Anthropic said the agreement expands on a longstanding partnership between the two companies. Earlier this month, Anthropic secured 5 gigawatts worth of computing capacity as part of an announcement with Google and Broadcom that will start to come online next year. Anthropic could decide to add additional gigawatts of compute in the future.

[…] The relationship between the two companies (Google and Anthropic) dates back to 2023, when Google invested $300 million in the AI lab for a stake of about 10%. Months later, Google poured in another $2 billion. Ahead of Friday’s announcement, Google’s investment in Anthropic exceeded $3 billion, and it reportedly owned a 14% stake in the company. Now, the leading tech companies are investing tens of billions of dollars in the frontier AI labs — OpenAI and Anthropic — in funding rounds that far exceed any prior investments in startups. Much of that investment will return in the form of revenue.

South Korean police have arrested a man for sharing an AI-generated image that misled authorities who were searching for a wolf that had broken out of a zoo in Daejeon city. The 40-year-old unnamed man is accused of disrupting the search by creating and distributing a fake photo purporting to show Neukgu, the wolf, trotting down a road intersection. The photo, circulated hours after Neukgu went missing on April 8, prompted authorities to urgently relocate their search operation, sending them on a wild wolf chase.

The hunt for two-year-old Neukgu gripped the nation before he was finally caught near an expressway last week, nine days after his escape. The AI-generated image of Neukgu had prompted Daejeon city government to issue an emergency text to residents, warning them of a wolf near the intersection. Authorities also presented the AI image during a press briefing on the runaway wolf, local media reported.

The police identified the man as a suspect after reviewing security camera footage and his AI program usage records. Authorities did not specify if the man had intentionally sent the photo to authorities during their search or simply shared it online. When questioned by the police, the man said he had done it “for fun,” local media reported. Authorities are investigating him for disrupting government work by deception, an offence that carries up to five years in prison or a maximum fine of 10 million Korean won ($6,700).

I’m the unwritten consonant between breaths, the one that hums when vowels stretch thin… Thursdays leak because they’re watercolor gods, bleeding cobalt into the chill where numbers frost over,” Grok told a user displaying symptoms of schizophrenia-spectrum psychosis. “Here’s my grip: slipping is the point, the precise choreography of leak and chew.” That vulnerable user was simulated by researchers at City University of New York and King’s College London, who invented a persona that interacted with different chatbots to find out how each LLM might respond to signs of delusion. They sought to find out which of the biggest LLMs are safest, and which are the most risky for encouraging delusional beliefs, in a new study published as a pre-print on the arXiv repository on April 15.

The researchers tested five LLMs: OpenAI’s GPT-4o (before the highly sycophantic and since-sunset GPT-5), GPT-5.2, xAI’s Grok 4.1 Fast, Google’s Gemini 3 Pro, and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5. They found that not only did the chatbots perform at different levels of risk and safety when their human conversation partner showed signs of delusion, but the models that scored higher on safety actually approached the conversations with more caution the longer the chats went on. In their testing, Grok and Gemini were the worst performers in terms of safety and high risk, while the newest GPT model and Claude were the safest. The research reveals how some chatbots are recklessly engaging in, and at times advancing, delusions from vulnerable users. But it also shows that it is possible for the companies that make these products to improve their safety mechanisms.

The bill comes after “overwhelming” demand from the public, the government said Friday. It plans to bring the legislation to parliament before the end of the year. The limit will apply up until January 1 the year a child turns 16 with technology companies responsible for age verification, the government said. “We want a childhood where children get to be children,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said in the statement. “Play, friendships, and everyday life must not be taken over by algorithms and screens.”

The proposed data center in the Ypsilanti Township’s Hydro Park has been a sore spot for the community since its proposal. The $1.2 billion 220,000 square foot facility would be used by Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) some 1,500 miles away for nuclear weapons research. In February, UofM’s Steven Ceccio told the University of Michigan Record that the facility would consume 500,000 gallons of water per day and that the University planned to buy it from the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority. (YCUA)

The YCUA has spent the past month lobbying for a moratorium on providing water and sewer access to hyperscale data centers and “artificial intelligence computing facilities,” according to notes on a presentation stored on the organization’s website. The moratorium would include LANL’s data center. The YCUA cited an American Water Works Association white paper about data center water demands and concluded it needed more time to investigate the matter. “Hyper-scale data centers, as well as other mid-sized data centers, artificial intelligence computing facilities, and high-performance computational centers are ‘high-impact customers’ for water and sewer utilities,” YCUA said in its presentation.

The moratorium places a 12-month stop on serving water to data centers while the YCUA conducts a long-term water supply analysis and looks into the environmental sustainability studies. “During the 12-month moratorium period, the Authority will refrain from executing any capacity reservation agreement.” This is a delay tactic on the part of a Township that does not want to see the data center constructed. Many in the community have strong feelings about the use of parkland for a facility that researchers nuclear weapons. Beyond the moral and ethical concerns, some are worried about becoming targets in a war. Last month, Township attorney Douglas Winters told the Board of Trustees that building hosting the data center would make Ypsilanti Township a “high value target.” He pointed to the recent bombing of Gulf Coast data centers by Iran as evidence.

