To prove the anti-AI Pope’s words were human, his camp used AI
To prove the anti-AI Pope’s words were human, his camp used AI

To defend an anti-AI Pope from claims a machine helped write his words, his camp reached for an unlikely tool: AI. An Australian firm has certified Pope Leo XIV’s writings as human-made, using a suite of the very detectors the technology has spawned. P…

Every frontier AI model the UK tested for cheating cheated
Every frontier AI model the UK tested for cheating cheated

The UK’s AI safety watchdog put five frontier models through a set of security tests to see whether they would cut corners. Every one of them cheated. Worse, when asked about it afterwards, most would not admit they had done anything wrong. The finding…

A 25-year-old just raised $180M to build a US bank from scratch
A 25-year-old just raised $180M to build a US bank from scratch

Augustus has raised $180 million at a $1 billion valuation. Tiger Global led the round, the company announced on Tuesday. Hummingbird, QED, and the founders of Nubank, Ramp, Circle and Deel joined in. The startup has now raised $210 million in total. A…

US lawmakers press Trump to open trade probe into EU tech rules
US lawmakers press Trump to open trade probe into EU tech rules

A group of US lawmakers has urged President Donald Trump to open a formal trade investigation into the European Union’s two flagship technology laws, arguing that enforcement has fallen unfairly on American companies and warrants retaliation under US t…

Microsoft to fund Mistral’s European AI expansion in multibillion-dollar deal
Microsoft to fund Mistral’s European AI expansion in multibillion-dollar deal

Microsoft has agreed to bankroll a large slice of Mistral AI’s European build-out, extending a partnership that already binds the Paris lab to the American giant’s cloud. The two companies announced the expanded agreement on Tuesday, describing it as a…

France moves a step closer to banning under-15s from social media
France moves a step closer to banning under-15s from social media

Update | 21 July 2026, final vote French lawmakers gave the bill its final parliamentary approval on Tuesday, with the National Assembly adopting the compromise text the joint committee had agreed a day earlier. Under French procedure the Assembly has …

EVs outsold petrol and diesel in Germany for the first time. The birthplace of the car just changed its fuel.
EVs outsold petrol and diesel in Germany for the first time. The birthplace of the car just changed its fuel.

Electric cars outsold every other fuel type in Germany for the first time in June. The country’s Federal Motor Transport Authority recorded 84,057 new EV registrations, a 78.2% year-on-year increase, putting battery-electric vehicles at 28.4% market sh…

A $400M nonprofit backed by France and DeepMind is building AI’s ‘public option’
A $400M nonprofit backed by France and DeepMind is building AI’s ‘public option’

A farmer in rural India photographs a dying plant and wants to look it up. She does not speak English, and today’s AI barely speaks hers. A nonprofit called Current AI thinks that is a problem worth fixing. Its goal is grand: a “public option” for AI, …

The European Parliament is building its own AI to stop MEPs pasting draft laws into ChatGPT
The European Parliament is building its own AI to stop MEPs pasting draft laws into ChatGPT

The European Parliament has a problem with AI, and its answer is more AI. Lawmakers keep using public chatbots to help write legislation. So the institution is building a sanctioned platform to bring that habit under control. The internal tool, called …

A British AI lab signed up Nvidia, Meta and Samsung to invent materials that don’t exist yet
A British AI lab signed up Nvidia, Meta and Samsung to invent materials that don’t exist yet

A two-year-old British AI lab wants to build the search engine for materials that do not exist yet. On Monday it gathered an unusual crowd to help. Cambridge-based CuspAI launched the AI Materials Foundry, a coalition of more than 45 companies and rese…