AI is inserting itself between companies and customers, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince warned in Toronto. More people ask chatbots before visiting sites, dulling brands’ impact. Even research teams lose revenue as investors lean on AI summaries.
Frontier models devour data, pushing firms to chase exclusive sources. Cloudflare lets publishers block unpaid crawlers to reclaim control and compensation. The bigger question, said Prince, is which business model will rule an AI-mediated internet.
Policy scrutiny focuses on platforms that blend search with AI collection. Prince urged governments to separate Google’s search access from AI crawling to level the field. Countries that enforce a split could attract publishers and researchers seeking predictable rules and payment.
Licensing deals with news outlets, Reddit, and others coexist with scraping disputes and copyright suits. Google says it follows robots.txt, yet testimony indicated AI Overviews can use content blocked by robots.txt for training. Vague norms risk eroding incentives to create high-quality online content.
A practical near-term playbook combines technical and regulatory steps. Publishers should meter or block AI crawlers that do not pay. Policymakers should require transparency, consent, and compensation for high-value datasets, guiding the shift to an AI-mediated web that still rewards creators.
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Alibaba unveiled Qwen3-Max-Thinking, which scored 100 percent on AIME 2025 and HMMT, matching OpenAI’s top model on reasoning tests. It targets high-precision problem-solving across algebra, number theory, and probability. Researchers regard elite maths contests as strong proxies for reasoning.
Built on Qwen3-Max, a trillion-parameter flagship, the thinking variant emphasises step-by-step solutions. Alibaba says it matches or beats Claude Opus 4, DeepSeek V3.1, Grok 4, and GPT-5 Pro. Positioning stresses accuracy, traceability, and controllable latency.
Signal from a live trading trial added momentum. In a two-week crypto experiment, Qwen3-Max returned 22.3 percent on 10,000 US dollars. Competing systems underperformed, with DeepSeek at 4.9 percent and several US models booking losses.
Access is available via the Qwen web chatbot and Alibaba Cloud APIs. Early adopters can test tool use and stepwise reasoning on technical tasks. Enterprises are exploring finance, research, and operations cases requiring reliability and auditability.
Alibaba researchers say further tuning will broaden task coverage without diluting peak maths performance. Plans include multilingual reasoning, safety alignment, and robustness under distribution shift. Community benchmarks and contests will track progress.
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People Inc. has joined Microsoft’s publisher content marketplace in a pay-per-use deal that compensates media for AI access. Copilot will be the first buyer, while People Inc. continues to block most AI crawlers via Cloudflare to force paid licensing.
People Inc., formerly Dotdash Meredith, said Microsoft’s marketplace lets AI firms pay ‘à la carte’ for specific content. The agreement differs from its earlier OpenAI pact, which the company described as more ‘all-you-can-eat’, but the priority remains ‘respected and paid for’ use.
Executives disclosed a sharp fall in Google search referrals: from 54% of traffic two years ago to 24% last quarter, citing AI Overviews. Leadership argues that crawler identification and paid access should become the norm as AI sits between publishers and audiences.
Blocking non-paying bots has ‘brought almost everyone to the table’, People Inc. said, signalling more licences to come. Such an approach by Microsoft is framed as a model for compensating rights-holders while enabling AI tools to use high-quality, authorised material.
IAC reported People Inc. digital revenue up 9% to $269m, with performance marketing and licensing up 38% and 24% respectively. The publisher also acquired Feedfeed, expanding its food vertical reach while pursuing additional AI content partnerships.
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The European Commission has unveiled RAISE, a new virtual institute designed to unite Europe’s AI research and accelerate scientific breakthroughs.
The launch, announced in Copenhagen, marks a flagship moment in the EU’s strategy to strengthen its leadership in science and technology through collective action.
Funded with €107 million under Horizon Europe, RAISE will bring together Europe’s best resources in data, computing power, and research talent.
An initiative that will help scientists apply AI to pressing challenges such as cancer treatment, climate change, and natural disaster prediction, while promoting innovation that serves humanity instead of commercial interests alone.
RAISE will work with the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking to secure access to AI Gigafactories and will dedicate €75 million to train and attract global researchers through Networks of Excellence.
The Commission also plans to double Horizon Europe’s annual AI investments to more than €3 billion, ensuring that the EU remains a global leader in scientific AI.
A project that reflects the EU’s ambition to achieve technological sovereignty and create an inclusive AI ecosystem. As RAISE grows in phases towards 2034, it will strengthen cooperation among Member States, academia, and industry, setting a benchmark for responsible and innovative AI in science.
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The European Commission has approved the creation of the Digital Commons European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (DC-EDIC), designed to strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty. The new body unites France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy as founding members.
DC-EDIC aims to build open, interoperable and sovereign digital systems, reducing reliance on imported technologies. Its work will focus on shared data infrastructure, connected public administration and collaborative digital tools to support both governments and businesses.
The Paris-based consortium will coordinate funding access, offer legal and technical guidance, and support the scaling of open-source digital solutions across Europe. Future projects will include a one-stop shop for resources, an expertise hub and a Digital Commons Forum.
All jointly developed software will be released under free, open-source licences, ensuring transparency and reuse whilst being GDPR compliant. The official launch is expected in December 2025, with the first annual State of the Digital Commons report planned for 2027.
