Around 70,000 Discord users may have had images of their government IDs stolen, according to an update from the company. Last week, the popular chat platform notified users that the third-party vendor the platform uses for customer service was hacked, affecting Discord users who had interacted with the apps customer support or trust and safety teams.
Discord initially announced last week that an unauthorized group gained access to a small number of government ID images. That includes images of sensitive documents like drivers licenses, passports, and potentially even selfies of people holding those documentsa common way to verify identity for online accounts.
On Wednesday, the company updated its blog post, estimating the number of affected users to be 70,000. While that is a small sliver of the chat apps 200 million monthly users, its still a large swath of people who now have very good reason to be worried about identity theft.
Beyond government ID images, the hackers may have gained access to Discord users names, usernames, emails, contact information, the last four digits of credit cards linked to accounts, IP addresses, and messages with customer service agents. Discord emphasized that full credit card numbers and CCV codes were not compromised, nor were passwords or messages on Discord that werent with its third-party customer support provider.
As soon as we became aware of this attack, we took immediate steps to address the situation, Discord said in a newly updated blog post. This included revoking the customer support providers access to our ticketing system, launching an internal investigation, engaging a leading computer forensics firm to support our investigation and remediation efforts, and engaging law enforcement.
The hacking group stole the documents explicitly in an effort to extort a financial ransom, Discord disclosed in its blog post.
Age verification comes with its own risks
Discord emphasizes that this wasnt a breach of its own systems and servers, but rather one that succeeded in compromising an external vendor the company uses. That distinction is important: Discord hosts a massive trove of chat logs and private conversations for its hundreds of millions of monthly active users.
This hack is still very bad news, particularly given the nature of the images that were stolenthe very images people rely on to establish the legitimacy of accounts around the web. Still, Discord users should know that server logs and private chats werent part of this hack. Discord says that it is in the process of contacting users affected by the ID document breach with an email from noreply@discord.com.
Discord did not name the vendor in its public statements, but signs and initial reports seem to point to Zendesk, which handles customer support for the platform. In a statement to Fast Company, Zendesk said that its investigation indicates this incident did not arise from a vulnerability within Zendesk’s platform and that its own systems were not compromised. Discord also uses the age verification provider k-ID for automated facial age estimation and identity document verification, though the company states that neither company permanently stores ID documents or the video selfies users upload to verify their age.
The hack is the latest example of the risks companies take when they collect sensitive personal data from users. As age verification laws spread, companies like Discord are increasingly requiring users to upload their passports and drivers licenses to prove that they are adults.
In July, Discord announced that it would make changes to comply with the U.K.s newly enacted Online Safety Act. That law requires platforms to shield young people from pornography and content promoting self-harm, eating disorders, or suicide through the implementation of age gates. While the Online Safety Act and similar U.S. state-specific age verification laws may have noble goals, they have faced pushback from critics concerned over their efficacy, privacy implications, and the broader risk of letting governments decide what people are allowed to see online.
Heres a question about the shutdown submitted by an Associated Press reader, Ryan S.:
How might the shutdown affect the U.S. economy?
Shutdowns of the federal government usually dont leave much economic damage. But the one that started Wednesday looks riskier, not least because President Donald Trump is threatening to use the standoff to permanently eliminate thousands of government jobs, and the state of the economy is already precarious.
For now, financial markets are shrugging off the impasse as just the latest failure of Republicans and Democrats to agree on a budget and keep the government running.
Lets take a look at a range of possible economic effects:
A couple of days: Financial markets may experience some fluctuation, but that likely wont be significant if funding is restored before too long. Workers will get paid back, and ideally, theres not much of an economic lag.
Longer term: Federal workers get furloughed and the federal government delays some spending during a shutdown. But when the funding comes back, workers go back to their jobs and collect back pay, and the government belatedly spends the money it had withheld. Its pretty much a wash.
Very long term: If there are significant disruptions to sectors like air travel due to shutdown-related circumstances like the security screeners and air traffic controllers who called out sick during the 2018-2019 shutdown that can mean more trouble for industries. But even in that 35-day shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that just 0.02% was shaved off 2019 U.S. gross domestic product, the nations output of goods and services.
Also: Trump has threatened to permanently eliminate thousands of government jobs during this shutdown, so if that happens, and new tranches of people are immediately out of work, that can upset an already precarious economy. We just dont know yet if those layoffs will happen.
___
Do you have a question for AP about the government shutdown? You can submit it here.
