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OpenAI's Fidji Simo says ChatGPT's "adult mode" is expected to launch in Q1 2026, says OpenAI wants to get better at age prediction before launching the feature (The Verge)

Google launches Disco, a Gemini 3-powered experiment that suggests and creates GenTabs, web apps based on the user's open browser tabs and Gemini chat history (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

OpenAI says GPT-5.2 Thinking hallucinates less than GPT-5.1 and has improved reliability for agentic AI needs; pre-release testers include Notion, Box, Shopify (Hayden Field/The Verge)

OpenAI launches GPT-5.2, its "best model yet," in Instant, Thinking, and Pro variants, with significant improvements in writing, coding, and reasoning (Maxwell Zeff/Wired)

Google DeepMind launches an enhanced Gemini Deep Research agent accessible to developers via its new Interactions API, along with a new DeepSearchQA benchmark (The Keyword)

Rivian says it is building its own 5nm AI chip called the Rivian Autonomy Processor and a foundational "Large Driving Model", to enable fully autonomous driving (Andrew J. Hawkins/The Verge)

Runway launches GWM-1, its first world model, which uses frame-by-frame prediction to simulate physics, and updates Gen 4.5 to add native audio and more (TechCrunch)

The OpenAI deal gives Disney a fair amount of oversight and control over how its IP is used, including a joint steering committee to monitor user creations (Axios)

Palantir expands its Percepta lawsuit, accusing Percepta's co-founders of poaching its workers and customers, and another employee of stealing confidential docs (Victoria Albert/Wall Street Journal)

Worktrace AI, founded by ex-OpenAI product lead Angela Jiang and researcher Deepak Vasisht, launches with a $9.3M seed, and releases a workflow automation agent (Alex Konrad/Upstarts Media)

Cursor launches Visual Editor, a vibe-coding product for designers that integrates professional design controls with natural language editing via Cursor's agent (Maxwell Zeff/Wired)

Berlin-based LI.FI, which provides businesses with price comparisons of crypto exchange rates and bridging fees, raised $29M, taking its total funding to ~$52M (Carlos Garcia/Fortune)

AT&T launches Connected Life, a smart home security system with hardware from Google and Abode, designed to keep working during power or internet outages (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)

Disney sends Google a cease-and-desist letter, accusing Google of "massive scale" copyright infringement and using AI to "exploit and distribute" the content (Todd Spangler/Variety)

Stanford researchers develop AI hacking bot Artemis and say it surpassed nine out of 10 penetration testers by rapidly finding bugs in the university's network (Robert McMillan/Wall Street Journal)

Disney and OpenAI sign a three-year deal to bring 200+ Disney characters to Sora; Disney makes a $1B investment in OpenAI and will become a major OpenAI client (OpenAI)

Study: 15 TikTok accounts posting AI videos of sexualized underage girls have nearly 300K followers; TikTok says that 14 of the accounts don't violate its rules (Clare Duffy/CNN)

Google brings Gemini to Chrome for iOS and iPadOS, after debuting on desktop and Android earlier in 2025, starting in the US in English for signed-in users (Steve Dent/Engadget)

Dutch payments group Mollie agrees to acquire London-based fintech GoCardless for €1.5B, set to close in 2026; GoCardless was last valued at $2.1B in early 2022 (Financial Times)

Sources: in recent months, Tencent aggressively hired AI researchers from ByteDance, including by offering to double their salaries, and reorganized its AI team (The Information)

Fertility startup Inito, which offers an at-home health diagnostics platform, raised a $29M Series B and plans to use AI-designed antibodies to make new tests (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)

Medra, which programs robots with AI to conduct and improve biological experiments, raised $52M led by Human Capital, taking its total funding to $63M (Agnee Ghosh/Bloomberg)

The EU opens investigations into Temu and airport scanner maker Nuctech to assess whether they unfairly penetrated the EU market thanks to Beijing subsidies (Francesca Micheletti/Politico)

Runware, which operates a developer tool platform that generates images, video, and audio in real-time, raised a $50M Series A, taking its total funding to $66M (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch)

Israeli startup Port, which offers a proprietary developer portal competitor to Spotify's open-source Backstage, raised a $100M Series C at an $800M valuation (Julie Bort/TechCrunch)

