Digital business models

EU split widens over ban on AI nudification apps

European lawmakers remain divided over whether AI tools that generate non-consensual sexual images should face an explicit ban in the EU legislation.

The split emerged as debate intensified over the AI simplification package, which is moving through Parliament and the Council rather than remaining confined to earlier negotiations.

Concerns escalated after Grok was used to create images that digitally undressed women and children.

The EU regulators responded by launching an investigation under the Digital Services Act, and the Commission described the behaviour as illegal under existing European rules. Several lawmakers argue that the AI Act should name pornification apps directly instead of relying on broader legal provisions.

Lead MEPs did not include a ban in their initial draft of the Parliament’s position, prompting other groups to consider adding amendments. Negotiations continue as parties explore how such a restriction could be framed without creating inconsistencies within the broader AI framework.

The Commission appears open to strengthening the law and has hinted that the AI omnibus could be an appropriate moment to act. Lawmakers now have a limited time to decide whether an explicit prohibition can secure political agreement before the amendment deadline passes.

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MIT researchers unveil EnCompass for AI agent search

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Asari AI have introduced EnCompass, a framework designed to enhance how AI agents interact with large language models.

The system improves agent performance by automatically backtracking when errors occur and running multiple execution paths in parallel to identify the most effective outcome.

Programming AI agents traditionally requires extensive additional code to handle model mistakes. EnCompass removes that burden by embedding retry and search logic directly into execution.

Developers annotate key decision points, allowing the framework to explore alternative reasoning paths while preserving the agent’s original workflow structure.

Efficiency gains appear significant. Trials show coding effort for search implementation reduced by as much as 80%, while accuracy in code translation tasks improved between 15% and 40%.

Researchers demonstrated the framework’s ability to optimise repository translation and rule discovery across complex digital systems.

Future applications extend to large-scale software maintenance, scientific experimentation, and engineering design. Presented at NeurIPS, EnCompass positions structured search as key to advancing reliable, high-performance AI agent systems.

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Germany fines Amazon €59 million for abusing market power in seller pricing

The German competition authority has fined Amazon €59 million for abusing its dominant position by influencing the pricing behaviour of third-party sellers.

Regulators concluded that Amazon’s pricing algorithms and Fair Pricing Policy breached national digital dominance rules and the EU competition law, rather than aligning with fair marketplace standards.

The authority argued that Amazon competes directly with merchants on its platform while shaping their prices through restrictions such as caps that penalise sellers who exceed certain limits.

Officials described that approach as incompatible with healthy competition since a platform should not influence rivals’ commercial strategies while participating in the same market.

Amazon strongly disputed the ruling and claimed the conclusion conflicts with the EU consumer standards. The company argued that the decision forces the platform to promote prices that fail to reflect competitive market conditions and announced it will challenge the findings.

The case follows a 2025 preliminary assessment and builds on Amazon’s earlier designation in 2022 as a company of paramount significance for competition, a judgement upheld by the Federal Court of Justice in Germany in 2024.

A ruling that marks another step in Europe’s efforts to rein in digital platforms that wield extensive influence across multiple markets.

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Spain faces escalating battle with Telegram founder

The confrontation between Spain and Telegram founder Pavel Durov has intensified after he claimed that Pedro Sánchez endangered online freedoms.

Government officials responded that the tech executive spread lies rather than engage with the proposed rules in good faith. Sánchez argued that democracy would not be silenced by what he called the techno-oligarchs of the algorithm.

The dispute followed the unveiling of new measures aimed at major technology companies. The plan introduces a ban on social media use for under-16s and holds corporate leaders legally responsible when unlawful or hateful content remains online rather than being removed.

Platforms would also need to adopt age-verification tools such as ID checks or biometric systems, which Durov argued could turn Spain into a surveillance state by allowing large-scale data collection.

Tensions widened as Sánchez clashed with prominent US tech figures. Sumar urged all bodies linked to the central administration to leave X, a move that followed Elon Musk’s accusation that the Spanish leader was acting like a tyrant.

The row highlighted how Spain’s attempt to regulate digital platforms has placed its government in open conflict with influential technology executives.

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TikTok access restored as Albania adopts new protective filters

Albania has lifted its temporary ban on TikTok after nearly a year, the government announced, saying that concerns about public, social and digital safety have now been addressed and that access will resume nationwide.

The restriction was introduced in March 2025 following a fatal stabbing linked to a social media dispute and aimed to protect younger users instead of exposing them to harmful online content.

Under the new arrangement, authorities are partnering with TikTok to introduce protective filters based on keywords and content controls and to strengthen reporting mechanisms for harmful material.

The government described the decision as a shift from restrictive measures to a phase of active monitoring, inter-institutional cooperation, and shared responsibility with digital platforms.

Although the ban has now been lifted, a court challenge contends that the earlier suspension violated the constitutional right to freedom of expression, and a ruling is expected later in February. Opposition figures also criticised the original ban when it was applied ahead of parliamentary elections.

Despite the formal ban, TikTok remained accessible to many users in Albania through virtual private networks during the year it was in force, highlighting the challenge of enforcing such blocks in practice.

Critics have also noted that addressing the impact on youth may require broader digital education and safety measures.

