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On Thursday evening, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for a single, nationwide regulatory framework governing artificial intelligence at the expense of the ability of different states to regulate the nascent technology. "To win, United States AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation," the order states. "But excessive State regulation thwarts this imperative."
As was expected after a draft of the order leaked earlier this week, the centerpiece of the document is an "AI Litigation Task Force whose sole responsibility shall be to challenge state AI laws inconsistent" with the president's policy vision. US Attorney General Pam Bondi has 30 days to create the task force, which shall meet regularly with the White House's AI and crypto czar, David Sacks.
As laid out in the president's AI Action Plan from July, the administration will also limit states with "onerous" AI laws from accessing federal funding. Specifically, the secretary of commerce will target funding available under the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program, a $42.5 billion effort to expand high-speed internet access in rural communities.
Advocacy groups were quick to criticize the president's order. "This executive order is designed to chill state-level action to provide oversight and accountability for the developers and deployers of AI systems, while doing nothing to address th
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 Apple is working on a smart home hub that will rely heavily on the more capable version of Siri that's coming next year. We've heard quite a bit about the hub over the last two years, but a recent iOS 26 code leak provides additional insight into what we can expect and confirms rumored features.
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OpenAI's "code red" response to Google's Gemini 3 Pro has arrived. On the same day the company announced a Sora licensing pact with Disney, it took the wraps off GPT-5.2. OpenAI is touting the new model as its best yet for real-world, professional use. "It's better at creating spreadsheets, building presentations, writing code, perceiving images, understanding long contexts, using tools, and handling complex, multi-step projects," said OpenAI.
In a series of 10 benchmarks highlighted by OpenAI, GPT-5.2 Thinking, the most advanced version of the model, outperformed its GPT-5.1 counterpart, sometimes by a significant margin. For example, in AIME 2025, a test that involves 30 challenging mathematics problems, the model earned a perfect 100 percent score, beating out GPT-5.1's already state-of-the-art score of 94 perfect. It also achieved that feat without turning to tools like web search. Meanwhile, in ARC-AGI-1, a benchmark that tests an AI system's ability to reason abstractly like a human being would, the new system beat GPT-5.1's score by more than 10 percentage points.
OpenAI says GPT-5.2 Thinking is better at answering questions factually, with the company finding it produces errors 30 percent less frequently. "For professionals,
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Apple has clawed back a bit of ground in its legal fight with Epic Games that could have wide-reaching consequences for all app developers. Today, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals mostly upheld a previous contempt ruling regarding fees Apple levied on third-party payment systems. However, the judges did decide to reverse the order that Apple cannot charge any commissions on those external payments, which was one of the company's main arguments in this ongoing debate.
To catch you up, US Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers initially ruled in 2021 that Apple must allow third-party payment systems, although her decision fell shy of calling the tech company's control over the App Store a monopoly. In May 2025, she ruled that Apple's 27 percent commission on those outside payments violated her previous order. Apple responded with an emergency motion to appeal that finding.
Epic Games had taken its smash hit Fortnite off both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store while it was in court arguing these cases. Fortnite returned to iOS in the spring and just arrived back
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Epic Games has spent a lot of time in court over the past several years, but it seems the company's litigious era may be winding down. The company announced today that its game Fortnite is back on the Google Play mobile store in the US. Fortnite's return to Android devices means Epic's popular hit is now available on just about every gaming platform following five years of arguing antitrust lawsuits.
Epic took both Google and Apple to court over their policies for mobile payment systems back in 2020. The gaming company has been successful on the whole in its challenges, most recently reaching a settlement with Google in November. The companies agreed to a modified version of the order US District Judge James Donato originally placed on Google regarding fees charged to developers and handling of in-app payments and third-party billing systems.
The same saga unfolded earlier this year with Apple. US Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers also sided with Epic Games in May, ordering Apple to stop collecting commissions on purchases made outside its own App Store. After a bit of back and forth, Fortnite finally
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If the system holds out long-term, it could significantly boost AI development in China.
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 Apple is actively testing under-screen Face ID for next year's iPhone 18 Pro models using a special "spliced micro-transparent glass" window built into the display, claims a Chinese leaker.
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