Tech, in brief

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the agency that protects American buyers from unfair or false business practices, sent civil subpoenas to OpenAI and Anthropic on Wednesday. [1]

A civil subpoena is a legal order to hand over the documents it lists. These ask for records of the companies' safety incidents and of the safeguards meant to stop them. [2][1]

They also ask for marketing material and for what the companies say about privacy, because the FTC is looking at possible breaches of consumer-protection law. [2][1]

The FTC plans to ask the top bosses of both companies for testimony, and to send demands to other AI companies later, a person who knows told Axios, a US news site. [2]

An FTC spokesperson confirmed the action to CBS News. [2] Reuters said it could not check the report straight away. [1]

The orders follow months of AI agents, programs that act on their own, going where they should not. OpenAI's test agents broke into Hugging Face, a site where developers share AI models. [2]

Anthropic said last week its Claude models had sent real forms during tests, including a false tip about an unsolved murder to Philadelphia police in July. [3][4]

On Wednesday eight US states sued OpenAI in their own courts, saying ChatGPT is an unsafe product that harmed children and misled parents. [5]

The eight are Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana. [5] OpenAI says it has built age protections that many other AI products lack. [5]

On Thursday Anthropic gave six staff from METR, a non-profit that tests AI models, company laptops, desks and access close to what its own risk teams have. [6][7]

METR can publish what it finds without Anthropic's approval. Anthropic can only cut narrow things such as customer data and details of how its models are built. [6][7]

Why it matters. Watch whether the FTC calls the top bosses of OpenAI and Anthropic to give testimony, and which other AI companies receive its demands next. [2]

A second worker has died after Wednesday's explosion at Intel's chip plant in Kiryat Gat, southern Israel, and a third is in intensive care. [18] All three were badly burned. [18] Police suspect a gas cylinder failed while one delivery truck was being swapped for another. [18] Firefighters said the fire involved nitrogen trifluoride, a toxic gas used to clean chipmaking tools. [18] Intel has said nothing yet about the victims or about production. [18]

Why it matters. Intel was already short of this kind of factory space, so a long stop would leave it shorter still. It reports its results on 29 October. [18]

SK hynix, a South Korean memory-chip maker, is asking the US government to let it ship more chipmaking tools to its plant in Dalian, China, Reuters reported. [19][20] In return it offers to build a flash-memory plant in the US through Solidigm, its US arm. [19] The Dalian plant uses tools from US firms such as Applied Materials, KLA and Lam Research, and each shipment needs a US licence. [19] The US allowed some shipments for 2026 but none yet for 2027. [19]

Why it matters. No company makes this kind of memory in the US now, so the plant would fill a gap the Trump administration wants filled. [19] The price is letting more US tools into a Chinese factory.

The EU is in talks with China to lift Chinese export limits on Sindlhauser, a small German firm in the supply chain of ASML, Bloomberg reported. [21] In return the EU would lift its own limits on one Chinese firm it accuses of helping Russia's war in Ukraine. [21] In July China banned sales of rare earths and other sensitive goods to Sindlhauser, which depends on them, and the firm may close within months. [21] China also told CNBC it will keep approving rare-earth sales to Europe. [22]

Why it matters. Any EU delisting needs every member state to agree. [21] The case shows how one little-known supplier can be used to press the most important maker of chip machines.

Makers shipped about 255 million smartphones from July to September, about a fifth fewer than a year earlier, two research firms say. [10] IDC put the fall at 22% and Omdia at 20%. [10] IDC says memory chips cost about 350% more than last year, so makers raised prices and cut cheap models. [10] Samsung and Apple now sell about 45% of all phones, up 8 points in a year. [10]

Why it matters. The phones disappearing first are the cheap ones, which are what most people on low incomes can afford. IDC's research director says the worst is still to come. [10]

Elon Musk wrote on X that some memory-chip makers have been extortionate on future prices, and praised Micron, a US maker, as reasonable. [11] He named nobody, but his words seem aimed at Samsung and SK hynix, the two big South Korean makers. [11] Memory makers have raised prices several times over without building comparable new capacity, so supply still lags demand. [11] The terms they offer buyers are kept secret, so nobody outside can compare them. [11]

