Week 42, 2026·19 Oct 20265 stories, checked by a human editor
AI, explained in plain English.
What's happening, what it means and why it matters to you.
New to AI? The big picture in 60 seconds
Where AI stands in 2026 →- What AI isSoftware that learns patterns from examples instead of following hand-written rules.
- What it can do todayWrite, summarise, translate, code, create images and voices, and complete tasks.
- What it still gets wrongMakes up facts, can be unfair, and is often a black box.
- Where it's headingAI "agents" that do whole tasks for you, built into the apps you already use.
This week at a glance
Read the full issue →Also this week
- 2ResearchCitizen Lab: targeted ads used to deliver zero-click spyware to Al Jazeera devices
- 3OtherSecurity experts say recent "rogue AI" incidents were basic containment failures
- 4ResearchAnthropic's Claude explains the long-mysterious origin of NIST's elliptic curve seeds
- 5ToolsAnthropic replaced Git with its own system as AI-written code merges jumped 12-fold
New guideAI and robots: from factory arms to humanoidsDid robots always use AI?Robots in hospitals, mines, hotels and archaeologyThe humanoid race: hype vs realityRead the guide →Photo: NASA/Bill Stafford, James Blair, Regan Geeseman, Public domain
Explore by topic
All 24 guides →
Stories
- Built with AIReal apps made by vibe coding
- AI unicornsThe companies behind the tools you use
- Young innovatorsKids and teens who built amazing things
- Before AI vs after AIWhat really changed, with evidence
Photo: Neptunerover, Public domain
Learn
- AI agents explainedNewWhat they are, how they work, tools to try
- AI and robotsNewFrom factory arms to humanoids
- Where AI standsThe big picture, in plain English
- AI and search (SEO, GEO)How AI answers searches, and what to do
Photo: Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0
Stay safe
- AI and cyber securityNewThe new arms race, and how to stay safe
- Spot AI scamsCloned voices, deepfakes and fake ads
- AI and your privacyWhat happens to your chats, and how to control it
Photo: Lacz02, CC BY-SA 4.0
Tools & people
- AI tools by jobHand-picked tools for your kind of work
- AI people to follow11 voices worth your feed
- Best AI chatbotsThe 5 worth using right now
Photo: Unknown photographer, Public domain
Did you know?
Solved by AIPolice caught two murder suspects after 19 years on the run, after AI "aged" their old photos.Read the story →Photo: Mari Lezhava, CC0
Solved by AIScrolls burned by Vesuvius in 79 AD can't be opened. AI read them anyway.Read the story →Photo: Franz Ludwig Catel, Public domain
Solved by AIIt took a century to find 430 Nazca Lines. AI helped find 303 more in six months.Read the story →
Decoded with AISperm whales may have a "phonetic alphabet". AI helped spot it in 9,000 recordings.Read the story →Photo: Gabriel Barathieu, CC BY-SA 2.0
AI failTwo lawyers were fined after citing court cases ChatGPT made up.Read the story →
AI failGoogle's AI told people to put glue on pizza. Here's why.Read the story →
AI failA newspaper recommended 15 summer reads. Ten of them don't exist.Read the story →
Scam alertA mother heard her daughter sobbing on the phone. It was an AI clone of her voice.Read the story →Photo: Youcef Smahi, CC BY 4.0
Scam alertEveryone on this video call was a deepfake. It cost a company $25 million.Read the story →Photo: Shixart1985, CC BY 2.0
Myth or fact? A 30-second quiz
Three quick questions. How AI-savvy are you?
ChatGPT searches the internet every time you ask it something.
It's a myth. It searches only when it decides a question needs fresh information, or when you ask it to. Otherwise it answers from what it learned in training, which stops at a cutoff date.
AI chatbots can invent facts, quotes and sources that sound completely real.
It's a fact. This is called a hallucination. Two New York lawyers were fined $5,000 after citing court cases that ChatGPT had made up.
AI detectors can reliably tell whether an essay was written by AI.
It's a myth. OpenAI shut down its own detector in 2023 because it was not accurate enough: it caught only about a quarter of AI-written text and wrongly flagged some human writing.
A few seconds of someone's voice can be enough for AI to copy it.
It's a fact. In 2023 Microsoft showed a research model that could imitate a voice from a 3-second sample. Scammers now use voice cloning to fake calls from family members.
Deepfake video calls only target celebrities and big companies.
It's a myth. A retired man in Kozhikode, Kerala, lost ₹40,000 after a video call from a deepfake of his former colleague.
If a famous person recommends an investment app in a video, it's probably genuine.
It's a myth. Deepfake ads of business leaders, cricketers and even the RBI Governor have pushed fake investment schemes. The RBI says it never gives investment advice.
The term "artificial intelligence" was first used in the 2010s.
It's a myth. It dates from 1955, when John McCarthy and colleagues proposed a summer research workshop on "artificial intelligence" at Dartmouth College.
A computer beat the world chess champion back in 1997.
It's a fact. IBM's Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in a six-game match in 1997, a decade before the first iPhone.
ChatGPT was the first chatbot ever made.
It's a myth. ELIZA, built at MIT in the mid-1960s, chatted with people by spotting keywords. Some users became convinced it understood them.
AI has helped read scrolls burned by Mount Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago.
It's a fact. Students used AI to find ink inside X-ray scans of still-rolled Herculaneum scrolls, reading over 2,000 characters of a lost text in 2024.
A company can be held responsible for what its website chatbot tells you.
It's a fact. A Canadian tribunal ordered Air Canada to honour a discount its chatbot had wrongly promised, rejecting the argument that the bot was responsible for its own words.
Electricity use by data centres is expected to roughly double by 2030, driven largely by AI.
It's a fact. The International Energy Agency projects data centres will use about as much electricity in 2030 as Japan does today.
AI helped crack a 50-year-old puzzle in biology, and it won a Nobel Prize.
It's a fact. AlphaFold predicts the 3D shape of proteins from their recipe. Its creators shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Some powerful AI models can be downloaded and run on your own computer.
It's a fact. These are open-weight models, such as Meta's Llama family: anyone can download the trained model instead of using it through a company's website.