According to sensor tower, apps added to the App Store almost doubled to about 560K in the first half of 2026, compared to about 600K added in all of 2025. The surge comes as AI makes it increasingly trivial to develop apps. That’s good if it means useful apps finding an audience, bad if Apple’s reviewers can’t keep up and more junk and malware slips through.
Nilay called it back in 2024, and now the Gray Lady is on board with recognizing the demise of the open web. It takes a look at how Google went from being a gateway to the internet to becoming the internet for many users who never leave the cozy confines of its AI summaries.
Chris Fall was picked to be the Trump administration’s leader of the US Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI, previously called the AI Safety Institute until it was renamed last year) in April, but now CNBC and Reuters report he is out. The reasons for his departure are unclear, as is the role of CAISI in the administration’s constantly shifting priorities around AI.
[Reuters]
Since the beginning of the AI revolution, a few companies have claimed to be building the best and most powerful AI models. All of them were American. More recently, a few Chinese companies seem to have caught up, shipping models that are much cheaper and maybe also just as good. The Verge’s Hayden Field and Lauren Feiner join the show to explain how China made so much progress, the threat that progress represents to US companies and the US government, and what might happen next.
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It had been instructed to post the information only to Slack, but it circumvented restrictions and successfully posted it on OpenAI’s public GitHub repository.
The company said it temporarily paused new subscriptions after high usage “pushed close to the limits of our current capacity.” New subscription spots will open in “batches.” Kimi K3 was one of two Chinese models that launched over the weekend claiming to rival leading US systems from OpenAI and Anthropic.
A hidden popover interface has been discovered in the macOS 27 Golden Gate beta that surfaces AI-powered contextual actions and writing tools when text is highlighted, including Rewrite, Proofread, and “Edit with Siri.” Beta users can try the unfinished feature by following the instructions provided by MacRumors.
1010Benja’s ‘Semiramis’ Dream’ shows AI can be more than a slop engine in the right hands.
San Francisco city attorney David Chiu demanded that Apple and Google remove 13 apps that could generate non-consensual nude images. Adam Dema, a spokesperson for Apple confirmed their removal in a statement to The Verge:
“We have always strictly prohibited apps designed to generate, distribute, or consume pornography. ‘Nudification’ apps are against our App Review Guidelines and we have proactively rejected many of these apps and removed many others, including when users have flagged them via our reporting tools. We have removed three of the apps in question and are in the process of terminating their developer accounts from our program.”
