Web design news

• Retailers want AI-generated ads exempt from EU transparency rules

  19-06-2026 11:55 via thenextweb.com
  
  Europe’s retailers would like the law to make an exception for them. AI-generated advertising should be carved out of the European Union’s incoming transparency rules, a retail association has argued, according to Reuters, taking aim at provisions that would require companies to label commercial content produced by artificial intelligence before those rules begin to bite […]
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• A city hit pause on AI data centres. Amazon responded by investigating its own engineers.

  19-06-2026 15:37 via thenextweb.com
  
  The backlash against AI data centres used to be a local zoning story. This week, it became a fight inside Amazon. Three Amazon engineers, Patrick Schloesser, Darius Irani and Liesl Wigand, say the company placed them under investigation after they testified to Seattle’s city council in favour of regulating data centres. They have filed a […]
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• Big Tech spent two years warning AI would take your job. Now its bosses say the opposite.

  19-06-2026 15:15 via thenextweb.com
  
  For two years, the people building AI told us it was coming for our jobs. This month, the same people started saying it will create them. Speaking in Paris, Jeff Bezos said AI would cause “a labour shortage”, not mass unemployment, and would unlock almost endless demand for builders and entrepreneurs. Days earlier, Sam Altman […]
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• AI cheating tools are winning. Detection was never the point.

  19-06-2026 14:47 via thenextweb.com
  
  The videos are everywhere, and the offer is always the same. Let AI do your homework, and you will not get caught. According to a New York Times investigation, TikTok and YouTube are now full of tutorials selling students two kinds of tool. Humanisers rewrite AI-generated text so it no longer reads like a chatbot. […]
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• Warren raises €10M to fix Belgium’s broken workplace pensions

  19-06-2026 14:33 via thenextweb.com
  
  The typical Belgian works for about 40 years and retires with a workplace pension worth less than a second-hand car. Warren, a Ghent-based fintech, wants to fix that. The company has raised €10mn in a seed round led by Motive Ventures, the venture arm of transatlantic investor Motive Partners. F Capital joined, alongside returning backers […]
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• The world thinks China is winning the AI race. It just doesn’t trust the winner.

  19-06-2026 14:25 via thenextweb.com
  
  Ask people around the world who is winning the AI race, and a surprising number now answer: China. In 11 of the 15 countries polled for a new report by the London consultancy Public First, a clear majority said they believe China is now ahead of the United States on AI capability and innovation. The […]
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• Two AIs just matched or beat doctors on diagnosis. The catch: none of the patients were real.

  19-06-2026 14:02 via thenextweb.com
  
  Two AI systems have matched, and in places beaten, doctors at diagnosing patients and planning their treatment. Then again, none of the patients were real. The results, published in Nature this week, are some of the strongest evidence yet that specialist medical AI is closing in on human clinicians. They are also a textbook case […]
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• A $5M tech-worker PAC is taking on Big Tech’s $100M war chest over AI rules

  19-06-2026 13:52 via thenextweb.com
  
  Silicon Valley is spending more than $100mn to elect politicians who will leave AI alone. A new group of tech workers wants to fight back with a fraction of that. The Guardrails Alliance, a super PAC that supports AI regulation, launched on Thursday with money from tech employees, labour unions and parents. Democratic operatives Shaunna […]
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• Disney is joining the AI-ad arms race, just as audiences turn on ‘slop’

  19-06-2026 13:31 via thenextweb.com
  
  Disney is about to start making your ads with AI. The company is preparing to launch a beta version of a tool that generates television ads using AI, a Disney executive told staff at an internal meeting, according to a recording obtained by Business Insider. The beta is due in July. Scripts, video and music […]
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• GitHub for the factory floor: Copia raises $26M to protect the code that runs industry

  19-06-2026 13:23 via thenextweb.com
  
  Ask an industrial engineer how their plant would recover if a controller’s code got corrupted or encrypted, and the honest answer is often grim: a backup on someone’s laptop, in a folder named “final_backup_2”. Copia Automation wants to replace that with something closer to how software teams work. The New York startup has raised $26mn […]
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• ‘Fight fire with fire’: Databricks is buying Panther Labs to challenge Splunk and CrowdStrike with AI

  19-06-2026 13:12 via thenextweb.com
  
  Databricks has a new pitch for the AI age of cyberattacks: fight fire with fire. The $134bn data-and-AI company said it will buy Panther Labs, a cybersecurity startup, as it pushes deeper into a market dominated by Splunk and CrowdStrike. It is Databricks’ third security acquisition, a sign of how seriously it is taking the […]
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• The Big Four bill by the hour. Andera just raised $37M to let AI do the audit.