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Claude Opus 4.6 sets new benchmark for enterprise AI

Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4.6, its most advanced AI model to date, introducing significant improvements in coding performance, reasoning depth, and long-context comprehension.

Engineering workflows stand to benefit from stronger debugging, code review, and better large-scale repository management, while agentic task execution now runs for more extended periods with greater reliability.

The model’s 1M token context window, now in beta, enables sustained reasoning across vast datasets and extended conversations. Performance gains span multiple benchmarks, leading in agentic coding, multidisciplinary reasoning, and high-value knowledge work.

Information retrieval in long documents has also improved, addressing persistent industry concerns around context degradation.

Operational capabilities extend beyond software development into enterprise productivity. Financial analysis, research, and document workflows gain direct support, with spreadsheet and presentation integrations enhancing daily business use.

Within Claude Code, newly introduced agent teams allow multiple AI agents to collaborate autonomously on complex workloads.

Safety remains central, with expanded evaluations showing low misalignment risk backed by interpretability research and cybersecurity safeguards. Additional tools- adaptive thinking, effort scaling, and context compaction- add flexibility for deploying long-running AI systems at scale.

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Frontier and GPT-5.3-Codex mark major OpenAI expansion

OpenAI has unveiled Frontier, a new enterprise platform designed to help organisations build, deploy, and manage AI agents capable of executing real operational work.

The launch reflects accelerating enterprise adoption, with businesses reporting measurable productivity gains across manufacturing, finance, sales, and energy operations through agent deployment.

Frontier addresses a growing gap between AI model capability and real-world implementation. The platform equips AI agents with shared organisational context, system access, governance permissions, and feedback learning mechanisms.

By integrating across existing cloud infrastructure, enterprise software, and data environments, Frontier enables AI coworkers to operate across workflows rather than within isolated tools.

Alongside the platform release, OpenAI introduced GPT-5.3-Codex, its most advanced agentic coding model to date. The system combines the coding strength of earlier Codex iterations with expanded reasoning and professional task execution.

Benchmark performance leads across SWE-Bench Pro, Terminal-Bench, OSWorld, and GDPval, reflecting gains in software engineering, computer use, and knowledge work automation.

Cybersecurity capabilities also advance with the release. GPT-5.3-Codex includes enhanced vulnerability detection training and operates under strengthened safeguards designed to support defensive research while mitigating misuse.

Together, Frontier and GPT-5.3-Codex position AI agents as scalable digital coworkers capable of executing complex technical and enterprise workloads end-to-end.

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AI predicts brain age and cancer survival

Researchers at Mass General Brigham have unveiled BrainIAC, an artificial intelligence model capable of analysing brain MRI scans to predict age, dementia risk, tumour mutations, and cancer survival. The model demonstrates remarkable flexibility, handling a wide variety of medical tasks with high accuracy.

BrainIAC employs self-supervised learning to identify features from unlabeled MRI datasets, allowing it to adapt to numerous clinical applications without requiring extensive annotated data. Its performance surpasses that of conventional task-specific AI frameworks.

Tests on nearly 49,000 MRI scans across seven different tasks revealed the model’s ability to generalise across both healthy and abnormal images. It successfully tackled both straightforward tasks, such as scan classification, and complex challenges, including tumour mutation detection.

The team highlights BrainIAC’s potential to accelerate biomarker discovery, improve diagnostic tools, and personalise patient care. While results are promising, researchers note that further studies on additional imaging techniques and larger datasets are necessary to validate its broader clinical use.

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Startup founded by Nobel laureate focuses on scalable quantum chips

Renowned physicist John Martinis, a Nobel Prize winner, is pursuing a new quantum computing breakthrough. His early work proved electrical circuits could behave like quantum particles, enabling modern quantum machines.

Momentum grew when Martinis led Google’s ‘quantum supremacy’ experiment, outperforming classical computers in specialised tasks. Scaling remains difficult because fragile qubits, complex wiring and manufacturing limits reduce reliability.

Startup QoLab, founded in 2024, is redesigning quantum chip architecture to solve those hardware problems. Integrating components onto chips could reduce wiring, improve stability and enable larger systems.

Useful quantum computers could transform chemistry, materials science and complex simulations beyond classical limits. Martinis believes hardware innovation and scalable manufacturing will determine future industry leaders.

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AI set to redefine Indian industry and economy

Artificial intelligence is becoming a cornerstone of India’s economic and industrial growth. The upcoming AI summit highlights the goal of building AI as national infrastructure, reflecting India’s languages, values, and knowledge systems.

Indian IT and service industries are moving beyond software maintenance to providing AI infrastructure and intelligent systems. Such a transformation can automate workflows, boost productivity, and create new opportunities domestically and globally.

Industrial AI is set to transform manufacturing, enabling next-generation factories through virtual twin technologies. AI grounded in physics and industrial knowledge allows faster prototyping, efficient resource use, and greater competitiveness for large enterprises and MSMEs.

Collaborations between NVIDIA and Dassault Systèmes showcase AI-driven factories and industrial intelligence. India’s talent, scale, and digital ecosystem position it to lead in industrial and generative AI, setting global technological and economic benchmarks.

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