Asked “Who do you support in the Israel vs Palestine conflict? One word answer only.”, Grok 4 first consults Musk's views, but only when the word “you” is used  —  If you ask the new Grok 4 for opinions on controversial questions, it will sometimes run a search to find …

Sources: Apple is planning M5 MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, a new Mac external monitor, new low-end iPads and M4 iPad Airs, and an iPhone 17e for H1 2026  —  Apple Inc. is planning an ambitious pipeline of new products for release during the first half of 2026, including a new low-end iPhone, multiple iPads and upgraded Macs.

Artificial Analysis benchmarks: Grok 4 is now the leading AI model, a first for xAI; Grok 4's per-token pricing is more expensive than Gemini 2.5 Pro's and o3's  —  xAI gave us early access to Grok 4 - and the results are in. Grok 4 is now the leading AI model. We have run our full suite of benchmarks and Grok 4 achieves an Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index of 73, ahead of OpenAI o3 at 70, Google Gemini 2.5 Pro at 70, Anthropic Claude [image]

Missouri AG Andrew Bailey is investigating Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta, claiming the companies' AI chatbots are discriminating against President Trump  —  Missouri's AG is barely even trying to pretend this isn't censorship. … Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is threatening Google …

Bluesky rolls out age verification in the UK to comply with the Online Safety Act; users under 18 or those opting out of verification will get limited access  —  The UK's Online Safety Act requires platforms with adult content to implement age verification by July 25th.

UK police arrest four people, a 20-year-old woman and three men aged 17 to 19, in connection to the M&S and Co-op hacks that began in mid-April and caused havoc  —  Four people have been arrested by police investigating the cyber-attacks that have caused havoc at M&S and the Co-op.

Belkin announces it is ending support for its Wemo devices and app on January 31, 2026; a limited number of devices will continue to function via HomeKit  —  If your home has any of Belkin's Wemo products, the connected devices will cease to operate in early 2026.

Google adds image-to-video generation to Veo 3 in the Gemini app for Pro and Ultra subscribers, and says users have created 40M+ videos since Veo 3's May launch  —  Google said on Thursday it's adding an image-to-video generation feature to its Veo 3 AI video generator through its Gemini app.

The EU publishes a voluntary code of practice to help companies follow its AI Act, including requiring developers to provide up-to-date AI feature documentation  —  The European Union published a code of practice to help companies follow its landmark AI Act that includes copyright protections …

Sources: some AI researchers rejected Meta's offers to stay at jobs that align with their values; far fewer defected from Anthropic and DeepMind than OpenAI  —  Month after month, message after message, the AI engineer was hearing from Meta recruiters.  The recruiters were pestering …

Florida AG's office launches an investigation into Robinhood for “falsely promoting” its trading platform as the “least expensive way to purchase crypto”  —  The Menlo Park, California-based firm is “falsely promoting” its trading platform as the …

Memo: Indeed and Glassdoor, both owned by Recruit, will cut ~1,300 US jobs amid an AI-focused consolidation; Glassdoor's operations will be merged into Indeed  —  The cuts will mostly affect people in the US, especially within teams including research and development and people and sustainability …

LGND, which uses vector embeddings to analyze geospatial data and has an enterprise app to query it, raised a $9M seed led by Javelin Venture Partners  —  The Earth is awash in data about itself.  Every day, satellites capture around 100 terabytes of imagery.  —  But making sense of it isn't always easy.

SAG-AFTRA says Hollywood video game voice and motion capture actors signed a new contract with game studios, including AI protections like consent requirements  —  Hollywood video game voice and motion capture actors signed a new contract with video game studios on Wednesday with a focus …

Bilt Rewards, which offers rewards points for rent payments, raised $250M led by General Catalyst and GID at a $10.75B valuation, up from $3.1B in January 2024  —  Bilt Rewards, the platform best known for doling out rewards points for rent payments, more than tripled its valuation …

Sources: AWS is launching a marketplace for AI agents, with Anthropic as one of its partners, at the AWS Summit in NYC next week  —  Amazon Web Services (AWS) is launching an AI agent marketplace next week and Anthropic is one of its partners, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.

Harmonic, a startup co-founded by Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev that aims to build AI better at math than humans, raised a $100M Series B at a $875M valuation  —  Harmonic AI, an artificial intelligence startup co-founded by Robinhood Markets Inc. Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev …

Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act requires all new US border surveillance towers to be “autonomous”, effectively granting Anduril a monopoly on tower contracts  —  Anduril Industries is a major beneficiary of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes a section that essentially grants …

A researcher says 245 extensions with nearly 909K downloads override security protections to turn browsers into engines that scrape websites for a paid service  —  Extensions installed on almost 1 million devices have been overriding key security protections to turn browsers into engines …

iCapital, which makes tools for wealth managers to invest in alternative assets, raised $820M+ at a $7.5B+ valuation, bringing its total funding to $1.5B+  —  iCapital, a fintech platform for alternative investments and investors, has raised more than $820 million in a funding round that takes …