Category Archives: Technology

EU could water down AI Act amid pressure from Trump and big tech

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European Commission confirms reports it is looking at postponing parts of landmark legislation

The European Commission is considering plans to delay parts of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, after intense pressure from businesses and Donald Trump’s administration.

The commission confirmed that “a reflection” was “still ongoing” on delaying aspects of the regulation, after media reports that Brussels was weighing up changes with the aim of easing demands on big tech companies.

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Google to build new AI datacentre on tiny Australian Indian Ocean outpost after signing defence deal

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Military experts say facility on Christmas Island would be valuable asset to monitor Chinese submarine and naval activity

Google plans to build a large AI datacentre on Australia’s remote Indian Ocean outpost of Christmas Island after signing a cloud deal with the Department of Defence earlier this year, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and interviews with officials.

Plans for the datacentre on the tiny island located 350km south of Indonesia have not previously been reported, and many details, including its projected size, cost and potential uses, remain secret.

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Rockstar Games delays Grand Theft Auto VI – again – to late 2026

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The hugely anticipated sequel was due to arrive in May of next year but has been pushed back to November 2026

Rockstar Games’s Grand Theft Auto VI, which was due to release on 26 May next year, has been delayed again – this time to the end of 2026. It has now been nearly two years since the game was announced, and more than 12 years since the release of Grand Theft Auto V.

“Grand Theft Auto VI will now release on Thursday, November 19, 2026,” reads Rockstar Games’s statement on X. “We are sorry for adding additional time to what we realize has been a long wait, but these extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve.”

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Global stock markets fall sharply over AI bubble fears

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Drop in US, Asia and Europe follows warning from bank bosses that market correction could lie ahead

Global stock markets have fallen sharply amid concerns that a boom in valuations of artificial intelligence (AI) companies could be rapidly cooling.

Markets in the US, Asia and Europe have fallen after bank bosses warned a serious stock market correction could lie ahead, after a run of record stock market highs led some companies to appear overvalued.

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Facebook’s job ads algorithm is sexist, French equality watchdog rules

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Regulator found ads for mechanics skewed towards men while those for preschool teachers targeted women

The French equalities regulator has ruled that Facebook’s algorithm for placing job adverts is sexist, after an investigation found that adverts for mechanic roles skewed towards men while those for preschool teachers were targeted at women.

The Défenseur des Droits watchdog said the Facebook system for targeted job ads treated users differently based on their sex, and constituted indirect discrimination. The regulator recommended that Facebook and its parent company, Meta, took measures to ensure adverts were non-discriminatory, giving the company three months to inform the French body of the measures.

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Has OpenAI really made ChatGPT better for users with mental health problems?

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Prompts indicating suicidal ideation got alarming replies, which experts say shows ‘how easy it is to break the model’

An OpenAI statement released this week claimed the company had made its popular service ChatGPT better at supporting users experiencing mental health problems like suicidal ideation or delusions, but experts tell the Guardian they need to do more to truly ensure users are protected.

The Guardian tested several prompts indicating suicidal ideation with the ChatGPT GPT-5 updated model, which is now the default, and got alarming responses from the large language model (LLM) chatbot.

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Nexperia halts chip supplies to China in threat to global car production

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Dutch-controlled company informs customers about suspension but is said to want to de-escalate trade war

Nexperia, the EU-based automotive chipmaker at the centre of a geopolitical dispute, has suspended supplies to its Chinese factory, stepping up a trade war that threatens to halt production at carmakers around the world.

The company wrote to customers this week informing them all supplies to a Chinese plant had been suspended.

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Microsoft reports strong earnings as Azure hit by major outage

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Tech giant reports earnings of $3.72 per share day after deal with OpenAI pushed value of company to more than $4tn

Microsoft blew off concerns of overspending on AI on Wednesday, reporting elevated earnings even as it faced an outage of its cloud computing service, Azure, and its office software suite, 365. The strong earnings report comes a day after a deal with OpenAI pushed the value of tech giant to more than $4tn.

After its Xbox and investor relations pages went down, the company issued a statement that said: “We are working to address an issue affecting Azure Front Door that is impacting the availability of some services.”

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Meta reports mixed financial results amid spree of AI hiring and spending

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Tech company brings in record quarterly revenue but major tax bill dampens earnings per share

Meta reported mixed financial results for the third quarter of 2025. The company brought in record quarterly revenue but reported a major tax bill that dampened earnings per share, the company announced on Wednesday. The financial results come as Meta ends a multibillion-dollar hiring spree focused on artificial intelligence talent.

The tech giant earned $51.24bn in quarterly revenue, beating Wall Street expectations and the company’s own projections for third-quarter sales. However, it reported earnings per share (EPS) of $1.05, far below Wall Street expectations of $6.70 in EPS. The major drop was due to a one-time non-cash income tax charge of $15.93bn. The EPS would have been $7.25 without this one-time charge, the company said.

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Google parent Alphabet beats forecasts with first $100bn quarter

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Strong demand for ads and cloud services powered tech giant’s growth as it makes multibillion-dollar AI investment

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, displayed steady growth in its core advertising business and cloud computing division as it reported third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, beating Wall Street estimates as it reported its first quarter of $100bn in revenue.

The company thrilled Wall Street – shares rose in after-hours trading – even as it announced that it would spend billions more than previously predicted. Alphabet raised its capital expenditure guidance in financial filings, declaring it would spend between $91bn and $93bn in the upcoming year, nearly all of it on infrastructure like datacenters to support artificial intelligence products, which are becoming an integral part of the company’s business. That estimate is up from an original declaration of $75bn in February and a revised figure of $85bn announced in July.