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Organisations across public and private sectors are using Salesforce’s Agentforce to engage people whenever and wherever they need support.
From local governments to hospitals and education platforms, AI systems are transforming how services are delivered and accessed.
In the city of Kyle, Texas, an Agentforce-driven 311 app enables residents to report issues such as potholes or water leaks. The city plans to make the system voice-enabled, reducing traditional call volumes while maintaining a steady flow of service requests and faster responses.
At Pearson, AI enables students to access their online learning platforms instantly, regardless of their time zone. The company stated that the technology fosters loyalty by providing immediate assistance, rather than requiring users to wait for human support.
Meanwhile, UChicago Medicine utilises AI to streamline patient interactions, from prescription refills to scheduling, while ambient listening tools enable doctors to focus entirely on patients rather than typing notes.
Salesforce said Agentforce empowers organisations to save resources while enhancing trust, accessibility, and service quality. By meeting people on their own terms, AI enables more responsive and human-centred interactions across various industries.
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Meta has introduced a new Facebook update allowing group administrators to change their private groups to public while keeping members’ privacy protected. The company said the feature gives admins more flexibility to grow their communities without exposing existing private content.
All posts, comments, and reactions shared before the change will remain visible only to previous members, admins, and moderators. The member list will also stay private. Once converted, any new posts will be visible to everyone, including non-Facebook users, which helps discussions reach a broader audience.
Admins have three days to review and cancel the conversion before it becomes permanent. Members will be notified when a group changes its status, and a globe icon will appear when posting in public groups as a reminder of visibility settings.
Groups can be switched back to private at any time, restoring member-only access.
Meta said the feature supports community growth and deeper engagement while maintaining privacy safeguards. Group admins can also utilise anonymous or nickname-based participation options, providing users with greater control over their engagement in public discussions.
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Mercedes-Benz reported faster decisions and better on-time delivery at Celosphere 2025. Using Celonis within MO360, it unifies production and logistics data, extending visibility across every order, part, and process.
Order-to-delivery operations use AI copilots to forecast timelines, optimise sequencing, and cut delays. After-sales teams surface bottlenecks in service parts logistics and speed customer responses. Quality management utilises anomaly detection to identify deviations early, preventing them from impacting production output.
Executives say complete data transparency enables teams to act faster and with greater precision across production and supply chains. The approach helps anticipate change and react to market shifts. Hundreds of active users are expanding adoption as data-driven practices scale across the company.
Celonis positions process intelligence as the backbone that makes enterprise AI valuable. Integrated process data and business context create a live operational twin. The goal is moving from visibility to action, unlocking value through targeted fixes and intelligent automation.
Conference sessions highlighted broader momentum for process intelligence and AI in industry. Leaders discussed governance, standards, and measurable outcomes from digital platforms. Mercedes-Benz framed its results as proof that structured data and AI can lift performance at a global scale.
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Nissan and Monolith have extended their strategic partnership for three years to apply AI across more vehicle programmes in Europe. The collaboration supports Nissan. RE: Nissan Plans to Compress Development Timelines and Improve Operational Efficiency. Early outcomes are guiding a wider rollout.
Engineers at Nissan Technical Centre Europe will utilise Monolith to predict test results based on decades of data and simulations. Reducing prototypes and conducting targeted, high-value experiments enables teams to focus more effectively on design decisions. Ensuring both accuracy and coverage remains essential.
A prior project on chassis bolt joints saw AI recommend optimal torque ranges and prioritise the following best tests for engineers. Compared with the non-AI process, physical testing fell by 17 percent in controlled comparisons. Similar approaches are being prepared for future models beyond LEAF.
Leaders say that a broader deployment could halve testing time across European programmes if comparable gains are achieved. Governance encompasses rigorous validation before changes are deployed to production. Operational benefits include faster iteration cycles and reduced test waste.
Monolith’s toolkit includes next-test recommendation and anomaly detection to flag outliers before rework. Nissan frames the push as an innovation with sustainability benefits, cutting material use while maintaining quality across a complex supply chain. Partners will share results as adoption scales.
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AI summaries can speed learning, but an extensive study finds they often blunt depth and recall. More than 10,000 participants used chatbots or traditional web search to learn assigned topics. Those relying on chatbot digests showed shallower knowledge and offered fewer concrete facts afterwards.
Researchers from Wharton and New Mexico State conducted seven experiments across various tasks, including gardening, health, and scam awareness. Some groups saw the same facts, either as an AI digest or as source links. Advice written after AI use was shorter, less factual, and more similar across users.
Follow-up raters judged AI-derived advice as less informative and less trustworthy. Participants who used AI also reported spending less time with sources. Lower effort during synthesis reduces the mental work that cements understanding.
Findings land amid broader concerns about summary reliability. A BBC-led investigation recently found that major chatbots frequently misrepresented news content in their responses. The evidence suggests that to serves as support for critical reading, rather than a substitute for it.
The practical takeaway for learners and teachers is straightforward. Use AI to scaffold questions, outline queries, and compare viewpoints. Build lasting understanding by reading multiple sources, checking citations, and writing your own synthesis before asking a model to refine it.
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