AI news brief: Midjourney, known for AI image and video generation, has acquired social astrology app Co-Star. Deal terms undisclosed. Co-Star has around 4.3M monthly active users, helping users calculate their birth chart and share results with friends inside the app. The app combines AI with human writers to deliver horoscopes and compatibility analysis. This acquisition…
AI News Brief: Attie is Bluesky’s AI assistant that lets users customize social feed algorithms without writing code, and it’s now expanding into an open research tool. This week Bluesky added a new feature called Quests to Attie, letting users query information and news spreading across the entire Bluesky social network (nicknamed the Atmosphere), covering not just Bluesky itself but also all apps built on the underlying AT Protocol, with users able to ask Attie to pull trending topic data or help identify the most influential accounts in a specific field or region.
AI News Brief: Leading AI chipmakers and open-source model advocates have jointly spoken out against overly restrictive US government measures targeting ‘open-weight’ AI models. Multiple AI companies including Hugging Face, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, and Nvidia have signed an open letter urging policymakers not to impose ‘premature broad restrictions’ on open-weight models. The letter comes as Washington deliberates how to respond to allegations that Chinese AI labs stole IP from US counterparts, and amid growing concerns over China’s rising AI capabilities. The letter does not mention China by name, but its timing coincides with reports that the Trump administration is considering an outright ban on Chinese open-weight models, and potentially sanctions on Chinese AI companies; the White House has also accused Moonshot AI of using distillation on Anthropic’s Fable model to train its newly released, impressive Kimi K3 model. The open letter emphasizes that distillation is a common technique widely used for model improvement, evaluation, and validation, rooted in the ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ innovation tradition from the open-source software movement. Policymakers should not conflate legitimate model development techniques with improper theft; illegal appropriation of closed-model value should be handled through targeted legal and commercial frameworks, not blanket restrictions on key innovation techniques like distillation. Replit CEO Amjad Masad, one of the signatories, told TechCrunch that ‘banning Chinese open models is equivalent to banning the entire open-model ecosystem,’ citing Thinking Machines Lab’s new open model Inkling—which was trained with help from Moonshot’s Kimi 2.5—as an example of how interconnected the ecosystem is. The open letter also rebuts the argument that ‘open-weight models are inherently dangerous and could be used for cyberattacks,’ arguing that defenders need equally capable models to detect, simulate, and respond to emerging threats; open models actually expand defensive capabilities, improve transparency, and let more teams find and patch vulnerabilities.
AI News Brief: OpenAI launched its first hardware product last week — a refined keyboard called Micro, designed to pair with ChatGPT, co-developed with professional keyboard maker Work Louder. The product is essentially a craft-grade peripheral for tech enthusiasts to play with, while general users may find it confusing. OpenAI’s foray into the hardware market hasn’t been smooth: Apple filed a lawsuit weeks ago accusing OpenAI of stealing trade secrets, and the two sides are expected to engage in a prolonged legal battle. Meanwhile, OpenAI is rumored to be developing another smart home device paired with ChatGPT, reportedly led by a team of former Apple engineers, which has also drawn attention.
AI News Brief: Alphabet (Google’s parent company) is designing a new server chip for its Gemini model, internally codenamed ‘Frozen v2’. According to a report by The Information citing anonymous sources, this chip is expected to launch in 2028 and could be 6 to 10 times more efficient than Google’s current AI chips, measured by the number of tokens generated per unit of power…
AI News Brief: Asian manufacturers like TSMC and Foxconn are integrating AI into EVs and humanoid robots to counter the rapid expansion of Chinese competitors. Jun Seki, Foxconn’s EV business strategy chief, stated at Nikkei Global Digital Summit 2026 that as autonomous driving technology matures, EVs will become the market focus, and AI is the key technology for boosting self-driving capability. Attendees broadly agreed that autonomous driving and robotics can create new advantages for Asian manufacturers under the off-China supply chain trend — using tech differentiation to counter low-price expansion by Chinese players in EVs and robotics. The original summary is brief, only highlighting Foxconn executive remarks and the off-China supply chain strategic context, without specific technical specs, timelines, or numbers. See the original link for details. Overall, the report reflects Japanese and Asian tech media’s focus on the AI+hardware route: using AI to enhance EV self-driving and humanoid robot practicality is seen as an important strategic direction for Asian manufacturers to seek differentiation and supply chain autonomy under Chinese competitive pressure.
