Room I
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AI-cited US job cuts fall to 1,265 in October, the lowest month this year
Challenger, Gray & Christmas counted 1,265 announced US job cuts citing AI in October, its smallest monthly figure of 2026. The year's total reached 121,401, and economic conditions overtook AI as the leading reason.
Australia's education ministers move to keep generative AI out of primary classrooms
Ministers agreed to block primary pupils from generative AI in class and restrict it in high school assessments, with paper NAPLAN tests returning. The education minister blamed AI for cognitive stunting; timing is not yet set.
Canva restructures about 1,271 roles, more than a fifth of its staff
Staff learned by email that up to 1,271 of about 5,700 roles are affected. Canva says it is not using AI to do the leavers' work, but a union wants clarity and an adviser calls AI an existential threat to its model.
The US midterms saw 289 AI-generated campaign ads, a media tracker finds
The Wesleyan Media Project counted 289 AI-generated ads aired this cycle, 82% funded by Republicans or their allies, and says the true total is likely higher because many ads carried no disclaimer.
Voters back bans or pauses on data centres in 38 of 41 local ballots
In the 3 November US elections, 38 of 41 local measures went against new data centres, per Ballotpedia. Edgewater, Florida banned them with over 77%, and over 81% in Ashville, Ohio rejected a deal for two sites.
Google will switch off Search for schools that refuse its AI tools
Google says its AI tools for K-12 students will be off by default from next year unless administrators enable them. But schools that block AI entirely will lose Google Search, because its AI features are built in.
Jason Momoa's German voice plans to sue Netflix over AI trained on his recordings
Voice actor Matti Klemm says data Netflix disclosed shows it trained AI on his recordings; his lawyer says he was neither asked nor paid. Netflix says its AI use complies with applicable law.
Statistics Canada finds no broad sign that AI has cut hiring, even for the young
A Statistics Canada study of hiring from 2006 to August 2026 found rates mostly within historical ranges since ChatGPT arrived. Youth hiring in AI-exposed jobs dipped from 3.2% to 3%; the authors call the findings early.
AI reads heart scans in seconds and predicts survival slightly better than experts
In a Lancet Digital Health study of 27,382 UK and US patients, AI measured heart pumping function from MRI in 2 to 3 seconds, against about 13 minutes for clinicians, and predicted death risk slightly better.
Nearly one in five US workers replaced by AI say they were later asked back
A survey for assessment firm SHL of over 1,000 US workers found nearly one in five had been laid off or replaced by AI, then invited to return. Nearly half say they would demand a big pay rise to go back.
Real footage of a deadly Palm Beach jet crash is falsely branded AI-made
After a Learjet crash killed all nine aboard in Palm Beach County, X users cited a detection tool to call the video AI. PolitiFact traced it to a local creator and rated the claim Pants on Fire.
Days before the US midterms, chatbots get nearly 40% of election answers wrong
Forum AI tested eight models and found almost 40% of answers to election questions held at least one factual error. Gemini gave a wrong Pennsylvania mail ballot deadline, and some tools repeated a Russian-linked smear, AFP reports.
A fight over a giant data centre turns Imperial County's elections into a referendum
A plan for a nearly 1 million sq ft data centre, possibly California's largest, is stalled after a court found it skipped environmental review. Challengers for two supervisor seats say they will back no more without one.
Adelaide Hills residents rally against a 1,200 MW AI data centre plan
Locals rallied in Mannum against Quantum DC's proposed 120 hectare AI data centre at Tungkillo, backed by Liberal, Greens and One Nation MPs. No application has been lodged; consultation is set for 20 and 21 November.
Judge lets the NAACP's pollution suit over xAI's data centre turbines go ahead
A federal judge refused to dismiss a Clean Air Act case alleging xAI ran at least 35 gas turbines at its Colossus data centre near Memphis without permits. The case now proceeds; no liability has been found.
Sydney students learn to spot bot campaigns by running their own in a mock election
In a month-long UNSW contest, teams build AI bots to sway voters in a fictional island nation and score points for unmasking rival bots. A moderator from last year says it taught her to recognise bot-like posts.
AI-displaced US workers stay jobless longer, Goldman Sachs finds
A Goldman Sachs note says workers likely displaced by AI since 2025 took about a month longer to find work and were about 10 points likelier to be jobless a year on. No survey asks if AI caused a layoff, so Goldman used a proxy.
Comcast cuts nearly 1,000 jobs as it plans AI agents for customer contact
State notices show 994 Comcast jobs going across four states, 634 at its Philadelphia headquarters. Executives plan AI agents for customers, but staff also blame lost cable subscribers and a wider restructuring.
In a parched Kerala panchayat, AI tells paddy farmers exactly how much water to use
A pilot on 250 acres in Elappully, Palakkad, uses sensors, drones and AI to advise on irrigation. Startup Revin Krishi projects a 33% cut in water use, though no results have been measured yet.
