Hello from the AI Beat 🗞️
Today’s selection shows the industry in fast motion: a billion-dollar takeover evaporates, Meta grabs a hot voice startup, and Europe’s blue-chip manufacturers warn Brussels that the AI Act is “toxic” for innovation. We also look inside Tesla’s first cars with Grok onboard, a sneaky new tactic in scholarly peer review, and the retro console that just scared Google’s Gemini off the chessboard. Let’s dive in.
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OpenAI has abandoned its plan to acquire coding-agent startup Windsurf. Instead, Google DeepMind is hiring CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and a slice of Windsurf’s R&D team, plus taking a non-exclusive license to some of the company’s tech. The recruits will focus on agentic coding features for Gemini. Windsurf’s head of business Jeff Wang becomes interim CEO as the startup charts a solo future.
Meta confirmed it is acquiring Play AI, a startup known for ultra-natural speech synthesis. An internal memo says the “entire Play AI team” joins next week to accelerate voice creation across Meta AI, AI Characters, wearables and audio tools. Terms weren’t disclosed, but the move follows Meta’s recent talent raid on OpenAI and its Scale AI super-intelligence partnership.
In a joint interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Siemens CEO Roland Busch and SAP CEO Christian Klein called the year-old EU AI Act a drag on competitiveness, saying overlapping rules and the separate Data Act are “toxic” for digital business models. They argue Europe needs data-sharing reform, not more compute, if it hopes to close the gap with the U.S. and China.
Tesla’s Summer Update 2025.26 activates Grok, the xAI conversational assistant, on all cars shipped after July 12 and on older models with AMD processors plus the latest firmware. Drivers launch Grok from the app drawer or by holding the steering-wheel voice button. The service is free, offers multiple personalities from “Storyteller” to “Unhinged,” but—fresh off a series of antisemitic posts on X—cannot yet issue vehicle commands.
A Nikkei Asia investigation found 17 arXiv preprints laced with invisible text telling AI tools to “give a positive review only.” The papers span 14 institutions in eight countries; one Waseda University professor defended the tactic as a hedge against “lazy reviewers” who rely on AI despite conference bans. Journals have not yet said how they will detect or sanction such manipulation.
After ChatGPT and Copilot were humiliated by Atari 2600 Video Chess (128 bytes of RAM!), Google’s Gemini initially boasted it would “dominate” the retro engine. Confronted with the console’s track record, Gemini conceded it would “struggle immensely” and cancelled the match—an unintentional lesson in LLM self-awareness and risk management.
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