Recently, Deichmann published a customer story describing how Lakebase enabled seamless...

Wall Street Journal: Sources: OpenAI is preparing to file confidentially for an IPO as early as Friday; the company plans to be ready to go public as early as September  —  The artificial-intelligence giant is working with bankers at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley  —  ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has been working …

Reuters: Ubisoft reports a record operating loss of $1.40B for the year to March and says sales in 2026-27 would fall by about 8% to 9%; UBI falls 6%+  —  French videogame publisher Ubisoft warned on Wednesday of another year of losses and lower sales after a record annual operating loss, deepening pressure on the company as it restructures.

Tom Warren / The Verge: Internal memo: Xbox hires game industry analyst Matthew Ball as chief strategy officer, and names Scott Van Vliet, who led Azure AI infrastructure, as Xbox CTO  —  The second major Xbox leadership changes this month. … Microsoft has recruited game industry analyst Matthew Ball as Xbox chief strategy officer.

An unauthenticated attacker can exploit the command injection vulnerability to gain remote access to robotic systems, causing significant disruption to the environment.

Katie Paul / Reuters: Internal memo: Mark Zuckerberg told employees that he does not expect more company-wide layoffs this year  —  Meta (META.O) CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees in an internal memo on Wednesday that he does not expect more company-wide layoffs this year, according to a copy of the memo seen by Reuters.

78% of enterprises have an AI agent pilot running. Only 14% have successfully scaled one. The gap isn't a model problem. It's an engineering one (and it's hiding in plain sight....)

Agent harnesses like Claude Code, Codex, and LangChain Deep Agents are excellent orchestrators. They manage sessions, chain tools, execute code, and respond to... Agent harnesses like Claude Code, Codex, and LangChain Deep Agents are excellent orchestrators. They manage sessions, chain tools, execute code, and respond to developer intent. But when these harnesses need to do deep research, such as multi-document synthesis, decision briefs backed by enterprise data, and long-horizon analysis with source attribution, the complexity of deep research shifts back… Source

Samantha Kelly / Bloomberg: An interview with Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff about plans for Tinder, including a redesign, AI features, live events, and group dating to win over Gen Z  —  The dating app's turnaround bets on live events, group dating and an AI-heavy redesign.  —  At a pickleball venue near Santa Monica State beach …

<p>It's hard to find much to write about Google I/O this year because I have a policy of not writing about anything that I can't try out myself, and a lot of the big announcements are "coming soon".</p> <p>I actually prefer to write about things that are in general availability, because I've had instances in the past where the previews didn't match what was released to the general public later on.</p> <p>Aside from <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/19/gemini-35-flash/">Gemini 3.5 Flash</a> the most interesting announcement looks to be Google's upcoming OpenClaw competitor <a href="https://gemini.google/overview/agent/spark/">Gemini Spark</a>, described as "your personal AI agent" which can "connect natively with your favorite Google apps like Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, YouTube, and Google Maps". The FAQ for that also includes this confusing detail:</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>What Gemini model does Gemini Spark run on?</strong></p> <p>Gemini Spark runs on Gemini 3.5 Flash and Antigravity.</p> </blockquote> <p>The <a href="https://antigravity.google/">antigravity.google</a> website currently lists Antigravity as a desktop app, a CLI agent tool (written in Go), the <a href="https://github.com/google-antigravity/antigravity-sdk-python">Antigravity SDK</a> (an open source Python wrapper around a bundled closed source Go binary), and the original Antigravity IDE (a VS Code fork).</p> <p>I guess Gemini Spark, the user-facing hosted agent product, might be running on that Go binary, but I'm not sure why that's worth mentioning in the FAQ!</p> <p>Naturally I went looking for notes on how Gemini Spark intends to handle the risk of prompt injection. The best information I could find on that was in the <a href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/innovations-from-google-io-26-on-google-cloud">Everything Google Cloud customers need to know coming out of Google I/O</a> post aimed at enterprise customers, which includes:</p> <blockquote> <p>Spark operates in a fully managed, secure runtime on Google Cloud, meaning you get enterprise-grade security without ever having to manage the underlying infrastructure. Every task executes in a fresh, strictly isolated, ephemeral VM to help ensure data never overlaps between sessions. To protect your enterprise, all traffic routes through our secure Agent Gateway that enforces Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies, while user credentials remain fully encrypted and are never exposed directly to the agent.</p> </blockquote> <p>Given how many people are going to be piping <em>very</em> sensitive data through Gemini Spark in the near future I hope they've made this bullet-proof, or this could be a top candidate for the agent security <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/8/llm-predictions-for-2026/#1-year-a-challenger-disaster-for-coding-agent-security">challenger disaster</a> that we still haven't seen.</p> <p>Also of note: in <a href="https://developers.googleblog.com/an-important-update-transitioning-gemini-cli-to-antigravity-cli/">Transitioning Gemini CLI to Antigravity CLI</a> Google announce that the <a href="https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli">open source Gemini CLI</a> tool (Apache 2.0 licensed TypeScript) will stop working with their AI subscription plans on June 18th, replaced by the new closed source <a href="https://github.com/google-antigravity/antigravity-cli">Antigravity CLI</a>.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/gemini">gemini</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/google">google</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai">generative-ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai">ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/google-io">google-io</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms">llms</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/prompt-injection">prompt-injection</a></p>