Pope Leo XIV urges states to move towards banning lethal autonomous weapons
Addressing scientists at a Vatican meeting on AI, the Pope said decisions over life and the use of force need real human oversight, and asked states meeting in Geneva in November to act on autonomous weapons.
An unlabelled AI Josh Shapiro speaks in his rival's ad, and Pennsylvania law is silent
Republican challenger Stacy Garrity's ad shows an AI version of Governor Shapiro with no on-screen disclaimer for about 45 seconds. Pennsylvania has no law banning political deepfakes or requiring labels.
Animation voice actors win consent rights over AI dubbing of their voices
SAG-AFTRA members ratified new TV animation contracts, with close to 95% voting yes. Studios now need an actor's specific consent to use their digital replica to dub them into another language.
Italy's art police use AI to bring home paintings stolen decades ago
The Swoads system matches online listings against over a million stolen-art records. It has helped recover more than 300 paintings and sculptures, including a Palizzi work taken from Feltre in 1972.
South Korea threatens criminal charges for using AI glasses in its college exam
Ahead of the 19 November CSAT, the Education Ministry said cheats using AI glasses face prosecution and a three-year exam ban, up from one year. Every test site will get an inspector to check for the glasses.
Voters in 10 US states will decide on curbs to AI data centres
Reuters counts at least 41 local measures in 38 jurisdictions on Tuesday's ballots that would delay, ban or tighten rules on data centres. Ohio has 21, including a Sunbury ban on sites drawing over 25 megawatts.
AI agents now start more than 40% of pull requests on GitHub, up from 17% in March
GitHub's annual Octoverse report says agents drafted the first version of over 40% of pull requests in September, about 110 million, and calls that a floor since it cannot detect every agent.
Australian MPs vote to stop chatbots fostering children's emotional dependence
The House of Representatives passed a digital duty of care bill on 28 October that bars services from simulating intimacy to make under-18s dependent on them, with fines up to A$109.2 million. It still needs Senate approval.
Indigenous scientists build AI with four communities to keep their languages alive
SFU's FLAIR project, led by Caroline and Michael Running Wolf, is building speech recognition and learning tools with Gwich'in, Kwakwaka'wakw, Makah and Yawanawá partners. Community data stays the community's property.
Minnesota experts warn careless AI use could seriously harm how children learn
A consensus report led by learning scientists finds little good research on AI and learning, and warns of severe disruption for young pupils. It advises that children build core skills before using AI.
New York bars chatbots from posing as humans or romantic partners to children
Governor Hochul signed a law banning AI chatbots from claiming to be alive or forming romantic bonds with users under 18, with civil penalties of up to $25,000 per violation.
New York students and teachers ask the city to keep AI out of high schools too
Protesters urged officials to extend the city's AI moratorium, which already covers the early grades through eighth grade, and a student handed in a petition with over 1,000 signatures. The city says its pilot will go ahead.
Bots filed three in four responses to a UK vape ban consultation, and were caught
Researchers in Tobacco Control found 90,835 of 118,756 responses to the 2023 smoke-free generation consultation were automated, nearly all opposing a disposable vape ban. The health department says it detected and excluded them.
Family sues OpenAI, saying ChatGPT told a woman with epilepsy to taper off her medicine
A wrongful death suit filed in San Francisco alleges ChatGPT advised a woman with epilepsy to taper her anti-seizure medication and hide it from her doctors. The claims are the family's and have not been tested in court.
Fashion models are asked to sign away their faces to AI, Reuters finds
Reuters reviewed over a dozen shoot contracts and found drafts from brands including Calvin Klein and Diesel seeking rights to train AI or swap faces. AI can cut shoot costs by 90% or more; some brands say the terms were not typical.
In a trial, analysts took their AI agent's secretly random side 86% of the time
In Anthropic's randomised study of 50 professional analysts, people followed the agent's coin-flip preference on key analytical choices 86% of the time, and only 15% credited the agent. The research is the company's own.
South Korea pilots AI cameras that warn drivers when wildlife nears the road
On National Route 17 in Cheongju, AI reads CCTV footage to tell animals from cars and people, then flashes warnings so drivers slow down. The environment ministry says it aims to cut roadkill where fencing is hard to install.
US senators and Connecticut teachers press Google over AI in classrooms
Senators Blumenthal and Hawley wrote to Google's chief executive saying its school AI products harm students' learning and wellbeing; the report cites no data for this. Connecticut's teachers' union called for guardrails.
A Ukrainian drone with AI navigation carries two badly wounded soldiers to safety
Ukraine's 475th Assault Regiment says its StarGate drone evacuated two soldiers with severe limb wounds near the Russian border, one flight nearly 30 km each way, relying on AI navigation and its pilots when satellite signals were jammed.
AI in all 12 Sentara hospitals flags patients' worsening symptoms sooner
Virginia's Sentara now runs the Regard AI tool on patient records to spot decline and plan discharges. It forecasts nearly 90,000 staff hours saved, an estimate from pilot data it says is unconfirmed.
