Artificial intelligence

Microsoft backs Australia’s next phase of digital government with new AI and cloud agreement

Australia’s rise to second place in the OECD Digital Government Index signals renewed momentum for national digital transformation.

A shift that comes as Microsoft signs a new five-year Volume Sourcing Arrangement with the Federal Government, designed to underpin modernisation across public services and create a secure, future-ready foundation for responsible AI adoption.

The agreement led by the Digital Transformation Agency gives agencies access to Microsoft Copilot, Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and a strengthened security and compliance framework instead of continuing reliance on ageing systems.

The arrangement sets clearer strategic pathways for innovation, procurement and skills development through an enhanced governance structure.

It recommits both sides to national security requirements, including the Security of Critical Infrastructure legislation, the Cloud Hosting Certification Framework and IRAP.

These measures allow agencies to expand AI use while retaining control of data and meeting the expectations placed on government institutions.

A successful Copilot trial in 2024 already demonstrated personal productivity gains of around one hour per day for participating staff.

Microsoft is also establishing a $1.55 million training fund for the Australian Public Service to support capability building in ethical AI use and modern cloud operations.

The company emphasises that Australia’s partner ecosystem will gain new opportunities because the agreement simplifies how local firms engage with government agencies. Such an approach forms an important part of the wider public sector reform agenda announced last year.

The new deal aligns with national priorities set out in the Whole-of-Government Cloud Computing Policy and the National AI Plan.

Australia now enters a pivotal period in which digital transformation is guided not only by technological capacity but by the frameworks of trust, resilience and public benefit that shape how government services evolve.

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AI misuse exposed as OpenAI details global disinformation and scam networks

OpenAI said criminal and state-linked groups misused ChatGPT for disinformation, scams and covert influence. Its latest threat report details coordinated account bans and highlights how AI tools are embedded within broader operational workflows rather than used in isolation.

One investigation linked accounts to Chinese law enforcement engaged in what were described as ‘cyber special operations’. Activities included planning influence campaigns, mass-reporting dissidents and drafting forged materials, with related efforts continuing through other tools despite model refusals.

The report also outlined a Cambodia-based romance scam targeting young men in Indonesia through a fake dating agency. Operators combined manual prompting with automated chatbots to sustain conversations and facilitate financial fraud, leading to account removals.

Separately, accounts tied to Russia’s ‘Rybar’ network used ChatGPT to draft and translate posts distributed across multiple platforms. OpenAI noted that campaign impact depended more on account reach and coordination than on AI-generated content alone.

Across China, Russia and parts of Southeast Asia, actors treated AI as one tool among many, alongside fake profiles, paid advertising and forged documents. OpenAI called for cross-industry vigilance, stressing the need to analyse behavioural patterns across platforms.

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Meta AI flood of unusable abuse tips overwhelms US investigators

Investigators in the US say that AI used by Meta is flooding child protection units with large volumes of unhelpful reports, thereby draining resources rather than assisting ongoing cases.

Officers in the Internet Crimes Against Children network told a New Mexico court that most alerts generated by the company’s platforms lack essential evidence or contain material that is not criminal, leaving teams unable to progress investigations.

Meta rejects the claim that it prioritises profit, stressing its cooperation with law enforcement and highlighting rapid response times to emergency requests.

Its position is challenged by officers who say the volume of AI-generated alerts has doubled since 2024, particularly after the Report Act broadened reporting obligations.

They argue that adolescent conversations and incomplete data now form a sizeable portion of the alerts, while genuine cases of child sexual abuse material are becoming harder to detect.

Internal company documents disclosed at trial show Meta executives raising concerns as early as 2019 about the impact of end-to-end encryption on the firm’s ability to identify child exploitation and support investigators.

Child safety groups have long warned that encryption could limit early detection, even though Meta says it has introduced new tools designed to operate safely within encrypted environments.

The growing influx of unusable tips is taking a heavy toll on investigative teams. Officers in the US say each report must still be reviewed manually, despite the low likelihood of actionable evidence, and this backlog is diminishing morale at a time when they say resources have not kept pace with demand.

They warn that meaningful cases risk being delayed as units struggle with a workload swollen by AI systems tuned to avoid regulatory penalties rather than investigative value.

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Colorado targets AI chatbot safety

AI chatbots operating in Colorado would face new child safety and suicide prevention requirements under a bipartisan bill introduced in the Colorado legislature. Lawmakers say the measure addresses parents to concerns about harmful chatbot interactions.

House Bill 1263 would require companies to clearly inform children in Colorado that they are interacting with AI rather than a real person. Platforms would also be barred from offering engagement rewards to child users.

The proposal mandates reasonable safeguards to prevent sexually explicit content and to stop chatbots from encouraging emotional dependence, including romantic role-playing. Parental control options would also be required where services are accessible to children in Colorado.

Companies would need to provide suicide prevention resources when users express self-harm thoughts and report such incidents to the Colorado attorney general. Violations would be treated as consumer protection infractions, carrying fines of up to $1,000 per occurrence in Colorado.

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UAE builds sovereign financial cloud

The Central Bank of the UAE has partnered with Abu Dhabi-based AI company Core42 to develop a sovereign financial cloud infrastructure in the UAE. The system is designed to ensure data sovereignty and strengthen protection against cyber threats.

According to the Central Bank of the UAE, the platform will operate on a centralised, highly secure and isolated infrastructure. It aims to support continuous financial services while boosting operational agility across the UAE.

