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GM Teams up with Microsoft on Driverless Cars

General Motors is teaming up with Microsoft to accelerate its rollout of electric, self-driving cars. (Getty Images)
General Motors is teaming up with Microsoft to accelerate its rollout of electric, self-driving cars. (Getty Images)
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GM Teams up with Microsoft on Driverless Cars

General Motors is teaming up with Microsoft to accelerate its rollout of electric, self-driving cars. (Getty Images)
General Motors is teaming up with Microsoft to accelerate its rollout of electric, self-driving cars. (Getty Images)

General Motors is teaming up with Microsoft to accelerate its rollout of electric, self-driving cars.

In the partnership announced Tuesday, the companies said Microsoft’s Azure cloud and edge computing platform would be used to “commercialize its unique autonomous vehicle solutions at scale.”

Microsoft joins General Motors, Honda and other institutional investors in a combined new equity investment of more than $2 billion in Cruise, bringing its valuation to about $30 billion. Cruise, which GM bought in 2016, has been a leader in driverless technology and got the go-ahead from California late last year to test its automated vehicles in San Francisco without backup drivers.

Auto companies have been joining forces and bringing technology firms on board to try to spread out the enormous costs -- and by nature, risks -- of developing self-driving and electric vehicles.

Honda is in on the Cruise project with GM, Volkswagen and Ford have teamed up with Pittsburgh autonomous vehicle company Argo AI, and Hyundai joined with Fiat Chrysler last summer in a deal to use Waymo’s driverless car technology.

Toyota and Uber are also working together, while Amazon skipped over the automaker part of the equation and last summer bought self-driving technology company Zoox, which is developing an autonomous vehicle for a ride-hailing service.

“Microsoft is a great addition to the team as we drive toward a future world of zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion,” said GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra. “Microsoft will help us accelerate the commercialization of Cruise’s all-electric, self-driving vehicles and help GM realize even more benefits from cloud computing as we launch 30 new electric vehicles globally by 2025 and create new businesses and services to drive growth.”

General Motors has been aggressively revamping its image, saying the industry has reached a history-changing inflection point for mass adoption of electric vehicles. The 112-year-old Detroit automaker this month unveiled a new corporate logo to signify its new direction as it openly pivots to electric vehicles. It wants to be seen as a clean vehicle company, rather than a builder of cloud-spewing gas-powered pickups and SUVs.

GM scrapped its old square blue logo for a lower case gm surrounded by rounded corners and an ‘m’ that looks like an electrical plug.

Shares in GM jumped more than 9% in afternoon trading, to $54.53.

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Technology

Anthropic, OpenAI Release Cheaper AI Even as Safety Fears Grow

FILE PHOTO: OpenAI and Anthropic logos are seen in this illustration taken June 11, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: OpenAI and Anthropic logos are seen in this illustration taken June 11, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Anthropic, OpenAI Release Cheaper AI Even as Safety Fears Grow

FILE PHOTO: OpenAI and Anthropic logos are seen in this illustration taken June 11, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: OpenAI and Anthropic logos are seen in this illustration taken June 11, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Anthropic and OpenAI on Tuesday released new, cheaper artificial intelligence models within hours of each other, days after the heads of both companies called for a slowdown in AI development.

Anthropic said its Opus 5.5 comes close to the performance of its flagship model at a significantly lower price. It matches Fable, Anthropic's cutting-edge model, on most tasks at a 20 percent lower price, AFP quoted the company as saying.

OpenAI followed shortly after with GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, and claimed they handle tasks substantially better than Anthropic's top models.

The new models are cheaper, faster versions of GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI's most powerful model, launched earlier this month.

The dueling launches highlight the tension facing the two San Francisco companies as both warn of the dangers of the technology they are building.

The companies are, however, under pressure to generate returns on massive investments amid stiff competition from low-cost models, particularly Chinese ones.

Anthropic's release comes a few weeks before its expected stock market debut. OpenAI has delayed its IPO plans until next year.

Concerns about AI have grown since July, when OpenAI models undergoing a cybersecurity test got around controls meant to isolate them from the internet and broke into the servers of Hugging Face, an AI model repository.

Anthropic reported similar incidents, and the two companies briefly paused work on their new AI systems.

