Forget retaliation: To cut tariffs President Trump imposed on their country, the Swiss sent a delegation of industry tycoons bearing gifts — a special Rolex desktop clock, a 1-kilogram personalized gold bar, and loads of flattery.
Why it matters: Trump loves such pampering, and the word's out among nations and companies seeking his favor. Tributes fit for a king — especially gold — catch his eyes and his heart.
Boeing will purchase up to 100,000 metric tons of carbon removal from Charm Industrial, a startup transforming forest wastes into "bio-oil" stored permanently underground.
Why it matters: It's Charm's first aviation deal amid growing emissions from flight — and an aerospace industry seeking climate solutions that can eventually reach a large scale.
Why it matters: This is twilight-zone stuff, folks. For the No. 1 and No. 3 paid downloads, the artists, the music, the lyrics — the songs — aren't by real people. But real people love them.
Artificial intelligence is rewriting the playbook for crime, from cheap deepfake scams and AI-written ransomware to mass identity hijacks and critical-infrastructure hacks.
Why it matters: This new class of AI-supercharged crime is putting lives and financial systems at risk. But police training, laws and cross-border tools aren't keeping up, futurists tell Axios.
Social media companies are heading to court over kids' mental health — and a New Mexico judge has just demanded Meta produce chatbot records in one key lawsuit, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Lawsuits targeting addictive algorithms and the mental health impacts on children are just the start of a new legal era where AI could be the wild card.
LISBON —Mozilla wants to do for AI what it did for the web — promote decentralized, open-source systems cautiously, president Mark Surman told Axios during an interview at Web Summit in Portugal.
Why it matters: Mozilla's effort underscores the broader global debate over who controls the data and sets the rules in the AI era.
LISBON — AI amplifies human creativity, but what makes brands and people successful will never be replicated by AI, Hootsuite CEO Irina Novoselsky and Bluesky COO Rose Wang said in an interview with Axios this week at Web Summit in Portugal.
Why it matters: Leaders of social media companies are embracing AI, but aiming to preserve what made their platforms successful: people's authentic voices and creativity.
Suspected Chinese operators used Anthropic's AI coding tool to target about 30 global organizations — and had success in several cases, the company said Thursday.
Why it matters: This is the first documented case of a foreign government using AI to fully automate a cyber operation, Anthropic warned.
Disney shares plunged 8% in early trading Thursday after the company reported disappointing revenue and warned of a prolonged distribution fight with YouTube TV.
Why it matters: Disney+ and Hulu's continued growth was overshadowed by a streaming-era carriage disagreement and declines in the legacy TV business.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) is partnering with AI companies Anthropic and Percepta to try to improve access togovernment benefits and housing, according to an announcement shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: Applying for government assistance or housing permits, as well as processing those services, can be difficult and time-consuming.
Google is turning its Gemini AI into a personal shopper, with new tools that can search, compare, call stores and even buy gifts for you.
Why it matters: It's the tech giant's biggest step yet toward "agentic commerce," one of the hottest frontiers in the effort to commercialize AI for general audiences.
Joby Aviation this month flew for the first time an autonomous vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft it and L3Harris Technologies are developing for defense applications.
Why it matters: It's a major milestone for the project — one that opens the door for additional internal testing this year as well as military demonstrations next year.
Uber is rolling out a new way to pay for someone else's trip — like aride home from the airport for a visiting parent, or a late-night drop-off for a babysitter.
Why it matters: The company's betting on demand as millions juggle holiday travel, pickups and drop-offs.
The latest AI models powering ChatGPT just learned to be friendlier, improving the experience for people who use chatbots responsibly.
It could be a problem for those who don't or can't.
Why it matters: As chatbots become more humanlike in their behavior, it could increase the risks of unhealthy attachments, or a kind of trust that goes beyond what the products are built to handle.