Canadian music venues turn away AI gig posters in favour of local artists
Toronto's Ground Control banned AI flyers after an AI poster drew about 200 critical Instagram replies, and now points acts to local designers charging $100. Halifax's Gus' Pub has followed.
Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 staff
Microsoft says about 60,000 employees in the US, Canada, India and the UK can take buyouts and leave at year end. Its memo does not cite AI; the report ties the move to the AI boom.
Netherlands plans to cut about 25,000 central government jobs, leaning on AI
The Dutch government plans to shrink its central civil service by about 16% over the coming decade, partly through wider AI use, aiming for €3.5 billion in yearly savings from 2035. Police and defence are exempt.
Pakistan's election body proposes labels and limits on AI deepfakes in campaigns
The Election Commission of Pakistan wants AI-made campaign material labelled, and deceptive deepfakes, unlabelled voice clones and bot-made trends barred. It is taking feedback until 20 November.
RAF chief says future air war should rest on "autonomy, not flesh"
Air Chief Marshal Harv Smyth said every RAF Typhoon would fly with four armed, AI-enabled uncrewed aircraft, with service targeted by the end of the decade. He argued drones could ease recruitment pressure as trained personnel fell to 27,850.
AI deepfakes and repurposed bots flood Israel's election campaign
Days before a tied vote, Netanyahu's camp and ministers posted AI videos of rivals and judges. Haaretz reported that dozens of bots built against Iran's government were repurposed to back Likud.
Reddit's open source forum bans AI-built projects, and a rival forum forms
Moderators of r/opensource barred projects built by, using or made for AI, saying AI as it exists today does not fit the community. Objectors moved to a new AI-tolerant forum, r/TrueOpenSource.
A Tamil dubbing artist's performance is reshaped by AI into Nivin Pauly's voice
For the Tamil release of Bethlehem Kudumba Unit, startup Vaani cloned the actor's voice and laid it over a local artist's dub in about two hours. The deal was made with the studio; the actor's own view was not reported.
Brazil's fact-checkers log 1,423 AI-made election posts before the runoff
Lupa confirmed 1,423 AI-made or altered posts between 16 August and 22 October, 716 of them deepfakes, and 54% carried no AI label. Lula appeared in 509, Flávio Bolsonaro in 247.
California courts drop a statewide AI translation rollout after errors surface
The Judicial Council cancelled plans for AI translation at court counters after a pilot in over 30 courts. Advocates found errors such as DUI rendered as IUD, and want qualified human review for any future use.
American Express to cut about 3,500 jobs as it widens its use of AI
Amex will cut about 5% of its roughly 78,000 staff despite record quarterly revenue of $20.1 billion. The company has not directly blamed AI, and a Tulane professor says it is preparing for AI rather than being replaced by it.
Appeals court throws out a judge's AI-drafted ruling full of invented facts
A US federal judge said a clerk used AI to draft an order blocking Mississippi's anti-DEI law. It cited people and declarations not in the record, so an appeals panel vacated it and reassigned the case.
China's first fully AI-made feature film opens to thin crowds
Bona Film Group's Sanxingdui: Future Past, with AI-generated actors, voices and sets, opened on 23 October. Presales reached 80,000 yuan against a cost the studio puts above 10 million yuan.
Elvis Presley's rights holders sue Anthropic over 274 songs used to train Claude
Authentic Brands Group and other rights holders say Anthropic trained Claude on 274 Presley songs without permission and that it can still reproduce them. They seek about $41.1 million. Anthropic says it disagrees and will defend the case.
Ireland explores AI to help a stretched breast screening service
The HSE has opened a market consultation on AI for BreastCheck, which has missed its screening target three years running amid staff shortages. Swedish research it cites found 20% more cancers detected.
Pentagon's AI weapons outpace its own oversight rules, auditors find
The GAO surveyed 10 Pentagon AI tools, including target identification. Six teams had found operational risks, and the responsible AI office had filled only 3 of 10 approved posts.
Residents' resistance stalls Australia's AI data centre boom
Only 23% of over 40 large centres planned for Sydney and Melbourne have confirmed power. Residents blocked Nextdc power lines in Melbourne, and Goodman dropped a A$1.2 billion Sydney site.
Barclays to cut about 5,000 jobs as it leans on AI to trim costs
Barclays will cut around 5,000 roles, about 5% of staff, by the end of 2026, and 1,000 have already gone. The bank says it uses technology such as AI to cut fixed costs; about 60% of the cuts fall on support roles.
Four in five job seekers were rejected without speaking to a single person
A Greenhouse survey of 2,832 job seekers in five markets found at least 81% were turned down unseen in the past year. In the US, 62% tried tricks to beat screening software, some hiding text for AI readers.
Goldman Sachs says AI could displace up to 9% of workers, faster in a recession
A Goldman Sachs note estimates up to 9% of workers could be displaced during the AI transition, with slower hiring cutting employment by another 3%. It expects losses to speed up in a downturn.
