Children today spend a significant amount of their time online, from learning and playing to communicating.
To protect them in an increasingly digital world, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, the European Commission’s DG CNECT, and the UK’s Ofcom have joined forces to strengthen global cooperation on child online safety.
The partnership aims to ensure that online platforms take greater responsibility for protecting and empowering children, recognising their rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The three regulators will continue to enforce their online safety laws to ensure platforms properly assess and mitigate risks to children. They will promote privacy-preserving age verification technologies and collaborate with civil society and academics to ensure that regulations reflect real-world challenges.
By supporting digital literacy and critical thinking, they aim to provide children and families with safer and more confident online experiences.
To advance the work, a new trilateral technical group will be established to deepen collaboration on age assurance. It will study the interoperability and reliability of such systems, explore the latest technologies, and strengthen the evidence base for regulatory action.
Through closer cooperation, the regulators hope to create a more secure and empowering digital environment for young people worldwide.
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The US AI safety and research company, Anthropic, has announced a $50 billion investment to expand AI computing infrastructure inside the country, partnering with Fluidstack to build data centres in Texas and New York, with additional sites planned.
These facilities are designed to optimise efficiency for Anthropic’s workloads, supporting frontier research and development in AI.
The project is expected to generate approximately 800 permanent jobs and 2,400 construction positions as sites come online throughout 2026.
An investment that aligns with the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan, aiming to maintain the US leadership in AI while strengthening domestic technology infrastructure and competitiveness.
Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, highlighted the importance of such an infrastructure in developing AI systems capable of accelerating scientific discovery and solving complex problems.
The company serves over 300,000 business customers, with a sevenfold growth in large accounts over the past year, demonstrating strong market demand for its Claude AI platform.
Fluidstack was selected as Anthropic’s partner for its agility in rapidly deploying high-capacity infrastructure. The collaboration aims to provide cost-effective and capital-efficient solutions to meet the growing demand, ensuring that research and development can continue to be at the forefront of AI innovation.
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The US tech giant, Meta, has announced the construction of its 30th data centre in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, a $1 billion investment that will power the company’s growing AI infrastructure while benefiting the local community and environment.
A facility, designed to support Meta’s most demanding AI workloads, that will run entirely on clean energy and create more than 100 permanent jobs alongside 1,000 construction roles.
The company will invest nearly $200 million in energy infrastructure and donate $15 million to Alliant Energy’s Hometown Care Energy Fund to assist families with home energy costs.
Meta will also launch community grants to fund schools and local organisations, strengthening technology education and digital skills while helping small businesses use AI tools more effectively.
Environmental responsibility remains central to the project. The data centre will use dry cooling, eliminating water demands during operation, and restore 100% of consumed water to local watersheds.
In partnership with Ducks Unlimited, Meta will revitalise 570 acres of wetlands and prairie, transforming degraded habitats into thriving ecosystems. The facility is expected to achieve LEED Gold Certification, reflecting Meta’s ongoing commitment to sustainability and community-focused innovation.
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The European Commission is preparing a Digital Package on simplification for 19 November. A leaked draft outlines instruments covering GDPR, ePrivacy, Data Act and AI Act reforms.
Plans include a single breach portal and a higher reporting threshold. Authorities would receive notifications within 96 hours, with standardised forms and narrower triggers. Controllers could reject or charge for data subject access requests used to pursue disputes.
Cookie rules would shift toward browser-level preference signals respected across services. Aggregated measurement and security uses would not require popups, while GDPR lawful bases expand. News publishers could receive limited exemptions recognising reliance on advertising revenues.
Drafting recognises legitimate interest for training AI models on personal data. Narrow allowances are provided for sensitive data during development, along with EU-wide data protection impact assessment templates. Critics warn proposals dilute safeguards and may soften the AI Act.
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Switzerland has formally joined Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship research and innovation programme, together with Digital Europe and the Euratom Research and Training Programme.
An agreement, signed in Bern by Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva and Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin, that grants Swiss researchers the same status as their EU counterparts.
They can now lead projects, receive EU funding, and access every thematic pillar, reinforcing cross-border collaboration in fields such as climate technology, digital transformation, and energy security.
The accord, effective from 1 January 2025, also enables Switzerland to become a member of Fusion for Energy in 2026, thereby integrating its researchers into ITER, the world’s largest fusion energy initiative.
Plans include Swiss participation in Erasmus+ from 2027 and in the EU4Health programme once a separate health agreement takes effect.
A development that forms part of a broader package designed to deepen EU–Swiss relations and modernise cooperation frameworks across science, technology, and education.
The European Commission reaffirmed its commitment to finalising ratification of all related agreements, ensuring long-term collaboration and strengthening Europe’s position as a global leader in innovation and research.
