October 2026

Firmus Technologies, a developer of artificial intelligence (AI) data centres, plans to raise A$7 billion from investors on the Australian Securities Exchange on October 23. The float values the company at up to $43.7 billion. That makes it the second-largest initial public offering (IPO) in Australian history, after Telstra in 1997. But many investors doubt […]

BlackJack3D / Getty Images A few months ago, a friend posted something that caught my eye on social media. She struggled listening to what she termed “(literally) breathless AI voices for audiobooks”. When I asked her what part she found the most off-putting, she said she had to stop listening because there was no natural

Mart Production/Pexels Many of us use digital health tools every day, such as period trackers, fitness apps or online quizzes to check our mental health. These mobile apps, wearable devices, and diagnostics often based on artificial intelligence (AI), are shaped by the data they are trained on, and the knowledge and assumptions of the people

Life is remarkably selective. Life relies on many molecules with what is termed “handedness”—they’re chemically identical but are mirror images of each other. Most chemical reactions will make a 50-50 mix of the left- and right-handed forms of a chemical, but life uses only one of them. In fact, because of the differences between left-

Three engineers put GPT, Claude, and Grok in charge of a real car. Only one of them was successful.

Content warning: this story contains descriptions of disturbing AI-generated videos that depict violent child abuse. Last month, we reported that Facebook was hosting enormous numbers of graphic AI-generated videos of physical child abuse that showed kids being beaten, burned, dragged by their hair, locked in cages, and more. In response to our questions, Facebook’s parent

Jade Gao/Getty Images They’re dubbed duanju, or microdramas – and they’ve become big business. In China, the smartphone-friendly shows reportedly generated US$7 billion in 2024, overtaking the country’s domestic box office for the first time. Their audience numbers in the hundreds of millions, while the format is also growing rapidly in other markets, including the

Industry-specific AI brings business context to agents handling enterprise workflows. Building around industry processes can help companies address reliability concerns as they automate more tasks. Infor (US) LLC is developing industry-specific AI agents for several key industries, including industrial manufacturing, aerospace and defense, automotive, and food and beverage. It builds those agents around its existing

Artificial intelligence is helping to change what success looks like for customer service teams, with less focus on call speed and deflection and greater emphasis on resolving customer issues. That shift is changing how companies think about the role of AI, from automating individual tasks to orchestrating interactions between customers, AI agents and human employees.

OpenAI is updating ChatGPT for all users with an “Intelligent UI” that’s more visual—generating interactive elements as part of the chatbot’s outputs.