In this summary article, organisers of a tutorial and a workshop at IJCAI-ECAI 2026 pick their key takeaways from their respective sessions. This tutorial was a practical, hands-on tutorial on the theory and methods for handling missing data in tabular and imaging settings, from statistical baselines to autoencoders and generative adversarial networks. The missingness mechanism is more important than the choice of imputation method. MCAR, MAR, and MNAR settings call for different treatment, and MNAR, the most challenging mechanism, is the one that most methods do not handle well. Deep generative imputation is not always better.

The company is also apparently willing to let bygones be bygones -- Disney has announced that it's hiring Karandeep Anand, the former CEO of Character.AI, as its first chief technology officer. "Karandeep brings a rare mix of experience across infrastructure, consumer technology and AI, and will be a vital addition to Disney's senior leadership team as we further our three priorities: great storytelling as our North Star, technology in service of creativity, and operating as One Disney," Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro said in a statement. "He also has real enthusiasm and respect for Disney, a clear sense of where technology and creativity meet and shares our belief that technology creates the most value when it helps people do their best work." Since becoming CEO in February, D'Amaro has leaned hard into Disney's capabilities as a technology company, pitching the Disney streaming service and app as central to its future. Hiring Anand, and making him a direct report, is a further attempt to sell that idea.

A comparison of a T-shirt as sold by Lonely Kids Club and Temu. The business owner says AI may have been used to scrape the content of his site and replicate the designs. A comparison of a T-shirt as sold by Lonely Kids Club and Temu. The business owner says AI may have been used to scrape the content of his site and replicate the designs. 'Brutal': thousands of T-shirt designs stolen and listed on Temu, Sydney label claims After 15 years running a small business making T-shirts, Warwick Levy says it was "brutal" when he first discovered an identical design for sale on Temu.

The Albanese government is considering giving AI companies access to Australian creatives' works by default as it pursues a compromise with US tech giants. "It would mean putting AI companies' interests over everyday Australians, giving AI companies access to all Australians' content, unless they opt out," Pocock said on Tuesday. "The burden should not fall on Australians to defend the rights they already hold over content they create and own and invest in." The proposals were contained in a document Pocock described as screenshots of government's consultation proposals, tabled in the Senate on Tuesday and titled "AI on Australian Terms". The document raises as a key issue the vast number of small individual creators of online content, for which voluntary deals with AI companies "is not realistic/possible".

Trending Now Say More Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Switch Off Creator Playbook Mashable Voices Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List In My Bag All Series Apple reveals'shocking evidence' in OpenAI trade secrets lawsuit Apple previously claimed this was just the tip of the iceberg. Apple claims it has evidence that a former employee stole trade secrets to benefit his new employer, OpenAI. Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI and two of its former employees over alleged stolen trade secrets is heating up. In a new filing, Apple says it has found shocking evidence and is asking the court for expedited discovery. Apple claims the limited information it found after a former employee's work laptop was returned to the company shows that its trade secrets are being used and evidence is being destroyed."

Apple has claimed in a new court filing that OpenAI is destroying evidence and that a former iPhone engineer used confidential Apple material in his work at the company. Apple has escalated its legal battle against OpenAI, claiming in a new court filing that OpenAI is actively destroying crucial evidence and that former iPhone engineer Chang Liu "not only downloaded a confidential Apple circuit schematic but also used it in his work" at the artificial intelligence company. The court brief was filed Monday in support of Apple's motion for expedited pretrial fact-finding in the lawsuit, which accuses the ChatGPT-maker of stealing trade secrets. OpenAI has pushed to have the case dismissed. Liu, who left Apple for OpenAI in January, is central to the case.

Trending Now Say More Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Switch Off Creator Playbook Mashable Voices Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List In My Bag All Series FTC and 22 states sue Amazon for allegedly inflating ad prices for 1.2 million advertisers Amazon denies misleading advertisers and says its system helped businesses save billions of dollars. Olivia Tauber is the deputy editor of digital culture, covering creators, media, movies, beauty, and more. Based in New York, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Cut, Teen Vogue, Complex, and Interview Magazine. She holds a Master's degree in Journalism from NYU and a Bachelor's from the University of Michigan. She also runs Fan Mail, a weekly pop-culture newsletter.

Apple offered new evidence in support of its claims that OpenAI used trade secrets taken by former employees in support its new hardware business. As part of a push to obtain expedited discovery, Apple filed a support document that revealed information found on a MacBook laptop used by a former employee after he began working at OpenAI. Apple's initial forensic investigation of a laptop Liu used after leaving the company alleges that the former employee knew he had access to Apple's third-party cloud storage and used it to download "dozens of confidential Apple files," including a circuit schematic. Apple further claimed that Liu used that schematic to run simulations in the course of his work for OpenAI. It claimed the laptop revealed previously unknown instances of stolen information, claiming that Liu "referred to using a tool and related software packages with names identical to proprietary internal engineering tools used at Apple." The next arguments by Apple claim that, after learning that he was the subject of its internal investigation, Liu directed a coworker at OpenAI to "restore" any Apple-issued devices, which Apple claimed was a way to erase forensic evidence that could be used against him.

Music publishers have claimed Anthropic's models'scraped' smash hits including Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You. Music publishers have claimed Anthropic's models'scraped' smash hits including Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You. Anthropic sued over alleged theft of'tens of thousands' of songs All AI wants for Christmas is a vast back catalogue of songs without paying for it, according to a multibillion dollar lawsuit against the startup behind the Claude chatbot. The compositions include Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You, Ain't No Mountain High Enough, originally performed by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, and Survivor's Eye of the Tiger. The plaintiffs claim they are victims of "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history". The lawsuit, filed in a California court, targets Anthropic and its chief executive, Dario Amodei, as well as co-founder Benjamin Mann.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Look Up Say More Switch Off Creator Playbook Mashable Voices Trending Now Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List In My Bag All Series The lawsuit claims the AI company is engaging in the most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history. Sony Music and Warner just filed a lawsuit alleging that Anthropic developed Claude models using stolen music. Music giants Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have just filed a potentially multibillion-dollar lawsuit against Anthropic, and the publishers aren't mincing words. The lawsuit, filed Friday evening in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, calls Anthropic the culprits behind one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history. Sony and Warner also named Anthropic CEO and cofounder Dario Amodei and cofounder Benjamin Mann in the lawsuit.