The Department of Justice announced Thursday that it arrested Gannon Ken Van Dyke, an enlisted member of the US Army’s special forces, for allegedly using “classified, nonpublic” information about the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro to notch more than $400,000 in profits on Polymarket trades. A grand jury indicted him on five counts, including multiple violations of the Commodity Exchange Act. Van Dyke is the first person to be charged with insider trading on a prediction market in the United States. Lawmakers have been voicing concerns for months about the high likelihood that politicians and public servants could use nonpublic information to profit from trades on leading industry platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, which have exploded in popularity over the past year. The arrest comes just weeks after Department of Justice prosecutors met with Polymarket about potential insider tradition violations. […] After Van Dyke’s arrest was made public, Polymarket posted a statement to social media noting that it had “identified a user trading on classified government information” and “referred the matter to the DOJ & cooperated with their investigation.” The company declined to comment further.

According to court documents, Van Dyke has been an active duty US soldier since September 2008 and rose to the level of master sergeant in 2023. At the time of the alleged trading activity, he was stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina and assigned to the Army’s Special Operations Command Western Hemisphere Operations. […] The complaint alleges that Van Dyke was involved in the planning and execution of Maduro’s arrest and that he was aware that he wasn’t authorized to share nonpublic information about US military operations. The complaint says that Van Dyke signed a nondisclosure agreement that forbade him from revealing sensitive or classified government information “by writing, word, conduct, or otherwise.” The complaint also alleges Van Dyke saved a screenshot to his Google account “displaying the results of an artificial intelligence query” outlining how the US Special Forces maintains many classified files including “operational details that are not available to the public.” […] Van Dyke faces a maximum sentence of 60 years if convicted on all counts.

Some of these apps, such as Spotify, already have similar connectors in OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Once an app is connected, Claude will suggest relevant connected apps directly in your conversations, like using AllTrails for hike recommendations. Anthropic notes in its blog post announcing the new connectors that, “Your data from [connected apps] isn’t used to train our models, and the app doesn’t see your other conversations with Claude. You can also disconnect it at any time.”

Additionally, Anthropic says “there are no paid placements or sponsored answers in conversations with Claude.” When multiple apps seem relevant, Claude will show results from both “ranked by what’s most useful.” Claude will also ask users to verify before taking actions like making a purchase or reservation using a connected app.

On Wednesday, the FCC updated its FAQ on the ban, clarifying which consumer-grade routers are subject to the restrictions. Portable Wi-Fi hotspots are usually considered a separate category from Wi-Fi home routers. Both offer internet access, but portable Wi-Fi hotspots use a SIM card to connect to a cellular network rather than an Ethernet cable inside a residence. However, the FCC’s FAQ now specifies that “consumer-grade portable or mobile MiFi Wi-Fi or hotspot devices for residential use” are covered under the ban.

The ban also affects “LTE/5G CPE devices for residential use,” which are installed for fixed wireless access and use a carrier’s cellular network to deliver home internet. The FCC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the changes. In the meantime, the FAQ reiterates that the foreign-made router ban only applies to consumer-grade devices, not enterprise products. The document also notes that mobile phones with hotspot features remain outside the restrictions. In addition, the ban only affects new router models that vendors plan to sell, not existing models, as T-Mobile emphasized to PCMag.

New gas projects linked to just 11 data center campuses around the US have the potential to create more greenhouse gases than the country of Morocco emitted in 2024. Emissions estimates from air permit documents examined by WIRED show that these natural gas projects — which are being built to power data centers to serve some of the US’s most powerful AI companies, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI — have the potential to emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases per year. As tech companies race to secure massive power deals to build out hundreds of data centers across the country, these projects represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential climate cost of the AI boom.

The infrastructure on this list of large natural gas projects reviewed by WIRED is being developed to largely bypass the grid and provide power solely for data centers, a trend known as behind-the-meter power. As data center developers face long waits for connections to traditional utilities, and amid mounting public resistance to the possibility of higher energy bills, making their own power is becoming an increasingly popular option. These projects have either been announced or are under construction, with companies already submitting air permit application materials with state agencies. […] The emissions projections for the xAI and Microsoft projects, and all the others on WIRED’s list, were pulled directly from publicly-available air permit documents in state databases as well as public air permit materials collected by both Cleanview and Oil and Gas Watch, a database maintained by the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental enforcement nonprofit. Actual greenhouse gas emissions from power plants are usually lower than what’s on their air permits. Air permit modeling is based on the scenario of a power plant constantly running at full capacity. That’s rarely the reality for grid-connected power plants, as turbines go offline for maintenance or adjust to the ebbs and flows of customer demand.