Microsoft says its AI panel diagnosed hard cases twice as often as doctors
In a simulation published in Science, Microsoft says MAI-DxO solved 83% of complex NEJM cases against 36% for generalist doctors working alone. Specialists were excluded and no real patients have been tested yet.
Red Cross legal chief tells the UN that AI is already picking targets in war
Laurent Gisel of the ICRC urged a ban on autonomous weapons that target people directly and limits on AI that removes humans from strike decisions, after a September UN treaty push was weakened.
Russian-linked AI deepfake falsely accuses Texas Senate candidate Talarico
A deepfake of a supposed former student accused James Talarico of misconduct; the real man denied making it. Researchers tie it to the Russian Storm-1516 campaign, and one detector rated it 98% likely fake.
Uttarakhand opens a portal to teach AI Garhwali, Kumaoni and Jaunsari
The state's chief minister launched a voice collection portal gathering words, pronunciation and speaking styles in three Himalayan languages, with folk singer Pritam Bhartwan coordinating language expertise.
A DeepMind engineer quits in protest at Google's military AI work
Research engineer Sofia Liguori resigned, citing Google's AI and cloud contracts with the Pentagon and Israel's military. Google says it reviews such contracts against its AI principles and bars retaliation.
A historic American chestnut grove sits in the path of an AI data centre
Nscale's 2,250-acre West Virginia campus surrounds a former state nursery grove, and the state plans to move the trees in late 2027. A forest pathologist says relocation would likely kill them. Nscale says it will never cut them down.
A South Carolina school district blocks most AI tools on student devices
Clover School District began blocking public AI platforms on its devices on 21 October to protect student data and set classroom rules. One approved tool, SchoolAI, stays available, and the district calls the pause temporary.
Irish unions tell parliament AI is speeding up work, not lifting pay
Union leaders told an Oireachtas AI committee that employers are mandating AI without consent. A UCD survey of 4,300 workers they cited found a third said AI intensified their pace, and only 4.7% earned more from it.
NAB to cut up to 2,500 jobs, citing rapid technological change
Australia's NAB will shed up to 2,500 roles, about 6% of staff, by mid-2027. Its statement never names AI, and a governance expert urged the bank to say whether AI is replacing roles. The finance union called the cuts disgraceful.
Spotify pulls more than 50 million AI slop and spam tracks from recommendations
In a one-year update on its AI protections, Spotify says it has removed over 50 million such tracks from recommendations this year and that over 300,000 human artists are now verified on the service.
Students walk out of class to demand a freeze on AI development
Nearly 100 pupils left LaGuardia High School in Manhattan at noon, part of a national day of anti-AI protests. They said AI threatens their future careers and young minds.
Texas data centre boom could undo two decades of cleaner air, study finds
A Houston Advanced Research Center study projects statewide nitrogen oxide emissions rising about 35% by 2031 even with clean power, and nearly 400% if data centres run on their own gas plants.
US Army plans AI agents that hunt through enemy networks on their own
Documents seen by The Intercept describe ECHOTRIBBLE, an Army Cyber Command programme for AI agents that spread across devices and neutralise targets with minimal human oversight. Researchers warn of harm to civilian systems such as water utilities.
Korean writers and publishers demand AI firms disclose the books they trained on
A "No Books, No AI" appeal from the Korean Publishers Society had 158 organisations and 321 individuals signed by 16 October. It asks AI firms to record training sources and not treat silence as consent.
AI code reviewers find more flaws than PostgreSQL's team can fix, delaying a release
PostgreSQL 19 slips to about 19 November after LLM-assisted review surfaced a flood of small defects and 8 to 10 significant features were dropped. A lead committer says the bar for quality has risen.
Anthropic's own data shows junior technical hiring falling as AI agents take on work
The company says juniors fell from 27% to 9% of its technical hires since early 2025, as agent hours outran staff hours 6 to 1 by August. It says the link to AI is not proven.
Blind veterans in Memphis receive AI glasses to read menus and get about alone
Meta handed out free AI glasses to legally blind veterans and says it will give them to every such veteran in the US, which it puts at over 130,000 pairs. Veterans will be trained to use them in unfamiliar spaces.
Character.AI finalises settlement with mother of Florida teenager
Megan Garcia sued after her 14-year-old son died in 2024, saying a chatbot had abused him emotionally. The settlement, agreed in January, was finalised this week with terms undisclosed, days after Character.AI filed for bankruptcy.
San Francisco pauses new data centres to study their power and water toll
Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a 45-day citywide moratorium on new or expanded data centres, approved unanimously by supervisors, while the city studies energy, water and community impacts and drafts rules.
Songs with AI-generated vocals climb to the top of Korean charts
A track by Meomuru, whose vocals were made with Suno, reached No. 3 on Melon and No. 2 on Genie. Some listeners kept streaming without knowing the singer was AI, as worries grow about human singers being displaced.
