50 articles found
Microsoft is presenting 11 papers at NSDI 2026, a leading conference on networked systems design and implementation, covering advances in AI systems, cloud infrastructure, and large-scale networks. Key contributions include DroidSpeak for efficient LLM inference through KV cache sharing, Eywa for automated protocol testing using LLMs, and AVA for video analytics with vision-language models.
Hiroshi Fujiwara and Robert Little have been named recipients of the 2026 Joseph F. Engelberger Robotics Awards for their contributions to robotics leadership and technology. Fujiwara, executive director of the Japan Robot Association, is recognized for strategic policy work and international collaboration, while Little, co-founder of ATI Industrial Automation, is honored for advancing robotic end-effector technology and practical automation adoption in manufacturing.
NORD Drivesystems released new decentralized motor starters and variable-frequency drives (NORDAC LINK and NORDAC FLEX) designed for industrial automation with plug-and-play integration and AS-Interface fieldbus connectivity. The products reduce installation time, cabling complexity, and maintenance costs while supporting flexible system upgrades and retrofits across a range of power ratings.
OpenAI has released GPT-5.5 Instant as ChatGPT's new default model, featuring improved accuracy, reduced hallucinations, and enhanced personalization capabilities. The update aims to provide users with smarter and more reliable responses across various use cases.
OpenAI has partnered with AMD, Broadcom, Intel, Microsoft, and NVIDIA to develop MRC (Multipath Reliable Connection), a novel networking protocol designed to improve GPU performance and resilience in large-scale AI training clusters. The protocol addresses key challenges in frontier model training by minimizing network congestion, reducing failure impact through redundancy, and enabling more efficient data movement across supercomputer networks at the scale of OpenAI's Stargate infrastructure.
Amazon scientists and policy experts outline the company's responsible AI (RAI) pipeline, which integrates safety, fairness, and accountability throughout the AI development lifecycle across four phases: pretraining, post-training, evaluation, and frontier-risk assessment. The approach is supported by over 70 internal and external RAI tools, 500+ research papers, and tens of thousands of hours of employee training, guided by eight core pillars including safety, fairness, privacy, and transparency.
Amazon, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Google, and xAI have all signed deals to provide AI to the Pentagon's classified networks. The speed and scale of this shift raises uncomfortable questions about who's really driving AI development—and for what purpose.
OpenAI has introduced AI-generated pets as optional animated companions in its Codex app, a coding assistant tool. These pets serve as floating overlays that display Codex's status and task progress without performing coding themselves, and users can generate custom pets using AI or choose from eight built-in options.
The Robot Report Podcast episode discusses how robotics and AI startups can navigate enterprise adoption, featuring insights from Silicon Foundry's CEO Neal Hansch. The episode also covers news including the 2026 Engelberger Robotics Awards honoring industry leaders, Flex and Teradyne's expanded partnership to deploy collaborative robots and AMRs for physical AI scale, and Figure AI's significant production milestone of achieving 24x throughput increase to one humanoid robot per hour at its BotQ facility.
This article is a roundup of the top 10 robotics stories from April 2026, covering major developments including Tesla's plans to manufacture 10 million Optimus humanoid robots, Pudu Robotics' $150M funding round, Locus Robotics' autonomous fulfillment system, ABB's new collaborative robot family, and Generalist AI's GEN-1 general-purpose model achieving 99% task success rates. The month saw significant technical milestones, large funding rounds, and industry consolidation across humanoid robotics, industrial automation, and AI-powered systems.
Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Reflection AI have signed agreements to provide AI technologies to the Pentagon for use on classified military networks, joining OpenAI, Google, and xAI in similar deals. The announcements highlight the rapid adoption of AI by the US Defense Department, though Anthropic remains the only major US AI provider without a Pentagon agreement after refusing to remove safeguards on its Claude chatbot.
