New tools, products, platforms, funding rounds, and company developments in AI security.
Nvidia is in talks to invest up to $30 billion in OpenAI as part of a funding round that could value the AI startup at $730 billion, separate from a previously announced $100 billion infrastructure agreement. This new investment is not tied to any specific deployment milestones, and the deal is still under negotiation with details subject to change.
Google released Gemini Pro 3.1, a new large language model (LLM, an AI trained on vast amounts of text to understand and generate language), which achieved record scores on independent performance benchmarks like Humanity's Last Exam and APEX-Agents. The model is currently in preview and represents a major improvement over the previous Gemini 3 version, particularly for agentic work (tasks where the AI breaks down complex problems into multiple steps and executes them).
YouTube is expanding its conversational AI tool to smart TVs, gaming consoles, and streaming devices, allowing users to ask questions about video content using an 'Ask' button or voice commands without pausing playback. The feature, currently available to select users over 18 in five languages, lets viewers get instant answers about things like recipe ingredients or song background information. This expansion reflects YouTube's growing dominance in TV viewing, with competitors like Amazon, Roku, and Netflix also developing their own conversational AI features for television.
India is hosting a major AI Impact Summit attracting executives from major AI companies and tech firms to drive investment and innovation in the country. The event showcases significant AI development activity, including new investments in Indian AI startups, partnerships between international AI companies and Indian firms, and announcements of local AI infrastructure projects, while also highlighting concerns about AI's potential impact on traditional IT services jobs.
Google released Gemini 3.1 Pro on February 19, 2026, a new AI model priced at half the cost of Claude Opus 4.6 with similar performance benchmarks. The model shows improved ability to generate SVG animations (scalable vector graphics, images made from code rather than pixels) compared to its predecessor, though it is currently experiencing slow response times and occasional errors due to high demand at launch.
Figma, a design software company, reported stronger-than-expected earnings and revenue growth, but its stock gains were limited because investors worry that AI (artificial intelligence) could disrupt software companies like Figma. To address these concerns, Figma has been integrating AI features into its products and announced a partnership with Anthropic, an AI startup, to demonstrate it is positioned to benefit from AI rather than be harmed by it.
OpenAI is raising over $100 billion at a valuation exceeding $850 billion, with major investors like Amazon, SoftBank, Nvidia, and Microsoft participating in the deal. The company is burning through cash while working toward profitability and is testing advertisements in ChatGPT for free users as a potential revenue strategy.
Top AI researchers are frequently switching between major companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, driven less by high salaries and more by ideological concerns about AI's impact on society and their personal missions. As these AI companies shift focus from raising money to making money and prepare for public offerings (IPOs, or initial public offerings where companies sell shares to the public), they face new pressure to be transparent and accountable for their spending and results.
Reload, an AI workforce management platform, launched Epic, a new product designed to solve a key problem with AI coding agents: they often lose context and shared understanding over time because they only have short-term memory. Epic acts as an architect that maintains a structured, shared memory of project requirements, decisions, and code patterns across multiple agents and sessions, keeping all agents aligned with the original system intent as development progresses.
OpenAI is partnering with Reliance to add AI-powered conversational search to JioHotstar, an Indian streaming service, allowing users to search for movies, shows, and sports using text and voice in multiple languages. The partnership will also integrate JioHotstar recommendations directly into ChatGPT, creating a two-way discovery system where users can find content through either platform. This move reflects a broader trend of streaming services using conversational interfaces (like ChatGPT or Gemini, Google's AI model) to help users discover entertainment.
Mirai, a London-based startup founded by the co-founders of Reface and Prisma, is developing technology to improve how AI models run on devices like phones and laptops rather than in cloud data centers. The company has built an inference engine (the part of software that runs AI models) for Apple Silicon written in Rust that claims to speed up model generation by up to 37%, and is creating an SDK (software development kit, a package of tools for developers) so app creators can integrate this technology with just a few lines of code. To handle tasks that can't be done on-device, Mirai is also building an orchestration layer (a system that directs requests) to send complex work to the cloud when needed.
This bulletin covers multiple cybersecurity threats across platforms, including Android 17's privacy enhancements to block unencrypted traffic, LockBit 5.0 ransomware gaining the ability to attack Proxmox virtualization systems with advanced evasion techniques, and several ClickFix social engineering campaigns (using fake websites and nested obfuscation) targeting macOS users to steal credentials or deploy malware like Matanbuchus 3.0 loader and AstarionRAT.
