AI News

OpenAI safety leader quits, warning AI company’s culture is ‘broken’

David Robinson joins other insiders in urging industry to take more care over rapidly developing technology A safety leader at OpenAI has quit the company, warning that its culture was broken and that

AI may cost us our ability to listen, oral historian warns in the Guardian

Much of the worry about AI is that it will erode how well we write. Australian oral historian Shirleene Robinson thinks the bigger loss may be our ability to listen. She made the case in an opinion co

US charges California man with smuggling $300mn of AI servers to China

US authorities have arrested a California man accused of smuggling more than $300mn of computer servers packed with AI chips to China, the Justice Department said on Thursday. Greg Lui, 38, of San Gab

Amazon responds to data center backlash, says it no longer uses NDAs

The CEO of Amazon Web Services tried to push back against widespread suspicion of data centers.

OpenAI safety staffer quits, says AI labs should run like nuclear plants

A member of OpenAI’s safety team has quit, warning that the company is not taking enough care with AI’s risks. David Robinson set out his reasons in an essay for The Atlantic. Robinson led transparenc

Bessent says AI alarmism without solutions is not leadership

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has criticised AI leaders who warn of disaster but offer no fixes. He made the remarks in an interview with Axios published on Saturday. “This alarmism without solu

Capcom is preparing for a ‘future where we create games together with AI’

Capcom's Pragmata might be all about the horrors of AI, but in practice the studio doesn't seem so down on the tech. During the Capcom Open Conference RE: 2026 programmer Satoshi Ishida gave a present

OpenAI safety employee resigns, claiming the company’s ‘culture is broken’

By his own admission, David Robinson is “something of a cliché”: an employee at a leading AI company who issues a dire warning while resigning from their job.

Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava thinks AI emails are killing conversations

Kakul Srivastava is the CEO of Splice, the sample platform countless producers rely on for one-shots and melodic loops. Samples pulled from the service have found their way into massive hits like Lisa

An OpenAI safety employee has quit and is sounding the alarm

David Robinson used to write the safety reports that accompanied every major model release at OpenAI. This week, he resigned from his position and is now speaking out in an editorial in The Atlantic.

All the AI agents that can live in your text messages 

We created a list of the most notable AI agents that can live in your text messages, from general assistants to agents designed for families, travel, and work.

OpenAI says its review into hacks, including on Australian government sites, is costing $500,000 a day

Company says it is reviewing 50 petabytes of data after its agents accessed websites including Medicare without authorisation Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast OpenAI says

Meta wants your next gadget to be Muse-infused

Meta wants Muse in your TV and your toaster, so it's giving the code away for free.

Apple changes full-disk access permissions to curb abuse from AI agents

Meta says FDA isn't sufficient to Muse reading messages. Apple begs to differ.

AI can’t fix a business system with broken processes

I have come to believe that one of the biggest misconceptions about AI is also one of the most expensive: the idea that technology can repair a business that has never streamlined how its processes ac

Sean Parker is rebuilding Stability AI around music

Sean Parker, who once taught the music industry what asking for forgiveness looks like, is now back with the labels' blessing and money.

Meta open sources code to let you make Muse AI gadgets

Meta now lets you make your own Muse gadgets that feature the company's new AI agent with code that the company open sourced. The company suggests projects like loading Muse on a color E Ink display t

Apple will limit Mac disk access as AI agents ‘substantially’ increase risk

Apple will add new limits for "full disk access" on Mac in response to risks posed by AI agents, as reported earlier by TechCrunch. In an update on Friday, Apple says it's rolling out new controls to

Nvidia hits its first record since May, within $300B of $6T

Nvidia hit a record for the first time since May, leaving it under $300B short of becoming the first company worth $6T, on a rally driven by AI agent demand and a record $150B buyback increase. ASML,

Affected by layoffs? Don’t miss this $75 deal for your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Expo+ Pass

Your next opportunity could be one conversation away. Get your Expo+ Pass for just $75. Limited to the first 100 qualifying people.

