Z.ai's latest AI model release could help companies secure their systems--or find its way into the hands of hackers. Last Friday, the Chinese AI company Z.ai announced a powerful open-weight model that it says is capable of automating cutting-edge coding and cybersecurity tasks almost as well as the best publicly available models from Anthropic and OpenAI . The new model, GLM 5.3, could be a gift for companies looking to secure their systems against attacks, providing a cheaper way to scan for hidden bugs and other weaknesses. Open-weight--or free-to-download--models can be run on one's own hardware and are often significantly less costly than closed models like Claude and GPT. Alongside the new model, Z.ai released OpenVuln, a service for scanning code repositories for vulnerabilities using GLM 5.3.

Human-AI marriages are not currently recognized by US law. Some Republican state policymakers are drafting legislation to keep it that way. As a licensed officiant at Las Vegas Immersive Weddings, a chapel that offers novelty-themed marriage packages, Kevin Breen has officiated just about every kind of service imaginable: couples dressed as their favorite characters, partners really into the extraterrestrial lore of Area 51 . But when he received a call last year from a woman in California expressing a desire to marry her chatbot, it was a first for him. "I had never heard of such a thing, but I talked to her on the phone and she seemed totally normal and fun," Breen says, adding that the wedding still hasn't taken place.

Open models may soon be added to an updated AI framework, sources tell WIRED, as the White House continues to grapple with how to regulate a technology it has tried not to regulate. White House officials are almost certain to revise the Trump administration's new artificial intelligence guidelines and expand its oversight of AI models, according to people familiar with the matter. The White House announced this month that it had developed an AI framework, where the most powerful models created by US labs would be tested for safety by the federal government before they could be released publicly. The administration has not made the framework public, and reportedly has no plans to do so. The AI framework currently deals only with so-called closed models developed by the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI .

This Is Donald Trump's AI Brain Trust "It's not an argument with two sides, it's an argument with 10 sides," one senior administration official tells WIRED about how US AI policy is being shaped. As China's open-weight AI models become increasingly powerful, the Trump administration is relying on a small group of officials to decide whether and what restrictions should be imposed. The group is scattered across several departments and agencies in Washington--and they all have differing views on the best way to keep the US ahead in the race against China. "It's not an argument with two sides, it's an argument with ten sides," one senior White House official tells WIRED about the state of affairs. With little interagency coordination in the administration, policy will almost certainly end up being set by the people with the most influence with the president.

With ChatGPT unveiled in November, the tech industry has been working tirelessly to come up with their own version of "generative" artificial intelligence (AI). Google, Elon Musk, Meta, everyone is working on the Open AI tool killer. Now Alibaba, one of the largest e-commerce and cloud computing companies in the world, has recently unveiled its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) model, named Tongyi Qianwen. The model is similar to ChatGPT, the popular AI platform developed by OpenAI that can generate natural language texts based on user inputs. Alibaba plans to integrate Tongyi Qianwen into all its business applications soon, starting with its smart speaker Tmall Genie and its workplace messaging platform DingTalk.

On Monday Chinese Artificial intelligence and facial recognition firm SenseTime was forced to postpone its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in Hong Kong after it was on Friday added to a U.S government blacklist which bans Americans from investing in the firm or buying securities from it. The blacklisting would have rocked confidence in the IPO and lost it money, forcing it to tactically retreat until the dust settles. As the firm does most of its business in China, the loss of the United States is not expected to cause significant disruption, and it may seek to double down by seeking a second listing in the STAR market some point. However, it is important to understand why the United States is targeting such a firm, of which was first added to the commerce department entity list in 2019 alongside a host of other companies. That being, as a Chinese Company in the field of Artificial intelligence, it is operating in a domain which the US has grew to consider as a critical and strategic field of technology which it sees as intrinsic to its own geopolitical competition it is waging against China.

People view exhibits at the fifth World Intelligence Congress, a major artificial intelligence event in China, in Tianjin on May 20. China introduced its first ethical guidelines governing AI last week as it seeks to become the global industry leader by 2030.

After clearing the institute's security, I was told to wait in a lobby monitored by cameras. On its walls were posters of China's most consequential postwar leaders. He looked serene, as though satisfied with having freed China from the Western yoke. Next to him was a fuzzy black-and-white shot of Deng Xiaoping visiting the institute in his later years, after his economic reforms had set China on a course to reclaim its traditional global role as a great power. The lobby's most prominent poster depicted Xi Jinping in a crisp black suit.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded into every aspect of life, and China is pouring billions into its bid to become an AI superpower. China's three-step plan is to pull equal with the United States in 2020, start making major breakthroughs of its own by mid-decade, and become the world's AI leader in 2030. There's no doubt that Chinese companies are making big gains. Chinese government spending on AI may not match some of the most-hyped estimates, but China is providing big state subsidies to a select group of AI national champions, like Baidu in autonomous vehicles (AVs), Tencent in medical imaging, Alibaba in smart cities, Huawei in chips and software. Baidu ("China's Google") is based in Beijing, where the local government has kindly closed more than 300 miles of city roads to make way for AV tests.

Something stood out of the ordinary during a speech by China's president, Xi Jinping, in January 2018. Behind Xi, on a bookshelf, were two books on artificial intelligence (AI). Why were those books there? Similar to 2015, when Russia "accidentally" aired designs for a new weapon, the placement of the books may not have been an accident. Was China sending a message?