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Doron Zauer proposes that the AI infrastructure layer is where the next batch of big winners will be found

On October 23, 2026, Doron Zauer, a partner at Earth & Beyond Ventures, offered his judgment that the next batch of big AI winners will come from companies building the infrastructure that giants rely on. He said that competition in the AI application layer is fierce and easily commoditized, while physical infrastructure such as silicon architecture, advanced materials, and connectivity technologies represents a long-term advantage that is hard to replicate. He noted that Israel has deep accumulated strength in chip design, photonics, and high-speed communications, and that entrepreneurs can target the architectural bottlenecks encountered by giants such as Nvidia, Apple, Intel, and Google. He also pointed out that commercialization success depends on yield, reliability, and system integration, and that early validation with industrial buyers and design partners is crucial. At present, this judgment is presented in a CTech report, and there are no other factual developments.

Meta begins offering personal AI agent Muse in Japan

Meta launched its personal AI agent Muse in Japan on October 23, making Japan the first overseas market after the North American launch in September this year. Muse supports iOS, Android, and muse.ai, can draw up plans and execute tasks on the user's behalf, continues processing even after the app is closed, and requests user confirmation before actions such as sending emails or purchasing products. The report said Meta is also advancing connector integrations with Japanese local services such as Mercari, Money Forward ME, and Ticket Pia, as well as with Gmail, Google Calendar, Instagram, Stripe, Shopify, Trip.com, and others. Meta said Muse runs in an isolated Muse Secure VM, with network access managed by an independent Sentinel agent; basic features are free, while the Power plan costs $20 per month and the Maximum plan costs $100 per month.

Pichai explains why Gemini 3.5 Pro has not been released

On October 23, 2026, Google CEO Sundar Pichai responded to the question of why Gemini 3.5 Pro was ultimately not released. According to a report by Alex Heath, Pichai said that while training the 3.5 series, the team found gaps in agentic capabilities, especially in coding, and believed that iterating with the smaller and more efficient Flash would be faster, so they released 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8 Flash in succession; by the time this set of capabilities could be applied to Pro, Argon pretraining had already been completed. This explanation currently comes from that report, and there are no other developments at this time.

Eric Schmidt Says AI Can Eliminate Enterprise Coordination Costs and Cut Thousands of Jobs

On October 22, 2026, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt offered his assessment that AI platforms can eliminate the "coordination tax" within enterprises, making roughly several thousand positions unnecessary in a company of 10,000 people. Drawing on his own experience, he said he used to work about 63 hours a week and spend 12 hours a day in meetings, and that this kind of coordination burden can be eliminated by AI. He also advised Gen Z not to resist AI but to get on board this "rocket ship." At present, this claim has only one report from Fortune Tech as its source, and there are no subsequent factual developments.

Peter Yang releases the /video-short skill

On October 22, 2026, Peter Yang released the free AI skill /video-short. This skill can turn raw single-person recording footage into a polished short video, automatically adding B-roll, motion graphics, subtitles, AI video, and music, and can be used with commonly used AI agents; it is now freely available on GitHub. A report the same day mentioned that the skill includes a built-in review page where users can pause on a frame and leave comments for the AI to correct; the agent applies each piece of feedback before loading the next draft. Peter Yang described this as being like Google Docs comments for video, and provided a free GitHub access link and tutorial.

English translation is being prepared.

INMO GO3 smart glasses go on sale, priced at $509

The INMO GO3 smart glasses are now on sale, priced at $509. According to 9to5Google, the product features one MicroLED display for each eye, with brightness up to 1500 nits and a 30-degree field of view, and integrates Google Gemini. In terms of features, it supports real-time translation in 98 languages, 13 of which can run fully offline, and can also take notes during meetings, with summaries to be presented directly through the glasses later. The device weighs 58 grams, has a replaceable battery, and its camera is equipped with a physical privacy cover; a speaker, a control ring, and sunglass overlays are also available as optional accessories. There are currently no further developments.

Sundar Pichai says Argon usage reached nearly 25 trillion tokens within 72 hours of launch

Sundar Pichai said that within 72 hours of Google's Argon going live, usage approached 25 trillion tokens, roughly 3 times the usage of Gemini 3.0 over the same period. He also mentioned that the model is currently being served, but compute capacity is limited. The remarks came from a video on Alex Kantrowitz's YouTube channel.