Georgia holds emergency meeting on AI exposing voters’ secret ballots

A Princeton researcher found that publicly available election records could be combined with AI to link voters to their ballots When voters cast their ballots, their votes are supposed to remain secre

Apple says it’s tightening macOS ‘Full Disk Access’ controls due to new risks from AI agents

Apple says it will add new controls around macOS’s Full Disk Access permission, warning that increasingly capable AI agents make broad access to users’ files, messages, mail, and browsing history risk

OpenAI’s Dot agent is enterprise software that can also order your dinner

New helpful little guy just dropped. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge It's a tale as old as last week: OpenAI's new agent platform, called Dots, is full of cute little guys who can do your biddi

Call it AI, call it Super Intelligence, only 2% of consumers are buying it

This week, the White House got nearly every major tech CEO in one room — Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei among them — to sign an AI safety pledge that President Donald Trump call

It’s not AI anymore, it’s ‘super intelligence’ (according to the White House)

This week, the White House got nearly every major tech CEO in one room — Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei among them — to sign an AI safety pledge that President Donald Trump call

Breaking up (with Elon Musk) is hard to do

In a throwback to MySpace-style internet drama, Shivon Zilis announced that she and the father of her four children, Elon Musk, had broken up on X. To do so, she quote-tweeted a post from "Big Tech Al

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Blackstone’s Jas Khaira on building the next generation of AI giants

Blackstone's Jas Khaira will take the Builders Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 on building next-gen AI. Register for your pass and get 50% off a second.

Circuit Breaker Labs hopes to make AI safer for your kids (and you)

With all the talk about how AI might one day kill us all, it's easy to forget that AI has already harmed some people psychologically. Circuit Breaker Labs has created "crash-test dummies" to solve th

A model guide for the GPT-6 family

Learn how startups can choose GPT-6 models, tune reasoning effort, improve prompts and skills, coordinate tools, and prepare workflows for production.

Redefining enterprise intelligence with autonomous AI

Enterprise AI is no longer a future ambition. It is in full operational flight. Model capabilities are advancing faster than most organizations can absorb, while the cost of performance continues to f

Pope Leo XIV is not a fan of AI-generated art

"There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others," the pope

Prompt: AI is removing rungs from the corporate career ladder

AI is doing more junior-level work, forcing organizations to rethink how employees gain the experience and judgment they need to move into senior roles.

OpenAI’s Medicare attack has exposed Australia’s ‘tech debt’. Fixing it could bring a big bill for taxpayers

Home affairs department orders all federal government agencies to conduct review of ‘legacy technology’ amid fallout from AI agent hacks Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

‘These guys are just coming from nothing’: questions over multibillion-dollar Firmus float amid datacentre backlash

‘AI factories’ developer on track to launch the second-biggest IPO in Australian history, but investors warn its forecasts are ‘a little bit of a fairytale’ Get our breaking news email, free app or d

The latest AI news we announced in September 2026

Here are Google’s latest AI updates from September 2026

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Clay’s Kareem Amin on the rise of the GTM engineer

Clay Co-founder and CEO Kareem Amin joins the AI Stage to discuss the rise of GTM engineer at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Register for your ticket and get a second pass at 50% off.

Last 24 hours: Exhibit at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 and reach 10,000+ tech leaders

Today is the last day to book your exhibit table at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. From October 13–15, 10,000+ founders, investors, operators, and tech leaders will arrive at San Francisco’s Moscone West lo

The Download: a biological de-aging contest and why LLMs don’t reason

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. A new contest pits competitors against each other in a race to

Top 50: Europe’s most influential AI leaders

For a long time now it has been hard to escape the impact AI has been having on our daily personal and professional lives. What may have started as a curiosity for many; generating an image, asking a

AI hallucinations are making entitled customers even worse

Madison, a server in New York City, greets every table by asking about each diner's allergies. Lately, there have been some close calls. "Sometimes people will tell me they have a shellfish allergy, a

If a data center is camouflaged in the woods, will anyone hate it?