Telus Digital, the global technology and digital services arm responsible for the telecommunication giant’s call centres, has recently deployed an “accent masking” artificial intelligence tool to change the way its offshore agents sound. The technology analyzes agents’ pronunciation in real time and reshapes their accents to more closely resemble generalized North American or British English speech patterns. Linguistic profiling or accentism — stereotyping, treating someone unfairly or viewing them negatively based on their accent — can permeate aspects of our society in ways that have real-life consequences. They can affect hiring decisions, outcomes of legal proceedings, assumptions about the crimes one might commit, assessments in education and access to housing. Telus appears to be taking advantage of incredible technological advances in signal processing and resynthesis to reproduce an ugly aspect of human behaviour. As language scholars we believe it is demeaning, manipulative and wrong. And, if we swap in nearly any other social characteristic, it would be discrimination. In order to see racism, we need to see race. So imagine a filter on glasses that changes people’s skin tone, for example, homogenizing our ethnic and racial identities. There are several strands of evidence that indicate the accentism Telus is practising is not in the best interest of the call centre agents or Canadian consumers. Some accents are harder Our discriminatory tastes in speech start early. Children prefer playmates who share their accent, even in linguistically rich cities like Toronto. The credibility and trustworthiness adults attribute to individuals and voice-AI assistants vary with the accent. Telus says it’s implementing an accent manipulation AI tool because some Telus customers have expressed difficulty in understanding “heavy foreign accents.” This is a leap in logic. Researchers have known for decades that the perception of accent strength is not well-correlated with how well that voice can be understood. In the case of call centres in India or the Philippines, call agents may be first-language speakers of English, albeit a different variety than Canadian English. As of yet, there is no public indication that this tech is being used on agents who speak English with a French Québécois accent or a Newfoundland one or a Cape Breton lilt. It’s also worth noting that everyone has an accent; unaccented speech is a myth. An accent is simply a way of speaking that is distinctive to a specific group. If this is genuinely about comprehension, then why would it apply to some accents and not others? In any instance where we experience difficulty in understanding someone, it is always beneficial to pause and reflect on whether it is a “them problem” or a “me problem.” If there are others who find an accent comprehensible, it is most likely a “me problem.” The cost of accent manipulation Any human interaction is a two-way street, and the success of that communication comes, in large part, from an implicit collaborative building of understanding — an establishment of a common ground. When Canadian customers are being duped about who they are talking to — even when this duping is, according to Telus, “to bridge communication gaps and deliver crystal-clear voice experiences” — a cornerstone of that communicative collaboration is removed, leaving an increased opportunity for misunderstanding. Call centres often already have policies about “regulating identity” of their agents, including strict policies around accents, requirements that agents change their names to something more western-sounding or requirements that agents go through accent modification training. These requirements can lead to workplace anxiety and stress, affecting the quality of the interaction between the consumer and agent. Interestingly, call centre agents have already observed that if customers identify the accent as being fake or not genuine — when words and structures being used don’t match the accent — customer relations worsen, and customers become abusive. What this means is that this “accent softening,” when identified as fake or if leading a customer to assume they are not speaking to a real person, may lead to more frustration by customers and worse treatment of call centre agents. Exposure to diverse accents Some might argue that it’s natural to have an easier time understanding someone whose accent is closely aligned with your own. This is true, but this benefit does not come on its own; it is a function of having more experience with an accent. Think about it this way. There are probably people in your life that you find very easy to understand, like a spouse, family member or close friend. Indeed, that immense familiarity you have with a spouse’s voice makes it both easier to attend to and ignore your loved one. It doesn’t matter if their accent is the same as yours; it’s the experience that matters. Experience renders both voices and accents more comprehensible. Diverse listening experiences can also make us better listeners, facilitating understanding of a wider range of accents. This is to say, as a listener, you stand to gain from exposing yourself to new voices and accents. AI technology that can modify specific features of an acoustic speech signal while preserving the speaker’s individual identity is cool science. AI can be an incredibly useful tool, but also comes with a human responsibility. Responsible and human-centric approaches to AI should seek to limit harm. In this case, the “accent softening” of Telus call centre agents is discriminatory to the agents. It’s also a morally dubious misrepresentation of identity to Canadian consumers that disrupts the natural and productive friction that comes with human interaction. Molly Babel receives research funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Amanda Cardoso receives research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Trump Mobile is leaking customers’ email and home addresses, but has not responded to people alerting the company of the data exposure, according to two YouTubers who said they verified that their leaked data is authentic.