Meg Kinnard, Associated Press
Wall Street is taking a pause on Thursday as U.S. stocks and even the price of gold pull back from record highs following their torrid runs.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.2%, coming off its latest all-time high and its eighth gain in the last nine days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 145 points, or 0.3%, as of noon Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% lower.
Gold also fell following its stellar rally this year, while Treasury yields held relatively steady in the bond market. Theyre taking a moment following big runs driven in large part by expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates to support the economy.
Financial markets have been so relentless, including a roughly 35% leap for the S&P 500 since a low in April, that worries are rising that stock prices may have shot too high and become too expensive. Concerns are particularly strong about the frenzy lifting stocks related to artificial-intelligence technology.
Dell Technologies sank 5% for one of the markets bigger losses, but that only trimmed its surge since talking up its AI growth opportunities earlier in the week. It’s still up 11% for the week so far.
Tesla was one of the heaviest weights on the market after falling 2%. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a preliminary evaluation of its Full Self-Driving system due to safety concerns.
Those losses helped offset a 4.9% ascent for Delta Air Lines, which reported a stronger profit for the summer than analysts expected.
Delta also gave a forecast for profit over the full year that topped analysts estimates. Its president, Glen Hauenstein, highlighted a broad-based acceleration in sales trends over the last six weeks, including for business travel domestically.
Such reports from companies are taking on more significance, offering windows into the strength of the economy. Thats because the U.S. governments shutdown is delaying reports that would clearly show how the overall economy is doing. This is the second week where the U.S. government has not published its update on unemployment claims, for example, a report that usually guides Wall Streets trading each Thursday.
PepsiCo rose 2.1% after it delivered a better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, saying momentum improved for its drinks business in North America. Delivering bigger profits is one of two ways that companies can make their stock prices look less expensive following their big rallies. The other is if their stock prices fall.
Akero Therapeutics leaped 16.7% after Novo Nordisk, the Danish maker of weight-loss drug Wegovy, said it would buy the South San Francisco-based drug developer. The price tag could reach $5.2 billion if Akeros lead product candidate wins federal regulatory approval.
MP Materials, a company that mines and processes rare earths in California, rose 7.1% after China announced curbs on its exports of the materials, which are critical for the making of everything from consumer electronics to jet engines.
Costco Wholesale climbed 2.4% after the retailer said its revenue rose 8% in September from a year earlier.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe after Italy’s Ferrari tumbled 14.1% following the release of financial forecasts that some analysts said were below their expectations.
Stocks in Shanghai leaped 1.3% after trading resumed there following a holiday.
Japans Nikkei 225 jumped 1.8% for another one of the worlds bigger moves. Technology giant SoftBank Group surged 11.4% after it announced a $5.4 billion deal to acquire the robotics unit of Swiss engineering firm ABB.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.13%, where it was late Wednesday.
Stan Choe, AP business writer
AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
In a single day, OpenAI laid out the two pillars of its next empire: first, it signed a sweeping deal with AMD to secure no less than six gigawatts of GPU compute, an agreement that could give it up to a 10% stake in AMD if certain milestones are met. Then, on stage at DevDay, it unveiled a new layer of mini-apps that live inside ChatGPT, turning the chatbot into something much bigger: not a product, but a platform.
Together, these moves define OpenAIs ambition with perfect clarity: control the power and control the interface.
Power, literally
The AMD deal is more than a supply contract: its a signal. Six gigawatts of GPU compute by 2026, the first one-gigawatt plant in construction, and stock warrants worth up to 160 million shares at a cent apiece if performance goals are hit.
Thats not procurement: its vertical integration through financial engineering. By embedding itself in AMDs roadmap for the next-generation MI450 chips, OpenAI is locking in compute capacity at a planetary scale. Its also buying influence: the right to co-design, the ability to shape pricing, and a hedge against Nvidias dominance.
Compute has become the new oil, and OpenAI just secured drilling rights.
From app to ecosystem
Then came DevDay. On stage, Sam Altman introduced mini-apps from Spotify, Canva, Expedia, Zillow, and others, micro-interfaces that live inside ChatGPT. The goal: let users interact with third-party services without ever leaving the chat, OpenAIs bid to make ChatGPT your conversational operating system.
Think of it as the app store without the store. No icons, no screens, just conversation. You ask ChatGPT to plan a trip, it calls Expedia; you ask about housing, it queries Zillow; you design a logo, and Canva appears, seamlessly. The interface disappears. The agent decides.
This is not a super-app in the Asian sense. Its something deeper: an orchestration layer that sits above every other digital service, turning natural language into the default control surface for your digital life.
If it works, ChatGPT stops being a chatbot and becomes the front end of the internet.
