AI This Week

A new legal battle is erupting over AI. Amazon has sued Perplexity, demanding the AI startup stop its Comet browser from shopping on its site. The lawsuit alleges Perplexity’s AI agent accesses customer accounts without consent, committing computer fraud and degrading the shopping experience Amazon built. Perplexity responded sharply, accusing Amazon of bullying and trying to stifle innovation that makes shopping easier for customers. This conflict exposes the high-stakes tension between established tech giants and the new wave of autonomous AI agents that act on behalf of users. As this AI browser war escalates, some competitors are embracing similar technology.

Google is studying “Project Suncatcher,” an initiative to move data center workloads off Earth and into orbit. The concept taps abundant solar power and the cold of space to run and cool AI-scale compute. It also promises new capacity as demand for training and inference surges. The plan raises hard questions: launch cost, serviceability, orbital debris, latency, and regulation. It draws clear comparisons to earlier radical infrastructure bets, such as underwater server farms and satellite networks. The idea signals how far cloud providers may go to meet AI’s hunger for energy and chips.

Nvidia and Deutsche Telekom are launching a one-billion-euro industrial artificial intelligence hub in Germany, a significant move in the global AI race. The project represents Europe’s latest bid to make up lost ground against the United States and China. Based in Munich and set to go live in early 2026, the center will offer companies access to powerful AI for processes from design to robotics, all operating on secure IT infrastructure. A key focus is “data sovereignty,” keeping sensitive industrial data secure on the continent. German industrial giants SAP and Siemens are also partners, aiming to enhance their own AI capabilities and client services.

In a stunning breakthrough, artificial intelligence has uncovered 303 new geoglyphs hidden in southern Peru’s desert, doubling the number of known Nazca Lines. An international team from Japan’s Yamagata University and IBM accomplished the feat in just six months, completing work that once took years in a fraction of the time. The ancient figures, dating from 200 B.C. to 650 A.D., depict felines, fish, and human forms. The AI system identified the patterns by analyzing vast amounts of satellite and drone imagery, spotting lines nearly invisible to the human eye. Archaeologists later confirmed each finding on the ground. This technology is accelerating archaeological discovery worldwide.

Four of the world’s wealthiest technology companies are dramatically increasing their AI spending. Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon are pouring billions more into building data centers, stating they cannot keep up with the intense demand for AI computing power. This spending spree, with capital expenditures from the four totaling over $360 billion in the last year, is sparking fears of a dangerous tech bubble. While the Federal Reserve chair distinguishes the situation from the dot-com boom because these companies are profitable, investors remain cautious. Following its announcement to raise spending to at least $70 billion, Meta’s stock fell 11 percent. The companies, however, point to massive future sales contracts as justification.