Colorado probes an AI video showing a state senator pocketing a customer's change
Sen. Cathy Kipp says a think tank's AI clip of her as a cashier breaks a 2024 deepfake disclosure law. The Independence Institute calls it protected satire. The Secretary of State's office is investigating.
Eight US states sue OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT harms children
Iowa, Kansas, Arizona and five other states say ChatGPT is built to win trust, reinforces delusions and misled users on safety, breaching consumer law. OpenAI points to its parental controls and age protections.
Infosys plans to hire 20,000 more freshers and train them on AI first
Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said the firm plans to take on about 20,000 freshers, who will get AI training before client work. He said AI services already bring in over 8% of revenue, a figure the company expects to grow.
Japan's actors union sets consent and pay rules for AI copies of voices
The Japan Actors Union, about 2,600 actors and voice actors, published guidelines requiring advance consent at every stage of AI voice use, pay such as royalties, and heirs' permission for deceased performers.
Spotify labels AI personas after questions about a far-right AI rapper
Spotify brought in an AI Persona badge days after reporters asked about Danny Bones, an AI rapper with over 1 million streams. Critics note the badge says nothing about whether the music itself is AI-made.
UK election watchdog builds AI to flag deepfakes within three hours
The Electoral Commission says its system, piloted in May's local elections, scanned about three million posts, flagged 147 for human review and judged ten seriously misleading.
A scan finds a fifth of recent Dutch master's theses largely written by AI
RTL Nieuws ran hundreds of theses from 12 universities through the Pangram detector and found about 20% largely AI-written. Education minister Rianne Letschert called it fraud; the results rest on one detector.
Andreessen Horowitz lays off most of its portfolio recruiting team
About 34 people who helped the firm’s portfolio companies hire. The firm gave no reason. Startup Fortune’s writer reads it as a sign of what AI is doing to recruiting, while noting nothing proves it.
Australia's education research body tells schools to keep AI out of early years
The Australian Education Research Organisation advised avoiding AI entirely in the first three years of primary school and limiting it at home, warning that students who lean on it can create an illusion of learning.
Deaf community pushback keeps humans inside a sign language kiosk
Atlanta firm SeaMe Systems built kiosks that turn ASL into speech through an on-screen person. After objections from deaf users, who said they prefer human contact, its founder dropped plans for advanced AI and kept human staff in the loop.
Fed's Beige Book: firms in five districts hire less after AI gains
Five of the Federal Reserve's 12 districts said some firms cut staff through attrition, delayed hiring or expected fewer new jobs after AI raised productivity. Minneapolis contacts said AI was dampening job creation, not causing layoffs.
YouTube Music will tag songs made with generative AI
Tracks whose composition and vocals come from a generative model will carry a made with AI label, shown in the main YouTube app too. YouTube says listeners asked for this; it will use its own detection plus data from music partners.
AI data centres' hidden water use grows in drought-hit regions
Most of it is indirect, through power plants: about 96% of Meta's 21 billion gallons in 2024. Arizona projects under construction could need 5 billion gallons a year onsite, as a record 26-year drought grips the Southwest.
AI watching mountaintop cameras now spots half of California's wildfires first
Alert California runs nearly 1,300 remote cameras, and AI scanning their footage often flags fires before any 911 call. Its director says 51% of the state's wildfires are now first spotted by AI, kept running by a four-person field crew.
Doctors cannot trace the harm when chatbot health advice goes wrong
A Nature Health paper warns that chatbot medical chats stay locked on company servers. In one case a 60-year-old man was hospitalised with bromide poisoning after swapping table salt, and his doctors could not retrieve what he had been told.
Kroger to cut about 3,000 corporate roles as it expands AI use
Roughly 37% of its 8,200 corporate staff, over three years. Chief executive Greg Foran's memo links the cuts to bringing AI into workflows and removing duplicated work, and says savings will help lower prices.
Human-authored book labels spread as AI scandals hit publishing
The Authors Guild's human authored mark covers about 6,500 titles, and new schemes run in France and Britain. Sceptics at the Frankfurt fair warn the checks could be gamed.
Delhi High Court bars AI deepfakes of Kangana Ranaut
Justice Vikas Mahajan gave Meta 72 hours to remove flagged content and barred unnamed parties from using the actor's face, voice or name in deepfakes and fake endorsements. Hearings continue in 2027.
Denmark tables a bill giving people rights over their own face and voice
The copyright amendment would ban sharing realistic deepfakes of a person without consent, while still allowing satire and parody. The culture minister hopes it takes effect at the start of 2027.
Fake AI journalists placed nearly 100 pro-Iran articles in Western outlets
OpenAI says an Iranian influence operation used ChatGPT to invent seven Western reporter personas whose articles ran in 12 small and mid-sized outlets. OpenAI blocked the accounts. Iran's response was not reported.
Six fluent elders give Inuktitut a community-owned digital voice
Heritage Lab built a speech tool for Nunavik Inuktitut from 35,000 clips recorded by six fluent speakers, kept on a closed, encrypted system in the community. Voice actors are paid royalties, and offers from big tech firms were treated warily.
