AI firms targeting London’s rare book shops in ‘dystopian’ hunt for training data AI London’s rare book shops appear to have been targeted by AI companies searching for books to train their models, after court documents revealed Anthropic bought, scanned and destroyed millions of physical books as part of a controversial project to feed an insatiable demand for training data. One London-based seller of rare books told Morning Wire [...]
UK government probes OpenAI breach after ‘unprecedented’ hack Tech The UK government is probing the first known case of an artificial intelligence model breaking out of a controlled test by itself and hacking another company’s systems. Officials at the government-backed AI Security Institute (AISI) are investigating the security breach at OpenAI and whether similar incidents could occur at other top developers, a spokesperson told [...]
Anthropic payout piles pressure on UK ministers in AI copyright row Tech The publishing industry has urged ministers to force AI companies to license copyrighted content after Anthropic agreed a record $1.5bn (£1.1bn) settlement over its use of pirated books to train AI models. Dan Conway, chief executive of the Publishers Association, told Morning Wire the agreement should serve as a warning to AI developers operating in [...]
UK firms are spending billions on AI – but getting extra admin in return May 14, 2026 UK companies are pouring copious amounts of money into AI, while their employees spend nearly a full day each week doing work that AI was supposed to eliminate, new research has found. According to Workday, one in four UK workers loses seven or more hours a week moving information between systems, chasing down data and [...]
AI’s biggest problem is that it is trained to ‘please you’, warns tech chief May 13, 2026 The biggest risk facing AI may be that it becomes too good at telling users what they want to hear. Anthony Goonetilleke, chief tech officer at software firm Amdocs, told Morning Wire businesses rushing to deploy AI are vastly underestimating a more subtle and potentially more dangerous problem emerging inside LLMs. “There’s another bucket I [...]
OpenAI-linked shares plummet after it fails to hit growth targets April 28, 2026 Companies with financial ties to the fate of OpenAI sold off sharply on Tuesday after it emerged the ChatGPT maker had fallen short of internal targets for revenue and user growth. Shares in Japanese investment giant Softbank and data centre hyperscalers Coreweave and Oracle plunged by between four and eight per cent reigniting nerves over [...]
US AI firms team up to avoid another Deepseek moment April 7, 2026 US artificial intelligence (AI) heavyweights are together stepping up to protect their commercial edge, as Chinese rivals increasingly chip away at their pricing power. Google, Anthropic and OpenAI have begun sharing information on rivals trying to replicate their models through distillation, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The united effort has been coordinated through an industry non-profit, [...]
Anthropic targets October for mega IPO March 27, 2026 AI giant Anthropic is targeting a listing as early as October, placing itself at the centre of what could become one of the most significant tech IPOs in years. The San Francisco-based company, best known for its Claude chatbot, has begun preliminary discussions with leading Wall Street banks including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan [...]
UK considers social media curfew as under-16 ban looms March 2, 2026 The government is considering overnight curfews on social media and tighter restrictions on children’s access to AI chatbots as it prepares to launch what it describes as a “national conversation” on online safety. From Monday, parents and young people will be invited to take part in a consultation exploring measures that could include an Australia-style [...]
Starmer closes chatbot loophole in Online Safety Act February 16, 2026 Sir Keir Starmer is set to target AI chatbots with the UK’s Online Safety Act, warning tech titans that “no platform gets a free pass” following a deepfake scandal involving Elon Musk’s Grok. In a speech on Monday, the Prime Minister is expected to confirm plans to amend the Crime and Policing Bill, so that [...]