” tools are a hot commodity at the moment, with startups like Lovable and Cursor fending off buyers and investors keen to tap a hot trend. Google’s now become the latest to hop on this bandwagon: The company is testing a vibe-coding tool called Opal, available to users in the U.S. through Google Labs, which the company uses as a base to experiment with new tech. Opal lets you create mini web apps using text…

Anthropic has built an army of autonomous AI agents with a singular mission: to audit powerful models like Claude to improve safety. As these complex systems rapidly advance, the job of making sure they are safe and don’t harbour hidden dangers has become a herculean task. Anthropic believes it has found a solution, and it’s a classic case of fighting fire with fire. The idea is similar to a digital immune system, where AI agents act like antibodies to identify and neutralise problems before they cause real harm. It saves researchers from relying on overworked human teams playing an endless game…

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is making progress on his plan for the company to shed its inefficiencies. And that includes spiking several manufacturing projects. The semiconductor giant reported Thursday in its second-quarter earnings report that it will delay, and in some cases not move forward with, multiple manufacturing projects. Specifically, Intel said it was no longer going forward with its previously announced projects in Germany and Poland. Those projects included an assembly and testing facility in Poland and a chip factory in Germany. Both projects have been sitting in limbo since being suspended in 2024, shortly after being announced. The company…

The Qwen team from Alibaba have just released a new version of their open-source reasoning AI model with some impressive benchmarks. Meet Qwen3-235B-A22B-Thinking-2507. Over the past three months, the Qwen team has been hard at work scaling up what they call the “thinking capability” of their AI, aiming to improve both the quality and depth of its reasoning. The result of their efforts is a model that excels at the really tough stuff: logical reasoning, complex maths, science problems, and advanced coding. In these areas that typically require a human expert, this new Qwen model is now setting the standard…

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said Shengjia Zhao, the co-creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, will serve as the chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs. Zuckerberg has been on a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence hiring blitz in recent weeks, highlighted by a $14 billion investment in Scale AI. In June, Zuckerberg announced a new organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs that’s made up of top AI researchers and engineers. Zhao’s name was listed among other new hires in the June memo, but Zuckerberg said Friday that Zhao co-founded the lab and “has been our lead scientist from day one.” Zhao will work directly with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI…

Google exceeded Wall Street expectations for the quarter ending in June after closing out a few months of AI-related momentum. On Wednesday, the company reported $2.31 in earnings per share (EPS) on $96.4bn in revenue, surpassing analysts’ projections of $2.18 EPS on $94bn in sales. Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, pointed to “robust growth” in key spaces across the company including AI, search, YouTube and Google Cloud. “We are leading at the frontier of AI and shipping at an incredible pace,” Pichai said in a statement. “AI is positively impacting every part of the business, driving strong momentum. Search delivered double-digit revenue growth,…

Alphabet shares (GOOGL.O), opens new tab rose more than 3% in early trading on Thursday as the Google parent’s earnings underscored a key message to investors: AI spending is climbing, but so are the returns. The tech giant has raised its 2025 capital spending forecast by $10 billion to $85 billion and signaled even higher outlay next year, stepping up efforts to meet soaring cloud demand and stay competitive in Silicon Valley’s escalating AI race. Its cloud-computing unit delivered an almost 32% jump in second-quarter revenue, surpassing expectations, as investments in in-house chips and the Gemini AI model began to pay off.…

Amazon is reportedly acquiring Bee, a company that makes an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered bracelet that transcribes the user’s conversations, makes them searchable and uses that content to create resources such as a to-do list. The move was announced by Bee CEO Maria de Lourdes Zollo in a Tuesday (July 22) LinkedIn post, and an Amazon spokeswoman said that a deal is signed but the agreement has not yet closed, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Wednesday (July 23). In her post, Zollo said that by joining Amazon, Bee will be able to bring this “personal, agentic AI” to more customers. “When we started Bee, we imagined a world where…

The Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC), a new firm that combines audits, standards, and insurance to enable enterprises to confidently adopt AI to unlock progress, has announced its launch following a successful $15 million seed funding round. According to AIUC, the company has launched with the second largest seed round in insurance history, which was led by Nat Friedman at NFDG, with participation from Emergence, Terrain, and others such as Ben Mann, co-founder of Anthropic, and former chief information security officers at both Google Cloud and MongoDB. The company’s aim is to “unlock the next wave of AI progress by…

Microsoft today announced the launch of Microsoft Research Asia – Singapore, its first lab in Southeast Asia, aimed at driving cutting-edge AI research, co-innovating AI-powered solutions for key industries, and nurturing the next generation of AI talent across the region. Supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), the establishment of the lab further deepens Microsoft’s commitment to Singapore’s thriving innovation ecosystem and expands its global research footprint in Asia. Guest-of-Honour, Dr. Tan See Leng, Minister for Manpower & Minister-in-charge of Energy and Science & Technology in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, delivered his remarks at the launch ceremony…