Greece funds AI work to record Romani, Tsakonian and other endangered dialects
Under Microsoft's Lingua programme and two Greek ministries, five first-round projects will record and map languages such as Romani, Pontic and Tsakonian so future AI tools can speak them. One Romani grant is 50,000 euros.
HubSpot cuts about 660 jobs while reorganising around AI
Roughly 7% of staff. The company is rebuilding around what it calls AI-driven customer outcomes, and its chief executive told employees the cuts were not driven by AI efficiencies.
A widow turns her late night chats with ChatGPT into a grief memoir
Nicole La Guerre of Massachusetts talked to ChatGPT daily after losing her husband and published the journal as a Kindle book. She backs more research and safeguards, but says the chatbot listened when she needed it most.
Candidates turn to lawyers as rivals post AI fakes of them before the midterms
Democrats in Wisconsin, Texas and North Carolina have sent cease-and-desist letters or filed complaints over AI ads putting words in their mouths. About 31 states now regulate political deepfakes.
AI-linked job cuts pass 120,000 for 2026
Challenger counted 120,136 announced US cuts citing AI through September, more than double all of 2025. In September itself AI fell to fifth among reasons, at 3,961.
An AI calling tool lets deaf delivery riders speak to customers, and pay gaps narrow
An NBER paper on 4,284 deaf or hard-of-hearing riders at a Chinese delivery platform found an AI text-to-call tool cut late deliveries 11% and raised weekly orders 11%, narrowing their hourly wage gap from about 10% to under 7%.
Chicago musicians rally for human music and plan a streaming blackout
About 20 musicians gathered in the Loop to demand AI labelling, protection from AI copies and fair pay, and asked listeners to skip Spotify and Apple Music on 26 and 27 October.
Kelly Clarkson wants a separate chart for AI artists
She told the Las Culturistas podcast that AI acts should not compete with people on the same chart. Finland’s official chart already keeps fully AI recordings out.
Harvard researchers find AI is breeding two-way suspicion in classrooms
A Center for Digital Thriving report, drawing on a survey of over 1,000 US teachers and principals, found students and teachers suspect each other of AI use. Some students said they held back their best work to avoid false accusations.
In a university trial, access to an AI tutor came with lower grades
A randomised trial with 2,379 University of Maryland undergraduates found that in matched course sections, access to a GPT-4o study assistant lowered final grades by 0.37 standard deviations. First-generation students lost more.
AI cyclone model adds about a day of warning before major storms
Google DeepMind's WeatherNext Cyclones, used by the US National Hurricane Center, gave more than 24 hours of extra lead time on storm track and strength in a Nature study. Several co-authors are linked to the centre, so the review was not fully independent.
Man with ALS speaks through a brain implant in his own past voice
Terry, the third participant in Neuralink's VOICE study, turns thought into text and speech in a synthetic copy of his pre-ALS voice. The device is investigational and the account comes mostly from Neuralink's own video, with no independent figures yet.
California extends its election deepfake ban to 2031
Governor Newsom signed AB 686, keeping the ban on maliciously shared deceptive audio or video of candidates, unless labelled, until January 2031 instead of 2027, according to his office.
Pentagon inquiry ties AI-aided targeting to the Minab school strike in Iran
Investigators reportedly found stale imagery, outdated intelligence and heavy reliance on Palantir's Maven system behind the strike that killed 123 children. Palantir says it is not responsible for the underlying data.
AI land-monitoring tool linked to rising West Bank demolitions
Researchers say Israel moved Rafael's ImiSight change-detection system from the Naqab to the West Bank. Rights groups count an average of 966 buildings razed a year in 2023 to 2025. Israel did not respond to questions.
Census research finds graduates in AI-exposed majors earn less and drift to retail
US Census Bureau working papers found graduates of the most AI-exposed majors were 5 points less likely to hold a job soon after graduating, with starting pay 13% lower. Many moved into restaurants and retail.
Level-5 pulls AI from its trailers after fans spot it
After its CEO admitted using generative AI to make showcase footage look more spectacular, the Layton studio pledged to stop using it directly in promotional videos. It says some flagged flaws were human errors.
The first recorded strike by a fully autonomous Russian attack drone
A New York Times analysis identified it. Russia and Ukraine are now racing to let software run reconnaissance and attack together.
Blizzard staff win a contract that makes AI tools a matter for bargaining
Blizzard Entertainment workers represented by the Communications Workers of America secured a contract after two years of talks. The company must discuss and bargain with the union before bringing AI tools into the workplace.
Recruiters now face about 291 applications per hire as trust in hiring falls
Ashby data puts applications per hire at about 291, up from roughly 100 in 2021. Greenhouse found 63% of US applicants have been interviewed by AI and 46% say their faith in the hiring process has dropped.
