Google Maps can now order your food, book your hotel, and read your calendar. Ask Maps just became an agent.

Google Maps is no longer just giving directions. The company announced on Thursday that Ask Maps, the Gemini-powered conversational feature it launched in March, is gaining agentic capabilities that l [...]

Google is killing Assistant on phones September 4. Gemini is the only option left.

Google confirmed in emails to users that Assistant on Android phones will shut down starting September 4, forcing everyone to Gemini. The process may take several weeks to complete, so holdouts may ge [...]

Jeff Bezos files to sell roughly $4 billion in Amazon shares after stock hits $3 trillion

Jeff Bezos has filed to sell 15 million shares of Amazon common stock, a stake worth roughly four billion dollars based on the company’s closing price on Monday. The filing, a Form 144 submitted to [...]

AI’s power crunch is sending data-centre builders to the banks

The bottleneck in AI is no longer chips. It is power, and the scramble to secure it is sending data-centre builders to the banks for billions in financing commitments, Bloomberg reports.The shift is a [...]

The EU can now inspect AI models, block market access, and fine providers 3% of turnover. The grace period is over.

The European Commission gained enforcement powers over general-purpose AI models on August 2, ending the grace period for Chapter V of the EU AI Act. The Commission can now demand to evaluate models b [...]

China drafts cyberbullying rules that reach AI-generated abuse

China’s internet regulator has published draft rules to combat cyberbullying, and, according to Reuters, the measures are written to reach abuse generated with artificial intelligence. The Cyberspac [...]

The Italian state just backed €500m for the company that owns AOL

Bending Spoons has agreed a €500m loan facility guaranteed by the Italian state. The guarantee comes from SACE, Italy’s export credit agency, which is wholly owned by the Ministry of Economy and F [...]

X Money can cut off your account over what you post

X Money went live on Monday. Buried in its support pages is a rule that no ordinary bank applies to a current account. “If your X account is suspended for violating Child Safety or Violent and Hatef [...]

A free AI model is winning over developers. And nobody knows whose servers it runs on

An anonymous model called Ox Alpha appeared on OpenRouter last week, free to use with a million-token context window, and developers have been impressed. OpenRouter’s own listing says prompts and co [...]