Rauch says AI Gateway itself is a tool marketplace

On October 23, 2026, Guillermo Rauch reposted Vercel's post introducing TakoViz's launch on AI Gateway, calling TakoViz one of the coolest real-world examples of generative UI. He also said he likes that AI Gateway itself is a tool marketplace: adding a tool in aisdk takes just 1 line of code, and you get "Google"—not just search, but also weather, sports, stocks, elections, and more. This statement currently comes from Rauch's own public remarks, with no subsequent developments yet.

Burnham will announce the establishment of a wildfire AI unit

On October 23, 2026, it was reported that Andy Burnham will announce plans to establish a new wildfire AI unit at the National Situation Centre. The centre is part of the Cobra briefing room, and this AI wildfire monitoring team aims to detect and extinguish fires faster. The report mentioned that earlier this summer, record-high temperatures were set, and emergency alerts were sent to mobile phones in England and Wales due to wildfires. The same report also said the Prime Minister will announce 45 million pounds to purchase wildfire-specific personal protective equipment for fire brigades, and invest 25 million pounds to restore dried-out peatlands in England to serve as natural firebreaks; companies such as Google, Airbus and VodafoneThree are expected to attend the first Wildfire Resilience Summit to discuss satellite monitoring and early warning systems. There are currently no subsequent developments.

The Browser Company announces the shutdown of the Arc browser

The Browser Company announced that it will discontinue the Arc browser in phases and redirect resources to its AI browser Dia. According to a report on October 23, 2026, the company has stopped creating new accounts; on December 22, Arc will completely cease operation on macOS and Windows, all accounts will be deactivated, and account-related personal data will be deleted within 30 days after deactivation. Starting November 23, AI features such as Browse for Me in the iOS and Android versions of Arc Search will be shut down, and the Android version will also be removed from Google Play. The company stated that all resources, including the security team, have been devoted to Dia; bookmarks, history, extensions, and features such as Spaces, Folders, and Tab Groups can be imported into Dia, most core features will remain free, and AI capabilities can be optionally enabled.

Aditya Agarwal said the conversation at @spc was very rewarding

Aditya Agarwal said the conversation at @spc was great and that he learned a lot. He shared the content of Sergey Levine's conversation at SPC: in his early years, Levine had a roomful of robots grasping objects all day in a converted Google conference room, accumulating a great deal of experience but lacking prior knowledge, and this bottleneck ultimately gave rise to Physical Intelligence. The conversation also covered the Pi Zero robot foundation model, the evolution of reasoning and generalization capabilities from Pi 0.5 to Pi 0.7, as well as the robot data challenge and world models. This content was published by Aditya Agarwal on October 23, 2026, and there are no subsequent developments as of yet.

Hassabis shortens AGI timeline to two to three years

Google DeepMind founder and Nobel Chemistry laureate Demis Hassabis offered his judgment that artificial general intelligence (AGI) may arrive within the next two to three years. Earlier this year he had estimated three to five years. Hassabis defines AGI as a system that can match the full cognitive scope of the human brain, and uses the "Einstein test" as the criterion, namely whether a system trained only on knowledge from before 1901 could reproduce Einstein's 1905 papers. Other reports say that in an interview with The Wall Street Journal he shortened the timeline to the next 2 to 3 years, and mentioned that earlier expectations ranged from 5 to 10 years, to within 5 years, to 2030. There are currently no further developments confirmed by factual evidence.

MiniMax thanks for bringing H3 to TPU and looks forward to open-source work on efficient video inference

MiniMax responded to SGLang including MiniMax H3 in the TPU support list of SGLang-TorchTPU, expressing thanks and saying it looks forward to more open-source work around efficient video inference. SGLang said that SGLang-TorchTPU was jointly built by SGLang, the Google TPU team, and the Meta PyTorch team, has been used for Meta's production inference, and supports models including Muse Spark Open, GLM-5.3 Flash, Kimi K3, Ling 3.1 Flash, and MiniMax H3. There are currently no facts about subsequent developments.