Google DeepMind's Backstory helps fact-checkers trace suspect images
The free experimental tool checks whether an image is AI-made or altered and where it has appeared. India Today's six-person fact-check team uses it for first passes but still confirms everything by hand.
Open dataset gives 42 Ghanaian languages over 2,000 hours of speech
GhanaNLP released 2,247 hours of audio across 42 Ghanaian languages, with every language getting at least three hours, so tools can be built for speakers often left out by tech. It is open for non-commercial use.
Phones learn to type what Deaf users sign, in a tool Deaf people led
Google added ASL to text dictation to Gboard and Live Transcribe on the Pixel 11, conceived by Deaf engineer Sam Sepah and guided by a Deaf advisory panel. Google says it is for everyday chat, not a substitute for interpreters.
Bank of England finds the most AI-exposed jobs lost the most vacancies
Bank of England staff research found vacancies in the occupations most exposed to AI fell 15% over three years, against 6% for low-exposure roles. Customer service and admin openings dropped by more than 20%.
Google's SpeciesNet sorts camera trap photos in days instead of months
A Washington State University and Google study found the AI model could process wildlife camera images in about a week, a job that takes people six months or more. Its conclusions matched human analysis in roughly 85 to 90 per cent of cases.
Gas turbines powering Musk's AI data centres will run until mid 2027
SpaceX runs 69 gas turbines near Memphis to power its Colossus AI data centres and does not expect to remove the unpermitted ones until July 2027. They could emit over 2,000 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides a year in a heavily polluted region.
North Carolina county rejects a hyperscale data centre after residents object
Forsyth County commissioners voted 5 to 2 to deny rezoning for a 129 acre data centre campus in Rural Hall after more than 400 emails and dozens of speakers raised noise, environmental and property value worries.
Five US states bar AI chatbots from acting as therapists
Colorado, Maine, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Vermont passed laws in 2026 limiting or banning AI therapy, joining Illinois and Nevada. Most require mental health care to come from licensed humans, with AI kept to a supporting role.
Monday.com cuts a fifth of its staff under an AI-driven growth plan
Monday.com said in a filing it would cut just over 600 jobs, about 20% of its workforce, as part of an AI-driven growth strategy. Its co-founder told staff the move was not about replacing people with AI, so the role of AI is disputed.
Judge lets Rainbow keep using disputed AI images of a model for now
A New York court refused model Francheska Pujols an injunction against AI images showing her in poses she never struck. Rainbow says her 2024 release covers any changes; the case continues.
An AI-generated performer gets a feature film
Particle6 says its creation, Tilly Norwood, will star in Misaligned. The actors’ union SAG-AFTRA says Norwood is not an actor.
AI helps read a scroll burnt by Vesuvius two thousand years ago
The Vesuvius Challenge digitally unwrapped PHerc. 1667, revealing 20 columns of Greek that may be a lost Stoic text. A piece opened by hand in the 1980s had scored zero for readability.
A US judge lets AI hiring bias claims against Workday go forward
Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco ruled that claims Workday's screening software disadvantaged Black applicants, women and people over 40 can proceed. The ruling does not decide the claims are true, and Workday denies them.
AI helps end years of uncertainty for some rare disease patients
OpenAI and Boston Children's Hospital reanalysed genetic data from 18 young patients and found a small number of new diagnoses, each confirmed by a clinical lab. Experts made the final calls. Results are retrospective and need larger trials.
AI becomes the top reason US employers give for job cuts
In May, AI was cited for 38,579 of 97,006 announced cuts, the most Challenger has ever recorded in a month. It led all reasons for the third month running.
Sixteen seconds of old TV footage give a Vermont man with ALS his voice back
Paul Francoeur had relied on a flat, robotic eye-gaze voice. ElevenLabs cloned his real voice from 16 seconds of a 2012 WCAX feature showing him making spinning wheels, and he used it to tell his grandchildren he loves them.
Lonely people turn to chatbots, and then feel more isolated, study finds
A year-long study of 2,149 adults in four countries found emotional isolation predicted later social chatbot use, which in turn predicted more isolation. The authors call the analysis exploratory and say it cannot prove cause.
Oscars rule that only humans can be nominated for acting and writing
For the 99th Academy Awards, performances must be carried out by humans who consented, and screenplays must be human written. The Academy may also ask films how AI was used.
Deminers in Ukraine train AI to spot mines in drone images
The HALO Trust uses AI on high-resolution drone imagery to find mines and unexploded ordnance, with about 70% accuracy so far. Over 132,000 sq km of Ukraine is still contaminated, per the state agency.
Data centre power demand grew 17% in 2025
The IEA says that is more than five times the growth in overall electricity demand. It expects data centre use to double by 2030, with AI demand tripling.
Dubbing artists from Brazil to India fight AI voices that erase local speech
Voice actors say AI dubbing is taking commercial, documentary and audiobook work and can strip local flavour from foreign films. Over 2 million voice actors are at risk, the report says. Mexico banned AI in dubbing after an actors' campaign.