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A Chinese company has stunned the AI world after its new open-source model outperformed OpenAI’s ChatGPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5 in key benchmarks.
Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2 Thinking model achieved the best reasoning and coding scores yet, shaking confidence in American dominance over advanced AI systems.
The Beijing-based startup, backed by Alibaba and Tencent, released Kimi K2 Thinking on 6 November. It scored 44.9 percent in Humanity’s Last Exam and 60.2 percent in BrowseComp, both surpassing leading US models.
Analysts dubbed it another ‘DeepSeek moment ‘, echoing the earlier success of China in breaking AI cost barriers.
Moonshot AI trained the trillion-parameter system for just US$4.6 million (nearly ten times cheaper than GPT-5’s reported costs) using a Mixture-of-Experts structure and advanced quantisation for faster generation.
The fully open-weight model, released under a Modified MIT License, adds commercial flexibility and intensifies competition with US labs.
Industry observers called it a turning point. Hugging Face’s Thomas Wolf said the achievement shows how open-source models can now rival closed systems.
Researchers from the Allen Institute for AI noted that Chinese innovation is narrowing the gap faster than expected, driven by efficiency and high-quality training data rather than raw computing power.
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AMD has completed the acquisition of MK1, a California-based company specialising in high-speed inference and reasoning-based AI technologies.
The move marks a significant step in AMD’s strategy to strengthen AI performance and efficiency across hardware and software layers. MK1’s Flywheel and comprehension engines are designed to optimise AMD’s Instinct GPUs, offering scalable, accurate, and cost-efficient AI reasoning.
The MK1 team will join the AMD Artificial Intelligence Group, where their expertise will advance AMD’s enterprise AI software stack and inference capabilities.
Handling over one trillion tokens daily, MK1’s systems are already deployed at scale, providing traceable and efficient AI solutions for complex business processes.
By combining MK1’s advanced AI software innovation with AMD’s compute power, the acquisition enhances AMD’s position in the enterprise and generative AI markets, supporting its goal of delivering accessible, high-performance AI solutions globally.
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Samsung has unveiled the Vision AI Companion, an advanced conversational AI platform designed to transform the television into a connected household hub.
Unlike voice assistants meant for personal devices, the Vision AI Companion operates on the communal screen, enabling families to ask questions, plan activities, and receive visualised, contextual answers through natural dialogue.
Built into Samsung’s 2025 TV lineup, the system integrates an upgraded Bixby and supports multiple large language models, including Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity.
With its multi-AI agent platform, Vision AI Companion allows users to access personalised recommendations, real-time information, and multimedia responses without leaving their current programme.
It supports 10 languages and includes features such as Live Translate, AI Gaming Mode, Generative Wallpaper, and AI Upscaling Pro. The platform runs on One UI Tizen, offering seven years of software upgrades to ensure longevity and security.
By embedding generative AI into televisions, Samsung aims to redefine how households interact with technology, turning the TV into an intelligent companion that informs, entertains, and connects families across languages and experiences.
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Japanese mobile carrier NTT Docomo has developed a system that measures physical and mental pain and translates it into a format others can understand.
The technology utilises brainwave analysis to convert subjective sensations, such as injuries, stomachaches, spiciness, or emotional distress, into quantifiable levels.
The system, created in collaboration with startup Pamela Inc., allows recipients to understand what a specific pain score represents and even experience it through a device.
Docomo sees potential applications in medical diagnosis, rehabilitation, immersive gaming, and support for individuals who have been exposed to psychological or social harm.
Officials said the platform could be introduced for practical use alongside sixth-generation cellular networks, which are expected to be available in the 2030s.
The innovation aims to overcome the challenge of pain being experienced differently by each person, creating a shared understanding of physical and emotional discomfort.
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Sweden’s data protection authority, IMY, has opened an investigation into a massive ransomware-related data breach that exposed personal information belonging to 1.5 million people. The breach originated from a cyberattack on IT provider Miljödata in August, which affected roughly 200 municipalities.
Hackers reportedly stole highly sensitive data, including names, medical certificates, and rehabilitation records, much of which has since been leaked on the dark web. Swedish officials have condemned the incident, calling it one of the country’s most serious cyberattacks in recent years.
The IMY said the investigation will examine Miljödata’s data protection measures and the response of several affected public bodies, such as Gothenburg, Älmhult, and Västmanland. The regulator’s goal is to identify security shortcomings for future cyber threats.
Authorities have yet to confirm how the attackers gained access to Miljödata’s systems, and no completion date for the investigation has been announced. The breach has reignited calls for tighter cybersecurity standards across Sweden’s public sector.
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