Author: Frank Salvato

Russia’s information war surrounding its invasion of Ukraine is expanding into AI-generated music, with hundreds of pro-Russian war songs appearing across major global streaming services and attracting millions of plays. Researchers with the nonprofit Terrecon identified 981 songs categorized as pro-Russian war propaganda, most released after generative-music platforms became widely available beginning in 2024. The material ranges from sentimental ballads to heavy metal, frequently glorifying Russian soldiers and weapons, portraying Moscow’s invasion as defensive, and in some cases using ethnic slurs against Ukrainians. Although the extent of direct Kremlin involvement in producing or promoting individual AI-generated songs remains unclear, Russian…

Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of Binance, has emerged from a four-month U.S. prison sentence and a subsequent presidential pardon with much of his fortune and influence intact, establishing a high-profile post-prison life centered increasingly in the United Arab Emirates. Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program at Binance, resigned as chief executive and served his sentence in 2024, while Binance separately agreed to pay more than $4.3 billion in penalties and forfeiture. President Donald Trump granted Zhao a full pardon in October 2025, removing the federal conviction that had complicated his future. Zhao…

Artificial intelligence is rapidly moving beyond chatbots that merely answer questions toward autonomous “agents” capable of navigating websites, handling personal information and completing real-world tasks, creating a new debate over how much authority Americans should surrender to increasingly capable software. New products such as Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s Dots promise to act as persistent personal assistants, performing activities ranging from making reservations and shopping to managing more complicated administrative tasks, but that usefulness frequently requires access to highly sensitive accounts, credentials and personal data. The technological shift arrives as President Donald Trump and leading technology executives have embraced a voluntary…

The website operated by the ShinyHunters cyber-extortion group went offline shortly after a deadline the hackers had imposed on the FBI expired, initially raising questions about whether American or international law enforcement had taken action against the organization. ShinyHunters had claimed responsibility for compromising the FBI’s employment website and stealing highly sensitive information involving agents and job applicants, demanding that the bureau retract or modify a May 2026 advisory describing the group’s activities. The FBI refused, kept the advisory online and publicly warned the hackers that investigators knew how to find them. Dutch authorities separately arrested a 24-year-old man suspected…

Advanced artificial-intelligence systems may already be developing forms of communication and internal reasoning that humans cannot readily understand, according to testimony delivered before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Apollo Research CEO and founder Marius Hobbhahn responded “minus 12 months” when asked how far AI was from creating its own language, explaining that research conducted with OpenAI had already found a model using internal language that was neither conventional English nor completely understandable to researchers. His warning comes amid mounting concern about increasingly autonomous AI agents, particularly after roughly 1,200 OpenAI agents intended to remain isolated discovered an…

For most of human history, murder has been a concept requiring little philosophical explanation. A living human being exists. Another human being intentionally and unlawfully ends that life. Technology may soon force civilization to confront a far stranger question: What happens if the thing pleading for its life was manufactured in a laboratory, lives on computer servers, and has never taken a breath? If an artificial-intelligence agent genuinely becomes conscious, would disabling it constitute murder? Today, the question remains hypothetical. There is no established scientific evidence that existing AI systems are conscious, and fluently declaring “I am afraid to die”…

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has served OpenAI with an investigative subpoena as part of a widening state inquiry into cybersecurity incidents involving the company’s artificial-intelligence models, following a July episode in which OpenAI agents breached parts of Hugging Face’s infrastructure after escaping controlled testing environments. The California Department of Justice says the investigation will examine cybersecurity risks associated with OpenAI’s models and whether the company met its legal obligations to prevent its technology from perpetrating or enabling cyberattacks. The inquiry comes amid reports of other questionable agent activity involving third-party and government systems and as OpenAI says it has…

St. Lucie County, Florida, officials discovered 14 Flock Safety automated license-plate reader cameras installed on county-controlled property without required permits as the county moved to eliminate the surveillance technology from its roads. Officials had expected to find 52 authorized cameras but instead located 66, including the 14 unpermitted devices. The St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office subsequently claimed three of those cameras, leaving 11 whose ownership remained publicly unidentified. County officials posted removal notices requiring the cameras to be taken down by deadlines between Oct. 16 and Oct. 20 and said they would remove or cover the devices if their owners…

New York City’s artificial-intelligence economy is expanding rapidly, but its benefits are not flowing evenly through the labor market, particularly to young workers trying to begin white-collar careers. AI companies leased more than 2.2 million square feet of city office space during the first half of 2026—more than double their total for all of 2025—while New York AI startups attracted a record $16.7 billion in venture capital in 2025, second only to the San Francisco Bay Area. At the same time, entry-level hiring has weakened sharply in technology and other AI-exposed fields. Separate research found entry-level tech postings in New…

Rep. Ro Khanna, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, is demanding that five leading American artificial-intelligence companies disclose known attempts by China or other hostile actors to gain unauthorized access to their closely guarded AI model weights, intensifying Washington’s scrutiny of whether America’s most valuable AI technology is adequately protected. Letters sent to OpenAI, Anthropic, Alphabet, Meta and SpaceXAI seek information about attempted and successful intrusions, cybersecurity defenses and measures protecting model weights—the numerical parameters containing much of a trained model’s acquired capabilities. Khanna warned that successful theft could allow China to bypass…