Harness, which uses AI to automate code testing, verification, security, and governance, raised a $240M Series E led by Goldman Sachs at a $5.5B valuation (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

OpenAI faces a wrongful death lawsuit from the estate of an 83-year-old woman killed by her son, who had engaged in delusion-filled conversations with ChatGPT (Julie Jargon/Wall Street Journal)

An Ai2 research scientist argues that AGI, as commonly conceived, will not emerge because it ignores, among other things, the physical realities of computation (Tim Dettmers)

Q&A with investor Gavin Baker of Atreides Management on the economics of AI, data centers in space, mistakes SaaS companies are making in adopting AI, and more (Patrick O'Shaughnessy/Invest Like The Best on YouTube)

Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal says the Indian edtech startup's valuation has fallen from its $3.5B peak three years ago to less than $500M, and confirms M&A talks (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

A look at the Model Context Protocol and how it went from a passion project made by Anthropic employees to an industry standard managed by the Linux Foundation (Hayden Field/The Verge)

China's power grid, the world's largest, gives it an edge in the global AI contest, helping Chinese companies develop AI models more cheaply than US competitors (Wall Street Journal)

a16z crypto says it is expanding to Asia and opening an office in Seoul, calling South Korea the world's second-largest crypto market (Sam Reynolds/CoinDesk)

Uber launches its B2B logistics service Uber Direct in India with ONDC integration, starting in Bengaluru with grocery deliveries for Zepto and KPN Farm Fresh (The Economic Times)

US investors are boosting Chinese AI-related tech stocks and adding cash to ETFs tracking China's tech sector, as US lawmakers push for tighter capital curbs (Wall Street Journal)

Uber discontinues monthly EV bonuses as it scales back key climate efforts after embracing Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, which slashed clean-energy incentives (Ben Elgin/Bloomberg)

JD.com's JingDong Industrials, a supply chain tech and services provider, opened down 7.8% after the company raised ~$383M in its Hong Kong IPO (Reuters)

Operation Bluebird, a Virginia-based startup planning to launch a "Twitter.new" social network, petitions the USPTO to cancel X Corp.'s "abandoned" trademarks (Cyrus Farivar/Ars Technica)

A Microsoft analysis of 37.5M Copilot conversations from January to September 2025 finds health, career, and relationship topics dominated users' questions (Megan Morrone/Axios)

Google DeepMind plans to open its "first automated science laboratory" in the UK in 2026, focused on using AI tools to develop new materials for chips and more (Melissa Heikkilä/Financial Times)

Sources: the US is working on a settlement that could see ZTE pay $1B+ over alleged foreign bribery from 2018 and earlier; a deal would require China's approval (Reuters)

Sei partners with Xiaomi to pre-install its crypto wallet and discovery app on all new Xiaomi phones sold outside mainland China and the US, starting in 2026 (Francisco Rodrigues/CoinDesk)

A group of state AGs sent a letter to Meta, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and others warning their chatbots' "delusional outputs" could be violating state laws (Courtney Rozen/Reuters)

The US CFTC grants crypto exchange Gemini a DCM license, allowing it to launch its prediction markets platform Gemini Titan (Daniel Kuhn/The Block)

Google tests AI-powered overviews on some publications' Google News pages; publishers like Der Spiegel, El País, and WaPo in commercial partnerships get paid (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)

Spotify will begin testing a feature that lets a user write a prompt for a playlist and receive a unique set of songs based on the user's earlier behavior (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Internal memo: Google is naming Amin Vahdat, who leads the company's AI and infrastructure team, to the new role of chief technologist for AI infrastructure (Reed Albergotti/Semafor)

Amazon now offers same-day perishable grocery delivery in 2,300+ US markets and has expanded the service's grocery offerings by 30%+ since its August launch (Peyton Bigora/Grocery Dive)

Google rolls out Preferred Sources globally, letting users customize "top stories" in Search, and launches highlighted links from users' news subscriptions (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Land)

ChatGPT was 2025's most downloaded free app in the US iOS App Store, up from No. 4 in 2024, followed by Threads, Google, TikTok, WhatsApp, and Instagram (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)