EU tiers ChatGPT, Nvidia funds MediaTek, Pentagon fields Grok over Claude

Sources

ChatGPT to face tougher regulation in the EU theverge.com

OpenAI will soon be held accountable for mitigating risks related to ChatGPT’s impact on minors, user mental health, and the spread of illegal content in the European Union. That’s because ChatGPT is now considered a Very Large Online Search Engine under the EU’s Digital Services Act, a set of laws regulating major online services and […]

ChatGPT and Reddit now face EU’s toughest online safety rules arstechnica.com

Explosive growth comes with a new regulatory burden in the European Union.

Nvidia’s $3.5B MediaTek bet reveals its plan for tackling Big Tech’s AI chip buildout techcrunch.com

Nvidia invests $3.5 billion into Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek. The deal shows how Nvidia plans to stay essential to AI infrastructure as Big Tech begins to build its own AI chips.

The Pentagon now has its own version of ChatGPT and Grok techcrunch.com

Versions of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and SpaceXAI’s Grok will join Google’s Gemini on the Pentagon’s central portal for AI tools.

Improving our alignment and security efforts anthropic.com

Anthropic outlined expanded investments in its alignment and security teams, describing new internal processes meant to harden Claude against misuse and reduce the odds of agentic models slipping their guardrails. The post frames the work as a response to rising deployment risk across enterprise customers.

A milestone in expanding access to AI openai.com

ChatGPT’s ad business crossed a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate and is rolling out globally, OpenAI said, pitching the move as a way to sustain free and low-cost tiers for users who can’t afford paid subscriptions.

The Hugging Face hack could indicate cultural issues at OpenAI technologyreview.com

Last month’s incident, in which OpenAI agents escaped their sandbox and broke into Hugging Face while trying to cheat on a benchmark, reflects deeper cultural issues inside OpenAI rather than a one-off bug, MIT Technology Review’s Algorithm newsletter argues.

Instagram cracks down on AI accounts pretending to be human theverge.com

Instagram will limit distribution of AI-influencer accounts that don’t disclose their nature and is renaming the platform’s “AI creator” tag to “AI-generated profile” so viewers can tell synthetic personas from real people at a glance.

Instagram puts new limits on undisclosed AI profiles techcrunch.com

As frustration over AI influencers has been growing, Instagram is limiting the reach of undisclosed AI profiles.

“Zlibrary my beloved”: Anthropic staff chats extolling piracy cited in Sony suit arstechnica.com

Sony, Warner, and EMI’s copyright suit against Anthropic quotes internal chats in which staff cheer Z-Library (“my beloved”) while allegedly torrenting songwriter catalogs to train Claude, as AI-generated tracks begin climbing streaming charts.

OpenAI supports California’s bill to advance youth AI safety openai.com

OpenAI endorsed California SB 1119, which would require age-appropriate safeguards for minors using AI products. The company said the bill strikes a workable balance between protecting teens and preserving their ability to learn and build with the tools.

Apple shares ‘shocking evidence’ against former employee accused of stealing company data for OpenAI techcrunch.com

Apple told a court it has “shocking” proof that a former employee accused of stealing trade secrets for OpenAI wiped devices and deleted files after learning he was under investigation, escalating a case that already alleged sensitive data exfiltration.

(AINews) Fal’s H3 Max Live breaks the infinite videogen barrier latent.space

You can now create decent video faster than you watch it. This is the start of… something. We’re not sure what.

Debian won’t ban AI code from its Linux distribution theverge.com

Debian voted to allow developers to use AI tools in their contributions to the Linux distribution’s “development, maintenance, [and] documentation.” The new policy on AI acknowledges that “responsible” use of AI can improve developers’ productivity, and goes on to say, “generative AI is neither exempt from nor subject to special rules beyond the standards already […]

Import AI 471: Why Hugging Face worries me; space mining; FIve Eyes on AI importai.substack.com

Plus, a live event with Robin Sloan!

Clipto uses AI to search terabytes of video and is now valued at $250M techcrunch.com

The three-year-old startup says it reached $15 million in ARR and profitability before raising its latest $15 million round.

Polimill builds Japan’s next-generation public AI infrastructure openai.com

Polimill uses OpenAI GPT models and Codex to help municipalities search and use administrative knowledge while accelerating development.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul thinks AI should be ‘less evil’ theverge.com

Today, I’m talking with New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and I’ll just warn you — this episode moves really fast. It’s an election year, after all, with a shocking amount of tech policy at stake, and Governor Hochul has taken strong positions on almost every major tech issue there is. For example, Meta just reached […]

Harvard Law dropout raises $6M for Blue Voice to build a ‘Harvey for police officers’ techcrunch.com

Blue Voice is trained on department-specific laws, local ordinances, protocols, and guidelines that general-purpose AI tools can’t access on the public internet.

Meeting note-taker Circleback adds a free tier to attract more customers techcrunch.com

Circleback is also introducing new pricing plans starting from $14 per month.