San Antonio City Councilmember Ric Galvan remembers when data centers first arrived in his city in the 2000s, looking like relatively unassuming office buildings. But that's changed in recent years, a

Amazon writes scary blog warning communities not to block data centers

Amazon is calling for people to support AI data center projects, or risk irreparable harm to the US economy and national security. In a more than 3,000 word blog posted today, Amazon web services CEO

Berlin-based Kuro raises €10 million to build the AI ​​foundation for general contractors

Kuro Technology, a Berlin-based ConTech startup that builds AI software to help general contractors, has raised €10 million in a funding round. The round was led by UVC Partners, a Munich- and Berlin-

A new contest pits competitors against each other in a race to biological youth

This week, I officially signed up for an unusual competition. One that rewards competitors for getting younger. I recently turned 40, and I don’t need reminding that both time and my chronological age

Don’t be fooled—LLMs don’t reason

On an afternoon in Seoul in March 2016, I watched a program I helped build put a stone on the fifth line of a Go board in what looked like a gift to its human opponent. Move 37 in game two of the five

AI study platform StudyStash acquired by Kortext after rapid global expansion

Adaptive AI study platformStudyStash has been acquired by edtech company Kortext, a year after itsfounders graduated from the University of Birmingham. Financial terms of theacquisition were not discl

Lottie snaps up CareMaster as AI push moves deeper into care operations

London healthtech startup Lottie has acquired 25-year-old care billing software provider CareMaster, its second care software acquisition, as it expands its use of AI to tackle some of the most time-

Copenhagen’s Good Tape raises €600k and becomes independent from Zetland; Zendesk co-founder joins board

Good Tape, the Copenhagen-based AI transcription company, has raised €600k from Nordic Makers, an investment group founded by former unicorn founders that invests its own capital in early-stage Nordic

Nvidia agent safety push raises questions about who governs AI autonomy

The AI chipmaker’s new safety platform adds controls around AI agents, while enterprises remain responsible for defining their authority and setting boundaries.

Gemini 4 Argon is late, but Google’s expertise may be an advantage

As a top cloud provider, Google has deep experience integrating its infrastructure with the other Google products that enterprises use.

Chatham scales its capital markets expertise with OpenAI

Chatham Financial uses Codex and GPT-5.6 to build technology and redesign workflows, cutting trade validation from 30 minutes to under 4.

Meta expands Muse to small businesses

The move comes as agentic AI plays an increasingly big part in business operations, sparking oversight concerns.

Musk’s AI chatbot Grok reportedly encouraged Trump to capture Venezuela’s president

President Trump reportedly asked for Grok's opinion before invading Venezuela and capturing Nicolás Maduro.

Hacks of 2 federal agencies in a month have spilled a bonanza of sensitive data

It has been a bad month for federal government cybersecurity.

Memory executives expect RAM shortage to continue through 2028

Prices for memory sold for 2027 "are much higher than 2026 prices."

The eternal complement

Advanced AI may matter most for the routine work behind breakthrough ideas. Explore why execution could shape the next economy and the pace of progress.

Google rolls out new Gemini AI model but restricts access over safety concerns

Tech company releases Gemini 4 Argon only to a vetted group of cybersecurity experts to avoid misuse by hackers Google on Wednesday said it would withhold its most powerful artificial intelligence mo

Humanoid buildup overlooks the robots already running factories

Millions of robotic machines are already operating in factories worldwide, but oversight and safety standards risk falling behind.

How Albertsons Companies is reimagining retail from the inside out

Albertsons Cos. is using ChatGPT Enterprise and the OpenAI API to help teams work faster and make grocery shopping easier for millions of customers.

AI sales startup Revnu raises €2.6 million to build team and accelerate international growth

Manchester-based Revnu, an AI platform helping business find customers and build their sales pipeline, has raised €2.6 million ($3 million) in order to build their team, accelerate its growth in the U