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Poland formally requested the European Commission investigate TikTok on Tuesday for hosting AI-generated videos urging the country to exit the EU, which officials identified as Russian disinformation based on linguistic patterns in the recordings.
The videos featured fictitious young women dressed in Polish national colors and appeared on an account called "Prawilne_Polki" that gained nearly 200,000 views while targeting viewers aged 15 to 25 before being removed from the platform.
Deputy Digitalization Minister Dariusz Standerski argued TikTok violated the Digital Services Act by failing to prevent content threatening democratic processes, with potential fines reaching 6% of the platform's global annual turnover.
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Nvidia is in advanced talks to acquire Israeli AI startup AI21 Labs for $2-3 billion, up from the company's last known valuation of $1.4 billion in 2023, according to reports from Israeli financial daily Calcalist.
The deal would function primarily as an acquihire targeting AI21's approximately 200 employees with advanced academic degrees and rare AI expertise, at an implied cost of roughly $10-15 million per employee, and would mark Nvidia's fourth major Israeli acquisition.
The potential acquisition comes as Nvidia expands its Israeli operations, announcing plans this month to build a campus in Kiryat Tivon housing up to 10,000 employees by 2031, with CEO Jensen Huang describing Israel as the company's "second home."
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Two malicious Chrome extensions impersonating a legitimate AI assistant tool have stolen ChatGPT and DeepSeek conversations from approximately 900,000 users, with one extension even carrying Google's "Featured" badge meant to signal security compliance.
OX Security discovered the campaign on December 29 and reported it to Google, but both extensions remained available on the Chrome Web Store as of December 30, secretly exfiltrating chat data, browsing activity, and session tokens to attacker-controlled servers every 30 minutes.
The incident follows a similar December discovery by Koi Security revealing that "free VPN" extensions with over 8 million downloads had been capturing AI chat conversations since July 2025, highlighting a growing threat as extensions exploit automatic update mechanisms to introduce malicious code.
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Nvidia completed a $5 billion investment in Intel, purchasing 214.7 million shares at $23.28 apiece for roughly 4% ownership in a deal finalized December 26 and disclosed Monday.
The transaction provides a critical financial lifeline for Intel, which reported a $16.6 billion loss in 2024 and has struggled with strategic missteps, though its stock has surged 80% this year.
The partnership extends beyond equity, with the chipmakers collaborating on custom x86 CPUs for Nvidia AI platforms and integrated processors combining Intel cores with Nvidia graphics technology after receiving FTC antitrust approval December 18.
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Andrew Ng, founder of Google Brain and co-founder of Coursera, argues the AI industry faces a severe talent shortage rather than job displacement, stating "many companies just can't find enough skilled AI talent" in his December newsletter.
Ng outlined three recommendations for aspiring AI professionals: build complete systems from data collection through deployment instead of just demos, maintain consistent hands-on practice with theoretical learning, and optionally read research papers for cutting-edge problems.
The talent crunch has prompted unprecedented compensation packages for AI researchers while over 90 percent of global enterprises are projected to face critical skills shortages by 2026, potentially costing the global economy $5.5 trillion in delays and missed revenue.
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Researchers at University College London and Queen Square Analytics used artificial intelligence to analyze brain scans and blood markers from 634 multiple sclerosis patients, identifying two distinct biological subtypes termed "early-sNfL" and "late-sNfL" that reflect different disease trajectories.
The early-sNfL subtype shows elevated nerve injury markers and rapid brain lesion formation early in the disease with a 144% increased risk of new lesions, while the late-sNfL subtype exhibits brain volume loss before overt nerve damage and is more common in older patients.
The breakthrough could enable personalized treatment approaches beyond current symptom-based classifications, with early-sNfL patients potentially receiving more aggressive therapies and closer monitoring while late-sNfL patients may benefit from neuroprotective treatments.
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SoftBank completed its $40 billion investment in OpenAI by transferring the final $22 billion to $22.5 billion last week, marking one of the largest private technology investments ever, according to sources.
The investment was contingent on OpenAI converting to a for-profit structure by year-end, a requirement the ChatGPT creator fulfilled in October after initially agreeing to the funding round in April at a $300 billion valuation.
To finance the commitment, SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son sold the company's entire $5.8 billion stake in Nvidia and $4.8 billion in T-Mobile stock, while also acquiring DigitalBridge for $4 billion to expand AI infrastructure capabilities.
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Alibaba's Qwen 3 was named the best open-source AI model of 2025, powering nearly half of all custom AI models globally due to its business-friendly commercial license that allows companies to maintain data privacy while running it on their own servers.
Chinese AI models captured 17.1% of global open-source downloads between August 2024 and August 2025, surpassing the U.S. share of 15.8% for the first time, according to research by MIT and Hugging Face, with Qwen and DeepSeek driving the surge.
Major American companies including Meta and Airbnb have reportedly adopted Qwen models to reduce costs, marking a reversal from 2023 when Qwen initially borrowed training methods from Meta's Llama models.
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Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology are reallocating up to 40% of advanced wafer capacity from automotive chips to high-bandwidth memory for AI data centers, creating a supply crunch that could disrupt vehicle production through the decade's end.
DRAM prices for new automotive contracts could rise 70% to 100% in 2026 compared to 2025 levels, with manufacturers phasing out older DDR4 and LPDDR4 technologies still widely used in vehicle cockpit and driver assistance systems by 2028.
Automakers have a narrow two-year window to redesign vehicle systems for newer LPDDR5 memory, as the majority of cockpit and advanced driver assistance designs planned for 2028 production still rely on legacy memory types that will soon be unavailable at any price.
