u/TorturedPoet30

Yesterday: OpenAI started testing "private safety processing" to avoid retaining customer data https://openai.com/index/offering-zero-data-retention-for-frontier-models/

Today: Anthropic will still require business customers to retain ​data for 30 days but will give them the option to keep it on their own cloud computing ​infrastructure https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropic-plans-change-enterprise-data-retention-policy-source-says-2026-08-20/

Video: https://x.com/ALVAR0SANCHEZ/status/2089303607636017160

Alcaraz, out since April with a wrist injury, ramped up training at home alongside Rune, sidelined since October 2025 from an Achilles tear. Both are listed for the 2026 US Open starting August 30, though their readiness remains uncertain after months away.

Deaf users can now sign into their phones instead of typing. This feels like one of those quiet but huge accessibility + AI milestones.

The model reads simultaneous hand, body, and facial movements and turns them into English text in real time.

In the blog post linked below they explain how they made it work for practical situations too, like one-handed signing while holding the phone. Pose tracking happens on-device for privacy, and the actual translation runs on the server. DeepMind says it’s state-of-the-art on academic benchmarks and was developed with heavy input from the Deaf community.

They’re planning to expand it to more languages next.

Source: https://deepmind.google/blog/putting-sign-language-ai-into-users-hands/

Source : https://www.meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone/

GDM announced open-sourcing WeatherNext's code and model weights on GitHub.

Source: https://deepmind.google/blog/weathernext-ai-model-achieves-breakthrough-in-forecasting-cyclones

A few points from the blog post:

• Forecasts cyclones up to 15 days in advance.
• Predicts track, intensity, size, structure, and formation.
• Outperforms or matches many traditional forecasting systems on key benchmarks.
• Released to support researchers, meteorological agencies, and the broader scientific community.
• Aims to improve disaster preparedness and early warning for extreme weather.
• Another example of AI delivering impact in science and public safety, beyond chatbots.

Google appears to be making AI coding a major priority for Gemini. Earlier this year, reports said that GDM had assembled a dedicated AI coding "strike team" to improve Gemini's coding capabilities. Around the same time, John Jumper was moved onto that team, before leaving gdm a few months later.

Now, Business Insider reports that Google is in advanced talks on an agreement to license Mechanize's technology and hire part of its team, rather than acquiring the company outright.

According to Axios report, the new AI framework will not be public. It was presented to tech companies today. Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta participated. It will be available only to companies that are part of the process. No comments from the EU or the UK. Open source models were discussed but no details reported.

Read more: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/open-secure-ai-alliance/?ncid=so-twit-957725

Main ponts ->

• NVIDIA launched the Open Secure AI Alliance (July 27, 2026) ~35 partners including Microsoft, IBM, Red Hat, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Hugging Face, Palantir, the Linux Foundation, SpaceXAI
• Goal: build shared open models, harnesses and tools for cyber defense instead of leaving AI security inside a handful of closed systems
• Trigger case: in the recent Hugging Face breach, closed AI tools blocked forensic work because they couldn't tell attacker from defender;; HF used the open-weight GLM 5.2 on its own infra to analyze 17k+ actions and contain it
• Counter to "open = unsafe": misuse risk is real but doesn't vanish with closed weights; answer is safeguards + evaluation + fast remediation, not locking defenders out
• Contributions: NVIDIA's NOOA agent framework (GitHub), Hugging Face donating Safetensors to PyTorch Foundation, Microsoft MDASH, SpaceXAI open-sourcing Grok Build (Grok weights planned) etc
• Policy ask: treat open models as defensive assets, not liabilities, blanket restrictions would concentrate dependence in a few closed providers

Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/topics/open-weight/

Key points from the “Open Weights and American AI Leadership” letter:

1. Open weights are foundational to American AI leadership
2. They expand access and make AI economically sustainable
3. Open weights strengthen competition and prevent concentration of power
4. Openness improves safety and security more than closed systems
5. Policymakers should avoid premature restrictions

Some context below

• David Sacks pushed back against Dean Ball (OpenAI) over AI regulation strategy who suggested the Trump admin direct federal agencies to issue "soft law" warnings that create FUD around Chinese open-weight models like Kimi, without needing an outright ban or strong evidence. The goall here is to make regulated companies shy away from them.
• This comes right after Chinese labs dropped open-weight models rivaling the latest Fable/ChatGPT-5.6 class in capabilities.
• A few days earlier, Demis proposed a US-led, FINRA-style self-regulatory body for frontier AI. The idea here is voluntary (then potentially mandatory) pre-release safety testing, up to 30 days, for models above certain capability thresholds. And it would apply to all models regardless of origin!
• Ball’s FUD approach looks like the practical enforcement mechanism for exactly this kind of framework -> create enough regulatory risk to keep advanced Chinese open-weights out of the US market in practice.
• Sacks called it what it is regulatory capture.
• He thinks that deliberately manufacturing uncertainty instead of using transparent, evidence-based rules undermines the rule of law and hands a massive advantage to today’s closed-source leaders (Anthropic, OpenAI).

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-17/us-considers-creating-finra-like-watchdog-to-vet-top-ai-models

The speed and near-universal endorsements from AI lab leaders and tech CEOs after Demis published his proposal wasn't a spontaneous reaction. this had obviously been discussed and refined behind the scenes for months.

The whole "everyone at the frontier agrees" story now looks carefully constructed to build momentum for the reported FINRA-style regulator.

Demis Hassabis will be meeting with policymakers in Washington next week to lobby for his plan, according to Bloomberg.

On the same day, The White House has launched a program called 'Gold Eagle' which will give them more control over American frontier AI releases, and will require explicit government approval over which companies are granted access to new models.

Full speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApCmqmhE1rg