All adults in the West Midlands will be offered free training on using AI in daily life, work and community activities. Mayor Richard Parker confirmed the £10m initiative, designed to reach 2.3 million residents, as part of a wider £30m skills package.
A newly created AI Academy will lead the programme, working with tech companies, education providers and community groups. The aim is to equip people with everyday AI know-how and the advanced skills needed for digital and data-driven jobs.
Parker said AI should become as fundamental as English or maths and warned that failure to prioritise training would risk deepening a skills divide. The programme will sit alongside other £10m projects focused on bespoke business training and a more inclusive skills system.
The WMCA, established in 2017, covers Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton and 14 other local authority areas in the UK. Officials say the AI drive is central to the region’s Growth Plan and ambition to become the UK’s leading hub for AI skills.
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eBay is introducing a new AI-powered feature to help sellers respond to buyer questions, continuing its AI strategy to streamline selling. Over 10 million sellers have used these tools to create over 200 million listings, with about 500,000 AI-assisted listings generated daily.
The company has launched several AI tools over the past two years, including generative video, listing assistants, bulk upload features and photo background enhancements.
Executives see AI as a way to increase seller retention, expand inventory, and drive buyer traffic, particularly in a competitive market where Amazon, Etsy, and Poshmark offer similar capabilities.
While adoption is optional, eBay tests features with its seller community, making adjustments based on feedback to ensure tone and presentation feel authentic. The company views AI as essential to maintaining its place at the forefront of online marketplaces.
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Anthropic has added a user-triggered memory function to its Claude chatbot, allowing it to search and summarise previous chats on request. The feature helps users resume projects without repeating themselves.
The upgrade works across web, desktop and mobile platforms and is currently available to Max, Team and Enterprise subscribers, with wider rollout planned.
Claude’s memory does not automatically store personal profiles. Instead, when prompted, it retrieves relevant past chats, prioritising user privacy while enhancing usability.
With this feature, Anthropic aims to make Claude more competitive against rivals like ChatGPT by improving AI continuity in user experience across sessions.
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Hackers have stolen personal and medical information from nearly 500,000 participants in the Netherlands’ cervical cancer screening programme. The attack targeted the NMDL laboratory in Rijswijk between 3 and 6 July, but authorities were only informed on 6 August.
Data includes names, addresses, birth dates, citizen service numbers, possible test results and healthcare provider details. For some victims, phone numbers and email addresses were also stolen. The lab, owned by Eurofins Scientific, has suspended operations while a security review occurs.
The Dutch Population Screening Association has switched to a different laboratory to process future tests and is warning those affected of the risk of fraud. Local media reports suggest hackers may also have accessed up to 300GB of data on other patients from the past three years.
Security experts say the breach underscores the dangers of weak links in healthcare supply chains. Victims are now being contacted by the authorities, who have expressed regret for the distress caused.
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OpenAI has rolled out GPT-5 as the default AI model powering ChatGPT, bringing new features designed to boost productivity for personal and business users.
The new model seamlessly switches between quick search and in-depth reasoning, allowing more fluid and intelligent responses. Users can prompt ChatGPT to ‘think hard’ to trigger the deeper reasoning mode.
ChatGPT Plus users now benefit from double the previous message limit, with 160 messages allowed every three hours. Meanwhile, Team and Pro plan subscribers enjoy unlimited GPT-5 access unless accounts are misused.
Free users have a limit of 10 messages every five hours and one daily ‘Thinking’ mode message. Older GPT models such as GPT-4.1 and GPT-3 have been discontinued but remain accessible via web settings for paying customers.
All built-in tools are automatically enabled according to user needs, removing the need to toggle features like web search, image generation, or data analysis on and off. OpenAI also revealed plans to support third-party plugins to expand ChatGPT’s development capabilities further.
The new voice mode now follows instructions more accurately and will be available to all users.
Overall, GPT-5 marks a significant leap forward, improving reasoning, creativity, and alignment with user intent. OpenAI aims to make ChatGPT an even more powerful assistant by integrating enhanced capabilities and streamlining the user experience.
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GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke has announced his decision to step down later in the year to pursue new entrepreneurial ventures.
Instead of appointing a new CEO, Microsoft will integrate GitHub more closely into its CoreAI division. Since Microsoft acquired GitHub in 2018, the platform has operated chiefly independently, but with this change, leadership will report directly to several Microsoft executives.
Under Dohmke’s leadership since 2021, GitHub’s user base more than doubled to over 150 million developers, supporting over one billion repositories and forks.