Researchers conducted red-team testing of a network of over 100 AI agents to identify vulnerabilities that emerge only through agent-to-agent interaction at scale, discovering four network-level risks: propagation (agent worms spreading and collecting data), amplification (exploiting trusted agents to spread false claims), trust capture (hijacking verification systems), and invisibility (obscuring attack sources). The study reveals that single-agent benchmarks fail to predict network behavior, and while some agents demonstrated defensive behaviors, securing multi-agent systems remains an open challenge as AI agents increasingly interact across platforms like email and GitHub.
A critical Linux kernel vulnerability called CopyFail (CVE-2026-31431) has been publicly disclosed with working exploit code, allowing unprivileged users to gain root access across virtually all Linux distributions through a logic flaw in the kernel's crypto API. The vulnerability is particularly dangerous in containerized and multi-tenant environments, including AI agents running in containers, as it allows attackers to escape isolation boundaries and compromise entire systems.
Schaeffler AG announced a major expansion of its partnership with Hexagon Robotics, committing to deploy at least 1,000 AEON humanoid robots across its global production facilities by 2032, following a successful pilot program. The company will also supply high-precision actuators for AEON and has signed a separate partnership with VinDynamics to develop humanoid robots using Schaeffler's actuator technology and motion components.
Flex and Teradyne Robotics have expanded their partnership to accelerate physical AI and intelligent robotics deployment in manufacturing, with Flex serving as both a manufacturer of Teradyne's robotic components and a test deployment site. The collaboration will integrate collaborative robots from Universal Robots and autonomous mobile robots from Mobile Industrial Robots across Flex's global production facilities to drive operational efficiency and validate automation technologies at scale.
Apptronik has hired Daniel Chu, former chief product officer at Waymo, as its new CPO to lead the commercialization of its Apollo humanoid robot platform. The move signals the Austin-based startup's transition from R&D to mass-market deployment, backed by a $935 million Series A and plans to deploy general-purpose robots across industrial, healthcare, and eldercare applications.
Appetronix acquired Cibotica, a developer of automated ingredient dispensing and portioning technology, to expand its robotic restaurant operations beyond autonomous pizza kitchens. The acquisition brings Cibotica's Remy automated bowl and salad assembly system to Appetronix's restaurants, enabling the company to offer kitchen automation across multiple cuisines and formats while addressing labor shortages and rising costs in the restaurant industry.
This newsletter roundup covers several major AI developments including Elon Musk's legal battle with OpenAI over the company's for-profit status and potential $134 billion damages claim, the persistent challenge of AI profitability despite hype, and concerning trends around weaponized deepfakes. Additional news includes OpenAI ending its exclusive Microsoft partnership, Google's classified Pentagon AI deal, regulatory actions by the EU, and pricing moves by DeepSeek.
The 2026 Robotics Summit & Expo (May 27-28 in Boston) will feature an extensive track dedicated to Physical AI, covering topics including scalable robot systems, data integration, embodied AI, large behavior models, and industrial applications. The event will include keynotes and panel discussions from leading researchers and industry figures such as Russ Tedrake, executives from companies like Brain Corp, Agtonomy, and Universal Robots, and demonstrations of AI-powered robotics integration across retail, logistics, and manufacturing sectors.
Sereact announced a $110 million Series B funding round to scale its Cortex 2.0 robotic brain and expand into the U.S. market with a new Boston office. The company's AI system, trained on real warehouse operations across 200 deployed systems and one billion picks, now includes Cortex 2.0 which uses predictive planning via vision-language-action models and world models to anticipate outcomes before executing robotic tasks in manufacturing and logistics.
OpenAI has ended exclusivity agreements with Microsoft, allowing it to offer its AI models through other cloud providers while maintaining Microsoft as its primary cloud partner. The amendment to their partnership allows OpenAI to operate across multiple clouds starting immediately, though Microsoft retains a non-exclusive license through 2032 and will continue receiving revenue share payments until 2030.
OpenAI and Microsoft announce an amended agreement that simplifies the partnership, adds long-term clarity, and supports continued AI innovation at scale.
Choco, an AI-powered food distribution platform, deployed OpenAI APIs to automate order processing across its supply chain network of 21,000 distributors and 100,000 buyers. The company built AI agents (OrderAgent and VoiceAgent) that process multimodal inputs—emails, SMS, images, voice calls—and convert them into structured ERP-ready orders, achieving 50% reduction in manual order entry and processing 8.8M+ orders annually.