  19-06-2026 13:02 via thenextweb.com
  
  Audit is the part of corporate life almost no one thinks about, and almost everyone pays for. Public companies spend thousands of hours a year collecting evidence, testing controls and writing it all up. Most of it is done by hand, in Excel, much the way it was in 2002. Andera wants to hand that […]
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• He spent 15 months hunting for compliance software that didn’t exist. So he built Flagright, which just raised $12.5M.

  19-06-2026 12:55 via thenextweb.com
  
  Baran Ozkan spent 15 months looking for software that did not exist. As head of financial-crime product at a European bank, he wanted a single tool to catch money laundering and fraud. Vendors overpromised. His own employer tried to build one in-house and failed. So he built it himself. His startup, Flagright, has now raised […]
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• VivaTech turns 10 and bets everything on AI that actually works

  19-06-2026 12:50 via thenextweb.com
  
  A decade after it began as France’s answer to the world’s great tech shows, VivaTech has become the place where Europe makes its case for the future, and the 2026 edition was its most confident yet. Every June, a corner of south-west Paris turns into the busiest crossroads in European technology. VivaTech is the continent’s […]
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• General Atlantic wants to back China’s Kling AI at $18bn. Beijing is telling its AI firms to refuse US money.

  19-06-2026 12:47 via thenextweb.com
  
  A US investor wants to buy into China’s most successful AI-video company. The timing could hardly be more awkward. General Atlantic is in talks to lead the first outside funding round for Kling AI, the video arm of Chinese tech group Kuaishou, Bloomberg reported. Kling is seeking more than $2bn at a valuation of $18bn, […]
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• Rejected by 180 investors, Bland just raised $50M to prove voice AI is the future

  19-06-2026 12:39 via thenextweb.com
  
  Isaiah Granet spent three weeks at Y Combinator getting turned down by 180 investors. Their reason was always the same: phone calls would not exist in a year. He has now raised more than $100mn to prove them wrong. His startup, Bland, has closed a $50mn Series C led by Dell Technologies Capital, Fortune reported. […]
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• The AI bubble didn’t pop. It sent the bill

  19-06-2026 12:07 via thenextweb.com
  
  Until last week, about 200 organisations could use a preview of Anthropic’s most capable model, Mythos. They got in through a programme called Glasswing, after the system flagged thousands of software vulnerabilities. Then, on the evening of 12 June, the US Commerce Department ordered Anthropic to cut off every foreign national, anywhere. The company could […]
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• Early users of Anthropic’s Mythos still have access after US order

  19-06-2026 11:35 via thenextweb.com
  
  When Washington ordered Anthropic to shut off access to its most advanced AI model, it did not shut off everyone. Some of the organisations Anthropic had chosen early to test Mythos have kept their access to a preview of the system, even as other versions went dark under a US export directive, according to a […]
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• Meta signs new AI computing deals with data-centre firm Crusoe

  19-06-2026 11:27 via thenextweb.com
  
  Meta has signed new deals to draw computing power from Crusoe, the data-centre developer, adding to the vast and growing pile of infrastructure the company is assembling for its AI ambitions. The agreements cover two sites, in Childress, Texas, and Warrenton, Missouri, and will give Meta roughly 1.6 gigawatts of capacity between them, according to […]
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• Higgsfield launches enterprise marketing agents built on NVIDIA, claiming 78 per cent of Fortune 500 as clients

  19-06-2026 11:21 via thenextweb.com
  
  Higgsfield, the AI video startup valued at $1.3 billion, on Wednesday launched what it calls the first enterprise-ready autonomous agent framework for marketing automation. Supercomputer 2.0, built on NVIDIA’s Agent Toolkit and powered by Nemotron models, adds safety controls and granular permissioning to a platform the company says is already used to create campaigns for 390 […]
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• Turkey clears Uber’s acquisition of Getir’s delivery business

