News and Analysis from the Era of Large Language Models
Elon Musk's AI company xAI announced an agreement with the Pentagon to integrate its Grok AI models into the military's GenAI.mil platform, with deployment targeted for early 2026. The platform will enable 3 million military and civilian employees of the Department of War (formerly Department
Waymo is testing Google's Gemini AI chatbot in its robotaxis to provide an AI assistant that accompanies riders and answers their queries, according to findings by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong. Wong discovered the complete system prompt for the unreleased Gemini integration whilst examining Waymo's mobile
Meta Platforms announced on 30th of December that it has acquired Manus, a Singapore-based developer of general-purpose AI agents, in a deal valued at more than $2 billion. Manus, founded in China before relocating to Singapore, introduced its first AI agent in March this year, which can execute complex tasks
Road, bridge, and sewer infrastructure improvements face delays as the AI data centre construction boom diverts resources from the construction market. Private spending on data centre construction reached an annualised run rate exceeding $41 billion, roughly matching state and local government spending on transportation construction, according to Census Bureau data.
The Washington Post introduced Your Personal Podcast, an AI-powered customisable audio briefing available to registered users on its mobile app, developed through a multi-year agreement with AI voice-generating software company Eleven Labs. In three rounds of internal testing, between 68% and 84% of scripts generated by the feature failed a
The University of Cambridge launched the Cambridge Online Trust and Safety Index on 11th December, exposing a thriving underground market where fake social media account verifications can be purchased for as little as 8 cents. The index allows the global community to monitor real-time market data for the online manipulation
The UK and Germany are emerging as key hubs for a new wave of AI defence startups, as Europe scrambles to rearm amid rising geopolitical tensions. Investors have funnelled a record $4.3 billion into the sector since the start of 2022, nearly four times the funds deployed in the
Perplexity and Harvard researchers have published the first large-scale study examining real-world AI agent usage, analysing hundreds of millions of queries from Perplexity AI's browser and digital assistant, Comet, which launched in July 2025. The research found that 36 per cent of all tasks assigned to AI agents
On 11th December 2025, The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reached an agreement for Disney to become the first major content licensing partner on Sora, OpenAI's short-form video generator. Disney will make a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI and receive warrants to purchase additional equity, whilst the
On 9 December 2025, the European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation into Google regarding its use of online content for AI purposes, marking the latest regulatory action against U.S. tech giants. The Commission is examining whether Google breached EU competition rules by using content from web publishers and
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on 11th December 2025 that seeks to limit the ability of states to regulate artificial intelligence whilst attempting to thwart some existing state laws. The order aims to sustain and enhance the United States' global AI dominance through a minimally burdensome national
On 11th December 2025, global energy technology company SLB signed a strategic collaboration agreement with Shell to develop digital and AI solutions that drive measurable performance and efficiency gains across upstream operations. The collaboration aims to develop agentic AI-powered solutions that will accelerate and amplify the capabilities of technical experts
