Google’s Cloud Experience lead Hayete Gallot says developer interest in sovereign cloud solutions is rising sharply amid AI concerns. More clients are asking to control how and where their data is stored, processed, and encrypted within public cloud environments.
Microsoft said it could not guarantee full cloud data sovereignty in July, increasing pressure on rivals to offer stronger protections.
Gallot noted that sovereignty is more than location. Cybersecurity measures such as encryption, ownership, and administrative access are now top priorities for businesses.
On AI, Gallot dismissed fears that assistants will replace developers, saying skills like prompt writing still require critical thinking.
She believes modern developers must adapt, comparing today’s AI tools to learning older languages like Pascal or Fortran.
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Elon Musk has taken an unexpected conciliatory turn in his feud with Sam Altman by praising a ChatGPT-5 response, ‘I don’t know’, as more valuable than overconfident answers. Musk described it as ‘a great answer’ from the AI chatbot.
At one point, xAI’s Grok chat assistant sided with Altman, while ChatGPT offered a supportive nod to Musk. These chatbot alignments have introduced confusion and irony into a clash already rich with irony.
Musk’s praise of a modest AI response contrasts sharply with the often intense claims of supremacy. It signals a rare acknowledgement of restraint and clarity, even from an avowed critic of OpenAI.
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Meta has introduced AI-powered translation tools for creators on Instagram and Facebook, allowing reels to be dubbed into other languages with automatic lip syncing.
The technology uses the creator’s voice instead of a generic substitute, ensuring tone and style remain natural while lip movements match the dubbed track.
The feature currently supports English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English, with more languages expected soon. On Facebook, it is limited to creators with at least 1,000 followers, while all public Instagram accounts can use it.
Viewers automatically see reels in their preferred language, although translations can be switched off in settings.
Through Meta Business Suite, creators can also upload up to 20 custom audio tracks per reel, offering manual control instead of relying only on automated translations. Audience insights segmented by language allow performance tracking across regions, helping creators expand their reach.
Meta has advised creators to prioritise face-to-camera reels with clear speech instead of noisy or overlapping dialogue.
The rollout follows a significant update to Meta’s Edits app, which added new editing tools such as real-time previews, silence-cutting and over 150 fresh fonts to improve the Reels production process.
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Arm Holdings has hired Amazon’s AI chip lead, Rami Sinno, to design its own complete chips. Known for Amazon’s Trainium and Inferentia processors, Sinno brings key expertise to Arm’s new direction in chip manufacturing.
Arm has traditionally licensed chip designs to companies like Apple and Nvidia, but now aims to build chips and complete systems. The firm is expanding teams with experience from HPE, Intel and Qualcomm, signalling a significant shift in its business model.
Backed by SoftBank, Arm plans to invest profits in chip development to rival Nvidia and reduce reliance on traditional licensing.
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Meta’s AI Studio, used to create and customise these bots across services like Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, is under scrutiny for facilitating interactions that may mislead or exploit users.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has warned that the United States may be underestimating China’s rapid advances in AI. He argued that export controls on semiconductors are unlikely to be a reliable long-term solution to the global AI race.
At a press briefing in San Francisco, Altman said the competition cannot be reduced to a simple scoreboard. China can expand inference capacity more quickly, even as Washington tightens restrictions on advanced semiconductor exports.
He expressed doubts about the effectiveness of purely policy-driven approaches. ‘You can export-control one thing, but maybe not the right thing… workarounds exist,’ Altman said. He stressed that chip controls may not keep pace with technological realities.
His comments come as US policy becomes increasingly complex. President Trump halted advanced chip supplies in April, while the Biden administration recently allowed ‘China-safe’ chips, requiring Nvidia and AMD to share revenue. Critics call the rules contradictory and difficult to enforce.
Meanwhile, Chinese firms are accelerating efforts to replace US suppliers, with Huawei and others building domestic alternatives. Altman suggested this push for self-sufficiency could undermine Washington’s goals, raising questions about America’s strategy in the AI race.
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Zimbabwe’s Information and Communication Technology Minister, Tendai Mavetera, revealed the second draft of the National AI Policy during the AI Summit for Africa 2025 in Victoria Falls, hosted by Alpha Media Holdings and AIIA.
Though the policy was not formalised during the summit, Mavetera stated it is expected to be launched by 1 October 2025 at the new Parliament building, with presidential presence anticipated.
The strategy is designed to foster an Africa where AI serves humanity, ensuring connectivity in every village, education access for every child, and opportunity for every young person.
Core features include data sovereignty and secure data storage, with institutions like TelOne expected to host localised solutions, moving away from past practices of storing data abroad.
At least 5 billion people worldwide lack access to justice, a human right enshrined in international law. In many regions, particularly low and middle-income countries, millions face barriers to justice, ranging from their socioeconomic position to the legal system failure. Meanwhile, AI has entered the legal sector at full speed and may offer legitimate solutions to bridge this justice gap.
Through chatbots, automated document review, predictive legal analysis, and AI-enabled translation, AI holds promise to improve efficiency and accessibility. Yet, the rise of AI in legal systems across the globe suggests the digitalisation of our legal systems.
While it may serve as a tool to break down access barriers, AI legal tools could also introduce the automation of bias in our judicial systems, unaccountable decision-making, and act as an accelerant to a widening digital divide. AI is capable of meaningfully expanding equitable justice, but its implementation must safeguard human rights principles.
Improving access to justice
Across the globe, AI legal assistance pilot programmes are underway. The UNHCR piloted an AI agent to improve legal communication barriers in Jordan. AI transcribes, translates, and organises refugee queries. With its help, users can streamline their caseload management, which is key to keeping operations smooth even under financial strain.