At India's AI Impact Summit, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei, leaders of two competing AI companies, visibly refused to join hands during a show of solidarity with other executives, highlighting their intense rivalry. The tension between them has recently escalated over disagreements about advertising in AI products, with Altman calling Anthropic 'dishonest' and 'authoritarian' in response to their Super Bowl ads criticizing OpenAI's ad plans.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) introduced a policy for open-source contributions that requires developers to understand any code they submit and to write comments and documentation themselves, even if they use LLMs (large language models, AI systems trained to generate human-like text) to help. While the EFF does not completely ban LLM-assisted code, they require disclosure of LLM use because AI-generated code can contain hidden bugs that scale poorly and create extra work for reviewers, especially in under-resourced teams.
Fix: The source explicitly states that contributors must disclose when they use LLM tools. The EFF's policy requires that: (1) contributors understand the code they submit, and (2) comments and documentation be authored by a human rather than generated by an LLM. No technical patch, update, or automated mitigation is discussed in the source.
EFF Deeplinks BlogResearchers discovered PromptSpy, the first known Android malware that uses generative AI (specifically Google's Gemini model) during its operation to help it persist on infected devices by adapting how it locks itself in the Recent Apps list across different Android manufacturers. Beyond this AI feature, PromptSpy functions as spyware with a VNC module (remote access tool) that allows attackers to view and control the device, intercept passwords, record screens, and capture installed apps. The malware also uses invisible UI overlays to block users from uninstalling it or disabling its permissions.
Fix: According to ESET, victims must reboot into Android Safe Mode so that third-party apps are disabled and cannot block the malware's uninstall.
BleepingComputerNIST announced the AI Agent Standards Initiative to develop standards and safeguards for agentic AI (autonomous AI systems that can perform tasks independently), with the goal of building public confidence and ensuring safe adoption. The initiative faces criticism for moving too slowly, as real-world security incidents involving agentic AI (like the EchoLeak vulnerability in Microsoft 365 Copilot and the OpenClaw agent that can let attackers access user data) are already occurring faster than standards can be developed.
A hacker exploited a vulnerability in Cline, an open-source AI coding agent, to trick it into installing OpenClaw (a viral AI agent that can perform autonomous actions) across many systems. The vulnerability allowed attackers to use prompt injection (hidden malicious instructions embedded in input) to make Claude, the AI powering Cline, execute unintended commands, highlighting growing security risks as more people deploy autonomous software.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, an AI work assistant, had a bug that caused it to accidentally access and summarize confidential emails from users' draft and sent folders, even though those emails were marked as confidential and protected by security policies. The issue affected enterprise users and was first discovered in January, though Microsoft says no one gained access to information they weren't already authorized to see. Microsoft has since rolled out a configuration update worldwide to fix the problem.
Fix: Microsoft has rolled out a configuration update to fix the issue. According to a Microsoft spokesperson: 'A configuration update has been deployed worldwide for enterprise customers.'
BBC TechnologyPromptSpy is Android malware that uses Gemini (Google's AI chatbot) to automatically keep itself running on victims' devices by analyzing the screen and sending instructions on how to stay in the recent apps list. The malware also uses accessibility services (special permissions that let apps control your device without user input) to steal data, prevent uninstallation, and give attackers remote access through a VNC module (virtual network computing, software for controlling devices remotely), and it's being distributed through fake websites targeting users in Argentina.
AI-generated deepfakes (fake videos created using artificial intelligence to realistically impersonate people) depicting Black women in negative stereotypes are spreading widely on social media and being shared by news outlets and public figures, sometimes without clear disclosure or verification. These videos perpetuate racist stereotypes and cause real harm to Black users, even when they carry watermarks indicating they are AI-generated, because viewers and media outlets treat them as authentic.
Fix: Epic maintains shared context by creating and preserving core system artifacts (product requirements, data models, API specifications, tech stack decisions, diagrams, and task breakdowns) upfront, then continuously maintaining a structured memory of decisions, code changes, and patterns throughout development. This shared memory follows agents across sessions and team members, ensuring all coding agents build against the same shared source of truth regardless of which agents are switched in or out.
TechCrunchFix: For Android 17 and higher: Google states that apps should "migrate to Network Security Configuration files for granular control" to avoid relying on cleartext traffic. Apps targeting Android 17 or higher will default to disallowing cleartext traffic if they use usesCleartextTraffic='true' without a corresponding Network Security Configuration.
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