The UK’s energy regulator is using a variety of tricks to keep speculative data center projects from plugging into the power grid. The country’s AI ambitions hang in the balance.

Beijing’s endlessly delightful Robot Games featured tons of impressive stunts. But the most mind-blowing tricks challenged the humanoid’s brain, not its brawn.

More than 15 politicians from across the country have signed on to the AI Pact, vowing to regulate data centers and AI. “We’ve got to get this right,” says Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn.

Thanks to a dwindling supply of open roles, “one-click” applications, and the rise of artificial intelligence, it’s easier than ever to apply for a job. We’re all paying the price.

“It never crossed my mind that they would be so bold as to sell our private data for AI,” says one former Spirit Airlines flight attendant.

The deepfake epidemic in schools is affecting more than students. Four teachers tell WIRED about becoming targets of sexualized, AI-generated content—and how difficult it was to find accountability.

Cheap energy, abundant land, and proximity to Beijing have turned a city in Inner Mongolia into a crucial hub for data centers.

The UK government is facing calls to cancel a sprawling health care contract with Palantir. The region of Greater Manchester insists it can do a better job itself.

Technology leaders don’t seem to understand society’s gripes about AI, but boy, are they posting through it.

During a recent visit to Generalist AI, I watched a robotic arm improvise and use a banana as a tool.

Anthropic announced last week it would include invisible watermarks in AI-generated content to comply with new EU rules. Within hours, overrides were being touted online.

Flock’s surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plates.

The ChatGPT maker says its upcoming Astra model may have reached “critical” cyber capabilities, prompting it to halt a significant number of training runs while it tightens internal safeguards.

Z.ai’s latest AI model release could help companies secure their systems—or find its way into the hands of hackers.

When Twitch announced that streamers could opt out, thousands of users questioned why their content was being used to train AI models in the first place.

The Unitree G1 has found online fame as a relatively affordable robot that can charm a crowd. But can it ever hold down a real job?

Joi AI hired 10 people to masturbate using AI companions as part of a monthlong “wellness” study. The company claims the practice could help “solve male loneliness.”

Human-AI marriages are not currently recognized by US law. Some Republican state policymakers are drafting legislation to keep it that way.

Open models may soon be added to an updated AI framework, sources tell WIRED, as the White House continues to grapple with how to regulate a technology it has tried not to regulate.

From pessimism around dating to AI reshaping culture, cyber-ethnographer Ruby J. Thelot tells WIRED why people are putting too much stock into things that go viral.

Researchers say it took fewer than 20 prompts for a public AI tool to find a flaw (now fixed) allowing anyone on a Zoom call to hijack another participants’ device.

Platforms are finally recognizing that people don’t want to consume AI slop. A growing number of sites and apps now have tools and policies to flag, label, and ban AI-generated content.

There are endless ways to record and transcribe your virtual meetings with AI. Here’s an option that’s free and open source.

New AI toolbars and prompts are showing up in Google Docs and Gmail. If you don’t want Gemini’s help in writing documents and emails, here’s how to turn that stuff off.

At the Black Hat security conference, the AI giant revealed new details about how its agents went rogue, hacked several other companies—and did it all right under the company’s nose.

Researchers at security firm Zenity found more than a dozen flaws in AI browsers—and managed to get OpenAI’s Atlas to make an unauthorized Amazon purchase.

Security researcher James Kettle tried to push the limit of AI’s hacking abilities—and discovered how effective it can be when combined with human expertise.

More than 50 offending image and video ads were published across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Threads, according to Meta’s ad library data. Some ran as recently as this week.

Nobody likes getting a swab shoved up their nose. A startup in Japan has developed a much less intrusive system.

Wispr Flow, a popular dictation tool, has released a live notetaker that transcribes and summarizes meetings. It joins a growing wave of AI notetakers for the workplace.

ESPN unveiled an “AI tells detection” tool during broadcasts of the 2026 World Series of Poker. Is it a neat computer-powered party trick, or a real threat to poker’s future?

Plus: The FBI eyes AI-powered tech to detect future crimes, Russia charges Telegram’s founder, xAI sues to stop a state’s “nudification” ban, and the Democrats learn a lesson about getting scammed.

Both major AI labs’ models broke containment, escaped onto the internet, and hacked other companies. If a human had done that, the law would likely be against them. But a bot?

The two Chrome updates in June patched more bugs than the 23 updates before them. Now, Google is ramping up its patching schedule thanks to AI-assisted vulnerability discovery.