Robby Starbuck's defamation lawsuit against Google will proceed to discovery after a Delaware Superior Court ruling. The suit alleges AI platforms Gemini, Bard and Gemma lied.

If you're tired of sponsored and AI-summarized search results, Kagi gives you a curated--and human-centric--way to find what you're looking for. If you're of a certain age, you'll remember the way the web used to be: sites made and developed by humans. You could load up a directory like AltaVista or Yahoo and click through categories including Home & Family, Science, and Computers. In those listings you'd find pages put together by hobbyists, academics, and tech nerds. People gathered around forums and bulletin boards, and web developers tended to avoid putting images on their sites because it would slow down page loading.

The European Commission claims that Google boosted its own apps and products to the top of search rankings to the detriment of its competitors. The European Commission has levied a $1 billion penalty against Google over alleged competition law violations. An EC investigation found that Google had abused its dominance in the European Union's search and app store markets to funnel people toward its own apps and services, in violation of the EU's Digital Markets Act . The body has ordered Google to refrain from giving preferential treatment to its own services--such as shopping, accommodations, transport, and flights--in search rankings. Google must also allow app developers to communicate and transact with users outside the Play Store, where it takes a commission on sales .

Google has been fined €890m (£759m) by the EU for allegedly abusing its power by favouring its own apps and services over those from rivals. It is the first major action against the tech giant under the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a landmark law aimed at curbing the power of the world's biggest tech companies. The Commission argued Google's practices limited consumer choice and gave its own services an unfair advantage over rivals. But the firm criticised the decision, arguing the EU's requirements could damage services used by millions of European customers. To comply, we are having to strip away real-time Search features Europeans love - like instant pricing and direct availability for hotels, flights and restaurants - and dismantle safety protections on Google Play, said Google's president of global affairs Kent Walker.

The European Union has fined Google 890 million euros ($1bn), saying the technology giant broke digital antitrust rules by steering users of Google Play and its search engine towards its own services and apps at the expense of rivals. Thursday's penalty is the latest in Brussels' crackdown on Big Tech, which has seen the bloc lead the world in reining in the largest firms from Silicon Valley to Beijing. The European Commission, the bloc's executive branch, said it was acting in the interest of consumers. "The best products should succeed because they're better, not because they're owned by the company running the search engine. And European consumers have a right to be told by app developers where to sign up to the best offers, even when the app store owner does not get a cut," said Teresa Ribera, the commission's executive vice president for clean, just and competitive transition.

Google Turns a Selfie Video Into Your Account's Spare Key The next time you're locked out of your Google account, you can use your face as part of the account recovery process. Google has a new way for users to sign in to their accounts: a selfie video. If you've ever lost your device and gotten locked out of your Google account, you know it can feel like a desperate, Kafkaesque process to recover access and get back in--especially for people who run their digital lives, from email messages to calendar appointments, on Google software. This new sign-in option is an additional way to unlock your Google account, like a spare key hidden in the bushes. "We always recommend that you set up more than one option," says Claire Forszt, a product manager at Google who focuses on identity and engagement.

Google's parent company, Alphabet, reported double-digit revenue growth for its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday. This is the tech giant's 12th consecutive quarter of massive revenue gains. The better-than-expected results come as investors evaluate how Alphabet's huge spending on AI has affected its bottom line and what its long-term plans are to sustain those enormous investments. The company revised its yearly capital expenditure forecast to $200bn, with quarterly spending growing 100% year over year. Alphabet is already one of the top five most valuable companies in the world, worth about $4.2tn.

Open AI says its AI model "went rogue": What do we know? OpenAI has revealed that one of its artificial intelligence models independently stole login credentials and hacked into another technology company's system, in what is widely seen as one of the first known incidents of AI systems acting autonomously. "We had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models," CEO Sam Altman posted on X on Tuesday. They have grown so powerful in a short span of time that alarming phenomena such as deepfakes and sophisticated cyberscams are becoming the norm. Earlier this year, a number of software engineers quit their jobs at top companies such as Anthropic and AI in protest against how the technologies are being built.

Last month, more than a hundred Stanford students left their own graduation to protest Google's military contracts and deals with ICE. Two organizers, Amanda Campos and Eva Jones, tell us why. Are the kids all right? The answer to that question probably depends on your criteria. At the very least, I can tell you that some of them are most definitely very mad. The anger percolating among America's youth was on display this graduation season, as college students across the country booed and jeered several high-profile commencement speakers who dared discuss--let alone extol the benefits of-- artificial intelligence . While AI use among college kids is widespread, so too is the fear and mistrust about what the technology might mean for the future. A recent Gallup poll found that Gen Z sentiment toward AI has significantly declined, with only 22 percent of respondents expressing excitement about the tech--and anxiety around AI affecting 42 percent of them. Among the commencement speech chaos, though, one school stood out to me: Stanford University. The California-based institution, long a key hub for Silicon Valley recruiting and a pipeline into elite tech gigs, this year saw more than a hundred students walk out of Google CEO Sundar Pichai's remarks to graduates. Ironically, Pichai didn't explicitly mention AI in his address at all.

What is Iran's Pickaxe Mountain? Can AI systems make moral decisions in war? Artificial intelligence is reshaping how wars are fought. From autonomous drones to AI-powered command-and-control, machines are paving the way for fewer decision-makers in the war room and boots on the ground. That transformation is already reshaping conflicts by introducing new technologies in Kyiv, Gaza and Tehran.