Weve been here before
Anyone who has watched the history of Silicon Valley knows how this story goes. Platforms begin as enablers and end as gatekeepers. In the 1980s, Microsoft used Windows to control distribution. In the 2000s, Google turned search into an auction for attention. In the 2010s, Apple and Meta built app stores and ad ecosystems that extracted rents from everything that passed through them.
Now, the interface itself, the conversation, becomes the platform. And the pattern is repeating.
When ChatGPT suggests which app to use, who decides which ones appear? Zillow proudly claims to be the exclusive real-estate partner inside ChatGPT today. But what happens when competitors arrive, and we all know they will? Will placement depend on merit, or on bidding? Will we see a market where companies pay for their slot in the agents recommendations, as SEO for AI conversations?
History suggests we will. The difference is that, this time, theres no search results page to scrutinize. The decision happens invisibly, in the flow of a chat.
The illusion of agency
For users, the promise is pretty seductive and sounds apparently very well. You no longer need to juggle tabs or apps, the agent does it all, it even starts the conversations. But the price of convenience is asymmetry. When you ask ChatGPT to find the best flight, youre not searching, youre delegating. And we all know that delegation without transparency leads to dependence.
Who audits the logic behind your agents choices? What data informs them? What economic incentives bias them? The more the interface simplifies, the more opaque the underlying process becomes.
Weve spent two decades complaining about algorithmic black boxes in search and social media. Now were about to build one around every digital decision we make.
Compute as a barrier, distribution as capture
The AMD alliance and the mini-apps announcement are two halves of the same strategy. Compute is the barrier to entry, distribution is the mechanism of capture.
By securing vast energy and chip capacity, OpenAI ensures that no competitor can easily match its scale. By embedding itself as the interface to other apps, it ensures that even if competitors exist, theyll have to go through its ecosystem to reach users. Its the classic Silicon Valley playbook, executed with breathtaking speed and a layer of AI pixie dust.
Altman learned from the best. He watched Apple, Google, and Facebook turn control of interfaces into control of economies. Now hes applying the lesson to the age of agents: own the conversation, and you own the user.
The energy question
The AMD deal also underscores an uncomfortable truth: large-scale AI is energy-intensive by design. Six gigawatts is roughly the output of six nuclear reactors. Training and running advanced models already consume staggering amounts of power. What happens when the worlds most popular interface is also one of its biggest electricity buyers?
OpenAI is not just building software: its building infrastructure with a carbon footprint and geopolitical consequences. When a private company starts locking up gigawatts of generation capacity, regulators should treat it not as a startup, but as a utility.
The governance gap
Every platform shift creates governance lags: rules arrive years after dominance is established. Thats how we ended up with app-store monopolies, ad-tech cartels, and search markets worth trillions, but accountable to no one.
ChatGPTs platformization is happening faster than any previous transition. And regulators, distracted by content moderation and copyright disputes, seem completely unprepared.
The risks are not theoretical. Once an agent acts on your behalf (booking travel, recommending purchases, even making hiring decisions) it will be impossible to disentangle convenience from manipulation. The more we outsource judgment to machines, the easier it becomes for those who own the machines to shape our behavior.
What happens next
The momentum is undeniable. OpenAI is buying computing, embedding partners, and positioning ChatGPT as the front end of everything. The financial press reads it as a triumph of execution. The tech industry reads it as the dawn of agentic computing. Both may be right.
But beneath the excitement, theres a warning written in the footnotes of tech history. Every time a platform promises frictionless integration, it ends up centralizing power. Every time we think this one will be different, it isnt.
Im not one more European obsessed with regulating everything, Im just old enough to remember several previous experiences akin to this one. The world doesnt need another operating system that mediates access to everything: it needs transparency, interoperability, and competition. If we dont insist on them now, we may find ourselves living inside the most powerful black box ever built: one that doesnt just answer our questions, but quietly decides which ones were allowed to ask. Be warned.
If every afternoon, like clockwork, you find yourself at the vending machine punching in the code for your daily Diet Coke, you may want to rethink your selection. According to a newly released study, the popular drink may be doing damage to one of your body’s most important organs.
The study, which was recently presented at the 2025 United European Gastroenterology Week conference in Berlin, involved tracking the beverage consumption habits of 123,788 participants. It found that just nine ounces of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), such as soda, can increase the risk of liver disease known as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) by about 50%.
However, when it comes to diet sodas, the findings are even worse. When it comes to diet drinks made with artificial sweeteners, the risk rises for 60%. At a 10.3 year follow-up, 108 of the participants had died from liver-related causes. However, while no significant association was found for the regular soda drinkers, consumption of low- or non-sugar-sweetened beverages (diet drinks) was linked to a higher rate of liver-related death. Both drinks were linked to higher liver fat content, as well.
