Techmeme
February 9, 2026, 7:30 AM

Top News

Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
A look at the 2026 Super Bowl ads from Anthropic, Amazon, OpenAI, and others, as AI continued to take center stage in ad creations and AI product promotion  —  Following last year's trend of showcasing AI in multimillion-dollar ad spots, the 2026 Super Bowl advertisements took it a step further …
Bloomberg:
The European Commission sends a statement of objections to Meta over WhatsApp blocking rival AI chatbots, warning it will take measures to avoid “serious” harm  —  Meta Platforms Inc. was given a European Union warning over policies that block the use of rival Artificial Intelligence assistants …
Brayden Lindrea / Cointelegraph:
Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek launches ai.com during the Super Bowl and opens up username handle registration to let users get a private, personalized AI agent  —  Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek's goal with ai.com is to build “a decentralized network of autonomous, self-improving AI agents …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
YouTube launches a Premium paywall for song lyrics on YouTube Music, after testing it in recent months; users get five free lyrics before they have to subscribe  —  After testing in recent months, YouTube Music looks to be widely rolling out a Premium paywall for lyrics.
Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
Moltbook was peak AI theater, offering less of a glimpse at the future and more of a mirror simply reflecting society's current obsession with AI  —  For a few days this week the hottest new hangout on the internet was a vibe-coded Reddit clone called Moltbook, which billed itself as a social network for bots.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Washington Post:
How the US government is adopting AI: NASA reports 420 AI use cases in 2025, up from 18 in 2024, HHS reports 398, Energy 325, DOJ 295, Interior 234, and DHS 205  —  The White House is accelerating AI adoption across government, embedding the technology in policing, health care, defense and science.
Wall Street Journal:
A profile of Amanda Askell, Anthropic's resident philosopher, who is learning Claude's reasoning patterns in a bid to endow it with a sense of morality  —  Anthropic has entrusted Amanda Askell to endow its chatbot, Claude, with a sense of right and wrong.  —  Amanda Askell knew from the age of 14 that she wanted to teach philosophy.
Alexandra Alter / New York Times:
How AI is impacting the romance novel industry, with authors failing to disclose AI use and using pen names more, bogging down the publishing ecosystem  —  The romance industry, always at the vanguard of technological change, is rapidly adapting to A.I. Not everyone is on board.
Siddhant Khare:
A software engineer explains “AI fatigue”, compounded by a FOMO treadmill of using AI labs' latest tools and “thinking atrophy”, alongside boosted productivity  —  You're using AI to be more productive.  So why are you more exhausted than ever?  The paradox every engineer needs to confront.
Juro Osawa / The Information:
ByteDance releases Seedance 2.0, an update to its AI video generation model that can make multi-shot scenes, available to select Jimeng and Jianying users  —  ByteDance's new AI video generation model Seedance 2.0, unveiled over the weekend, is generating a lot of buzz on social media, with some calling it a game changer.

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Featured Podcasts

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"We're in a Race Against Time," Joe Kahn on Running the New York Times in the Age of AI Slop
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More News

Dominic Chopping / Wall Street Journal:

Earlier Picks

Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
Bloomberg:
George Hammond / Financial Times: