Recent AI news and official updates

TechCrunch AI published: As Cognition reaches $492 million in annualized revenue run rate, it more than doubled its valuation in eight months, it says.

TechCrunch AI published: ElevenLabs' new model will let users regenerate a section of a song without affecting the rest of the track.

TechCrunch AI published: China's AI boom is producing world-class talent, and Beijing is increasingly reluctant to let them go elsewhere.

TechCrunch AI published: YouTube will now automatically label videos that use significant photorealistic AI, instead of relying solely on creators to disclose AI-generated content themselves. It's also making AI labels more prominent.

TechCrunch AI published: While these agents would be able to read and analyze users' portfolios to come up with trading strategies and suggest investments, they'll only be able to access the pre-loaded balance in the dedicated wallet to place orders.

TechCrunch AI published: "CEOs are uniquely prone to AI psychosis," Box CEO Aaron Levie opines. Maybe that explains the almost religious belief in AI productivity gains.

MIT Technology Review published: This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Stay on top of what’s going on in AI this summer Here at MIT Technology Review, we understand exactly how relentless the pace of news from the world of artificial intelligence…

Simon Willison's AI Notes published: PICARD: Data, shields up DATA: Brilliant! Shields can reduce damage we sustain. Not immunity. Not hubris. Just prudence. It's not precaution—it's strategy. [camera shakes] WORF: HULL BREACHES ON NINE DECKS DATA: Here's what happened: you told me to raise shields, and I didn't — Kyle Ferrana , @KyleTrainEmoji Tags: ai , llms , coding-agents , ai-misuse

Simon Willison's AI Notes published: The pressure Daniel Stenberg on the unprecedented level of pressure the curl team are facing right now thanks to the deluge of (credible) AI-assisted security issues being reported. The rate of incoming security reports is 4-5 times higher than it was in 2024 and double the speed of 2025 -- meaning that on average we now get more than one report per day . The quality is way higher than ever before. The reports are typically very detailed and long. [...] For the first time in my life, my wife voiced concerns about my work hours and my imbalanced work/life situation. I work more than I’ve done before, but the flood keeps coming. [...] This is a never-before seen or experienced pressure on the curl project and its security team members. An avalanche of high priority work that trumps all other things in the project that is primarily mental because we certainly could ignore them all if we wanted, but we feel a responsibility, we have a conscience and we are proud about our work. The good news is that curl is a very solid piece of software, so the vulnerabilities people are finding tend not to be of high severity: What is also a good trend: almost no one finds terrible vulnerabilities. All vulnerabilities found the last few years in curl have all been deemed severity LOW or MEDIUM. I'm not saying there won't be any more HIGH ever, but at least they are rare. The most recent severity high curl CVE was published in October 2023. Via Lobste.rs Tags: curl , security , ai , generative-ai , llms , daniel-stenberg , ai-ethics , ai-security-research

TechCrunch AI published: Google overhauled Search at I/O 2026, replacing blue links with AI agents. The backlash has been swift. DuckDuckGo app installs spiked 30% as users seek a way out.

TechCrunch AI published: OpenRouter has raised a $113 million Series B led by CapitalG. Its 5x growth in usage over six months indicates the multi-AI-model future is here.

TechCrunch AI published: Human Archive, a startup founded by UC Berkeley and Stanford researchers, is paying gig workers in India to wear camera-equipped caps and sensor devices to collect the real-world physical training data that AI and robotics labs are racing to acquire.

Simon Willison's AI Notes published: Microsoft Copilot Cowork Exfiltrates Files The biggest challenge in designing agentic systems continues to be preventing them from enabling attackers to exfiltrate data. In this case Microsoft Copilot Cowork (yes, that's a real product name ) was allowing agents to send emails to the user's own inbox without approval... but those messages were then displayed in a way that could leak data to an attacker via rendered images: Because these messages can contain external images that trigger network requests to external websites, data can be exfiltrated when a user opens a compromised message sent by the agent. Since OneDrive can create pre-authenticated download links, a successful prompt injection could cause those links to be leaked, allowing files to be downloaded by the attacker. Via Hacker News Tags: microsoft , security , ai , prompt-injection , generative-ai , llms , exfiltration-attacks , lethal-trifecta

Simon Willison's AI Notes published: A lot of the emails I get from founders are now written in a hard-hitting journalistic style. I know they're written by AI, because no founder ever wrote this way before. And once you realize something is written by AI, it's hard not to ignore it. I have never knowingly finished reading an email signed by a human but written by AI. It feels like being lied to, and who would stand for that? [ ... ] It makes me think less of the author. It means they can't write well unaided (or feel they can't), and that they're trying to trick me. It's not impressive to use AI to write stuff for you; any teenager can do that. — Paul Graham Tags: paul-graham , writing , ai , generative-ai , llms , ai-misuse

TechCrunch AI published: For years, UMG has pushed platforms, streaming services, and AI companies to implement stricter content moderation policies.

MIT Technology Review published: Amid rapidly growing adoption of enterprise-level AI agents, there’s a disconnect emerging between ambition and execution. Although 85% of organizations say they want to be agentic within the next three years, 76% say their current operations and infrastructure can’t support that change. They cite a lack of readiness across people, processes, and workflows. The sticky…

MIT Technology Review published: This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. A reality check on the AI jobs hysteria Despite the growing hysteria over AI’s threat to white-collar jobs, there’s still scant evidence that the technology has had a large-scale impact on…

MIT Technology Review published: Haven’t you heard? White-collar jobs are going away, decimated by AI. Waves of layoffs in the tech sector (most recently at Coinbase and Meta and Cisco) are said to presage what will soon come for all of us knowledge workers. But before you quit your job as a software developer or financial analyst—or tech journalist—and…

MIT Technology Review published: Artificial intelligence has not so far produced a clean story of mass unemployment. Aggregate employment in developed countries remains broadly stable, and recent assessments have found limited evidence that AI has shifted the headline numbers. But a troubling change may be hiding beneath the surface: the quiet weakening of the first rung of the career…

Simon Willison's AI Notes published: I cannot believe I'm saying this, but getting the literal Pope to canonize your product's specific technical limitations as a spiritual treatise is the single greatest act of vendor lobbying I have ever seen. — Corey Quinn , on Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah's influence on Magnifica Humanitas Tags: ai , anthropic , ai-ethics , corey-quinn