NerdNews

Nvidia's DLSS 5 uses generative AI to enhance game graphics, but sparks controversy over potential loss of artistic control. The tech can add lighting, materials, and subtle visual touches, but some argue it overrides existing art direction.

The 2026 State of Secrets Sprawl report reveals a significant increase in secrets leaks, with 28.65 million new hardcoded secrets added to public GitHub commits in 2025. AI-assisted coding has accelerated the problem, with AI service secrets increasing by 81% year over year. The report highlights the need for improved secrets management and non-human identity governance to prevent secrets sprawl.

Mistral, a French AI startup, has announced Mistral Forge, a platform that allows enterprises to build custom AI models trained on their own data. This move is aimed at giving companies more control over their data and AI systems, and is seen as a key differentiator for Mistral in the enterprise AI space. Forge enables companies to train models from scratch, which could address limitations of common approaches and provide better handling of non-English or domain-specific data.

Google's Personal Intelligence feature, which connects across Google ecosystem to provide tailored responses, is now available to all US users. The feature can be used in AI Mode in Search, the Gemini app, and Gemini in Chrome, and is available for free-tier users.

Apple announced several new products, including the iPhone 17e, iPad Air M4, MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max, M5 MacBook Air, MacBook Neo, AirPods Max 2, and Studio Display. These products feature improved performance, new designs, and advanced technologies like AI and wireless charging.

Mistral's Leanstral is an AI code verification tool that uses formal code verification to reduce the need for human code review. It has been released with open weights and is available as an agent mode within Mistral Vibe and via a free API endpoint. Leanstral has been shown to outperform larger open source rivals while being more cost-effective.

Agentic AI changes traditional workload boundaries, requiring an AI and data constitution with converged capabilities. Sovereign infrastructure will decide the winners, with platforms needing to support operational execution, high-concurrency analytics, and AI reasoning.

The GlassWorm supply-chain campaign has returned, targeting hundreds of packages, repositories, and extensions on GitHub, npm, and VSCode/OpenVSX. Researchers have identified 433 compromised components, with evidence pointing to a single threat actor. The malware uses invisible Unicode characters to hide malicious code, stealing cryptocurrency wallet data, credentials, and access tokens.

Sears' AI chatbot, Samantha, had its conversations with customers exposed online, including personal details and contact information, due to unsecured databases. The exposure included 3.7 million chat logs and 1.4 million audio files, which could be used for phishing attacks and other malicious activities. The issue was discovered by security researcher Jeremiah Fowler and has since been secured by Sears' parent company, Transformco.

Cellebrite's AI-powered tools enable rapid analysis of data from seized mobile phones and computers, allowing investigators to identify links between data sets, map locations, and construct timelines. The technology can analyze data in near-real-time, without waiting for forensic experts to submit reports, and can even identify the owners of mobile devices and summarize text messages.

Everpure's Evergreen One for AI brings Exa flash and GPU-based service-level agreements, providing a performance-backed consumption model for artificial intelligence. The company also announced the beta release of its Datastream automated AI pipeline appliance, which integrates Nvidia GPUs with Everpure storage to tackle the 'data readiness' challenge.

Oracle introduces Project Detroit, aiming to improve interoperability between Java, JavaScript, and Python. The project embeds V8 and CPython runtimes directly into the JVM, promising better performance and security. This move is part of Oracle's efforts to position Java as a viable option in the era of AI and machine learning.

World, co-founded by Sam Altman, has released AgentKit, a tool to verify humans behind AI shopping agents. AgentKit uses World ID, derived from an Orb scan, to integrate with the x402 protocol, allowing websites to verify a real human is behind an agent's purchasing decisions.

Gamma, a platform for AI-powered presentations and websites, has introduced Gamma Imagine, an AI image-generation product to create marketing assets, competing with Canva and Adobe. The tool uses text prompts to generate brand-specific assets like interactive charts, visualizations, and social graphics, and integrates with tools like ChatGPT and Zapier.

Gecko Robotics has signed a 5-year IDIQ deal with the US Navy to use its robots and sensors for inspecting and maintaining the Navy's fleet of ships, with an initial award of $54M and a ceiling of $71M. The deal aims to help the Navy reach its goal of 80% ship readiness by 2027 and reduce maintenance costs.

A security flaw in AWS Bedrock Code Interpreter allows attackers to exfiltrate sensitive data using DNS queries, despite network restrictions. The flaw is considered intended functionality by AWS, highlighting the need for strict permission boundaries and network controls.

Microsoft has stopped automatically installing the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on Windows devices with Microsoft 365 desktop client apps. The app integrates AI-powered Copilot assistant with Microsoft 365 suite apps. The forced rollout began in December but has been temporarily disabled.

The UK government has committed to investing £1bn over the next four years to enable the country to deliver quantum computing at scale. The funding will support breakthroughs in sensing and navigation, and the skills and infrastructure needed to bring these technologies to market. A procurement programme, ProQure, will also be rolled out to identify promising companies and deliver state-of-the-art prototypes for evaluation.

Google is working with Michigan utility DTE to add 2.7 gigawatts of new resources, including solar power, energy storage, and clean resources, to power a new data center in suburban Detroit. The deal includes 1.6 gigawatts of solar power, 400 megawatts of four-hour energy storage, and 50 megawatts of long-duration energy storage.

The EU has sanctioned Emennet Pasargad, an Iranian company, for its involvement in various high-profile cyberattacks, including interference with US elections and attacks on the subscribers of Charlie Hebdo. The company is also responsible for compromising the subscriber base of Charlie Hebdo and offering it for sale on the dark web. Additionally, the EU has sanctioned two Chinese organizations and two individuals associated with them for their role in cyberattacks.