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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

Tel Aviv- and NYC-based Datafy, which offers an autonomous cloud storage optimization service, raised a $20M seed led by Bessemer Venture Partners  —  The autonomous cloud storage optimization startup Datafy Inc. says it's ready to help enterprises pounce on some massive cost savings after closing on $20 million in seed funding.

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.

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 …

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 …

YouTube will remove its Trending page and Trending Now list in favor of category-specific charts, says it better aligns with the way content is discovered now  —  YouTube is removing its Trending page and Trending Now list in favor of category-specific charts, the company announced on Thursday.