AI Watch, Wednesday 14 October 2026AI agents get a wallet and a badge

Emmanuel Macron has called a defence and national security council dedicated to artificial intelligence, 01net reports. The Élysée now ranks AI among France's "strategic domains", on a par with space and nuclear power. The subject thus leaves the economic field for that of sovereignty and defence.

The European Data Protection Board, which brings together the continent's data protection authorities, has adopted a statement on smart glasses and published a report, "The connected gaze", on the uses and risks of these devices. The body warns about the capture of images and sound in public spaces by camera-equipped frames, as Meta and others push their consumer models. The text lays the groundwork for a common doctrine before the practice spreads.

Google opened Gemini 4 Argon, its flagship model presented on 30 September, to the entire world on Tuesday 13 October. After months on the sidelines of the frontier-model race, the company claims a level comparable to the best, with advanced reasoning and better performance on complex tasks, according to The Verge. Google highlights fewer evasions, repetitions and stock phrases, as well as a one-million-token output (the units of text a model produces), according to Next.ink. AI Pro subscribers now have access, whereas the offer was first reserved for the Ultra plan, the most expensive. The lab also released a version for robotics and a document on the model's safety.

The conversational chatbot platform Character.AI has filed for bankruptcy protection, five years after its launch, TechCrunch reports. Part of its assets will be sold to Disney for $20 million. According to bankruptcy filings analysed by 404 Media, the company kept burning cash despite a sizeable user base, a sign that the economics of the service did not hold. Founded by former Google researchers, Character.AI once embodied the promise of consumer AI companions. Its fall is a reminder that a large audience is not enough to cover the cost of inference (the cost of running the model on each request).

OpenAI announced the arrest of Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old engineer accused of hiding a sophisticated recording device in an executive meeting room in San Francisco. According to the US Department of Justice, he is charged with attempting to intercept oral communications; he was fired on 9 October, the day of his arrest. According to Wired, the queries he reportedly sent to a chatbot reveal his preparations in the days before the microphone was found. OpenAI, which had reported the matter to the FBI, says it detected no access to its models, its code or its customers' data. The company adds that its own models helped identify the suspect.

American Express presented a framework on Tuesday 13 October meant to stop an AI agent (a program that carries out tasks end to end) from buying anything other than what its holder authorised. The point, according to TechCrunch, is to avoid mistaken purchases and disputes as AI-driven buying spreads. The same day, Shopify opened its catalogue, more than a billion listings, to more agents: a customer will be able to set up their assistant to order on their behalf. The two announcements sketch the same economy, called agentic, where the software places the order itself. For a procurement department or an IT department, the question becomes one of mandate, what an agent can commit to on its own and up to what amount.

Chinese exports of integrated circuits rose 136% year on year in September, to $45 billion, according to customs data cited by the South China Morning Post. The increase outpaces the 108% rate recorded over the first nine months of the year. By volume, China exported only 1% more chips (32.7 billion units): it is the price surge, driven by the memory shortage, that explains the leap in value. The country confirms its growing weight in the global semiconductor chain, despite American export controls.

The shares of Asian memory-chip makers dropped sharply this week, a sign of growing doubts about how long the AI-driven profit cycle will last, the South China Morning Post reports. In Seoul, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix fell 7.4% and 10.1% on Tuesday, dragging down China's CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies) as well. The paradox is stark: memory prices are rising and quarterly results stay solid, but investors are questioning a possible turn. The two movements, sharply rising exports and falling shares, tell the same tension around a memory market boosted by AI demand.