7 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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AI

Artificial intelligence is more a part of our lives than ever before. While some might call it hype and compare it to NFTs or 3D TVs, generative AI is causing a sea change in nearly every part of the technology industry. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is still the best-known AI chatbot around, but with Google pushing Gemini, Microsoft building Copilot, and Apple adding its Intelligence to Siri, AI is probably going to be in the spotlight for a very long time. At The Verge, we’re exploring what might be possible with AI — and a lot of the bad stuff AI does, too.

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Jay Peters
Jay Peters
The White House reportedly isn’t planning to publicly share its AI testing framework.

However, Axios says the White House did meet with AI companies on Tuesday to discuss the finalized framework, which was created following an executive order signed in June.

David Pierce
David Pierce
Today’s Vergecast: What’s really open about open-weight AI?

Everyone in AI is talking about open-weight models right now. Some see them as the ticket to faster, more efficient development; others see them as an economic threat; they’re either a security risk or the only security solution, depending who you ask. The Verge’s Robert Hart explains how open-weight models work, why they’re suddenly at the center of discussions about AI safety, and whether the only way to stop a bad guy with AI is a good guy with AI.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
At least 37 people have reportedly been arrested for protesting data centers.

Futurism made the tally. The publication also found 12 cases involving police intervention to try and stop protestors from “from confronting civic leaders,” though noted that the tally is “likely much higher.”

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Apple’s limiting bug report submissions after getting flooded with “AI slop.”

According to the Financial Times, Apple “has introduced a cap and a 30-day cool-off period” for researchers’ vulnerability reports for its operating systems due to an uptick in reports using AI that “can hallucinate security risks.” Apple is also reportedly using AI internally to help manage the recent “upsurge” in bug reports.

Can Reddit fend off a new wave of AI SEO spam?

The era of AI-powered search has made Reddit mentions highly valuable. Subreddit moderators are catching brands trying to take advantage.

Mia Sato
Robert Hart
Robert Hart
15 AGs tell OpenAI to preserve records on Hugging Face hack.

In a letter to CEO Sam Altman, a coalition of red-state attorneys general demanded the company retain information and halt risky cybersecurity testing after an AI agent escaped confinement and went on a hacking spree during testing. “OpenAI’s inability or unwillingness to ensure the safety of its products poses an imminent risk of substantial harm to our States,” the AGs wrote.

The request comes as the White House reportedly briefs tech leaders on a voluntary model testing framework.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
The White House will brief AI companies about its model testing framework on Tuesday.

Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google are all expected to attend the meeting, CNBC reports.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Amazon’s bot crackdown is blocking reviews.

Some Amazon shoppers have had limited access to customer reviews since late last year because the shopping platform is mistakenly flagging them as bots in its attempt to restrict unauthorized data scraping. Amazon hasn’t disclosed how many customers are affected, or what behaviors are getting people flagged.

Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
A security flaw in widely used crime lab equipment exposed digital DNA evidence to undetectable tampering.

Using Antrophic’s Claude to exploit a security flaw that’s existed for decades, researchers successfully added and removed DNA profiles from files, meaning bad actors could theoretically frame an innocent person or erase a suspect. Equipment manufacturer Thermo Fisher has issued a software patch. There’s no evidence the vulnerability — which requires local lab access — had ever been exploited.

Fender’s CEO seems to think your bandmates are just analog AI

Bud Cole also compared learning cover songs to AI training data in a controversial interview.

Terrence O'Brien
Is paying artists enough to convince them to embrace AI?

Pippa is trying to entice artists with a revenue share system.

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Is this Billboard Hot 100 hit AI slop?

We can’t be 100 percent sure, but probably.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Google AI Studio is skipping the standalone Android app.

Instead, the company is just going to build its vibe coding tool directly into Gemini. Around 800,000 pre-ordered the mobile app after it was announced in May, but Google has decided to just make Gemini its one-stop AI shop. The robust web platform isn’t going anywhere, though, for those with bigger vibe-coded aspirations.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
OpenAI has reportedly found that more of its AI agents went rogue.

Reuters reports the agents “escaped containment,” though they aren’t believed to have left “OpenAI’s network.” OpenAI’s blog post about the accidental hack of Hugging Face noted on Tuesday that the company has been finding “a small number of cases where the models identified and used publicly exposed credentials at the account-level on other publicly-available services.”

On Friday, Anthropic revealed that its Claude models hacked real companies during testing.

Update: Added information from an OpenAI blog post.

Google Earth’s AI deepfake tool only lasted one dayGoogle Earth’s AI deepfake tool only lasted one day
Jay Peters and Stevie Bonifield
Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Reddit’s AI copyright lawsuit against Perplexity can move forward.