The infrastructure will be powered by AI and provide automation and real-time data analysis for licensed institutions in the UAE. It will also enable unified management of multi-cloud services within a single regulatory framework.

Core42, established by G42 in 2023, said finance must remain sovereign as it relies on digital infrastructure. The Central Bank of the UAE described the project as a key pillar of its financial infrastructure transformation programme.

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Anthropic faces data theft claims from Musk

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and xAI, has publicly accused Anthropic of stealing large volumes of data to train its AI models. The allegation was made on X in response to posts referencing Community Notes attached to Anthropic-related content.

Musk claimed the company had engaged in large-scale data theft and suggested that it had paid multi-billion-dollar settlements. Those financial claims remain contested, and no official confirmation has been provided to substantiate the figures.

Anthropic, known for developing the Claude AI model, was founded by former OpenAI employees and promotes an approach centred on AI safety and responsible development. The company has not publicly responded to Musk’s latest accusations.

The dispute reflects a broader conflict across the AI industry over how companies collect the text, images and other materials required to train large language models. Much of this data is scraped from the internet, often without explicit permission from rights holders.

Multiple lawsuits filed by authors, media organisations and software developers are testing whether large-scale scraping qualifies as fair use under copyright law. Court rulings in these cases could reshape licensing practices, impose financial penalties, and alter the economics of AI development.

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AI-enhanced electronic nose shows promise for early ovarian cancer detection

Scientists are combining AI with advanced sensor technology, commonly known as an electronic nose, to detect subtle patterns in volatile organic compounds (VOCs) associated with ovarian cancer.

The AI component improves the system’s ability to differentiate disease-specific chemical fingerprints from benign or background VOC profiles, increasing sensitivity and specificity compared with earlier sensor-only approaches.

Ovarian cancer is notoriously difficult to diagnose in early stages due to vague symptoms and a lack of reliable screening tools. The AI-boosted electronic nose aims to fill this gap by analysing breath, urine, or blood headspace samples in a non-invasive manner, with the potential to be deployed in clinical or even point-of-care settings.

Early experimental results suggest that regressing VOC patterns using machine learning models can distinguish ovarian cancer cases with greater accuracy than traditional methods alone. However, larger clinical validation studies are still underway.

Researchers emphasise that this technology is intended as a screening and triage tool to flag individuals for more definitive diagnostics, not as a standalone diagnostic test at present.

If successfully scaled and validated, AI-enhanced VOC detection could lead to earlier interventions and improved survival outcomes for patients with ovarian cancer.

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AI automation quietly reshapes core insurance operations

A Business Reporter analysis notes that AI in the insurance sector has progressed from pilots and back-office experiments to core operational automation, spanning underwriting, claims processing, customer servicing, document interpretation and financial workflows.

This shift is driven by the need to reduce high operating costs, estimated at roughly 22% of global premiums, which have long limited the industry’s growth and agility.

Modern AI systems are increasingly deployed as intelligent processing layers that interpret applications, policy documents and financial records, route work, reconcile data and assist human judgement without requiring wholesale replacement of legacy systems.

Insurers see potential for real-time underwriting support, dramatically faster claims intake and near-instant reconciliation of finance tasks, enabling staff to shift focus from repetitive administration to higher-value activities such as risk assessment, customer relationships and portfolio insights.

The commentary suggests that resistance to broader AI adoption in insurance is cultural rather than technical, as the industry’s traditionally cautious stance can slow integration even when automation delivers measurable value.

The core message is that AI’s role in insurance is not to replace humans but to remove friction and elevate human work by automating routine functions efficiently and at scale.

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AI helps researchers see the bigger picture in cell biology

Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report progress in applying AI to integrate and interpret diverse biological datasets, helping overcome key challenges in cell biology research.

Traditional experimental approaches often generate fragmented data, such as gene expression profiles, imaging, and molecular interactions, that are difficult to combine into a coherent view of cellular systems.

By contrast, AI models can learn patterns across multiple data types, reveal connections between disparate datasets, and generate holistic representations of cell behaviour that would otherwise require extensive manual synthesis.

The new AI techniques allow researchers to uncover relationships between genes, proteins and cellular processes with greater clarity, enabling improved hypothesis generation, experimental design and understanding of complex biological phenomena such as development, disease progression and response to therapies.

Because these AI tools can help prioritise experimental directions and reduce reliance on trial-and-error studies, they may accelerate breakthroughs in areas ranging from immunology to cancer biology.

Researchers emphasise that AI complements, rather than replaces, traditional biological expertise, acting as a data-driven partner that expands scientists’ ability to see the ‘bigger picture’ across scales and contexts.

Ethical and methodological considerations also underscore the importance of validating AI-generated insights with rigorous experiments.

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How multimodal sensing powers physical AI

Multimodal sensing allows physical AI systems to combine inputs such as vision, audio, lidar and touch to build situational awareness in real time. The approach enables machines to operate autonomously in complex physical environments.

The architecture typically includes input modules for individual sensors, a fusion module to combine relevant data, and an output module to generate actions. Applications range from robotics and autonomous vehicles to spatial AI systems navigating dynamic 3D spaces.

Fusion techniques vary by use case, from Bayesian networks for uncertainty management to Kalman filters for navigation and neural networks for robotic manipulation. The aim is to leverage complementary sensor strengths while maintaining reliability.

Implementation presents technical challenges including environmental noise filtering, calibration across time and space, and balancing redundant versus complementary sensing. Engineers must also manage tradeoffs in processing power, controllers and system design.

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