THE RUNDOWN

Researchers found that when asked to recommend political candidates, xAI's Grok model overwhelmingly favoured Republican candidates while OpenAI's GPT leaned Democratic — disagreeing in more than half of the cases tested. It's a serious finding that cuts to the heart of what AI systems are actually doing when they play the role of helpful advisor. If your AI is politically pre-loaded, you might not even know it's happening, and that's a problem that goes well beyond election season.

Governor Josh Shapiro signed the Artificial Intelligence Deceptive Advertising Act into law on Thursday, making Pennsylvania one of the first US states to legally require disclosures on AI-generated advertisements. It's a direct response to how indistinguishable AI-generated content has become from real footage, real voices, and real faces. Expect other states — and eventually countries — to follow this template as the regulatory conversation around AI picks up pace globally.

Two critical vulnerabilities in PHP — the programming language quietly powering a majority of the world's websites — came dangerously close to causing widespread internet chaos. What made this episode particularly unsettling is that AI tools were used both to discover the old bugs and then, almost immediately, to begin exploiting them. The episode is a sharp reminder of just how fragile the internet's foundations really are, and how AI is changing the speed at which security threats can escalate from discovery to active attack.

After reports that Elon Musk had personally ordered SpaceX to throttle Starlink access in Ukraine, the service appears to be functioning normally again. The situation remains tense and deeply political — the fact that a single person's decision can cut off satellite internet for an active war zone raises questions that the tech industry doesn't have good answers to yet. Ukraine's dependence on commercial satellite infrastructure continues to be one of the more uncomfortable stories in modern geopolitics.

Jack Dorsey's Block has unveiled a voice AI model that, according to early reports, sounds eerily close to a real person — and crucially, it can run locally on a MacBook M4 Max without needing a cloud connection. That last detail matters a lot. On-device AI that doesn't phone home to a server changes the privacy equation significantly, and it signals where the serious AI hardware race is heading. Expect more of this kind of edge-based AI in the coming months.

Apple is gearing up for another hardware event, with strong expectations around new Macs and, intriguingly, what could be the first official announcement of a touchscreen MacBook. Developers are already finding creative ways to use the iPhone Duo's dual-screen setup — from flight trackers to retro cassette players — suggesting Apple's hardware bets are paying off in the app ecosystem. The touchscreen Mac, if it lands, would be Apple's biggest shift in laptop design in years.

A running tracker of failed AI projects is making the rounds, and the list is longer than you might expect — including Apple's repeatedly delayed Siri overhaul and OpenAI's messy attempt at a 'super app.' It's a useful corrective to the relentless hype cycle. Not every AI project survives contact with real users, and the graveyard is a reminder that building AI products people actually want to use is genuinely hard, regardless of how much funding is behind you.

Grocery delivery giant Instacart has reportedly held discussions about selling itself to either DoorDash or Uber, signalling the consolidation pressure building across the on-demand delivery space. Instacart never quite found the dominant position it seemed destined for after its pandemic-era surge, and a sale would reshape the competitive dynamics of delivery in North America. It's worth watching — the winner of this deal could end up controlling a significant slice of how urban consumers shop for food.

NASA has announced updated lander plans for upcoming Moon missions and says it has resolved a long-running technical issue with the Orion spacecraft. The agency's tone was confident — 'we have the mandate, we have the resources' — and after years of delays and budget battles, the Artemis programme does seem to be moving with more urgency. Africa's own space ambitions are growing too, so the infrastructure and knowledge being built around these missions isn't just an American story.

It's been one of those days where the tech news isn't just about gadgets — it's about power, trust, and who gets to make decisions that affect millions of people. Stay sharp out there.