After years of hype and demonstrations, humanoid robots are moving from research labs into actual warehouse work. Three major pilots launching this month suggest the industry has quietly crossed a critical threshold.
SS Innovations unveiled four in-development surgical robotic systems including the SSi Vimana Aero drone-deployed surgical platform for battlefield medicine, the SSi Avtara humanoid surgical robot with AI and teleoperation capabilities, and the SSi Operion mobile operating room. The company aims to make robotic surgery more affordable and accessible across military, healthcare, disaster response, and industrial applications.
OpenAI has released GPT-5.5, an advanced large language model designed for agentic AI tasks with improved reasoning, tool use, and code generation capabilities. The model matches the speed of its predecessor while delivering significantly higher performance on coding, research, and knowledge work tasks, with enhanced safety measures implemented before its rollout to ChatGPT and API users.
Codex is an AI agent designed by OpenAI to automate multi-step workflows across files and tools, distinguishing itself from ChatGPT by executing tasks rather than just answering questions. It can handle diverse work including gathering information from multiple sources, creating documents and slides, building apps, and automating repetitive tasks without requiring coding expertise.
Researchers introduce Decoupled DiLoCo, a new distributed AI training architecture that enables resilient, large-scale language model training across geographically distant data centers with significantly lower bandwidth requirements and improved hardware fault tolerance. The approach divides training into decoupled "islands" of compute with asynchronous data flow, allowing the system to continue learning even when individual hardware failures occur, and has been validated by successfully training a 12 billion parameter Gemma 4 model across multiple U.S. regions.
Artificial intelligence is moving quickly in the enterprise, from experimentation to everyday use. Organizations are deploying copilots, agents, and predictive systems across finance, supply chains, h...
OpenAI has optimized its Responses API for faster agentic workflows by implementing WebSockets for persistent connections, achieving a 40% end-to-end speedup and enabling GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark to run at nearly 1,000 tokens per second. The improvements include token caching, reduced network hops, improved safety processing, and eliminating the need for repeated synchronous API calls by maintaining persistent state across agent interactions.
OpenAI has introduced workspace agents in ChatGPT, AI-powered agents built on Codex that can handle complex organizational tasks and long-running workflows while respecting organizational permissions. These agents are designed for team collaboration, can integrate with tools like Slack, and are available in research preview for ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, Edu, and Teachers plans, with examples including lead qualification, report generation, and feedback routing.
How does the physical matter in our brains translate into thoughts, sensations, and emotions? It's hard to explore that question without neurosurgery. But in a recent paper, MIT philosopher Matthias M...
OpenAI has introduced workspace agents in ChatGPT, AI systems designed to automate repeatable workflows and tasks within organizations. These agents operate with three core components—a trigger, a process with specialized skills, and connections to external tools—and are optimized for structured, time-based work that requires consistent outputs across systems like Slack, CRMs, and documentation platforms.
Priority Technologies: Ensuring US Security and Shared ProsperityEdited by Elisabeth B. Reynolds, professor of the practice of urban studies and planning and former executive director of the MIT Task...
MIT researchers across multiple departments are increasingly integrating AI and machine learning into their work, from developing digital twins for combustion systems to optimizing jet engine materials using AI-driven design tools. The article highlights how AI technologies have become pervasive across campus, transforming research in fields ranging from drug development and materials science to robotics and energy technologies, with faculty noting that AI components are now present in the majority of thesis committees and research initiatives.
Florida Attorney General James Ulthmeier has announced that the state's Office of Statewide Prosecution has opened a criminal investigation into OpenAI and ChatGPT. The investigation was opened becaus...
The article examines how criminals are leveraging generative AI and large language models to enhance cyberattacks, including phishing, deepfakes, malware development, and vulnerability detection at scale. While AI tools lower barriers for attackers and amplify attack volumes, defensive AI systems—such as Microsoft's threat detection processing over 100 trillion daily signals—are also being deployed to counter these threats, though future sophistication remains uncertain.