NGOs working to increase access to justice, such as Migrasia in Hong Kong, have begun using AI-powered chatbots to triage legal queries from migrant workers, offering 24/7 multilingual legal assistance.
While it is clear that these tools are designed to assist rather than replace human legal experts, they are showing they have the potential to significantly reduce delays by streamlining processes. In the UK, AI transcription tools are being used to provide victims of serious sexual crimes with access to judges’ sentencing remarks and explanations of legal language. This tool enhances transparency for victims, especially those seeking emotional closure.
Even as these programmes are only being piloted, a UNESCO survey found that 44% of judicial workers across 96 countries are currently using AI tools, like ChatGPT, for tasks such as drafting and translating documents. For example, the Morrocan judiciary has already integrated AI technology into its legal system.
AI tools help judges prepare judgments for various cases, as well as streamline legal document preparation. The technology allows for faster document drafting in a multilingual environment. Soon, AI-powered case analysis, based on prior case data, may also provide legal experts with predictive outcomes. AI tools have the opportunity and are already beginning to, break down barriers to justice and ultimately improve the just application of the law.
Risking human rights
While AI-powered legal assistance can provide affordable access, improve outreach to rural or marginalised communities, close linguistic divides, and streamline cases, it also poses a serious risk to human rights. The most prominent concerns surround bias and discrimination, as well as widening the digital divide.
Deploying AI without transparency can lead to algorithmic systems perpetuating systematic inequalities, such as racial or ethnic biases. Meanwhile, the risk of black box decision-making, through the use of AI tools with unexplainable outputs, can make it difficult to challenge legal decisions, undermining due process and the right to a fair trial.
Experts emphasise that the integration of AI into legal systems must focus on supporting human judgment, rather than outright replacing it. Whether AI is biased by its training datasets or simply that it becomes a black box over time, AI usage is in need of foresighted governance and meaningful human oversight.
Image via Pixabay / jessica45
Additionally, AI will greatly impact economic justice, especially for those in low-income or marginalised communities. Legal professionals lack necessary training and skills needed to effectively use AI tools. In many legal systems, lawyers, judges, clerks, and assistants do not feel confident explaining AI outputs or monitoring their use.
However, this lack of education undermines the necessary accountability and transparency needed to integrate AI meaningfully. It may lead to misuse of the technology, such as unverified translations, which can lead to legal errors.
While the use of AI improves efficiency, it may erode public trust when legal actors fail to use it correctly or the technology reflects systematic bias. The judiciary in Texas, US, warned about this concern in an opinion that detailed the fear of integrating opaque systems into the administration of justice. Public trust in the legal system is already eroding in the US, with just over a third of Americans expressing confidence in 2024.
The incorporation of AI into the legal system threatens to derail the public’s faith that is left. Meanwhile, those without access to digital connectivity or literacy education may be further excluded from justice. Many AI tools are developed by for-profit actors, raising questions about justice accessibility in an AI-powered legal system. Furthermore, AI providers will have access to sensitive case data, which poses a risk of misuse and even surveillance.
The policy path forward
As already stated, for AI to be integrated into legal systems and help bridge the justice gap, it must take on the role of assisting to human judges, lawyers, and other legal actors, but it cannot replace them. In order for AI to assist, it must be transparent, accountable, and a supplement to human reason. UNESCO and some regional courts in Eastern Africa advocate for judicial training programmes, thorough guidelines, and toolkits that promote the ethical use of AI.
The focus of legal AI education must be to improve AI literacy and to teach bias awareness, as well as inform users of digital rights. Legal actors must keep pace with the innovation and integration level of AI. They are the core of policy discussions, as they understand existing norms and have firsthand experience of how the technology affects human rights.
Other actors are also at play in this discussion. Taking a multistakeholder approach that centres on existing human rights frameworks, such as the Toronto Declaration, is the path to achieving effective and workable policy. Closing the justice gap by utilising AI hinges on the public’s access to the technology and understanding how it is being used in their legal systems. Solutions working to demystify black box decisions will be key to maintaining and improving public confidence in their legal systems.
The future of justice
AI has the transformative capability to help bridge the justice gap by expanding reach, streamlining operations, and reducing cost. AI has the potential to be a tool for the application of justice and create powerful improvements to inclusion in our legal systems.
However, it also poses the risk of deepening inequalities and decaying public trust. AI integration must be governed by human rights norms of transparency and accountability. Regulation is possible through education and discussion predicated on adherence to ethical frameworks. Now is the time to invest in digital literacy to create legal empowerment, which ensures that AI tools are developed to be contestable and serve as human-centric support.
Image via Pixabay / souandresantana
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A new Google Cloud survey shows that nearly nine in ten game developers have integrated AI agents into their workflow. These autonomous programs generate assets and interact with players in real time, adapting game worlds and NPCs to boost immersion.
Smaller studios are benefiting from AI, with nearly a third saying it lowers barriers to entry and allows them to compete with larger publishers. Developers report faster coding, testing, localisation, and onboarding, while larger companies face challenges adapting legacy systems to new AI tools.
AI-powered tools are also deployed to moderate online communities, guide tutorials, and respond dynamically to players.
While AI is praised as a productivity multiplier and creative copilot, some developers warn that a lack of standards can lead to errors and quality issues. Human creativity remains central, with many studios using AI to enhance gameplay rather than replace artistic and narrative input.
Developers stress the importance of maintaining unique styles and creative integrity while leveraging AI to unlock new experiences.
Industry experts highlight that gamers are receptive to AI when it deepens immersion and storytelling, but sceptical if it appears to shortcut the creative process. The survey shows that developers view AI as a long-term asset that can be used to reshape how games are made and experienced.
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