AI News Brief: Chris Fall has resigned as director of the US Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), confirmed by the agency to multiple media outlets though no reason was given. Fall took the position just three months ago, succeeding Collin Burns who left after less than a week — reportedly due to his prior work at Anthropic while the Trump administration was feuding with the company. Before them, CAISI was led by venture capitalist David Sacks as White House AI and crypto policy chief until his March departure. Fall previously served as DOE Office of Science director (first Trump term) and acting ARPA-E director. CAISI sits under NIST and handles AI model technical standards, testing methods, and cybersecurity risk assessment, but was not the lead agency in the June Commerce export-control dispute over Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable models. This month the White House signed an executive order creating the Gold Eagle AI safety oversight plan, which notably excluded CAISI. Meanwhile, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis called for an independent industry standards body modeled after FINRA to regulate frontier AI — exactly what CAISI was created to do. Fall’s resignation comes as China’s Moonshot released Kimi, whose performance approaches frontier-level models, reigniting debate over whether the US should ban Chinese open-source models.
AI News Brief: Anthropic received final approval from a federal judge this Monday to pay $1.5 billion to settle a copyright class action lawsuit — the largest settlement in U.S. copyright law history. Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California had preliminarily approved the deal last year, finding that Anthropic had illegally downloaded and stored millions of copyrighted books; after Alsup retired, Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin officially signed the approval this Monday. Under the settlement terms, roughly 500,000 works are eligible for $3,000 each, shared among rights-holding authors and publishers. However, many authors and creators don’t view this as a victory, because the ruling on the case’s core legal question actually favored Anthropic: Alsup determined that training AI models on copyrighted text qualifies as fair use, a decision seen as a pivotal turning point for the AI industry. But the ruling didn’t absolve Anthropic of responsibility for how it sourced its books — its training data came from two channels: books it purchased and scanned (legal), and books downloaded from piracy sites like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. Alsup ruled the latter itself constitutes illegal behavior and said the piracy claims could proceed to jury trial; Anthropic then agreed to settle to avoid going to court and facing potentially massive damages. Because the settlement prevents the case from being appealed to form binding precedent, broader industry legal questions remain unresolved — Google, Meta, Midjourney, OpenAI and others still face similar copyright lawsuits. Just last week, a group of publishers and authors including Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier, and writer Scott Turow sued Google, alleging it used copyrighted works to train Gemini.
AI News Brief: Moonshot AI is preparing for an IPO in Hong Kong, potentially within six months, according to two sources who spoke with Nikkei Asia. The company’s valuation and revenue continue to surge. Meanwhile, on July 17 at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, Moonshot AI unveiled its latest Kimi K3 AI model and ran a booth to promote it, drawing significant attention from attendees. The market focus is whether this Chinese startup could trigger another ‘DeepSeek moment’ for the AI industry — delivering a relatively breakthrough in technology or business performance that once again shakes up the competitive landscape in Silicon Valley and the global AI industry. The report did not disclose specific valuation figures, revenue scale, or IPO fundraising amounts, noting only that the information came from insiders and remains unconfirmed by the company.
AI News Brief: An investigation by Japan’s Nikkei reveals that hidden off-balance-sheet debt at five US tech giants has ballooned eightfold in roughly four years to an estimated $1.65 trillion, exceeding their reported liabilities and making it harder for investors to gauge their true risk. The report shows these hidden debts stem mainly from data center lease agreements and GPU supply contracts…