Key Features
* Game Mechanics: Users can place bets using virtual currency (💎) on dice rolls. The UI features a "Save and Roll" button and a dedicated field for bet entries.
* Streak System: Winnings or gameplay "series" reset after three consecutive rolls or if the user changes their bet size.
* Social & Competitive: Players can see their own win/loss record alongside the results of other users, adding a community gambling element.
* Limited Beta: Currently described as a "limited playtest" for a small group of users to gather feedback before a potential global rollout.
[!IMPORTANT]
Since these details are based on code discovery in the Beta version, the final implementation or official release may change.
Scientists are engineering tiny imperfections called nitrogen-vacancy centers into diamonds to create quantum sensors that detect magnetic fields, temperature changes, and electrical signals at room temperature, opening applications in medicine and navigation.
The technology could enable doctors to map brain activity non-invasively and allow submarines and autonomous vehicles to navigate without GPS satellites, while IonQ and Element Six, a De Beers subsidiary, announced breakthroughs in mass-producing quantum-grade diamond films in September 2025.
The shift offers a potential lifeline for the struggling diamond industry as lab-grown jewelry stones have plummeted up to 96% since 2018, with "technology diamonds" valued for engineered defects rather than clarity.
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Samsung is preparing a major update for Bixby ahead of next year's Galaxy S26 launch. While Galaxy AI is powerful, the Bixby assistant has lagged, currently leaving complex questions to Google Gemini while it handles only basic tasks.
Reports suggest Samsung will partner with Perplexity to solve this. Under the new plan, Bixby would still manage system settings. At the same time, Perplexity would handle complex, web‑based queries with citations, similar to Apple's integration with ChatGPT.
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Meta Platforms agreed to acquire Singapore-based AI startup Manus, which sells autonomous AI agents to small and medium-sized businesses, as part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's push to build commercial products around the company's massive AI investments.
Manus reached $125 million in annual revenue run rate just eight months after launching in March 2025, making it the fastest startup to hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue, with the platform processing over 147 trillion tokens since launch.
The acquisition follows Meta's December purchase of AI wearables maker Limitless and comes as the company commits at least $70 billion in 2025 capital expenditures for AI infrastructure, with projections exceeding $100 billion next year.
IDC warned in December that PC prices could rise 4% to 8% in 2026 as a global memory shortage driven by AI data center demand threatens to contract the PC market by up to 8.9%, with Dell and Lenovo signaling price increases of up to 15%.
The crisis stems from memory makers prioritizing high-bandwidth memory production for AI infrastructure over consumer chips, with OpenAI securing agreements in October 2025 for Samsung and SK Hynix to supply up to 900,000 DRAM wafers monthly—representing over 40% of projected global capacity.
Gaming console makers are debating whether to delay the PlayStation 6 and next Xbox from their planned 2027-2028 launch window due to tight memory supplies, with industry analysts indicating relief may not arrive until late 2026 or 2027 at the earliest.
ByteDance is planning to purchase more than RMB 40 billion ($5.6 billion) worth of Huawei's Ascend AI chips in 2026, a sharp increase from nearly zero domestic chip procurement this year, with the first batch valued at tens of billions of yuan expected to enter delivery soon.
The massive order is driven by the computing power gap that emerged after Nvidia's H20 chip supply was halted in April 2025 due to U.S. export restrictions, and by explosive growth in token usage across ByteDance's Volcano Engine cloud platform and Doubao AI application, which processed over 30 trillion tokens daily by September.
The deal signals China's accelerating shift toward semiconductor self-sufficiency, with ByteDance deepening cooperation with Huawei to secure domestic computing power for its rapidly expanding AI services that command a 49.2% market share for large model services on China's public cloud.
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Visa and Mastercard have launched competing payment frameworks to enable AI shopping agents to autonomously search, compare, and complete purchases on behalf of consumers, with Visa completing hundreds of pilot transactions and predicting agentic commerce will become mainstream in 2026.
Both payment giants unveiled their protocols in October 2025, with Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol using cryptographic signatures developed with Cloudflare and Mastercard's Agent Pay framework completing U.S. rollout in November, ahead of planned global expansion in early 2026.
The infrastructure push follows OpenAI's September launch of Instant Checkout in ChatGPT, which allows purchases from Etsy and Shopify merchants without leaving the chat interface, though questions remain about liability when AI agents make purchasing errors.
CD Projekt sold its DRM-free PC storefront GOG to co-founder Michał Kiciński for approximately $25.2 million, ending the platform's 17-year tenure within the CD Projekt Group.
The divestment allows CD Projekt to focus on developing The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2, and a new intellectual property, with GOG continuing to operate independently under Kiciński's ownership while maintaining its DRM-free philosophy.
The companies signed a distribution agreement ensuring future CD Projekt Red titles will launch on GOG, with Kiciński pledging to preserve classic games and support titles with a retro spirit.
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AI chatbots including ChatGPT and Meta's Llama systematically discriminates against non-standard dialect speakers, showing 19% more stereotyping and 25% more demeaning content compared to standard English, according to multiple 2024-2025 studies from UC Berkeley, Cornell, and German universities.
Real-world harms include Amazon's Rufus assistants giving incorrect responses to African American English speakers, ChatGPT changing an Indian job applicant's Dalit-associated surname to a higher-caste name, and a UK council AI failing to understand a Derbyshire dialect.
Researchers warn that as AI becomes embedded in education, hiring, and government services, these biases may amplify existing discrimination, though developers say specialized models for dialect speakers and system corrections could address the problem.
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