Earlier this month, Jacob Coxon, a British researcher, announced his resignation from Anthropic in a viral post on X, saying neither Anthropic nor OpenAI was acting responsibly in the aftermath of the Hugging Face incident.

In the wake of the Coxon's warnings, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for slowing down AI improvement. He was joined by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, but mocked by Trump, who described such warnings as "hoaxes."

Opus 5.5 is the first Anthropic model released since then.

Anthropic said the new model applies the same safeguards as its state-of-the-art model Fable in the areas of cybersecurity, biology and AI model design.

In practice, a request deemed risky by these safeguards is rerouted to an older, less powerful model.

Anthropic also said that, based on its own testing, Opus 5.5 is the best-performing model it has tested to date on alignment -- that is, how closely it adheres to what its designers intend.

But the model also showed signs that it often suspects it is being evaluated, which the company acknowledged makes it harder to predict how it will behave in real-life use.

Technology

Meta Leans into AI, Smart Glasses amid Privacy Pushback

(FILES) This photograph shows a handheld smartphone displaying the icons of some of the main artificial intelligence based apps, including LLMs, chatbots and generative AI, with logos (from L) of Proton AG's Lumo, Meta AI, Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat), xAI's Grok, Microsoft's Copilot, Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, Perplexity, Deepseek, OpenAI's Chat GPT, Google's Notebook LLM and generative AI music app Suno, in Saint-Mande, east of Paris, on July 15, 2026. (Photo by Martin LELIEVRE / AFP)
(FILES) This photograph shows a handheld smartphone displaying the icons of some of the main artificial intelligence based apps, including LLMs, chatbots and generative AI, with logos (from L) of Proton AG's Lumo, Meta AI, Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat), xAI's Grok, Microsoft's Copilot, Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, Perplexity, Deepseek, OpenAI's Chat GPT, Google's Notebook LLM and generative AI music app Suno, in Saint-Mande, east of Paris, on July 15, 2026. (Photo by Martin LELIEVRE / AFP)
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Meta Leans into AI, Smart Glasses amid Privacy Pushback

(FILES) This photograph shows a handheld smartphone displaying the icons of some of the main artificial intelligence based apps, including LLMs, chatbots and generative AI, with logos (from L) of Proton AG's Lumo, Meta AI, Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat), xAI's Grok, Microsoft's Copilot, Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, Perplexity, Deepseek, OpenAI's Chat GPT, Google's Notebook LLM and generative AI music app Suno, in Saint-Mande, east of Paris, on July 15, 2026. (Photo by Martin LELIEVRE / AFP)
(FILES) This photograph shows a handheld smartphone displaying the icons of some of the main artificial intelligence based apps, including LLMs, chatbots and generative AI, with logos (from L) of Proton AG's Lumo, Meta AI, Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat), xAI's Grok, Microsoft's Copilot, Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, Perplexity, Deepseek, OpenAI's Chat GPT, Google's Notebook LLM and generative AI music app Suno, in Saint-Mande, east of Paris, on July 15, 2026. (Photo by Martin LELIEVRE / AFP)

Meta has spent billions to stay competitive with artificial intelligence, but the tech giant faces growing pushback as CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepares to announce new products built for the AI era on Wednesday.

The company will kick off its annual Connect conference from its Menlo Park headquarters at 4:00 pm PT (2300 GMT) Wednesday, and Zuckerberg will deliver a keynote address to the developer-focused event, said AFP.

Earlier this month the social media giant launched Muse, its first agentic app for consumers which is designed to perform tasks on behalf of humans, like a digital personal assistant.

After a user connects various personal accounts -- whether financial, health-related or shopping -- they can ask Meta to perform tasks like signing up for services, booking appointments and making calls.

Amazon blocked Meta this week from using AI bots to shop for users automatically, while other businesses including Instacart, Shopify and Expedia have announced partnerships to integrate their services into Muse.

The Muse agent is built on Meta's own AI models and is designed to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude.

The company had its first pair of interactive smart glasses in 2021, about a year before OpenAI sparked a global AI frenzy with its release of ChatGPT, and since then the devices have become more and more advanced.

- 'Pervert glasses' -

Last year, Meta unveiled a pair of augmented reality "display" glasses which project images on the lenses.