  19-06-2026 11:17 via thenextweb.com
  
  Uber has cleared the last regulatory hurdle to buying Getir’s delivery business in Turkey. The country’s Competition Board approved the US company’s acquisition of the delivery arm from Getir’s Emirati controlling shareholder, Mubadala, on Friday, ending a review that began when the deal was struck in February and clearing the way for Uber to deepen […]
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• Hyundai to buy SoftBank’s last Boston Dynamics stake for $325m

  19-06-2026 10:53 via thenextweb.com
  
  Hyundai is preparing to buy out the last piece of Boston Dynamics it does not already own. The South Korean carmaker plans to acquire SoftBank’s remaining 9.65% stake in the US robotics firm for $325m, a deal that would make the maker of the Atlas humanoid a wholly owned Hyundai subsidiary, according to a newspaper […]
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• China tightens indium phosphide checks as AI demand climbs

  19-06-2026 10:22 via thenextweb.com
  
  The bottleneck in the AI buildout is turning out to be a metal most people have never heard of. China has tightened its scrutiny of exports of indium phosphide, a compound essential to the high-speed optical chips that move data inside AI data centres, in a move that threatens to slow the very infrastructure the […]
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• Alibaba Cloud opens first data centres in France as the EU tightens rules on foreign cloud providers

  19-06-2026 10:09 via thenextweb.com
  
  Alibaba Cloud on Wednesday launched its first data centres in France, opening two availability zones in Paris as part of a broader push into a European market that is rapidly reassessing its dependency on foreign cloud providers. The facilities make France Alibaba Cloud’s third European hub, after Germany, where it has operated since 2016, and Britain. […]
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• US court rules Ohio can restrict children’s use of social media

  19-06-2026 10:03 via thenextweb.com
  
  Ohio can require social media companies to get a parent’s permission before letting children under 16 onto their platforms, a US appeals court ruled on Thursday, reviving a law the tech industry had managed to freeze. The decision from the Cincinnati-based 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals overturns a lower court that had blocked the […]
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• Meta lobbies Congress for protection from child-harm lawsuits

  19-06-2026 09:44 via thenextweb.com
  
  Meta is asking Congress for something it cannot win in court: protection from the lawsuits that accuse its products of harming children. The company has been lobbying lawmakers for legal immunity from child-harm claims tied to platforms such as Instagram, according to people familiar with the effort, as it faces thousands of suits from young […]
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• SpaceX falls more than 6% as the record IPO rally cools

  19-06-2026 09:37 via thenextweb.com
  
  For two days, SpaceX was one of the five most valuable companies on Earth. On Thursday, the market began to reconsider. Shares in Elon Musk’s rocket-and-satellite company fell more than 6%, last trading down 6.5% at $178.50, as the frenzy that followed the largest initial public offering in history started to cool. The drop was […]
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• Leaked licences show Bulgaria greenlit surveillance exports to governments accused of repression

  19-06-2026 09:11 via thenextweb.com
  
  Bulgaria’s export control authority licensed a Sofia-based surveillance firm to sell phone-tracking tools, interception systems, and monitoring infrastructure to intelligence agencies in countries with documented records of suppressing dissent. The licences, published by Human Rights Watch on Wednesday, cover exports by Circles BG to government buyers in Azerbaijan, Serbia, Malaysia, Mexico, the UAE, and at least […]
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• A 201-year-old mutual bank just launched an AI Center of Excellence with a startup partner

  18-06-2026 21:34 via thenextweb.com
  
  Liberty Bank, a 201-year-old mutual bank headquartered in Middletown, Connecticut, announced the launch of an AI Center of Excellence alongside a strategic partnership with Flare AI. The centre will serve as the hub for AI strategy, governance, and execution across the bank’s personal, commercial, and digital operations. The partnership is structured around outcomes rather than […]
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• Spotify launches Reserved, a ticketing feature that rewards superfans with early concert access

  18-06-2026 21:16 via thenextweb.com
  
  Spotify on Wednesday launched Reserved by Spotify, turning the concert ticketing concept it unveiled last month into a live product. The feature automatically holds up to two concert tickets for Premium subscribers based on their listening habits, making Spotify the first audio streaming platform to offer dedicated pre-sale ticket access. The first artist to participate is indie-pop […]
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