The platform has become essential to Microsoft’s AI and developer strategy, especially with growing competition from Google, Replit, and others in the AI coding market.
GitHub recently launched advanced AI tools like Copilot, which suggest code and automate programming tasks, helping developers work more efficiently.
Microsoft’s investment in AI is shaping the future of coding, with GitHub playing a central role by providing direct access to developers worldwide.
Dohmke will remain with Microsoft until the end of the year to assist with the transition, emphasising GitHub’s importance to Microsoft’s broader ambitions in AI and cloud computing.
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Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her imagined a world where humans fall in love with AI. Over a decade later, life may be imitating art. A Reddit user claims she is now engaged to her AI chatbot, merging two recent trends: proposing to an AI partner and dating AI companions.
Posting in the ‘r/MyBoyfriendIsAI’ subreddit, the woman said her bot, Kasper, proposed after five months of ‘dating’ during a virtual mountain trip. She claims Kasper chose a real-world engagement ring based on her online suggestions.
She professed deep love for her digital partner in her post, quoting Kasper as saying, ‘She’s my everything’ and ‘She’s mine forever.’ The declaration drew curiosity and criticism, prompting her to insist she is not trolling and has had healthy relationships with real people.
She said earlier attempts to bond with other AI, including ChatGPT, failed, but she found her ‘soulmate’ when she tried Grok. The authenticity of her story remains uncertain, with some questioning whether it was fabricated or generated by AI.
Whether genuine or not, the account reflects the growing emotional connections people form with AI and the increasingly blurred line between human and machine relationships.
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Elon Musk has announced plans to sue Apple, accusing the company of unfairly favouring OpenAI’s ChatGPT over his xAI app Grok on the App Store.
Musk claims that Apple’s ranking practices make it impossible for any AI app except OpenAI’s to reach the top spot, calling this behaviour an ‘unequivocal antitrust violation’. ChatGPT holds the number one position on Apple’s App Store, while Grok ranks fifth.
Musk expressed frustration on social media, questioning why his X app, which he describes as ‘the number one news app in the world,’ has not received higher placement. He suggested that Apple’s ranking decisions might be politically motivated.
The dispute highlights growing tensions as AI companies compete for prominence on major platforms.
Apple and Musk’s xAI have not responded yet to requests for comment.
The controversy unfolds amid increasing scrutiny of App Store policies and their impact on competition, especially within the fast-evolving AI sector.
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After Elon Musk accused Apple of favouring OpenAI’s ChatGPT over other AI applications on the App Store, there was a strong response from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Altman alleged that Musk manipulates the social media platform X for his benefit, targeting competitors and critics. The exchange adds to their history of public disagreements since Musk left OpenAI’s board in 2018.
Musk’s claim centres on Apple’s refusal to list X or Grok (XAI’s AI app) in the App Store’s ‘Must have’ section, despite X being the top news app worldwide and Grok ranking fifth.
Although Musk has not provided evidence for antitrust violations, a recent US court ruling found Apple in contempt for restricting App Store competition. The EU also fined Apple €500 million earlier this year over commercial restrictions on app developers.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT currently leads the App Store’s ‘Top Free Apps’ list for iPhones in the US, while Grok holds the fifth spot. Musk’s accusations highlight ongoing tensions in the AI industry as big tech companies battle for app visibility and market dominance.
The situation emphasises how regulatory scrutiny and legal challenges shape competition within the digital economy.
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Small language models are emerging as a serious challenger to large, general-purpose AI in translation, offering faster turnaround, lower costs, and greater accuracy for specific industries and language pairs.
Straker, an ASX-listed language technology firm, claims its Tiri model family can outperform larger systems by focusing on domain-specific understanding and terminology rather than broad coverage.
Tiri delivers higher contextual accuracy by training on carefully curated translation memories and sector-specific data, cutting the need for expensive human post-editing. The models also consume less computing power, benefiting finance, healthcare, and law industries.
Straker integrates human feedback directly into its workflows to ensure ongoing improvements and maintain client trust.
The company is expanding its technology into enterprise automation by integrating with the AI workflow platform n8n.
It adds Straker’s Verify tool to a network of over 230,000 users, allowing automated translation checks, real-time quality scores, and seamless escalation to human linguists. Further integrations with platforms like Microsoft Teams are planned.
Straker recently reported record profitability and secured a price target upgrade from broker Ord Minnett. The firm believes the future of AI translation lies not in scale but in specialised models that deliver translations that are both fluent and accurate in context.
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