Author: AI News First

Every Sunday, NPR host Will Shortz, The New York Times’ crossword puzzle guru, gets to quiz thousands of listeners in a long-running segment called the Sunday Puzzle. While written to be solvable without too much foreknowledge, the brainteasers are usually challenging even for skilled contestants. That’s why some experts think they’re a promising way to test the limits of AI’s problem-solving abilities. In a recent study, a team of researchers hailing from Wellesley College, Oberlin College, the University of Texas at Austin, Northeastern University, Charles University, and startup Cursor created an AI benchmark using riddles from Sunday Puzzle episodes. The…

US lawmakers are pushing for a DeepSeek ban after security researchers found the app transferring user data to a banned state-owned company. DeepSeek, practically unknown just weeks ago, took the tech world by storm—gaining global acclaim for its cutting-edge performance while sparking debates reminiscent of the TikTok saga. Its rise has been fuelled in part by its business model: unlike many of its American counterparts, including OpenAI and Google, DeepSeek offered its advanced powers for free. However, concerns have been raised about DeepSeek’s extensive data collection practices and a probe has been launched by Microsoft and OpenAI over a breach…

South Korean officials on Saturday temporarily restricted Chinese AI Lab DeepSeek’s app from being downloaded from app stores in the country pending an assessment of how the Chinese company handles user data. The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said the Chinese app would be available to be downloaded once it complies with Korean privacy laws and makes the necessary changes. The restrictions will not affect usage of the existing app and web service in the country. However, the data protection authority said it “strongly advises” current users to avoid entering personal information into DeepSeek until its final decision is made.…

As the 2025 AI Action Summit kicks off in Paris, global leaders, industry experts, and academics are converging to address the challenges and opportunities presented by AI. Against the backdrop of rapid technological advancements and growing societal concerns, the summit aims to build on the progress made since the 2024 Seoul Safety Summit and establish a cohesive global framework for AI governance.   AI Action Summit is ‘a wake-up call’ French President Emmanuel Macron has described the summit as “a wake-up call for Europe,” emphasising the need for collective action in the face of AI’s transformative potential. This comes as the…

The next frontier for large language models (LLMs), one of the key technologies underpinning the boom in generative AI tools, might be geographical. On Monday, Paris-based AI startup Mistral — which is vying to rival the likes of U.S.-based Anthropic and OpenAI — is releasing a model that’s a bit different from its usual LLM. Named Mistral Saba, the new custom-trained model is designed to address a specific geography: Arabic speaking countries. The goal for Mistral Saba is to excel in Arabic interactions. Mistral Saba is a relatively small model with 24 billion parameters. As a reminder, fewer parameters generally…

Europe has no intention of playing catch-up in the global AI race, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared at the AI Action Summit in Paris. While the US and China are often seen as frontrunners, von der Leyen emphasised that the AI race “is far from over” and that Europe has distinct strengths to carve a leading role for itself. “This is the third summit on AI safety in just over one year,” von der Leyen remarked. “In the same period, three new generations of ever more powerful AI models have been released. Some expect models that will…

Copyright claims against AI companies just got a potential boost. A U.S. federal judge last week handed down a summary judgment in a case brought by tech conglomerate Thomson Reuters against legal tech firm Ross Intelligence. The judge found that Ross’ use of Reuters’ content to train its AI legal research platform infringed on Reuters’ intellectual property. The outcome could have implications for the more than 39 copyright-related AI lawsuits currently working their way through U.S. courthouses. That said, it’s not necessarily a slam dunk for plaintiffs who allege that AI companies violated their IP rights. All about the headnotes…

Tech giants are beginning an unprecedented $320 billion AI infrastructure spending spree in 2025, brushing aside concerns about more efficient AI models from challengers like DeepSeek. The massive investment push from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta signals the big players’ unwavering conviction that AI’s future demands bold infrastructure bets, despite (or perhaps because of) emerging efficiency breakthroughs. The stakes are high, with collective capital expenditure jumping 30% up from 2024’s $246 billion investment. While investors may question the necessity of such aggressive spending, tech leaders are doubling down on their belief that AI represents a transformative opportunity worth every dollar.…

The advent of more powerful processors in the early 2000’s started the computing revolution that led to what we now call the cloud. With single hardware instances able to run dozens, if not hundreds of virtual machines concurrently, businesses could offer their users multiple services and applications that would otherwise have been financially impractical, if not impossible. But virtual machines (VMs) have several downsides. Often, an entire virtualised operating system is overkill for many applications, and although very much more malleable, scalable, and agile than a fleet of bare-metal servers, VMs still require significantly more memory and processing power, and…

AI models are being cranked out at a dizzying pace, by everyone from Big Tech companies like Google to startups like OpenAI and Anthropic. Keeping track of the latest ones can be overwhelming.  Adding to the confusion is that AI models are often promoted based on industry benchmarks. But these technical metrics often reveal little about how real people and companies actually use them.  To cut through the noise, TechCrunch has compiled an overview of the most advanced AI models released since 2024, with details on how to use them and what they’re best for. We’ll keep this list updated…