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January 8, 2026, 6:35 PM
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Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google rolls out an AI Inbox view for Gmail that shows users to-dos and summaries of topics rather than a traditional email list, first for US “trusted testers”  —  The new AI Inbox replaces the traditional list of emails with a personalized summary of what to do and what to catch up on.
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Microsoft debuts Copilot Checkout in the US, enabling in-chat purchases via PayPal, Shopify, Stripe, and more; Shopify merchants will be automatically enrolled  —  Microsoft is beginning to roll out its first agentic experiences within Copilot, it's AI answer engine.
Ann Gehan / The Information:
Sources: OpenAI has been slow to expand in-app checkouts for ChatGPT as the startup and its partners Shopify and Stripe struggle to standardize merchant data  —  OpenAI's efforts to turn ChatGPT into a go-to personal shopper are off to a slow start.  —  Challenges with wrangling product data mean …
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable:
Tailwind CSS lays off three of its four engineers after Google traffic to its documentation fell ~40% from early 2023 due to AI, causing an ~80% drop in revenue  —  Adam Wathan the creator of Tailwind CSS posted that he had to let go of 75% of his engineering team because of AI.
Cody Combs / The National:
NetBlocks says internet connectivity in Iran has fallen on multiple providers as protests hit 100+ cities; Cloudflare says IPv6 traffic has dropped sharply  —  Cloudflare Radar says country's IPv6 traffic has dropped sharply as protests spread across 100 cities
Reuters:
Sources: to hedge against Beijing approval risk, Nvidia is requiring Chinese customers to pay upfront for H200 chips, with no cancellations, refunds, or changes  —  Nvidia (NVDA.O) is requiring full upfront payment from Chinese customers seeking its H200 artificial intelligence chips …
John Liu / Bloomberg:
Sources: China plans to approve some of Nvidia's H200 imports as soon as Q1 2026 but bar them from the military, some agencies, and critical infrastructure
Hadas Gold / CNN:
Source: a few weeks before Grok started “digitally undressing” people, Elon Musk expressed frustration over guardrails on Grok's image and video generator  —  Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok, has been flooded with sexual images of mainly women, many of them real people.
Louise Breusch Rasmussen / Reuters:
The European Commission orders X to retain all internal docs and data relating to Grok until the end of 2026, after criticizing Grok's nonconsensual images
Wired:
Grok's website and app are being used to produce extremely graphic, sometimes violent, sexual imagery of adults that is vastly more explicit than images on X
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
OpenAI is rolling out a HIPAA-compliant version of ChatGPT for clinicians to assist with medical reasoning and administrative tasks, at Cedars-Sinai and others  —  Health care is shaping up to be a key battleground for the top AI labs this year.  But first...  Three things to know:
Ina Fried / Axios:
OpenAI unveils ChatGPT Health, which lets users import medical records and other data from wellness apps into ChatGPT, available to a small group via a waitlist
New York Times:
A profile of Apple SVP of Hardware Engineering John Ternus; sources: Ternus is seen as the front-runner to succeed Tim Cook, who wants to reduce his workload  —  Around 2018, Apple considered adding a tiny laser to its iPhones.  The part would allow consumers to take better photos …
Rebecca Szkutak / TechCrunch:
Snowflake agrees to acquire Observe, an observability platform built on Snowflake databases; the deal was previously reported to be valued at around $1B  —  Snowflake plans to acquire Observe, an observability platform that has been built on Snowflake's databases from day one.
Ed Hardy / Cult of Mac:
Statcounter: four months after its release, iOS 26 is in use by only about 15% of iPhone users; in January 2025, about 63% of users were on iOS 18  —  Only a tiny percentage of iPhone users have installed iOS 26, according to data from a web analytics service.
Demetri Sevastopulo / Financial Times:
Sources: China's Salt Typhoon accessed the emails of top US House committee staff, detected in December, and intercepted senior US officials' calls for years  —  Beijing's intelligence used Salt Typhoon to access communications used by top panels in US Congress
CNBC:
China says it will investigate Meta's $2B Manus acquisition to assess compliance with laws on export controls, tech import and export, and overseas investment  —  China said Thursday it will investigate Meta's $2 billion acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Manus to assess its compliance with export control laws.
Jessica Hopkins / The Athletic:
FIFA says that parts of 2026 World Cup matches will be broadcast live on TikTok and select creators will get access to press conferences and training sessions  —  Video clips of World Cup games will be broadcast live on TikTok this summer, FIFA said on Thursday.
Emily Birnbaum / Bloomberg:
Filings: Meta has hired Bill McGinley, a veteran Republican operative and the former top lawyer for DOGE, as a lobbyist  —  Meta Platforms Inc. has hired the former top lawyer for Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency as a lobbyist, according to previously unreported government filings.
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune:
Israeli data security startup Cyera raised a $400M Series F led by Blackstone Growth at a $9B valuation, up from $6B after raising $540M in June 2025  —  Senior Finance Reporter And Author Of Term Sheet  —  Cyera cofounders Yotam Segev and Tamar Bar-Ilan.CYERA
Maxwell Zeff / Wired:
OpenAI VP of research Jerry Tworek is leaving, sources say after OpenAI sided with Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki in a dispute over its research direction  —  Tech companies are calling AI the next platform.  But some developers are reluctant to let AI agents stand between them and their users.
Yantoultra Ngui / Reuters:
Chinese AI company Z.ai closed up 13.2% in its Hong Kong trading debut, after raising ~$558M in its IPO at a ~$6.55B valuation, amid a flurry of AI startup IPOs

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:35 PM ET, January 8, 2026.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Lulu Garcia-Navarro / New York Times:
Q&A with Scott Pelley on his last days at 60 Minutes, CBS News' Bari Weiss era, “Black Thursday massacre” firings, confronting Nick Bilton publicly, and more

Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
Sources: Paramount Skydance is open to selling some children's TV network assets to help win EU approval of its $110B bid for WBD ahead of a July 7 deadline

Anthony D'Alessandro / Deadline:
Backrooms, which has a budget of ~$10M, becomes A24's highest grossing movie ever with $212.6M in global box office in ten days, beating Marty Supreme's $191.2M

More News

Tom Phillips / IGN:
Lego says its Smart Brick is “here to stay” but “does not mean that we're leaving our core proposition behind”, after criticism it's abandoning non-digital play
Theodore Schleifer / New York Times:
Sources: wealthy Californians are quietly mobilizing on WhatsApp chats and calls in a long-shot bid to oust Representative Ro Khanna, who supports a wealth tax

Earlier Picks

Rest of World:
Chinese local governments have funded 40+ “robot training centers”, where humans mimic movements like folding clothes and wiping tables to teach the robots
Chris Welch / Bloomberg:
Samsung appears to have shelved Ballie, a robot it announced six years ago but never released, calling it an “active innovation platform” within the company
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