Engadget News + Next

-Anthropic is reportedly trying to reach a new deal with the US Defense Department, which could prevent the government from labeling it a supply chain risk.

-The White House announced that several major players in tech and AI have agreed to steps that will keep electricity costs from rising due to data centers. Under this Ratepayer Protection Pledge, companies are agreeing to practices that are intended to protect residents from seeing higher electricity costs as more and more businesses create power-hungry data centers.

-Apple Music has now introduced "Transparency Tags" designed to show listeners if any elements were generated in whole or part by AI. The catch is that Apple is leaving it up to labels and distributors to create those tags.
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It's currently available for select users in the US on desktop.
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-Over five days in December 2025, more than 200 simulated "grid events" tested a London data center’s ability to adjust its energy use on the fly. In each simulated grid event, the data center successfully adjusted its energy use to the requested level, reducing power draw by up to 40%

-Meta has signed an AI licensing deal with News Corp that will allow the Meta AI maker to use content from The Wall Street Journal and other brands in its chatbot responses and for training of its AI models.

-TikTok said that implementing the technology would prevent its safety teams or law enforcement from being able to read messages if needed. The ByteDance-owned app framed it as a deliberate decision, made in an effort to keep users, especially younger ones, safe on its platform.
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The Digital Home Key can unlock smart doors through your phone.
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-OpenAI’s Sam Altman said the company will amend its deal with the Defense Department to explicitly prohibit the use of its AI system on mass surveillance against Americans.

-On Monday, the US Supreme Court declined to hear a case about whether an artwork generated with the help of AI can be copyrighted. The refusal means that a lower court's decision to reject the copyright request will stand.

-Starlink is getting ready to launch its second generation of satellites, and it's expected to match the speeds of a traditional terrestrial network. During a keynote at Mobile World Congress,
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