Friday, 20 March 2026
Welcome to today's roundup of the most interesting developments in AI and technology.
Top Stories
WordPress.com now lets AI agents write and publish posts, and more
New AI agents on WordPress.com could lower barriers to publishing while increasing machine-generated content across the web.
Read moreThe best AI investment might be in energy tech
Power has become one of the biggest bottlenecks in rolling out new AI data centers. That's creating an opening for investors.
Read moreThese AI notetaking devices can help you record and transcribe your meetings
These physical notetakers transcribe audio and give users summaries and action items of meetings using AI. Some even offer live translation.
Read moreJeff Bezos reportedly wants $100 billion to buy and transform old manufacturing firms with AI
The Amazon magnate has a new project centered around acquiring industrial firms and revamping them with AI technology.
Read moreOnline bot traffic will exceed human traffic by 2027, Cloudflare CEO says
AI bots may outnumber humans online by 2027, says Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, as generative AI agents dramatically increase web traffic and infrastructure demands.
Read moreMeta rolls out new AI content enforcement systems while reducing reliance on third-party vendors
Meta believes these AI systems can detect more violations with greater accuracy, better prevent scams, respond more quickly to real-world events, and reduce over-enforcement.
Read moreTechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200 nominations are still open
Nominate your startup, or one you know, for TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200 before May 27. Chance to win $100,000 equity-free funding and VC access.
Read moreAmazon brings Alexa+ to the UK
The company is currently letting users in the U.K. try out Alexa+ for free via an early access program.
Read moreIndustry
Meta is having trouble with rogue AI agents
A rogue AI agent inadvertently exposed Meta company and user data to engineers who didn't have permission to see it.
Read moreSam Altman's thank-you to coders draws the memes
Altman expresses gratitude for people who knew how to write their code from scratch. The internet replies with salty jokes.
Read moreNothing CEO Carl Pei says smartphone apps will disappear as AI agents take their place
Nothing CEO Carl Pei says AI agents will eventually replace apps, shifting smartphones toward systems that understand intent and act on a user's behalf.
Read moreNvidia is quietly building a multibillion-dollar behemoth to rival its chips business
Nvidia's networking business raked in $11 billion last quarter despite getting significantly less fanfare than chips and gaming.
Read morePatreon CEO calls AI companies' fair use argument 'bogus,' says creators should be paid
Patreon CEO Jack Conte says AI companies should pay creators for training data, arguing their fair use defense falls apart when they license content from major publishers.
Read moreThis startup wants to make enterprise software look more like a prompt
The company has raised $12 million in seed funding to build an AI operating system for enterprise.
Read moreFor effective AI, insurance needs to get its data house in order
A report from Autorek, a provider of AI solutions to the insurance industry has produced a report that describes operational drag in companies’ internal processes that not only affect overall efficiency but cause an impediment to the effective implementation of AI in insurance concerns. Insura
Read moreTrustpilot partners with AI companies as traditional search declines
Trustpilot is reported to be pursuing partnerships with large eCommerce companies as AI-driven shopping gains traction. In an interview with Bloomberg News [paywall], chief executive Adrian Blair said that AI agents acting on behalf of consumers require lots of information about the businesses they&
Read moreGoldman Sachs sees AI investment shift to data centres
Artificial intelligence investment is entering a more selective phase as companies and investors look beyond early excitement and focus on the data centre infrastructure required to run AI systems. Recent analysis from Goldman Sachs suggests the market is moving toward what the firm describes as a &
Read moreResearch & Products
DoorDash launches a new 'Tasks' app that pays couriers to submit videos to train AI
Delivery couriers will be able to earn money by completing activities like filming everyday tasks or recording themselves speaking in another language.
Read moreMultiverse Computing pushes its compressed AI models into the mainstream
After compressing models from major AI labs, including OpenAI, Meta, DeepSeek, and Mistral AI, Multiverse Computing has launched both an app that showcases the capabilities of its compressed models and an API that makes them more widely available.
Read moreNVIDIA wants enterprise AI agents safer to deploy
The NVIDIA Agent Toolkit is Jensen Huang’s answer to the question enterprises keep asking: how do we put AI agents to work without losing control of our data and our liability? Announced at GTC 2026 in San Jose on March 16, the NVIDIA Agent Toolkit is an open-source software stack designed to
Read moreRebel Audio is a new AI podcasting tool aimed at first-time creators
Rebel Audio is a new all-in-one podcasting tool that allows creators to record podcasts, edit, clip content for social, and publish episodes, all without ever leaving the platform.
Read moreThe Gemini-powered features in Google Workspace that are worth using
From summarizing emails, drafting content, organizing data, and tracking meetings, here are all the best Gemini features in Google Workspace.
Read moreThe leaderboard “you can't game,” funded by the companies it ranks
Artificial intelligence models are multiplying fast, and competition is stiff. With so many players crowding the space, which one will be the best — and who decides that? Arena, formerly LM Arena, has emerged as the de facto public leaderboard for frontier LLMs, influencing funding, launches, and PR
Read moreMastercard keeps tabs on fraud with new foundation model
Mastercard has developed a large tabular model (an LTM as opposed to an LLM) that’s trained on transaction data rather than text or images to help it address security and authenticity issues in digital payments. The company has trained a foundation model on billions of card transactions, with
Read morePolicy & Ethics
Trump's AI framework targets state laws, shifts child safety burden to parents
Trump’s AI framework pushes federal preemption of state laws, emphasizes innovation, and shifts responsibility for child safety toward parents while laying out lighter-touch rules for tech companies.
Read moreVisa prepares payment systems for AI agent-initiated transactions
Payments rely on a simple model: a person decides to buy something, and a bank or card network processes the transaction. That model is starting to change as Visa tests how AI agents can initiate payments. New work in the banking sector suggests that, in some cases, software agents may soon take on
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