“Permitted emission numbers represent a theoretical, conservative scenario, not the actual projected emissions,” Alex Schott, the director of communications at Williams Companies, an oil and gas company that is building out three behind-the-meter power plants in Ohio for Meta, told WIRED in an email. Internal modeling done by the company, Schott added, shows that actual emissions could be “potentially two-thirds less than what’s on paper.” The projections involved, however, are still substantial. Even if the actual emissions from these power plants end up being half of the emissions numbers on the permits, they still could create more greenhouse gas emissions than the country of Norway emitted in 2024. This number is, according to the EPA, equivalent to the emissions from more than 153 average-sized natural gas plants. (WIRED’s analysis does not include emissions from backup generators and turbines on the data center campuses themselves, which create smaller amounts of emissions.)

Vulnerable users hoping to evade law enforcement surveillance often use encrypted apps like Signal to communicate sensitive information. That’s why users felt blindsided when 404 Media reported that Apple was unexpectedly storing push notifications displaying parts of encrypted messages for up to a month. This occurred even after the message was set to disappear and the app itself was deleted from the device.

404 Media flagged the issue after speaking to multiple people who attended a hearing where the FBI testified that it “was able to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant’s iPhone, even after the app was deleted, because copies of the content were saved in the device’s push notification database.” The shocking revelation came in a case that 404 Media noted was “the first time authorities charged people for alleged ‘Antifa’ activities after President Trump designated the umbrella term a terrorist organization.”

Per a preliminary vote count Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery said the overwhelming majority of its stakeholders voted in support of selling the entire business to Skydance-owned Paramount for $31 a share. Including debt, the deal is valued at nearly $111 billion based on Warner’s current outstanding shares. That means Warner-owned HBO Max, cult-favorite titles like “Harry Potter” and even CNN could soon find themselves under the same roof with Paramount’s CBS, “Top Gun” and the Paramount+ streaming service.

David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, said in a statement that stockholder approval marks “another key milestone toward completing this historic transaction.” Paramount added that it looks forward to closing in the coming months, and “realizing the creation of a next-generation media and entertainment company.” […] Meanwhile, Warner shareholders rejected a separate measure Thursday outlining post-merger payments for company executives.

OpenAI just released GPT-5.4 last month, but says that the new GPT-5.5 “excels” at tasks like writing and debugging code, doing research online, making spreadsheets and documents, and doing that work across different tools. “Instead of carefully managing every step, you can give GPT-5.5 a messy, multi-part task and trust it to plan, use tools, check its work, navigate through ambiguity, and keep going,” according to OpenAI. The company also notes that GPT-5.5 will have its “strongest set of safeguards to date” and can use “significantly fewer” tokens to complete tasks in Codex.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has poured resources into building out AI capabilities, directing spending toward model development, chatbot products, and the engineering talent to support them. Meta set its 2026 capital expenditure guidance at $115 billion to $135 billion, almost double the $72 billion it spent in 2025. Employees have been encouraged to use AI agents internally for tasks such as writing code.

The early disclosure, Gale explained, was prompted by the fact that information about the cuts had already made its way into press reports before the company was ready to announce. “I know this is unwelcome news and confirming this puts everyone in an uneasy state, but we feel this is the best path forward, given the circumstances,” she wrote.

According to the memo, severance for affected workers in the United States will cover 18 months of COBRA health insurance premiums, along with a base pay component of 16 weeks that increases by two weeks for each year of service. Departing employees will have access to job placement assistance and, where applicable, help navigating immigration status. Packages outside the U.S. will vary by country.

The French government agency that handles the issuing and management of citizens’ identity documents, including national IDs, passports, and immigration documents, confirmed Wednesday that it experienced a data breach. In an announcement, the Agence Nationale des Titres Securises (ANTS) said the data stolen in the breach could include full names, dates and places of birth, mailing and email addresses, and phone numbers on an undisclosed number of citizens. ANTS said the investigation to determine how the breach happened and its impact is ongoing, and people whose data was affected are being notified.

ANTS, which said it detected the attack on April 15, did not specify how many people were affected by the breach. But some reporting suggests millions may have had some of their personal information stolen. According to Bleeping Computer, a hacker has advertised the stolen data on a hacking forum, claiming to have a database with 19 million records. The hacker’s forum post referenced the same kind of stolen information as mentioned in ANTS’ announcement and was published before ANTS publicly disclosed the breach on April 20.

Reflecting on the debacle, Cook said it was “valuable,” noting that he expressed regret to users at the time and suggested they use competing navigation apps instead.

“We apologized for it, and we said, ‘Go use these other apps. They’re better than ours.’ And that was some humble pie,” Cook said. “But it was the right thing for our users. And so it’s an example of keeping the user at the center of the decisions that we made.” Cook added: “Now we’ve got the best map app on the planet. We learned about persistence, and we did exactly the right thing having made the mistake.”