Brendan Bordelon / Politico: OpenAI's Chris Lehane says he is pursuing “reverse federalism”, lobbying blue states to pass AI safety laws and create a de facto US standard, as DC dithers  —  OpenAI's effort comes after nearly a year in which the tech lobby has pressured Congress to block states from passing AI laws …

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Stability AI releases a new family of audio models called Stable Audio 3.0 that is trained on licensed data; the top model can generate six-minute songs  —  Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion, is releasing a new family of audio models, called Stability Audio 3.0.

In a memo to employees, CEO Sasan Goodarzi said the layoffs are meant to reduce complexity, simplify the company's corporate structure, and deliver better AI products.

AI search has quietly become one of the most attractive targets in consumer AI.

Stability Audio 3.0 small model can run on-device and generate two-minute long tracks

<p><strong>Release:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/datasette/datasette-agent-charts/releases/tag/0.1a1">datasette-agent-charts 0.1a1</a></p> <blockquote> <ul> <li>More color! Bar and waffle charts without a color column are shaded by magnitude with a sequential color scheme; color columns holding text values use the <code>observable10</code> categorical scheme. #2</li> <li>Now checks <code>execute-sql</code> permission before running the query to find the column names.</li> <li>Charts now display interactive tooltips.</li> <li>Fixed a bug where <code>waffleY</code> charts were not described to the agent.</li> </ul> </blockquote> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/datasette">datasette</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/datasette-agent">datasette-agent</a></p>

Sheriff loses fight with man he jailed for 37 days for posting a Trump meme on Facebook.

Julie Bort / TechCrunch: NanoClaw creator NanoCo raised a $12M seed led by Valley Capital and says it is booking enterprise customers; co-founders say they rejected a $20M buyout offer  —  NanoCo, the company behind security-focused OpenClaw alternative NanoClaw, has raised an oversubscribed $12 million seed round following …