'I feel like I'm at war': are we losing the battle against machine-made music? This year, the battle for song of the summer has been eclipsed by a much more complicated - some would even say disturbing - debate. That's because we find ourselves asking not "What's the song of the summer?" but rather "Is the song of the summer even?" Among the top contenders for the title is Fenix Flexin's Rubberz, a single released in June that has ascended to No 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 and racked up more than 35m Spotify streams. The artist is known for his trap music as part of the rap duo Shoreline Mafia, but Rubberz is a mildly noirish, 80s-inspired synth-pop track featuring a voice nothing like his.

Mark Zuckerberg arrives to the Los Angeles superior court on 18 February 2026 in Los Angeles, California. Mark Zuckerberg arrives to the Los Angeles superior court on 18 February 2026 in Los Angeles, California. Major legal battles against Meta over child safety are playing out in courts across the US - and the tech giant is losing. Recent rulings raise big questions about social media companies' responsibility to their youngest users. Meanwhile, more key executives have jumped ship from Google as it battles OpenAI and Anthropic in the race for AI dominance, and Meta's smart glasses face a fearsome backlash.

Estimates suggest AI will create close to £370bn in cumulative value for fossil fuel companies between 2026 and 2030. Estimates suggest AI will create close to £370bn in cumulative value for fossil fuel companies between 2026 and 2030. AI's potential climate benefits outweighed by role in boosting fossil fuels, study finds AI-driven productivity gains enable more planet-heating pollution from fossil fuels than they avoid from renewables, a study has found. Researchers modelled the technical potential for AI to boost clean power generation along with projections for how it can help produce coal, oil and gas. Across 64 scenarios, they found net yearly carbon pollution rose by 0.47-1.8

Sunset Visitor studio's founder tells us about their new, unnerving Captcha-filled world which prompts players to ask what it means to have a'meat body' S unset Visitor is a studio that has long engaged with the idea that video games are an effective vehicle for ruminating on societal problems. Its Peabody award-winning project, 1000XResist, incorporated the development team's complex feelings about the Covid pandemic. "We're pretty used to absorbing the world into the work," says studio founder Remy Siu. The outfit's latest game, Prove You're Human, continues this legacy of reflective game making, providing players with an AI-centric psychological horror experience where they must reason with a learning model convinced that it's alive. "We've tried to situate ourselves in [the question]: what is the effectual feeling of being a person inside of all of this?" Siu says.

The Report Remove service said it had received 420 reports from children so far this year. The Report Remove service said it had received 420 reports from children so far this year. Exclusive: anonymous flagging service says cases have surged, as watchdog says AI is making sexualised or'nudified' content easier to produce Children in the UK have reported a surge in explicit deepfake images featuring their likenesses, as a safety watchdog warned AI is making such content easier to produce. The Report Remove service, which blocks intimate images from appearing online, said there had been a rapid increase in imagery that had been digitally manipulated or "faked" in some way, including with AI and nudification tools. In the first six months of this year it received 420 reports from children of images of themselves that they believed had been faked or manipulated to appear explicit.

Solar panels arranged on the rooftop of an industrial park in Jimo, Qingdao, in eastern China's Shandong province. Solar panels arranged on the rooftop of an industrial park in Jimo, Qingdao, in eastern China's Shandong province. Donald Trump has ordered a new 15% tariff on imported products made of polysilicon, an important ingredient in microchip manufacturing that is primarily produced by China. The new tariff, which will take effect on 4 December, is aimed at supporting US chip and solar panel supply chains to compete with Beijing on artificial intelligence and energy. The executive order signed by the president on Thursday evening said: "The plan of action in this proclamation will, among other things, help ensure the commercial viability of United States production of polysilicon and its derivatives that is necessary to meet United States economic and national security requirements."

'Leicester Square, please guv': Self-driving taxis cleared for London streets'later this summer' The taxi app company Uber and the autonomous technology developer Wayve have been granted the first minicab licences in London allowing them to offer self-driving taxi rides to paying customers - but with a human safety driver in place, for now. The companies said they would start trips in the UK "later this summer" before the full public launch. The San Francisco-headquartered Uber and London-based Wayve are racing against the Google-owned Waymo and its Chinese equivalent Baidu's Apollo Go to launch self-driving taxi services in London. Their progress is being watched closely because the British capital will be one of the first cities in the world to have American and Chinese tech firms operating on the same roads. Uber and Wayve said more than 100,000 Londoners were on their waiting list for the self-driving taxis.

The Chinese have broken the Dutch company's hold over deep-ultraviolet lithography, a technique essential to the computer chip supply chain. The Chinese have broken the Dutch company's hold over deep-ultraviolet lithography, a technique essential to the computer chip supply chain. Even for the rollercoaster world of AI, last week was particularly volatile as investors scrambled to keep up with developments that threatened the dominance of the largest western chipmakers. It began with a double whammy. On Monday, the Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT floated on the Shanghai stock market, soaring by 466% in value to 3.3tn yuan (£365bn).

He says society will have to find a way to recover skills lost to AI once the bubble bursts. He says society will have to find a way to recover skills lost to AI once the bubble bursts. When the AI bubble bursts, what will Australia do with the tools it built? W hen the AI bubble bursts, executives who enthusiastically replaced their staff with AI tools will learn that it takes a "really long time" to replace those lost skills, says Cory Doctorow, a science fiction author and journalist. In his new book, the Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, the man who coined the word "enshittification" says the question isn't "Are we in an AI bubble?" but "When will the bubble burst?" "The thing about bubbles is that after they burst, we look back and we say, 'Well, obviously that was the weak link,'" he says.

OpenAI and Anthropic lost billions in predicted value after being shown up by a Chinese startup. OpenAI and Anthropic lost billions in predicted value after being shown up by a Chinese startup. Why are OpenAI and Anthropic cheering on regulation in Australia? The companies hope to follow in the footsteps of SpaceX, which raised $86bn and soared to a $2.1tn valuation after it listed on public markets in June Top US AI developers Anthropic and OpenAI cheered when Australia announced it would set new AI rules. Big tech celebrating limits on their Silicon Valley VC-funded free-for-all might seem counterintuitive but there's a much broader play than just what happens in one relatively small market.