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AFP developing AI tool to decode gen Z slang amid warning about ‘crimefluencers’ hunting girls

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AFP commissioner Krissy Barrett says online crime networks of young boys and men are targeting vulnerable teen and preteen girls

Australian federal police will develop an AI tool to decode gen Z and Alpha slang and emojis in an effort to crackdown on sadistic online exploitation and “crimefluencers”.

The AFP commissioner, Krissy Barrett, will use a speech at the National Press Club on Wednesday to warn of the rise of online crime networks of young boys and men who are targeting vulnerable teen and preteen girls.

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US and China reach ‘final deal’ on TikTok sale, treasury secretary says

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Scott Bessent said plan was part of framework for trade deal but did not share details on transferring app’s ownership

US treasury secretary Scott Bessent claimed on Sunday that the US and China have finalized the details of a deal transferring TikTok’s US version to new owners.

“We reached a final deal on TikTok,” Bessent said on Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan. Alluding to Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, Bessent continued: “We reached [a deal] in Madrid, and I believe that as of today, all the details are ironed out, and that will be for the two leaders to consummate that transaction” during a meeting scheduled for Thursday in Korea.

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Tesla reports steep drop in profits despite US rush to buy electric vehicles

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Carmaker exceeded Wall Street’s expectations with more than $26bn in revenue, but saw a 37% drop in profits

Despite record vehicle sales, Tesla saw a precipitous drop in profit in its most recent quarter.

A rush to buy electric vehicles before a US tax credit for them disappears had boosted Tesla’s flagging sales, leading to the automaker exceeding some of Wall Street’s projections in its most recent financial quarter. Yet the company failed to meet earnings expectations and its stock fell in after hours trading.

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Elon Musk feuds with US transportation chief in social media posts: ‘2 digit IQ’

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SpaceX owner said Sean Duffy was ‘trying to kill Nasa’ after acting head said agency would reopen contracts for Artemis mission

Elon Musk attacked Sean Duffy, the US secretary of transportation, on Tuesday in a series of posts on X, accusing him of trying to “kill NASA”, suggesting he should be fired and calling him “Sean Dummy”. The posts intensified a long-running feud between Duffy, who is also the acting head of Nasa, and Musk, whose company SpaceX is central to the US space program.

Musk’s tirade against Duffy followed a statement from the transportation secretary on Tuesday that Nasa would reopen contracts for the agency’s Artemis mission to land humans on the moon, which SpaceX had previously secured. Duffy said that SpaceX had fallen behind on its timelines. Duffy suggested the contract might go to another billionaire’s rocket company, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.

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Tory MP reports ‘AI-generated deepfake’ video announcing his defection to Reform UK

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Mid Norfolk MP George Freeman calls spread of AI-generated misinformation a ‘dangerous development’

A Conservative MP has reported an “AI-generated deepfake” video of him announcing that he has joined Reform UK to the police, according to reports.

George Freeman, the MP for Mid Norfolk, denounced the video and, in a Facebook post, called the deliberate spread of misinformation through AI-generated content a “concerning and dangerous development”.

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AI chatbots are hurting children, Australian education minister warns as anti-bullying plan announced

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Jason Clare says artificial intelligence is ‘supercharging bullying’ to a ‘terrifying’ extent

A disturbing new trend of AI chatbots bullying children and even encouraging them to take their own lives has the Australian government very concerned.

Speaking to media on Saturday, the federal education minister, Jason Clare, said artificial intelligence was “supercharging” bullying.

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Banks need stricter controls to prevent romance fraud, says City regulator

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FCA cites study showing victims’ ‘red flags’ are often missed and calls for improved monitoring systems

The City regulator has called on banks and payment firms to bring in stricter controls protecting customers from romance fraud after a study showed a number of missed “red flags” that led to people losing huge sums of money.

The review by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) highlighted one case where someone lost £428,000, another where a customer made 403 payments totalling £72,000 to a fraudster and a case where someone wanted money to transfer cryptocurrency to their “partner” in Iraq.

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Canadian man fined for submitting AI hallucinations as part of legal defense

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Jean Laprade ordered to pay $3,500 in legal saga of ‘hijacked planes’, Interpol red alerts and ‘inappropriate use’ of AI

A Quebec man has been ordered to pay C$5,000 (US$3,562) for submitting artificial intelligence hallucinations as part of his legal defense, a move the judge warned was “highly reprehensible” and threatened to undermine integrity in the legal system.

Justice Luc Morin of Quebec superior court levied the fine on Jean Laprade in a decision released on 1 October, capping a legal saga the judge said “contains several elements worthy of a successful movie script”, including a “hijacked plane passing through several complacent airports”, Interpol red alerts and the “inappropriate use of artificial intelligence” by Laprade.

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Digital ID: Danes and Estonians find it ‘pretty uncontroversial’

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Citizens have enrolled with little opposition, albeit with some concerns over security and privacy, as UK plans system

For Danish teenagers, getting enrolled for MitID (my ID) has become somewhat of a rite of passage.

From the age of 13, Danes can enrol for the national digital ID system, which can be used for everything from logging into online banking to signing documents electronically and booking a doctor’s appointment.

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‘Your basis to live is checked at each and every step’: India’s ID system divides opinion

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Keir Starmer is considering Aadhaar as model for UK, but detractors warn of ‘digital coercion’ and security breaches

It is often difficult for people in India to remember life before Aadhaar. The digital biometric ID, allegedly available for every Indian citizen, was only introduced 15 years ago but its presence in daily life is ubiquitous.

Indians now need an Aadhaar number to buy a house, get a job, open a bank account, pay their tax, receive benefits, buy a car, get a sim card, book priority train tickets and admit children into school. Babies can be given Aadhaar numbers almost immediately after they are born. While it is not mandatory, not having Aadhaar de facto means the state does not recognise you exist, digital rights activists say.

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