Amazon's next-gen Alexa+ chatbot is now available in four new Echo devices and a bevy of Ring cameras. The company also debuted three new Kindle Scribe tablets, one with a color screen. All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. It got a large language model power-up earlier this year in the form of Alexa+ (a paid upgrade for non-Amazon Prime subscribers), and now, Amazon has fresh hardware to take advantage of the assistant's new capabilities.

What does recognising a Palestinian state mean? Why have Spain, Italy sent ships to assist the Gaza flotilla? Who are the artists speaking out against the war? Why has Microsoft cut Israel off from some of its services? Microsoft has announced that it has withdrawn some of its services from the Israeli army, following an investigation that raised concerns that Israel may be violating the company's terms of service by using its artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services to spy on millions of Palestinians throughout Gaza and the West Bank.

KKR Co-CEO Joe Bae says that if Japan doesn't invest in areas such as automation, robotics and artificial intelligence, the aging population and decline will become a bigger and bigger challenge for its success as a nation." KKR says Japan's aging population presents opportunities to invest in areas that tap artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies to make the most of a shrinking workforce. We're looking for ways to invest in businesses and industries that fundamentally improve the productivity of Japanese workers," KKR Co-CEO Joe Bae said in an interview in Tokyo. If Japan doesn't invest in areas such as automation, robotics and AI, the aging population and decline will become a bigger and bigger challenge for its success as a nation." Bae is keen on technology or software companies that can help provide skilled labor or services to boost productivity and negate Japan's demographic trends.

Toyota has opened the doors to the first phase of Woven City, its experimental town meant to act as an incubator for technologies from autonomous driving to artificial intelligence. Woven City aims to serve as a test bed for the innovative technology the world's No. 1 automaker needs to regain its competitive edge in an industry dominated by battery-powered cars with sophisticated software. Still, it was unclear during a Thursday tour for media and stakeholders how the city might fit that requirement. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right. With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories.

Flock Safety is pitching its police-style drone program to private businesses. It could bring aerial surveillance to shopping centers, warehouses, and hospitals. Flock Safety, whose drones were once reserved for police departments, is now offering them for private-sector security, the company announced today, with potential customers including including businesses intent on curbing shoplifting. Companies in the US can now place Flock's drone docking stations on their premises. If the company has a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly beyond visual line of sight (these are becoming easier to get), its security team can fly the drones within a certain radius, often a few miles. "Instead of a 911 call [that triggers the drone], it's an alarm call," says Keith Kauffman, a former police chief who now directs Flock's drone program.

The Trump administration's General Services Administration partners with Elon Musk's xAI to provide Grok AI models to federal agencies for $0.42 per organization.

The new sites will boost Stargate's planned capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts--about equal to the output of seven large nuclear reactors. An aerial view shows construction underway on a Project Stargate AI infrastructure site in Abilene, Texas on April 23, 2025. OpenAI is planning to build five new data centers in the United States as part of the Stargate initiative, the company announced on Tuesday. The sites, which are being developed in partnership with Oracle and SoftBank, bring Stargate's current planned capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts--roughly the same amount of power as seven large-scale nuclear reactors . "AI is different from the internet in a lot of ways, but one of them is just how much infrastructure it takes," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during a press briefing in Abilene, Texas on Tuesday.

What we know, and don't, about the link between painkillers and autism Scientific evidence is lacking to support the US government's decisions to caution against using a common painkiller in pregnancy and fast-track the approval of an experimental medication for autism On Monday, the US government announced two initiatives related to autism . It will update labelling on the common painkiller paracetamol, also called acetaminophen, warning use during pregnancy may increase the risk of autism and ADHD in children . It will also approve a drug called leucovorin for use in some children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Neither of these moves is based on robust scientific findings, and they are likely to have minimal effect on autism rates in the US. The announcement comes after the country's highest ranking public health official, Robert F Kennedy Jr, pledged in April to identify the causes of autism by the end of September.

We introduce FinDebate, a multi-agent framework for financial analysis, integrating collaborative debate with domain-specific Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Five specialized agents, covering earnings, market, sentiment, valuation, and risk, run in parallel to synthesize evidence into multi-dimensional insights. To mitigate overconfidence and improve reliability, we introduce a safe debate protocol that enables agents to challenge and refine initial conclusions while preserving coherent recommendations. Experimental results, based on both LLM-based and human evaluations, demonstrate the framework's efficacy in producing high-quality analysis with calibrated confidence levels and actionable investment strategies across multiple time horizons.