SSBs have long been under scrutiny, while their diet alternatives are often seen as the healthier choice. Both, however, are widely consumed and their effects on liver health have not been well understood,” lead author of the study, Lihe Liu, said in a press release.
Liu continued, Our study shows that LNSSBs were actually linked to a higher risk of MASLD, even at modest intake levels such as a single can per day. These findings challenge the common perception that these drinks are harmless and highlight the need to reconsider their role in diet and liver health, especially as MASLD emerges as a global health concern.
Diet beverages have also been associated with weight gain, insulin confusion, and even cancer. Regardless, Diet Coke has surged in popularity in recent years. Some social media users have even begun referring to the trendy habit as a “fridge cigarette,” given it’s a habit widely known to be unhealthy, but that just seems to hit the spot anyway.
Experts say that it’s best to avoid consuming both drinks with any regularity. The safest approach is to limit both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks,” Liu says. “Water remains the best choice as it removes the metabolic burden and prevents fat accumulation in the liver, whilst hydrating the body.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Thursday that it is opening an investigation into 2.88 million Tesla vehicles equipped with its Full Self-Driving system over more than 50 reports of traffic-safety violations and a series of crashes.
The auto safety agency said FSD an assistance system that requires drivers to pay attention and intervene if needed has “induced vehicle behavior that violated traffic safety laws.”
The agency said it has reports of Tesla vehicles using FSD driving through red traffic lights and driving against the proper direction of travel during a lane change.
RECALL COULD FOLLOW IF NHTSA FINDS SAFETY RISKS
In total, NHTSA is reviewing 58 reports of issues involving traffic safety violations when using FSD, including 14 crashes and 23 injuries.
The new investigation comes amid growing scrutiny of Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system from Congress and weeks after a new NHTSA administrator was confirmed.
Tesla, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, issued a software update to FSD this week.
NHTSA said it has six reports in which a Tesla vehicle, operating with FSD engaged, “approached an intersection with a red traffic signal, continued to travel into the intersection against the red light and was subsequently involved in a crash with other motor vehicles in the intersection.”
NHTSA said four crashes resulted in one or more injuries.
The investigation – a preliminary evaluation – is the first step before the agency could seek a recall of the vehicles if it believes they pose an unreasonable risk to safety.
A driver in Houston in 2024 told NHTSA that FSD “is not recognizing traffic signals. This results in the vehicle proceeding through red lights, and stopping at green lights.”
The complaint added: “Tesla doesn’t want to fix it, or even acknowledge the problem, even though they’ve done a test drive with me and seen the issue with their own eyes.”
NHTSA also said it will review FSD behavior when approaching railroad crossings. Last month, Democrat Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal cited a growing number of reported near-collisions in urging the agency to investigate.
Tesla’s FSD, which is more advanced than its Autopilot system, has been under investigation by NHTSA for a year.
In October 2024, the agency began an inquiry into 2.4 million Tesla vehicles equipped with FSD after four reported collisions in conditions of reduced roadway visibility, such as sun glare, fog or airborne dust, including a 2023 fatal crash.
Tesla says FSD “will drive you almost anywhere with your active supervision, requiring minimal intervention” but does not make the car self-driving.
Tesla’s other automated vehicle features have also drawn agency scrutiny.
In January, NHTSA opened an investigation into 2.6 million Tesla vehicles over reports of crashes involving a feature that lets users move their cars remotely.
NHTSA is also reviewing Tesla’s deployment of self-driving robotaxis in Austin, Texas, launched in June.
David Shepardson, Reuters
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. Im Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy.
This week, Im focusing on how generative AI and agents might radically change websites. I also look at the circular arrangements that are financing the AI boom, and at Blackrocks big move into data centers.
Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan.
How AI and agents could completely change websites
At OpenAIs developer event this week, the company had a lot to say about autonomous agents, the AI-powered helpers that can understand what a user needs (sometimes proactively) and then do the work of getting it. The common narrative this week based on OpenAIs announcements is that the company is building a platform around ChatGPT and people will use the chatbot as a gateway to all sorts of web content. Freestanding websites (like Fast Company) will likely still exist, but they might look and work very differently when powered by large language models and agents.
How might they change?
