NerdNews

Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok reportedly advised President Trump to capture Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, after a secret meeting in December 2025. Grok told Trump that many Venezuelans would celebrate Maduro's downfall, which later happened after the US invasion. The Pentagon has also used Grok to deploy and strike targets during the Iran War.

Researchers studied the writing habits of AI models, including Opus 5.5 and Astra, to identify telltale phrases and constructions. They found that each model has its own unique quirks, such as overusing certain words or phrases, and that these tells can be used to detect AI-generated content.

OpenAI has severed ties with three members of its safety team after they allegedly mishandled sensitive company information. The company confirmed the news, stating that the individuals violated policies on accessing and handling sensitive information, breaking the trust essential to their work.

The panel discusses how production operations are evolving with AI, using automation and new architectural practices to build more understandable systems, and how AI is reshaping software delivery and changing the deterministic nature of production applications.

Google's Gemini 4 Argon is a advanced AI model designed for deep reasoning and complex tasks, comparable to OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra and Anthropic's Opus, with lower hallucination rates and costs. It excels in visual understanding, cybersecurity defense, and can analyze charts, videos, and documents. Argon is available for introductory prices and will be rolled out to developers, enterprises, and general users.

Shopify introduces Canvas, a tool that lets merchants build online stores by chatting with AI. Canvas uses Shopify's AI agent, Sidekick, to create and customize sites in real-time, making it easier for non-technical users to build and manage their online stores.

Airbnb's CEO Brian Chesky discusses the company's approach to AI, the need for a new operating system for AI agents, and the potential for 'multiplayer' AI interfaces. Chesky believes that current chatbot interfaces are not suitable for e-commerce and that a more robust software infrastructure is needed to support consumer AI agents.

Microsoft is repositioning Copilot as the 'OS for work', integrating coding and agent capabilities, and bringing Office into Copilot. This move aims to make Copilot a central platform for work, leveraging AI to change how people work, similar to how Microsoft Office did in the past.

The Bank of England's governor, Andy Bailey, has warned investors that the return on investment in AI may take longer than expected. He stated that while AI has the potential to contribute significantly to the UK and world economy, its benefits may not be as great as financial markets expect, and it could take over five years to reap the financial benefits. Analyst firm Gartner projected that AI capital investment would not achieve a return on invested capital of 12% until 2032 at the earliest.

Chelsea Troy discusses the importance of slowing down to develop software engineering skills, using techniques like spaced repetition and format diversification, and understanding how systems work to effectively use tools and AI.

Amazon Web Services has released an open-source decision model called Strands Decider 2B, inspired by TypeSafe’s Jev. The model is designed to deliver calibrated choices and confidence scores, making it suitable for automating workflows. It is built on the 'torso' of an LLM, Qwen3.5-2B, and is fully open-sourced, available now, and small enough to run locally.

Legato's AI hearing glasses, called Legato Frames, integrate hearing-assistance technology into eyewear frames, using AI to distinguish voices from background noise and amplify voices. The glasses are available for purchase starting at $999 and offer 10-12 hours of battery life.

Satlyt, founded by a former Google and SpaceX product manager, has raised $8M to develop software for running AI models on satellites. The company aims to create a shared computing system in orbit, allowing satellites to share workloads and generate revenue. Satlyt's software has already been flown on two demonstration missions and is set to launch on a SpaceX rocket alongside Google's space data center effort.

A federal judge has dismissed antitrust lawsuits filed by Chegg and Rolling Stone's parent company, Penske Media Corporation, which accused Google of driving away web traffic with its AI-powered search features. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs' claims don't stand up to antitrust law, stating that an expectation of search traffic is not an agreement and is simply how a general search engine works.

Qualcomm has announced an early developer preview of Linux running on its upcoming Snapdragon X2 Series laptop processors, aiming to resolve software friction and accelerate upstream ARM laptops. The preview establishes a functional Debian 13 reference environment and targets kernel contributors, toolchain developers, and distribution maintainers.

Cloudflare plans to issue quantum-safe TLS certificates using Merkle Tree Certificates, which can withstand attacks from quantum computers. This move is part of a major overhaul of the web public key infrastructure to make website encryption and authentication safe for the post-quantum age.

A new California law requires autonomous vehicle companies to provide local support for first responders and imposes fines if a robotaxi blocks them for over 30 minutes. Companies like Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox must comply with the law, which aims to improve safety and response times.

Fervo Energy's Cape Station power plant is the world's first enhanced geothermal power plant, completed in just 23 months. It has started selling electricity to the grid and has the potential to generate up to 4 gigawatts of electricity. The project is a significant milestone in the development of geothermal energy and could provide a new source of renewable energy for power-hungry data centers.

The Pentagon's human resources management system was breached, resulting in the theft of data from nearly 3 million people, including Social Security numbers, names, and military personnel information. The breach occurred between October 2025 and July 2026 due to a vulnerability in the system's file-sharing capabilities.

OpenAI's ChatGPT has introduced a Virtual Try On feature, allowing users to upload photos and see themselves in various clothes. The feature uses the new ChatGPT Images 2.5 model and can be accessed anywhere a product listing for clothing appears in a chat. Users can save products they like to their Library in the app for later reference.