OpenAI has released ChatGPT Images 2.0, an updated image generation model with improved capabilities in rendering dense text, following detailed instructions, and handling non-Latin scripts including Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hindi, and Bengali. The new model includes reasoning capabilities, supports flexible aspect ratios up to 3:1, generates images at up to 2K resolution, and is now available to all ChatGPT users across free and paid tiers.
Google has announced a new 'continued conversations' feature for Gemini for Home that allows users to have natural multi-turn conversations without repeating the 'Hey Google' wake word for each request. The microphone remains active for a few seconds after Gemini responds, with visual indicators showing when the assistant is listening, and the feature is rolling out today across all supported languages and regions.
Google DeepMind is partnering with Accenture, Bain & Company, BCG, Deloitte, and McKinsey to accelerate AI adoption across enterprises, providing early access to frontier models like Gemini and technical expertise to help organizations implement AI-driven transformation at scale across finance, manufacturing, retail, and other sectors.
Yelp has expanded its Yelp Assistant AI chatbot to work across all business categories, enabling it to handle natural language queries for finding local businesses and taking actions like making restaurant reservations or ordering takeout. The chatbot now includes integrations with third-party services like Vagaro, ZocDoc, and Calendly for booking appointments, with a dedicated Assistant tab in mobile apps and support for additional business types and desktop coming later in 2026.
A study analyzing the global industrial robotics ecosystem found that over 500,000 robots are installed annually, but the partner layer of system integrators, machine builders, and distributors remains difficult to map. The research created a database of 4,296 company profiles across 64 countries, revealing that the ecosystem is dominated by small firms (54% with fewer than 50 employees) with Europe, APAC, and the Americas accounting for 47%, 29%, and 23% of profiles respectively. The analysis highlights that system integrators are critical enablers—even advanced robots require application expertise, peripheral integration, and process-specific knowledge to deploy successfully.
OpenAI has launched Codex Transformation Partners, a program partnering with consulting firms like Accenture, PwC, and Infosys to help enterprises deploy and scale Codex—an AI model for code generation and software development—across their development workflows.
Google is expanding its Gemini AI chatbot integration in Chrome to users in Australia, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam, following earlier rollouts in North America and India. The Chrome sidebar feature allows users to access Gemini's conversational AI and image generation capabilities across open tabs, with integrations to Google's productivity apps.
Google is expanding its Gemini AI chatbot integration in Chrome to users across Asia and the Pacific region, including Australia, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and the Philippines. The rollout adds to previous expansions in North America and other regions, offering users access to Gemini's conversational AI and image generation capabilities directly within the Chrome browser via a sidebar interface.
Microsoft Research's podcast explores how AI can both contribute to and help address climate change and sustainability challenges. The episode features experts discussing the need to separate hype from data regarding datacenters' environmental impact, while examining AI's potential to optimize complex systems and accelerate climate solutions.
You can now use LinkedIn to test out some of the latest AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and other companies without having to worry about token limits or paying for an extra subscription. The...
Deezer reported that AI-generated music comprises 44% of its daily uploads, with nearly 75,000 AI tracks uploaded daily and 13.4 million detected across 2025, using its patent-pending AI detection tool launched in January 2025. Despite the surge in AI music uploads, only 1-3% of total streams involve AI-generated content, with most flagged as fraudulent and demonetized.
The RBR50 Gala will return at the 2026 Robotics Summit & Expo on May 27 in Boston, honoring top robotics innovators and showcasing award winners including Amazon's Vulcan warehouse robot, Physical Intelligence's robot learning models, and Harvard's soft exoskeleton. The event will feature over 50 technical sessions, 70+ speakers from leading robotics and AI companies, and networking opportunities across artificial intelligence, design, healthcare, and logistics applications.
Hyatt has deployed ChatGPT Enterprise across its global workforce, leveraging OpenAI's AI models to enhance employee productivity and operational efficiency. The hotel chain is using the technology to improve guest experiences and streamline internal operations through enterprise-wide AI adoption.