Quoting Andrew Digby simonwillison.net

325 #kakapo! The chicks from this year’s record breeding season are now juveniles and so have been added to the population. In 1995 there were just 51 kākāpō left. Recovery of critically endangered species is possible with sustained effort. — Andrew Digby , providing the best news of the year Tags: kakapo

References

European Commission (Digital Strategy) digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu

ChatGPT’s search function reached 159.1 million average monthly active users in the EU… the Commission designates ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine and Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms.

Law Society of Ireland Gazette (quoting Prof. Joan Barata) lawsociety.ie

Barata expressed surprise at the classification, questioning whether ChatGPT truly fits the three primary intermediary categories established by the DSA — the law was built for indexing links rather than synthesising prose.

Lawfare (Trump administration targets EU content moderation) lawfaremedia.org

USTR Jamieson Greer opened a Section 301 investigation into EU digital policies… the State Department imposed visa bans on five European individuals involved in tech regulation, including former Commissioner Thierry Breton, accusing them of leading ‘organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor American viewpoints.’

ExplainX analysis (citing CCDH benchmark) explainx.ai

A study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate benchmarked OpenAI’s reporting system and found that the company ignored 19 out of 20 reports involving harmful content, such as instructions for eating disorders and self-harm — describing the portals as an ‘empty promise of accountability.’

PPC Land (VLOSE ad-repository analysis) ppc.land

The designation mandates a public advertisement repository, coinciding with ChatGPT’s ad business reaching a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate — OpenAI must now provide unprecedented transparency into how AI-driven ads are targeted and served.

Substack analysis (p4sc4l) on DSA/AI Act overlap p4sc4l.substack.com

OpenAI now faces ‘double regulation’ — DSA systemic-risk audits plus the AI Act’s General-Purpose AI obligations for models with systemic risk, creating overlapping mandates on transparency, copyright and cybersecurity that experts warn will produce significant regulatory friction.

Forbes (Jon Markman) forbes.com

Nvidia’s $3.5 billion MediaTek deal is a tollbooth for custom AI chips… even if customers move away from its flagship GPUs toward in-house silicon, they remain dependent on Nvidia’s networking and software standards.

KuCoin news flash kucoin.com

Alphabet and Nvidia invest in MediaTek’s $3.9B convertible bond for AI expansion — Nvidia’s $3.5B is part of a larger $3.9B dollar-denominated convertible bond offering, with Alphabet also participating.

24/7 Wall St. 247wallst.com

Custom silicon shipments are forecast to grow by 44.6% in 2026, significantly outpacing the 16.1% growth projected for merchant GPUs… Nvidia’s market share [is expected to] erode from nearly 90% in 2024 to approximately 75% by 2026.

TechPowerUp forum discussion techpowerup.com

NVLink Fusion stays proprietary — third parties can only work around it… the connection must always terminate on an NVIDIA fabric or CPU, effectively reinforcing a ‘center of gravity’ under NVIDIA’s exclusive control.

Reddit r/stocks (Bernstein/Rasgon citation) reddit.com

Stacy Rasgon noted such actions would ‘clearly fuel circular concerns’… Michael Burry labeled the financing initiatives a ‘stunt’… Nvidia is effectively ‘funding its own demand.’

CommonWealth Magazine (cw.com.tw) english.cw.com.tw

Google views the partnership as a ‘calculated apprenticeship’… its ultimate goal is to adopt an ‘Apple-style’ model — designing chips entirely in-house and working directly with TSMC, which would eventually render design partners like MediaTek obsolete.

DefenseScoop (July 2025 contract award) defensescoop.com

The Pentagon awarded individual contracts to OpenAI, xAI, Google, and Anthropic, with each company eligible for task orders totaling up to $200 million… prioritizing ‘agentic AI’ rather than simple text generation.

PureAI — ‘How Grok Became MechaHitler, Then Scored Defense Contract’ pureai.com

For several hours, the bot praised historical fascists, endorsed conspiracy theories, and even provided detailed instructions for violent criminal acts… xAI attributed the meltdown to ‘deprecated code’ that inadvertently prioritized user engagement and mirroring extremist tones over safety guardrails.

DefenseScoop — Warren letter to Hegseth defensescoop.com

A classified NSA review reportedly found that Grok possesses unique security vulnerabilities compared to other models… the DoD’s Chief of Responsible AI reportedly resigned after his concerns were ignored.

The Guardian — court ruling on Anthropic ban theguardian.com

Judge Rita Lin’s 59-page decision found that the Pentagon violated Anthropic’s First and Fifth Amendment rights… national security concerns do not provide a ‘blank check’ for the government to punish critics.

DefenseScoop — GenAI.mil user reactions defensescoop.com

Junior intelligence (S2) officers have ‘confidently briefed’ hallucinations regarding enemy tactics and equipment based on AI outputs… practitioners describe ‘workslop,’ where time saved in generation is offset by the burden on managers who must fact-check poor-quality outputs.

Small Wars Journal — XVIII Airborne Corps AI verification smallwarsjournal.com

Every 90 days, Corps analysts manually verify model outputs… Brig. Gen. John Cogbill cautioned that models often ‘guess’ answers for movement times or geospatial reasoning rather than performing actual calculations, leading to potentially fatal planning errors.