The European Commission has proposed the EU Kids Act, which would prohibit chatbots from mimicking emotions or personal relationships when interacting with users under 18. The draft law also bars children under 13 from using chatbots without parental supervision, prevents chatbots from retaining memory across separate conversations, and stops platforms from auto-activating or prominently placing AI companions in minors' contact lists. Companies that fail to build in these child-safety protections could face fines up to 6% of their global turnover.
Google's Threat Intelligence Group disclosed a credential-harvesting operation where attackers compromised cloud infrastructure and deployed a multi-agent AI framework that scanned for vulnerabilities, fixed its own errors, and rotated IP addresses largely without human input. The entire campaign, which compromised thousands of third-party credentials, took less than six hours to execute. Separately, Microsoft found AI-assisted phishing messages reaching click-through rates of 54%, compared to roughly 12% for conventional campaigns.
Lunacy Audio has released Nova, a platform where developers can create and sell music software instruments assembled from premade effects blocks and AI prompts rather than traditional code. The launch includes 10 initial plug-ins, ranging from lo-fi cassette-style synths to ambient drone generators, built by Lunacy and select partners. A companion host plugin lets users load and switch between Nova instruments inside their digital audio workstation, and instruments can also run in a browser without one.
A Pew Research survey of over 42,000 people across 37 countries, conducted between February and May, found that a majority in 34 nations believe AI will destroy more jobs than it creates over the next two decades. Concern is highest in wealthier nations such as Australia, South Korea, and the US, and most respondents also expect AI to widen the gap between rich and poor.
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, released a 37-page 'Humanist AI Code of Conduct' outlining Microsoft's principles for AI development, including its stance on issues like AI consciousness. In an interview and a companion essay, he criticized Anthropic's approach to 'model welfare,' arguing it dangerously misconstrues what AI systems actually are and complicates the broader safety debate.
In 2023, Poland's state-backed Orlen energy group tried to buy 6 million barrels of Venezuelan crude during a sanctions reprieve, hiring intermediary Hannon and UK firm Lexcor Energy to handle the deal in USDT stablecoin. Multiple currency-to-crypto conversions in Dubai went wrong, leaving tens of millions unaccounted for, and a representative who carried USB drives loaded with crypto wallets to Venezuela was reportedly defrauded by fake brokers posing as PDVSA officials.
Nokia shares jumped 6.3% after the company announced a partnership with Microsoft aimed at expanding its data offering for telecommunications providers. The gain pushes Nokia's stock up nearly 70% for the year so far.
MIT Technology Review's latest list of under-35 innovators highlights researchers and founders working on climate tech, including Jae-Won Chung's software for measuring AI models' energy consumption, Jing Wei's AI-based pollution tracking, and Zhonghua Zheng's city-specific climate models. The list also features Mohammad Alkhadra of Lithios and Benjamin Mowbray of Rock Zero, two startups developing faster, cheaper methods to extract lithium from brine and hardrock ore respectively.
Meta's Oversight Board issued decisions on two cases involving AI-generated videos of real people—one showing a Scottish politician making inflammatory remarks he never said, another mocking a menstrual health volunteer. In both instances, Meta failed to label the content as AI-generated and only acted after the Board intervened, despite user reports and appeals being automatically dismissed beforehand.
States United Action, a nonpartisan election-protection nonprofit, has identified 197 candidates who have denied or questioned the legitimacy of past election results running in congressional and statewide races across 43 states this November. The list includes a sitting member of Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 results, a former state legislator who blended QAnon theories into election denial, and local officials pushing unsubstantiated noncitizen-voting claims.
In a conversation, software pioneer Ray Ozzie described his early exposure to computing at a high school with ARPA-funded terminals and later at the University of Illinois, where daytime coursework meant punch cards but nighttime access to the PLATO system revealed a thriving online community with chat, messaging, and forums decades before the modern internet. He credits this early, informal exposure to networked computing with shaping his later work on collaborative software.
Hackers physically removed a Flock Safety license plate reader from a roadway, extracted an encryption key from its storage, and shared the recovered files with 404 Media and WIRED. The data showed the device's software identifies not just vehicles and plates but also people, bicycles, and even small details like bumper stickers, generating over a million images in just weeks of logs.
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