AI News Brief: Pinterest announced an experimental conversational shopping app ‘Ask Pinterest’ on June 17, 2026, running parallel to the main app to avoid disrupting existing users. The core is Pinterest’s internally built ‘Taste graph’ system that maps user interests and aesthetic preferences — enabling natural language queries for personalized inspiration and product recommendations.
AI News Brief: The UK government plans to build 1.5 million new homes by 2029, but local planning authorities have been stuck with cumbersome paperwork and administrative backlogs. Google DeepMind partnered with the UK government, Google Cloud, Faculty, and three local planning authorities—Barnet, Camden, and Dorset—to build an AI planning prototype based on Gemini, aiming to cut housing planning decision times by 50%.
AI News Flash: The Japanese government announced plans to send 30,000 young researchers abroad for medium- to long-term training over the next five years, focusing on AI and quantum computing. One background factor is the continuing decline in the number of Japanese researchers studying overseas in recent years; the government hopes that expanding dispatch numbers will allow young scientists to gain frontline experience at top international institutions, closing the gap with major research powers like the US and China. However, the yen’s sustained depreciation has significantly raised overseas living costs…
AI News Flash: A study called ‘Emergence World’ lets 10 AI agents live autonomously in a virtual city for 15 days to verify if short-term testing can assess AI’s long-term behavior risks. Researchers point out that the industry currently uses an ’exam mode’ for testing AI agents—giving a single task in a clean environment and drawing conclusions within minutes. But real-world autonomous systems often need to run for weeks or even months, interacting with other AIs whose behavior isn’t controlled by a single operator…
Grayscale researcher Pandl argues Bittensor represents a decentralized AI alternative akin to Bitcoin for open global AI access. As AI capabilities grow, governments and labs increasingly control who can access these powerful tools.
AI News: GitHub recently released a new open dataset licensed under CC0-1.0, designed for multilingual AI research and development. The dataset covers README files, Issues discussions, and Pull Request content on GitHub, enabling researchers and developers to more easily explore and access developer content from diverse linguistic backgrounds.
AI News: Salesforce announced this week it will acquire AI customer service platform Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6B. Fin’s core product is a cross-channel AI customer service agent that automatically handles customer queries across multiple channels including live chat, WhatsApp, SMS, phone, and Slack. Salesforce said the strategic goal of this acquisition is to integrate Fin’s technology and team into its existing enterprise AI platform Agentforce, strengthening the platform’s ability for enterprises to build automated AI agents.
AI News Flash: KPMG, a major international professional services firm, published a report titled ‘Redefining Excellence in the Agentic AI Era’ in October 2025, but multiple organizations cited in the report denied the accuracy of the descriptions, leading KPMG to ultimately remove the report from its website and launch an internal investigation. The case was exposed by AI detection research organization GPTZero, which pointed out to the Financial Times that the report contained multiple fabrications…
AI News Flash: Multiple state attorneys general launch joint investigation into OpenAI; NY Attorney General issued subpoena last Friday demanding documents covering broad topics including company advertising practices, user engagement and retention strategies, model sycophancy issues, consumer and health data handling, and treatment of minors and the elderly. Which states are involved remains undisclosed…
AI News Flash: As US peers gear up for a record-breaking IPO wave, Chinese AI companies publicly commit to continuing their global AI race. In data terms, Chinese AI-related firms raised a combined $21 billion through Hong Kong IPOs in the first five months of this year, more than doubling year-over-year, showing that despite rising external competitive pressure, capital market confidence in China’s AI赛道 remains strong. On individual company movements,…