Our AI writers make their big bets for the coming year--here are five hot trends to watch. In an industry in constant flux, sticking your neck out to predict what's coming next may seem reckless. But for the last few years we've done just that--and we're doing it again. How did we do last time? Here are our big bets for the next 12 months. The last year shaped up as a big one for Chinese open-source models.

The US military action in Venezuela breaches international law and the UK should make clear it is unacceptable, the chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has said. Dame Emily Thornberry is the most senior Labour MP so far to criticise Donald Trump's strikes on the country over the weekend, which saw President Nicolas Maduro and his wife captured. The UK government has so far refused to say whether the move was illegal, insisting it is for the Americans to lay out the legal basis for the action. But the US president's actions have been criticised by some Labour MPs, as well as the leaders of the Lib Dems, Greens and the SNP. Dame Emily told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour the strikes were not a legal action and she cannot think of anything that could be a proper justification.

Some major retailers and independent stores have introduced AI body scans, CCTV or facial recognition equipment to identify crimes like shoplifting.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. An attendee plays the Monster Hunter Wilds video game on the Sony PlayStation 5 Pro console during the Tokyo Game Show 2024 at Makuhari Messe in 2024 in Chiba, Japan. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . With the start of the new year, Californians will pay a new fee every time they buy a product with a nonremovable battery -- whether it's a power tool, a PlayStation or even a singing greeting card.

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It's called Handy, and it uses AI models to accurately convert your speaking voice into text--all for free. If old sci-fi shows are anything to go by, we're all using our computers wrong. We're still typing with our fingers, like cave people, instead of talking out loud the way the future was supposed to be. Have you ever seen Picard touch a keyboard? And it's odd because our computers are all capable of turning speech into text by default.

On X, sexual harassment and perhaps even child abuse are the latest memes. Earlier this week, some people on X began replying to photos with a very specific kind of request. "Put her in a bikini," "take her dress off," "spread her legs," and so on, they commanded Grok, the platform's built-in chatbot. Again and again, the bot complied, using photos of real people--celebrities and noncelebrities, including some who appear to be young children--and putting them in bikinis, revealing underwear, or sexual poses. By one estimate, Grok generated one nonconsensual sexual image every minute in a roughly 24-hour stretch.

New state laws taking effect in 2026 will impact taxpayers through higher minimum wages, tourism taxes in Hawaii and tightened SNAP benefit restrictions.

Though the drama surrounding Elon Musk was frequently absurd and unpredictable, it was also consequential. Though the drama surrounding Elon Musk was frequently absurd and unpredictable, it was also consequential. Elon Musk's 2025 recap: how the world's richest person became its most chaotic How the tech CEO and'Dogefather' made a mess of the year - from an apparent Nazi salute during his White House tenure to Tesla sales slumps and Starship explosions T he year of 2025 was dizzying for Elon Musk . The tech titan began the year holding court with Donald Trump in Washington DC. As the months ticked by, one public appearance after another baffled the US and the world.

Scroll back through the last year, and the same words come up again and again. The top-trending terms of 2025, from artificial intelligence to Zohran Mamdani, shaped headlines across politics, conflict, technology and climate. As the year comes to a close, AJ Labs has compiled an A to Z list of names, places and issues that generated sustained interest throughout 2025, according to a loose analysis of our own most-viewed story tags and those that appeared in Google's most searched. Taken together, these terms are a patchwork of issues that are also likely to spill into 2026, from ongoing conflicts to a changing technosocial landscape not seen since the dawn of the internet. This is 2025 from A to Z, by the words that made the year.