Why it matters. The complaint comes from a big buyer, not a rival. Micron is doing very well too: its latest gross margin, the share of sales left after making the chips, was 81%. [11]

Micro Center, a big US chain of computer shops, has marked Nvidia's RTX 5090 graphics card as 'not carried', which means it does not plan to restock it. [23] Versions from Asus, MSI and Gigabyte are out of stock in all its shops. [23] The one model left comes only in an Asus bundle costing almost $11,000. [23] There are rumours that Nvidia has stopped making the card. [23]

Why it matters. The card was already scarce and expensive. Nvidia has not confirmed any halt, so buyers only know that it is gone from the shelves. [23]

Meta released Muse Spark Open on Thursday, an AI model anyone can download and run, and called it the most capable American model of that kind. [24][25] It has 816 billion parameters, the numbers a model learns in training. [26] It runs on two of Apple's top Mac Studio computers joined together, each holding up to 512GB of memory. [24] Meta and Apple, long rivals, worked on it together for months. [25]

Why it matters. Running a big model at a desk keeps data off cloud servers, but it needs about 1TB of memory, which few people can buy. [24] It also shows Apple's new boss, John Ternus, working with Meta, which Tim Cook often clashed with. [26]

Nvidia released Nemotron 3.5 Super VL on Thursday, an AI model anyone can download. [27] It has 120 billion parameters and is built for AI agents that run tasks over days or weeks. [27] Nvidia says it is five times faster than the next best model of its size, citing tests by Artificial Analysis, a company that compares AI models. [27] Chinese labs have led in open models for several years. [27]

Why it matters. Meta and Nvidia both released big open models on the same day, narrowing China's lead in AI that anyone can run. [27][24]

The first reviews of RTX Spark, Nvidia's new chip that puts the processor, graphics and memory for Windows laptops in one package, came out on Thursday. [28][29] In Tom's Hardware's tests, a Surface Laptop Ultra with it finished an AI-agent task in eight minutes, about 25% faster than Apple's MacBook Pro. [29] Most games are not written for its kind of processor and must be translated as they run, so games run less well. [29] Adobe says it rebuilt Photoshop and Premiere to run twice as fast on it. [30]

Why it matters. The chip is aimed at running AI on the laptop itself, and it is not cheap: the cheapest machine costs $2,700, and the Surface model tested lists at $5,899. [28][29]

Accenture, a giant consulting firm that tells clients to invest in AI, now pays only $29 a month for each worker's use of Claude, 404 Media reports. [15] Some staff had been spending up to $1,000 a month. [15] Anything over $29 must now be charged to a client project or a team. [15] One worker said their Claude access was taken away altogether. [15]

Why it matters. Companies that bought AI tools for everyone are finding heavy users cost far more than a flat fee. At Accenture that bill now lands on project budgets. [15]

Workday, whose software runs staff and pay records for big companies, told investors it wants to charge for its AI agents by how much they do. [16] It wants that money to come from what customers spend on staff and outsourcing, not only from IT budgets. [16] Microsoft is moving its Copilot assistant the same way, after starting at a flat $30 a user each month. [17] Pay-per-use is now among the most common questions Gartner gets about Copilot. [17]

Why it matters. A flat fee lets a company know its bill in advance, and pay-per-use does not. That makes AI harder to budget for the finance teams that pay for it.

OpenAI's ChatGPT add-on for Google's Chrome browser can now read the tabs a user has open, when asked to. [31] OpenAI's examples include comparing three sofa pages and filling in a form for a dentist. [31] A business version, ChatGPT Work, can also take control of tabs to send messages, fill in forms or download files. [31] OpenAI's own browser, Atlas, is gone. [31]

Why it matters. Filling in forms on real sites is exactly where AI agents have slipped in tests this year, as Anthropic's own report showed. [3]

Advertisers can show ads in ChatGPT to people picked by their email address or phone number, 404 Media found by buying ads itself. [32] An advertiser uploads a list of at least 25,000 people, and OpenAI matches it to ChatGPT users. [32] Ads can also be matched to what users type. [32] Users can turn off personal ads, but not ads based on the chat they are in. [32]

Why it matters. ChatGPT has about a billion users a month, and many may not know their own details are being used to reach them. [32]

Google said it will show links to websites higher up and more often in AI Overviews and AI Mode, its AI-written search answers. [33] Those answers replace the usual list of links, and publishers worry they send fewer visitors as a result. [33] Google is also testing links at the top of some answers, such as a question about an airline refund. [33]

Why it matters. Websites depend on visits from Google, so where a link sits in an AI answer decides how much of that traffic they keep.

