A London tribunal ruled against Apple by finding that its App Store practices abused a dominant market position, opening the door to nearly £1.5bn in damages. This ruling arrives as EU regulators intensify oversight on tech companies. The European Commission is also cracking down on Meta and TikTok for breaches of the Digital Services Act in an effort to enforce rigorous transparency and data access standards. Meanwhile, Apple may disable privacy tracking in Europe as mounting regulatory pressure forces changes to its data-collection practices.
An AWS outage disrupted over 11 million users due to faulty automation and DNS glitches, shaking up the cloud infrastructure arena. In response, Microsoft rapidly deployed out-of-band patches for a critical WSUS vulnerability (detailed update), underlining the importance of swift action amid rising security threats. The company also revived its nostalgic Clippy character in a new Copilot AI update (more on Clippy), blending humor with functionality in modern workflows.
OpenAI is making bold moves on multiple fronts. Its acquisition of Software Applications Inc is a clear step towards deeper ChatGPT integration on macOS, while the launch of a new Company Knowledge feature (company knowledge update) enables seamless access to internal files to rival Microsoft 365 Copilot. Additionally, OpenAI’s update to its Sora app (Sora deepfake update) now extends to Android, sparking debate over content safeguards and deepfake technologies.
In other developments, Oxford spin-out Astut secured seed funding to commercialize its transparent AI reasoning platform (funding announcement), positioning itself uniquely in the high-stakes decision-making space. Meanwhile, Automattic has escalated its legal battle by filing counterclaims against WP Engine over trademark and branding issues (legal dispute update), signaling a fierce push to protect its brand identity in the evolving digital landscape.