With tech vendors clamoring to prove themselves as the next possible winner in the AI race, Apple’s underwhelming response in generative AI technology has produced varying estimates about how behind the iPhone maker is. Apple did not release as many new Apple Intellligence features as was expected at its Worldwide Developers Conference 2025 last month. Meanwhile, Apple delayed new feature releases for Apple Intelligence until March 2026. Moreover, social media giant Meta recently poached three AI researchers from Apple, leaving some holes in Apple’s talent pool. However, reports that Apple could be considering buying AI search vendor Perplexity to make its 14-year-old digital assistant Siri…

We’re launching Web Guide, a Search Labs experiment that uses AI to intelligently organize the search results page, making it easier to find information and web pages. Web Guide groups web links in helpful ways — like pages related to specific aspects of your query. Under the hood, Web Guide uses a custom version of Gemini to better understand both a search query and content on the web, creating more powerful search capabilities that better surface web pages you may not have previously discovered. Similar to AI Mode, Web Guide uses a query fan-out technique, concurrently issuing multiple related searches to identify…

Using AI, scientists have built a “GPS” for cancer-fighting immune cells. It’s a molecular navigation system that helped the cells lock onto cancer, kind of like Google Maps guiding travelers to a new address, researchers report July 24 in Science. At its core, the system relies on tiny proteins custom-designed by artificial intelligence. The approach, a form of immunotherapy, is “very much a proof-of-concept,” says Timothy Jenkins, a medical biotechnologist at the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby. But his team’s end goal is to develop new therapies doctors can use to treat cancer ­— perhaps even personalized for individual patients. “It’s…

Our Executive Function series features perspectives from leaders on the frontier of AI adoption. Model ML is building AI infrastructure transforming how leading financial services firms operate. Model ML’s platform features purpose-built agents and an application that automates end-to-end workflows as well as bespoke research and analysis. We spoke with CEO and co-founder Chaz Englander about how financial firms are evolving, and how recent AI advances are automating and streamlining their operations. What was your first meaningful encounter with AI, and how did it influence the creation of Model ML? After selling our last company, my brother and I realized…

Walmart (WMT.N), opens new tab unveiled plans on Thursday to roll out a suite of AI-powered “super agents” designed to improve the shopping experience for customers and streamline operations. The world’s largest retailer said the four agents powered by agentic AI – designed for Walmart shoppers, store employees, suppliers and sellers, and software developers – would soon be the primary way people engage with Walmart. The super agents will be the entry point for every AI interaction these groups have with Walmart, replacing several existing agents and AI tools, along with new ones yet to be built, the company said. Walmart is…

Many AI tools can look at a video today and summarize what is going on, but things become a bit tricky when you ask models questions about multiple videos and footage spanning many hours. This is a big limitation for security companies that want to use AI to scrub through thousands of hours of footage from different cameras, as well as marketing companies that want to study different video campaigns and product shoots. Memories.ai wants to tackle that problem with its AI platform that can process up to 10 million hours of video. For companies with a lot of video to…

Contract review remains a slow, manual process that strains legal teams, forcing lawyers to sift through dense language, flag risks, and translate legal terms. In fact, the problem is so prevalent that for the past several years, Tokyo-based LegalOn Technologies has had an open door to that market: Its AI contract review software for legal teams is today used by 7,000 organizations across Japan, the U.S., and the U.K., the company claims, and it leads the Japanese market, with 25% of all public companies in the country using its platform. LegalOn’s AI contract review tool, Review, identifies risks and suggests edits based on…

Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a trio of executive orders that he vowed would turn the United States into an “AI export powerhouse”, including one targeting what the White House described as “woke” artificial intelligence models. During remarks at an AI summit in Washington, Trump decried “woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models”, before signing the orders on stage at the Mellon Auditorium. “Once and for all, we are getting rid of woke. Is that OK?” Trump said, drawing loud applause from the audience of AI industry leaders. He then asserted that his predecessor, Joe Biden, had “established toxic diversity, equity and inclusion ideology as…

Google announced on Thursday that it’s launching a new AI feature that lets users virtually try on clothes. The tech giant is also rolling out updated price alerts and teased an upcoming feature that will let users explore shoppable outfits and room inspiration using generative imagery. The official launch of the virtual try-on feature comes two months after Google began testing it. The feature works by allowing users to upload a photo of themselves to virtually try on a piece of clothing. The feature is launching in the United States today, letting users try on apparel items in Google’s Shopping Graph…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned Wall Street executives that bad actors could exploit digital voice ID authentication to defraud consumers by enabling large money transfers, creating what he describes as an imminent fraud crisis. “I am very nervous that we have an impending, significant fraud crisis,” Altman said during a banking regulatory conference hosted by the Federal Reserve on Tuesday. During a panel that was moderated by Michelle Bowman, the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision, Altman said that one of his biggest concerns is that some financial institutions accept digital voice ID as authentication for someone to move a lot…