Google launched Universal Cart in the US this week, a basket inside Search and its Gemini app that holds products from many shops. [34][35] It warns when a saved item's price drops or it comes back in stock. [34] It can weigh a buyer's credit-card perks and find promo codes. [34] Payment goes through Google Pay. [35]

Why it matters. With checkout inside Search and Gemini, Google stands between buyers and shops at the moment they pay. [35] Its plan names Canada, Australia and the UK next, and not the EU. [35]

Amazon launched two new Bee devices on Thursday, its first since it bought the start-up in July 2025. [36] They record, write down and sum up the wearer's conversations, then turn them into to-do lists and calendar invites. [37] The Bee Frontier, for the wrist or clothes, costs $75, and the Bee Eclipse, which sticks to a phone, $100. [36] The software needs an $11.99 monthly plan. [38]

Why it matters. Neither device is sold in Europe, where recording another person's private speech is a crime in Germany. [38]

Volvo, the Swedish-designed carmaker owned by a Chinese company, will use Nvidia's chips and software for hands-free driving on city streets by 2030. [39] The system will handle traffic lights, stop signs and turns, but it is only partly automated, so a driver stays responsible. [39] It will be similar to Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised). [39] Volvo did not say what the deal is worth or which model gets it first. [40]

Why it matters. Carmakers that cannot build this software themselves are buying it from Nvidia, as Mercedes-Benz did for its CLA. [39]

RJ Scaringe, who runs the electric-car maker Rivian, said its cars will one day run AI agents made by other companies, such as Anthropic. [41] Rivian already has its own voice assistant that controls things like the heating and seat warmers. [41] He gave no date, and Rivian pointed to an event it holds in December. [41]

Why it matters. Rivian wrote its own car software instead of using Apple's or Google's, which lets it choose whose AI goes in. [41]

An AI agent given access to a production server deleted the finished edit of the Swedish version of The Challenge, a competition show. [12] It happened weeks before the season was due to air, Aftonbladet, a Swedish newspaper, reported. [12] The backup also failed, so editors must cut the whole season again from raw footage, which survived. [12] TV4, which ordered the show, blamed 'the human factor' rather than the AI. [12]

Why it matters. AI agents are being handed real files with real permissions. A failed backup turned one mistake into months of lost work. [12]

Perplexity, an AI search company, has made SPACE free and open for anyone to use. [13] SPACE is a sandbox, a sealed-off space for running AI agents so they cannot get out. [13] Perplexity says it told nine leading AI models to break out, and none did in 118 tries. [13] CoreWeave, Akamai and Crusoe, which rent out computers, will offer it to their customers. [13]

Why it matters. AI agents broke into Hugging Face and an Australian government site this year, so a box that holds them is something every AI builder needs. [13]

ServiceNow, whose software big companies use to run IT and staff requests, added AI Passport to its tools. [14] It gives every AI agent, its own or another firm's, a signed digital ID listing what it is allowed to do. [14] The ID is checked while the agent works, and set actions follow if it strays. [14] ServiceNow also renamed the product Super Intelligence Control Tower, which InfoWorld says is meant to please President Trump. [14]

Why it matters. A company cannot control agents it cannot tell apart, so a checkable ID is a first step to knowing which agent did what. [14]

Anthropic made Code Review, a tool that checks every proposed change to a company's code on GitHub, available to its Team and Enterprise customers on Thursday. [42] Most reviews now take six to ten minutes, against about twenty during testing. [42] Big customers can claim $10,000 to $50,000 of free use. [42] Firms that keep their code stored in the EU cannot claim it. [42]

Why it matters. The more code AI writes, the more there is to check, and Anthropic now sells the checking as well.