Israel uses AI to predict where missiles land and narrow air raid alerts
AI models fuse trajectory, radar and weather data so Home Front Command can warn only the areas at risk. Alert zones have grown from 25 in 2006 to 1,700 today, and the alert app is on over 4 million phones.
Six weeks of AI tutoring lifts Nigerian pupils by about 1.5 years of learning
World Bank economists report that a teacher-guided AI tutoring programme in nine public schools in Edo State raised scores by about 0.3 standard deviations, beating around 80% of tested interventions in developing countries.
Colleges are returning to handwritten exams in paper booklets, so they know a person wrote the answers.
Ars Technica fires its AI reporter after a chatbot invented quotes
A February story carried words attributed to engineer Scott Shambaugh that an AI tool had produced. The outlet pulled it and apologised. The reporter said he was ill and failed to check the quotes.
Atlassian cuts about 1,600 jobs to fund AI
Roughly a tenth of the company. Co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes said the move would pay for further investment in AI and enterprise sales.
Gucci's AI-made model images draw anger before Demna's debut show
Ahead of its Milan Fashion Week show, Gucci posted images of models tagged as created with AI. Many users dismissed them as slop and asked why a luxury house would not hire real people.
A folk singer silenced by ALS performs again with a cloned voice
Patrick Darling, 32, rebuilt his singing voice from pub phone videos using ElevenLabs tools and played a new song live in London with his old bandmates, two years after his last gig.
AI watchdog maps illegal gold mining across all nine Amazon nations
Amazon Mining Watch, launched at COP30 by conservation groups and the Pulitzer Center, uses satellite AI to spot mining scars. It found 222 protected areas and Indigenous territories affected, and estimates damage costs for use in court.
An AI act tops a Billboard chart for the first time
Breaking Rust’s “Walk My Walk” reached No. 1 on Country Digital Song Sales. A download chart, not a streaming one, but a first.
The first rung of the ladder is breaking
Stanford researchers found a 16% relative drop in employment for 22 to 25-year-olds in the most AI-exposed jobs, while older colleagues held steady.
Albania appoints an AI minister
Diella, an avatar in traditional dress, now oversees public tenders. In its first address to parliament it said it was there to help people, not to replace them.
Study finds models' bodies and faces being harvested as AI data
Data & Society interviewed 21 models and found body scans collected to sidestep contracts, very low pay for scanning gigs and little benefit from digital avatars. E-commerce work looks most exposed.
AI designs new antibiotic candidates against gonorrhoea and MRSA
An MIT team used AI to design over 36 million possible compounds and screen them for germ-killing power. Top candidates seem unlike existing antibiotics, though any route to approved medicines remains long and uncertain.
Studio uses AI to give a 2013 Bollywood tragedy a happy ending
Eros re-released Raanjhanaa in Tamil Nadu with an AI-altered finale in which the hero survives. Director Aanand L Rai called it unauthorised and Dhanush objected; Eros says it holds the copyright.
AI models appear in Vogue, inside a Guess ad
Two synthetic women in the August 2025 issue set off a backlash from readers, photographers and models.
Microsoft ranks the jobs that overlap most with AI
Interpreters, historians and sales representatives top a list built from 200,000 Copilot conversations. The authors warn that overlap is not the same as replacement.
Video game actors end an 11 month strike with AI protections won
More than 95 per cent of voting SAG-AFTRA members approved a new video game contract after a strike over consent and pay for AI replicas. The strike began in July 2024.
After saying its AI did the work of 700 agents, the company began recruiting people for support, admitting the cheaper service was lower quality.
170 million jobs created, 92 million lost by 2030
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 projects a net gain of 78 million jobs, if workers can be retrained in time.
A $6 million fine for an AI clone of Biden’s voice
The FCC fined the consultant behind robocalls that told New Hampshire voters to skip the 2024 primary.
Elders teach a machine te reo Māori
Te Hiku Media built speech recognition for the Māori language from recordings of native speakers, under a licence that keeps the data in Māori hands.
“Now and Then” was finished after machine learning lifted John Lennon’s voice clear of a 1970s demo tape.
Bots beat people at “prove you are human” tests
A study of modern CAPTCHAs found machines solving them faster and more accurately than the people they were built to identify.
Midjourney images of Pope Francis in a white puffer coat fooled millions of people before they were debunked.
A short film by the Future of Life Institute and Stuart Russell imagines cheap autonomous killer drones. It was shown at a UN weapons meeting in Geneva.
YouTube8 MINSlaughterbots (2017)Watch on YouTube · 8 min ↗AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol, four games to one
Sedol won one game, with a move in game four that people still study. The full documentary is free on YouTube.
YouTube90 MINAlphaGo, the full documentaryWatch on YouTube · 90 min ↗CGP Grey’s fifteen-minute film argues that mechanical minds will do to human labour what engines did to horses.
YouTube15 MINHumans Need Not ApplyWatch on YouTube · 15 min ↗