The EU has opened an investigation into Google over its artificial intelligence (AI) summaries which appear above search results. The European Commission said it would examine whether the firm used data from websites to provide this service - and if it failed to offer appropriate compensation to publishers. It is also investigating how YouTube videos may have been used to improve its broader AI systems, and whether content creators were able to opt-out. A Google spokesperson said the probe risks stifling innovation in a market that is more competitive than ever. Europeans deserve to benefit from the latest technologies and we will continue to work closely with the news and creative industries as they transition to the AI era, they said.

Plus: Trump says he'll sign an order blocking states from regulating AI. There are huge gulfs of opinion when it comes to predicting the near-future impacts of generative AI. In one camp there are those who predict that over the next decade the impact of AI will exceed that of the Industrial Revolution--a 150-year period of economic and social upheaval so great that we still live in the world it wrought. At the other end of the scale we have team'Normal Technology': experts who push back not only on these sorts of predictions but on their foundational worldview. That's not how technology works, they argue. Advances at the cutting edge may come thick and fast, but change across the wider economy, and society as a whole, moves at human speed.

FixBot can check on the health of your devices and talk you through necessary repairs. You can even point your phone's camera at broken gear to get started. The company's new app helps guide people through the repair process. The online repair service iFixit has a new app out today . When you open it, you will see something you've likely grown to expect in a new release: a chatbot.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie: 'We Are a City on the Rise' Since taking office, San Francisco's mayor has been on a quest to revitalize the city and increase public safety. He's also kept the National Guard out--with a little help from some very powerful friends. I first met Daniel Lurie, San Francisco's newly minted mayor, about five minutes before we walked onstage at WIRED's Big Interview event, held in his city last week. Lurie's team let me know ahead of time that his window for this conversation was tight: He'd just come from announcing a new city police chief, and had about half an hour for me before he needed to be on to the next thing. Which was? "No idea," Lurie quipped, shortly before we were foisted from backstage and into our conversation in front of several hundred attendees--a local crowd, who, judging from their boisterous reactions to Lurie's every word, are among the 73 percent of San Franciscans who approve of the job he's done since taking office in January of this year. To Lurie's credit, the story of San Francisco right now is largely a positive one. The city is indisputably the global hub of AI innovation and the billions of dollars that accompany it, with companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, along with smaller startups, investors, and plenty of young, AI-focused technologists all calling San Francisco home. Yes, that means rents are up and housing stock remains precariously low. But office vacancy rates are dropping, retail outlets are coming back to the city's downtown, and as Lurie's office is quick to tout, several key metrics measuring municipal crime--including homicides and car break-ins--are at historic lows. I wanted to talk to Lurie about all of that, but I was also curious about the bigger picture: his administration's dynamic with the federal government, particularly in the context of President Trump's October plan to send the National Guard into San Francisco--an endeavor that Lurie managed to thwart, according to The New York Times, by recruiting a powerful coterie of technology executives to work the phones in his favor. Lurie wasn't exactly forthcoming there, in keeping with his diligent efforts to focus conversations on San Francisco, and perhaps avoid attracting the attention, or the ire, of the current administration. It's a different tack than other Democrats governing progressive parts of the country have taken, from New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to California governor Gavin Newsom. But if the response in the room last week was any indication, Lurie's local fans don't seem to mind his "say less" strategy--at least for now. Someone has a 70-something percent approval rating.

Defense analyst Seth Jones warns in 'The American Edge' that the U.S. could exhaust long-range missiles within a week of Taiwan conflict with China.

Can Bike Riders and Self-Driving Cars Be Friends? Some cycling advocates are on board with robotaxis. Others see the self-driving car boom as perpetuating auto dependency. Los Angeles is a car city, and it's rarely more obvious than from a vulnerable perch on top of a bicycle . Among big cities in the US, LA has a middling-to-bad reputation for bike riding.

America's great journey in space is about to face its most consequential moment in half a century. Everyone agrees: It's a complete disaster. I. Artemis, We Have a Problem As you may have heard, NASA plans to send a crew of astronauts around the moon in early 2026, followed by a lunar landing in 2027. Or maybe you haven't heard. When I told one of my daughters about this plan to send people to the moon, she said, after a long silence: "But I thought we already sent a bunch of people there a long time ago." This is a standard response when I quiz people about Artemis, NASA's program to return to the moon, and this time to stay . It's named for Apollo's twin sister and the goddess of the moon and the hunt. The other day, I was in a gaggle with six neighbors, all highly informed professional people--two of them with long careers at the National Science Foundation--and none knew anything about Artemis except one thing: It's a plan to send people to Mars. Artemis is a moon mission. There is no Mars mission NASA has no Mars rocket, no Mars capsule, no Mars mission crew. What it does have is a very troubled moon program. Artemis faces fundamental engineering challenges that have called into question the program's basic architecture. Reconfiguring a mission this important is hard in the best of times, but the agency is being forced to do it during a year of unprecedented internal turmoil. A new administration always means turnover, but NASA has been in an uncontrolled spin every bit as alarming as the one Neil Armstrong famously pulled out of during in 1966. More than a year ago, President-elect Donald Trump nominated a billionaire entrepreneur and Elon Musk ally, Jared Isaacman, to become NASA administrator. It was an unconventional choice, but Isaacman drew support from many quarters in the space community. Then, right before Isaacman was poised for confirmation by the Senate, Trump and Musk had a nasty falling-out, and Trump yanked Isaacman's nomination. Since Inauguration Day, NASA had been run by acting administrator Janet Petro, a veteran agency official, and with Isaacman out, she remained in charge until one day in July when Trump suddenly named Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy as interim administrator.

America's Biggest Bitcoin Miners Are Pivoting to AI In the face of a profitability crisis, industrial-scale bitcoin miners are transforming their data centers into AI factories. One afternoon in June 2024, I stood up against the fence of a sprawling industrial facility a few miles outside of Corsicana, Texas. Over a metal gate, I watched a bright yellow excavator claw at the dirt and flatbed trucks shuttle to and fro. A hangar-like structure with a gleaming white roof stretched hundreds of meters along the opposite perimeter. The company that owned the plot, Riot Platforms, was busily constructing the world's largest bitcoin mine. A year and a half later, a projected two-thirds of the facility is being repurposed to accommodate AI and high-performance computing (HPC) tasks.

Google runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet. Google runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet. EU opens investigation into Google's use of online content for AI models Tue 9 Dec 2025 05.06 ESTFirst published on Tue 9 Dec 2025 03.48 EST The EU has opened an investigation to assess whether Google is breaching European competition rules in its use of online content from publishers and YouTube creators for artificial intelligence. The European Commission said on Tuesday it will examine whether the US tech company, which runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet, is putting rival AI owners at a "disadvantage". "The investigation will notably examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to such content, thereby placing developers of rival AI models at a disadvantage," the commission said.

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