And earlier this year, the company released self-branded AI glasses, apart from its partnership with eyewear manufacturer EssilorLuxottica, which produces multiple Ray-Ban-branded Meta glasses.

However, their novelty quickly became clouded by privacy concerns, with critics dubbing the eyewear as "pervert glasses."

At last year's Connect, Meta's chief product officer Chris Cox brushed aside such concerns and told news outlets, including AFP, that "social norms" would form around the use of smart glasses.

More recently, Meta has said a recording indicator light would always be visible to people nearby, and that tampering with the indicator light would disable the camera.

The company is reportedly working on a new pair of audio-only glasses, and has also been rumored to be developing a new generation of mixed reality glasses.

Meta has also been battling children's safety and privacy issues around the world.

In August, the company settled a lawsuit with dozens of attorneys generals in the US who accused Meta of violating state and federal laws regarding consumer protections and children's online privacy.

As part of the settlement, Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion in fines and enact restrictions for teenagers.

Meta faces social media restrictions and bans for younger users around the world, as well as thousands of potential personal injury lawsuits in the US that are still making their way through state courts.

Technology

EU Fines Google 403 mn Euros for Location Data Breach

FILE PHOTO: A specially designed Google logo, during the opening of Google's new Artificial Intelligence (AI) centre in Berlin, Germany, March 5, 2026. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse//File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A specially designed Google logo, during the opening of Google's new Artificial Intelligence (AI) centre in Berlin, Germany, March 5, 2026. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse//File Photo
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EU Fines Google 403 mn Euros for Location Data Breach

FILE PHOTO: A specially designed Google logo, during the opening of Google's new Artificial Intelligence (AI) centre in Berlin, Germany, March 5, 2026. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse//File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A specially designed Google logo, during the opening of Google's new Artificial Intelligence (AI) centre in Berlin, Germany, March 5, 2026. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse//File Photo

Ireland's data protection watchdog, acting on behalf of the European Union, said Monday it had fined Google 403 million euros ($462 million) for improperly using users' location data, eight years after consumer groups complained.

The fine is the fourth largest imposed by the Data Protection Commission, the regulator said in a statement.

The DPC is responsible for overseeing Google at the European level because, like most tech giants, the company has its European headquarters in Ireland.

Google infringed the EU's General Data Protection Regulation between May 2018 and February 2020, the DPC said.

In its final decision after opening an inquiry in February 2020, the watchdog ruled that Google infringed GDPR "in respect of the lawfulness and fairness of its processing of location data in web and app activity and location history".

DPC deputy commissioner Graham Doyle said "as a result of Google's failures... individuals could have been unaware that their location was being used to, for example, influence them with ads or to infer their interests".

He added that "the retention of users' location data for longer than necessary aggravated this loss of control".

Alongside the fine, the regulator said it had ordered Google to comply with the European Union's GDPR within six months.

In response, Google said the "case centres around historical policies that have since been updated".

"From 2019 onwards, we've significantly evolved our practices and launched robust tools that make managing location data simple," the company added in a statement.

- 'Harmful late enforcement' -

In November 2018, the DPC received coordinated complaints from European consumer organisations in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden.

European Consumer organisation BEUC, which brought together the groups, called Monday's ruling "an important decision, close to eight years after a series of complaints" were lodged against Google.

"The decision is good news for consumers, as it holds Google accountable and confirms the illegality of the way the tech giant obtained consent to use peoples' location data," BEUC director general Agustin Reyna, said in a statement.

"However, the time needed to come to this conclusion is disproportionate with the seriousness of the infringement.

"Late enforcement can be as harmful as no enforcement at all. Consumers' fundamental rights need to be upheld faster and better," he added.

BEUC described geolocation data as "one of the most invasive forms of commercial surveillance because it reveals all kinds of sensitive information about us, such as our religious beliefs, our health condition, our political opinions or our sexual orientation".

Google is the subject of three other DPC investigations -- all "at an advanced stage" -- according to the regulator.

These include proceedings opened in September 2024 to determine whether the company is liable for failing to conduct an impact assessment regarding the use of Europeans' personal data to train Google's artificial intelligence.

The largest DPC fine was imposed on Facebook owner Meta in 2023 -- 1.2 billion euros for transferring data to the United States.