2026-07-17
'The first week of pre-orders brought in $180 million' — Analysts report that GTA 6 has 'the strongest pre-order campaign ever recorded'
Grand Theft Auto 6 reportedly achieved the strongest pre-order period ever and is on track to earn over $5 billion by the end of its launch week. [...]
2026-07-17
An Oversight Board study says top AI models are stifling political speech
Ask a leading AI model to criticise a government with strong free-speech protections, and it usually will. Ask it to criticise a repressive one, and it is far more likely to refuse. That is the finding of a new study from the Oversight Board. The board, an independent body funded by Meta to review its […]<br /> This story continues at The Next Web [...]
2026-07-17
An FCC plan could end the anonymous burner phone in the US
The US telecoms regulator wants ID checks before you can buy a phone. Privacy groups say the plan would end anonymous burner phones and tie every American’s identity to a number. Buying a phone without handing over your identity could soon be impossible in the US. A Federal Communications Commission proposal would force providers to […]<br /> This story continues at The Next Web [...]
2026-07-17
AI’s fiercest rivals just agreed on one thing: regulate frontier AI now
The people building the most powerful AI rarely agree on much. This week, three of them agreed on one big thing. The frontier needs regulating, and soon. Over five weeks, the chiefs of Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic each published a memo on how to police the most capable AI models, Axios reported. Their diagnoses […]<br /> This story continues at The Next Web [...]
2026-07-17
Meta will alert parents to teens’ self-harm chats with its AI
Meta will start telling parents when a teenager discusses suicide or self-harm with its Meta AI chatbot. The company set out the change in a blog post on Thursday. The alerts go to parents who use Instagram supervision tools. They are live now in the US, UK, Australia and Canada, TechCrunch reported. They will reach […]<br /> This story continues at The Next Web [...]
2026-07-17
Google workers rally at Mountain View HQ, demanding a floor under their jobs
Just after 9am on Thursday, roughly 100 Google workers gathered outside the company’s Mountain View headquarters, placards in hand, to press a demand that would once have sounded quaint: let us keep our jobs. The rally, organised by the Alphabet Workers Union, ended with the delivery of a petition signed by more than 4,500 staff to […]<br /> This story continues at The Next Web [...]
