Microsoft is pushing agentic AI deeper into the PC with Fara-7B, a compact computer-use agent (CUA) model that can automate complex tasks entirely on a local device. The experimental release, aimed at gathering feedback, provides enterprises with a preview of how AI agents might run sensitive workflows without sending data to the cloud, while still

Apple’s decision to take part in (and co-sponsor) this year’s NeurIPS conference shows how the company is keeping close tabs on future trends in the field, highlights its willingness to cooperate, and shows Apple reaching out to recruit new expertise.  The company’s machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) teams are deeply involved in the important event. Since

There are few things tech companies like more than rolling out marketing-tested slogans that sound like cutting-edge breakthroughs, but turn out to be nothing more than stale, old wine in new bottles. It’s a lot easier to roll out a slogan than do the hard work of creating something new. So, it’s difficult not to

Alibaba’s recently launched Qwen AI app has demonstrated remarkable market traction, accumulating 10 million downloads in the seven days since its public beta release – a velocity that exceeds the early adoption rates of ChatGPT, Sora, and DeepSeek. The application’s rapid uptake reflects a shift in how technology giants are approaching AI commercialisation. While international

We’ve all seen the headlines: a third of US college students say they use ChatGPT for writing tasks at least once a month. The share of US teens turning to the same tool for schoolwork doubled between 2023 and 2024. Generative AI tools overall are a fixture of life for seven out of ten teens.

AI spending in Asia Pacific continues to rise, yet many companies still struggle to get value from their AI projects. Much of this comes down to the infrastructure that supports AI, as most systems are not built to run inference at the speed or scale real applications need. Industry studies show many projects miss their

A €1.2 trillion AI prize sits on the table for Europe’s economy, and the region has the talent and raw ingredients to claim it. While the global narrative often focuses on competition with the US and China, the view from the ground in Europe is a region of untapped potential, world-class talent, and deep infrastructure

In order to meet the massive demand for AI, Google wants to double the overall size of its servers every six months, a growth rate that would create a 1000x greater capacity in the next four or five years. The statement came from the head of Google’s AI infrastructure, Amin Vahdat, during an all-hands meeting

Zyphra, AMD, and IBM spent a year testing whether AMD’s GPUs and platform can support large-scale AI model training, and the result is ZAYA1. In partnership, the three companies trained ZAYA1 – described as the first major Mixture-of-Experts foundation model built entirely on AMD GPUs and networking – which they see as proof that the

Pushing the frontiers of computer-use agents with an open-weight, ultra-compact model, optimized for real-world web tasks In 2024, Microsoft introduced small language models (SLMs) to customers, starting with the release of Phi (opens in new tab) models on Microsoft Foundry (opens in new tab), as well as deploying Phi Silica (opens in new tab) on Copilot+ PCs powered by Windows 11. Today, we are pleased to announce Fara-7B,