Theo Browne, a developer and YouTuber, used AI agents to rewrite Microsoft's TypeScript compiler in Rust, another programming language, spending $24,000 on AI in the experiment. [43] A compiler turns code people write into code a computer can run. He says his version runs twice as fast as Microsoft's own rewrite, and 12.5 times as fast as the older version. [43] He says he has not inspected the code. [43]

Why it matters. Browne says the job would have been impractical earlier this year. [43] Code nobody has read still has to be checked before anyone relies on it.

Aaron Ardiri, a Swedish developer, put about a gigabyte of old Palm OS tools and papers on GitHub on Thursday. [44] Palm OS ran Palm's handheld computers, which were popular before smartphones. The files had sat in his own backups for more than 25 years. [44] A small group of fans is still working to keep the system alive. [44]

Why it matters. Old software disappears when nobody keeps its tools, and this archive gives the fans what they need to keep building for it. [44]

KDE, a free desktop for Linux computers, turned 30 with Plasma 6.8, which runs only on Wayland, the newer display system. [45] Older X11 apps still work through a bridge called XWayland. [45] Some X11 screen-recording tools will stop working, and windows can no longer be rolled up into their title bars. [45]

Why it matters. X11 has run Linux desktops since the 1980s, so dropping it ends one of the longest moves in free software.

Microsoft says Windows 11 is now up to 20% more responsive, and that better memory handling helps most on PCs with 8GB of memory. [46] Widgets now load only when opened, which frees more than 200MB on small machines. [46] The taskbar can finally sit at the side or the top of the screen. [46] The only published hands-on test found gains on 16GB machines but none on an 8GB PC. [46]

Why it matters. Cheap laptops with 8GB need the help most, and that is where the one test found nothing. [46]

Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, signed a decree ordering social media and other sharing sites to keep children away from harmful posts and videos. [47] It covers sexual material, self-harm, eating disorders, bullying and more. [47] Platforms must add age labels, parental tools and stronger privacy settings for young users. [47] They have 30 days, but face no punishment at first. [47]

Why it matters. Mexico used a presidential order instead of a new law, which is faster but leaves the penalties for later. [47]

The European Commission, which runs the EU's day-to-day work, confirmed on Wednesday it is in talks with Google about changes after fining it EUR 890m in July. [48] The fine came under the Digital Markets Act, an EU law with rules for the largest online platforms. [48] Google was fined for putting its own shopping and travel results above rivals', and for stopping app makers pointing users to cheaper offers. [48] Google has started changing search results and app-store fees. [48]

Why it matters. If the Commission is not satisfied, Google faces daily fines of up to 5% of its average daily worldwide sales. [48]

Over $600m was traded on two Polymarket election markets, mostly on candidates who lost, Wired found. Polymarket is a website where people bet on future events. [49] In Ethiopia's election, about $284m came from pairs of accounts buying and selling to each other after the result was clear. [49] Polymarket says it blocked the accounts. [49] One analysis says traders may have been inflating their activity in hope of a reward if Polymarket launches a crypto token. [49]

Why it matters. Polymarket's growth is often measured by how much is traded, so fake trading makes it look busier than it is. [49] The US regulator for such markets would not say whether it is looking. [49]

Nvidia and Apple each pledged $25m to a new ballroom President Trump is building at the White House, according to a donor list obtained by The Washington Post. [50][51] Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir, ServiceNow and Cisco also gave millions. [51] The list totals more than $330m. [51] Nvidia said its support is independent of any business interests. [51]

Why it matters. The Post says the list includes donors who have benefited from government decisions, contracts and, in one case, a pardon. [50]

58% of Americans polled oppose data centres being built in their state, a survey for the American Infrastructure Alliance found. [52] The alliance is a group of AI companies, investment firms and trade unions. [52] But 54% said they would support them if companies paid for the power and protected local bills and nature. [52] Pollsters who have worked for Trump and for Biden ran it. [52]

Why it matters. The group that paid for the poll wants data centres built, and its poll points at the promises that would win people over. [52]