Sundar Pichai discusses Argon, the frontier, and the personal agent plan

On October 21, 2026, Alex Heath previewed that Sundar Pichai would appear on the Sources program the next day. On October 22, Pichai posted that he had sat down with Alex Heath to talk about Argon, frontier models, and Google's personal agent plan; the quoted interview content covered early reactions after the release of Gemini 4 Argon, areas where the model still needs improvement, changes in DeepMind leadership, and Google's response in the personal agent race. On the same day, another report said that in the Sources Podcast conversation, Pichai confirmed that Google's research results had already shown that Gemini 5 would be a substantial improvement over Argon, and stated that this internal judgment was one of the main reasons he is currently willing to invest heavily in compute.

OpenAI and Google Cloud reach partnership; frontier models and Codex to launch on Google Cloud

On October 21, 2026, OpenAI announced a partnership with Google Cloud to bring its frontier models and Codex agent workflows to Google Cloud's Model Garden, allowing enterprises to use these technologies within their existing build environments. OpenAI's official statement did not disclose specific launch timing, the list of available models, or pricing information. Subsequent reports said that GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6.1 Sol, GPT-6 Luna, and Codex will launch on Google Cloud, with the first batch of models already available to select enterprise customers in private preview and a general availability plan to roll out in the coming weeks; enterprises can call them via the Google Cloud API and purchase them on Google Cloud Marketplace using their cloud account balances. Other reports said that GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6.1 Sol, and GPT-6 Luna are already live on Google Cloud.

Trump demands data centers generate their own power and pay dividends to communities

On October 21, 2026, Trump posted on Truth Social stating that large new data centers must generate their own power and pay cash "dividends" to their host communities. Related reports noted that the closest existing commitment is the Ratepayer Protection Pledge signed in March of that year by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI, under which signatories pledged to build or purchase generating capacity and bear infrastructure upgrade costs, though experts believe the pledge may not be enforceable at the federal level. Trump said the dividend proposal goes further than that pledge. Reports on October 22 further stated that Trump also demanded that data centers supply surplus power to local communities free of charge or sell it to them, and noted that communities across the United States have continued to protest AI data center projects over rising electricity prices, noise, water shortages, and other issues. There are currently no facts on subsequent developments.

English translation is being prepared.

Apple updates App Store Review Guidelines to address AI non-consensual intimate imagery

On October 16, 2026, Apple updated the App Store Review Guidelines, targeting AI-generated non-consensual intimate imagery and apps that conceal harmful features during review. The revised Guideline 1.2 requires apps hosting user-generated content to take measures to prevent and remove intimate images created without consent, and to provide reporting and blocking channels; Guideline 2.5.19 explicitly states that developers must not misrepresent an app's purpose during review or add undisclosed features after launch, and violations may result in removal of both the app and the developer account. Reports say the adjustment stemmed from investigations finding that such undressing apps were still listed, with cumulative downloads of 483 million and revenue exceeding $122 million for the apps involved, and Apple has removed 15 of them. On October 22, the Tech Transparency Project published an investigation stating that, using four test accounts for 13-year-old boys, it found that even with parental controls enabled, 135 AI apps capable of generating nude images could still be accessed on the Apple and Google app stores; both platforms rely on developer questionnaires to self-report age ratings. As of September 28, Apple had removed 25 apps and Google 6, but all the removed apps remained fully usable on the test phones.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne propose that generative AI is distorting archaeology and flattening Indigenous knowledge

Researchers at the University of Melbourne argue in an article on AIhub that generative AI is distorting archaeology and flattening Indigenous knowledge. The article states that GenAI scrapes and reuses Indigenous cultural and intellectual property (ICIP) on a large scale without consent, compressing local Indigenous knowledge tied to specific lands and communities into statistical patterns, thereby erasing its context. The authors say their recent research found that AI can often distinguish science from Indigenous consensus and long-circulating fringe narratives, but that this capability itself relies on training data collected or reproduced without community permission. The article also mentions that among the top results of a Google image search for "cultural heritage Australia" is a GenAI-fabricated image of a nonexistent giant stone carved head circulating. This judgment is currently reported by a single source, with no subsequent factual developments.