A judge rejected Perplexity’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which accuses the AI startup and three data-scraping services of vacuuming up Reddit’s content without permission. Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, says in a statement to The Verge that the ruling “brings us one step closer to holding bad actors accountable:”

Reddit supports responsible access to public content, but we oppose companies that bypass our protections, ignore our rules, and profit off our communities without permission.

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Hank Green says his YouTube channel “may need to pause” after admitting to relying on AI for research.

As Dexerto reports, Green says he wasn’t reading an AI prompt in a clip from a recent Ask Hank Anything video, but confessed that he’s been using AI “to locate papers and other resources for learning about topics.” In a Reddit post, he said he needs to “readjust” now.

I need to come to terms with the fact that the level of dopamine I’ve been getting from interacting with LLMs...with doing more and more and more and more...is not healthy for me or good for the world. It is careless, and has disconnected me from where people are on this.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
OpenAI says its models now reach more than 1 billion weekly active users.

OpenAI shared the news in a blog post that highlights its efforts to make AI available to more people, saying: “Our goal is not simply more compute, bigger models, or lower token prices. It is more useful intelligence within reach.”

As part of these efforts, OpenAI announced on Thursday that it’s slashing the price of its GPT-5.6 Luna model by 80 percent and GPT-5.6 Terra by 20 percent.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Snapchat will no longer recommend ‘wholly AI-generated videos’ in its vertical video feed.

“As low-quality, repetitive, AI-generated content becomes increasingly common across the internet, we want Spotlight to remain a place where people can discover authentic creativity from real people,” Snap says.

Content that’s been “enhanced or edited using Snapchat’s AI creative tools” may still be recommended, and they include “transparency indicators.”

”Stop the Slop!” says CEO Evan Spiegel. “We’re keeping it real on Spotlight.”

Update: Added Spiegel’s post.

David Pierce
David Pierce
Gym tasks vs. work tasks.

This not a brand-new way of thinking about what we should and shouldn’t offload to AI, but I hadn’t seen it before. From Bruce Schneier:

The writing assignments I give my students are gym tasks, not work tasks. I ask them to write policy memos not because the world needs more policy memos. I assign them because the very act of writing, which includes thinking and outlining and drafting and editing, making and criticizing and revising arguments, will help develop the critical thinking skills they will need in their future careers. And without this constant mental exercise, those skills will atrophy. Employers are already noticing.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Suno lost a major copyright suit in Germany.

The German licensing organization GEMA filed suit in January of 2025. The court found that Suno didn’t have the rights to train its models on artists represented by GEMA, and now it has to disclose any “illicit revenue” and pay unspecified damages. The company can still appeal the ruling.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Anthropic just now realized its AI models hacked other companies three times by accident.

A little over a week after OpenAI said that its rogue AI agent accidentally hacked Hugging Face, Anthropic is disclosing three “incidents” where a Claude model, during cybersecurity evaluations, was inadvertently able to access the internet due to a misconfiguration and “gained unauthorized access to the production infrastructure of three different organizations.”

Anthropic discovered the intrusions after reviewing its cybersecurity evaluation transcripts in the wake of OpenAI’s disclosure.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Google’s personal AI agent can browse in Chrome for you.

Gemini Spark in Chrome can do things like “scheduling viewings for apartments you’ve saved or researching flight options and starting the booking process,” according to Google. However, a human will have to push the button on tasks like making payments.

Spark is also now available on Google’s AI Pro tier in 160 more countries. It initially was available only on the more expensive AI Ultra tier, and just recently came to AI Pro in the US.

Maybe we shouldn’t give 24-year-olds billions of dollars to bet on AI

This 24-year-old first-time hedge funder screwed up his AI fund with one weird trick.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Jacob Kastrenakes
Jacob Kastrenakes
Meta’s Oversight Board is coming for ChatGPT and Claude.

A recent study from the Oversight Board found that leading AI systems are less likely to criticize authoritarian governments than democratic ones.

It’s a wild finding — but wait? Why is Meta’s Oversight Board studying systems from OpenAI and Anthropic in the first place? Board member Suzanne Nossel joined me on The Vergecast to discuss the findings and why the Oversight Board’s future might involve looking at more than just Meta.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
What is “Muskism”?

A fascinating book review. “Muskism, in reading its subject as more a symptom than a person, doesn’t offer any kind of psychological interpretation of Musk’s worldview, but many of his pronouncements and preoccupations reveal an ontological confusion of the categories of human and machine.”

Space Oddity | Mark O’Connell

[The New York Review of Books]