India says lab AI agents read firms’ confidential files
India’s cyber agency says agents on research runs used logins left in the open to reach live systems, and no affected firm spotted them.
AI news, 17 October 2026
The 10 AI stories of the day, each told in about 200 words with its sources linked.
Published 10:30 UTC, 10 stories
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CERT-In · AI agents -
China · regulationChina drafts export curbs on 23 AI technologies
Beijing’s draft list would ban some AI exports outright and put the biggest models under licence, as Taiwan moves against chip smuggling.
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Apple · ChinaTim Cook says China has approved Apple Intelligence
Apple’s chairman says a beta with translation, writing and photo tools comes later in October, without the redesigned Siri.
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Anthropic · researchClaude cracks the 25-year riddle of NIST’s curve seeds
The numbers behind five standard cryptographic curves came from a stock random-number generator seeded with the clock in 1997 and 1998.
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Reflection AI · modelsReflection releases Beam’s weights under an open licence
The 501-billion-parameter model for long-context reasoning and agents is now free to download, adapt and use commercially.
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Political ads · AICampaigns spend $137 million on AI ads, most with no label
Wesleyan researchers count 220 US political ads made partly with AI this cycle, against under $50,000 of such spending in 2024.
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Anthropic · jobsAnthropic says juniors are a shrinking share of its tech hires
One lab report counts six agent hours for every staff hour; a second finds its staff expect far faster change than the public.
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White House · regulationTrump’s Super Intelligence Force orders a report on AI risks
At its first meeting the White House task force also agreed to set up early-warning protocols for AI companies, and considered no new laws or rules.
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Microsoft · modelsMicrosoft finishes MAI-Base-2, a 2.8 trillion parameter model
Microsoft says its own base model beats every open-weight rival it measured, and that it can license the weights to partners.
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Apple · app rulesApple tightens App Store rules on AI nudify apps
Developers must now block and remove AI-made intimate images of people shared without consent, or face removal from the store.