A new UX. Right now, we use a mouse or a touchscreen to peruse menus, tap buttons, and scroll. We do all this either to see what the publisher has on offer, or to find the specific content we want within the virtual layers of information on the website. The only intelligence guiding that process is the descriptive language in the menus and buttons. AI models could inject much more intelligence into the experience. Users might be able to just talk to the interface and let the website gather the most relevant information in real timesimilar to the way AI search engines like Perplexity form a custom package of multimedia information after a user enters a query. And all that information might change in front of the users eyes as they give the AI more instructions. In other words, websites may no longer have a standard structure dictating how and where content is displayed. It may depend entirely on what the user is looking for and how they describe their need.
Agent, my agent. At OpenAIs developer event on Monday, Christina Huang, one of the companys execs, used the platforms new Agent Builder tool to create an agent (live, onstage, in under eight minutes) that would act as a sort of concierge to help users at a standard web page the company built about the event. It showed developers the agent builder was the main point, but it also gave a glimpse of how OpenAI is thinking about the future of websites. Website visitors could tell the agent what they hoped to learn at the conference, and the agent would assemble a schedule full of the best panels and work groups to suit that end. The agent also had its own personality and visual style. The user interacted with it by typing, but it could easily have been a voice interaction between user and agent, which would have added a new dimension to the agents vibe.
An intelligent UX and agents might play key roles in the websites of the future, or at least in the first phase of AI influencing how we access information online. From there, it could evolve to types of interaction that are hard to imagine right now. We should also remember that it may not be all about us (humans). Researchers are already trying to understand how websites might be coded differently for when most of the sites visitors are AI agents.
AIs incestuous funding circle
A growing number of people are voicing concern that just a few well-monied individuals and companies will control the AI that powers much of business and personal life, along with unprecedented amounts of personal information willingly fed into it by consumers. But the risks of AIs small circle of big players may run deeper than that. AIs biggest players are investing in each other, which some fear could be artificially inflating the stock prices and valuations of the whole group, as Bloombergs Emily Forgash and Agnee Ghosh point out.
For example, Nvidia announced a $100-billion investment in OpenAI, which will buy about 2% equity in the company. Notably, the Nvidia investment will time the release of the funds according to the pace at which OpenAI buys the chips: Nvidia gets guaranteed chip sales and a 2% share of OpenAI. [T]hese investments might be circular and raise related party concerns, as Nvidia may own shares in a customer that will likely use such funds to buy more Nvidia gear, writes Morningstar equity analyst Brian Colello in a research brief. OpenAI struck a similar agreement with Microsoft when it took a $10-billion investment from the software giant, then used the money to buy its Azure cloud computing services.
After facing criticism for the circular nature of the Nvidia deal, OpenAI doubled down and struck a similar deal with AMD, a rival AI chipmaker. OpenAI will buy large quantities of AMDs Instinct AI chips on a set schedule over the next decade. If it keeps to the schedule, itll get the option of taking a 10% stake in AMD. The deal gives OpenAI a solid second source for AI chips, and could give AMD the stamp of approval it needs to become a legit challenger to Nvidia. AMD CEO Lisa Su called the arrangement a virtuous, positive cycle. OpenAIs Sam Altman said during a meeting with reporters this week that the industry is still experimenting with the right financial models to pay for AIs immense development and hosting costs.
On Tuesday, reports said Nvidia will buy a stake of up to $2 billion in Elon Musks xAI, which is now raising a $20 billion round. The financing includes equity and debt and is tied to the purchase of Nvidia GPUs for xAIs Colossus 2 data center in Memphis.
The return on these big bets depends on how quickly AI can bring broad new efficiencies to big business, and, perhaps, find new ways to pry more dollars from consumers. There just isn’t much real evidence that these things are about to happennot yet. As Bloomberg puts it, AI remains an untested technology in business. So all the funding and equity and chip contracts flying back and forth between these companies are, in a sense, just promises among a relatively small group of people that AI indeed will pass the tests that lay ahead. Thats why the word bubble is on everybodys lis.
Blackrock is moving hard on data centers and energy
The big money is moving into AI data centers. Blackrock, the worlds largest asset manager, is reportedly in advanced talks to spend almost $40 billion to buy Aligned Data Centers, which owns 78 data centers across the U.S., Canada, and South America. That news came two days after reports that Blackrock is also in advanced talks to buy the utility company AES in a deal said to be worth $38 billion.
Massive amounts of investment are pouring into the data center space, fueled by a belief that AI models will soon power many business and personal computing functions. Among the biggest barriers to such a transformation is a dearth of both AI computing power and the electricity needed to power it. M&A in both the data center and energy spaces has surged.
Blackrock is doing the deals through its Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) subsidiary. The Aligned Data Center deal, which was reported Friday by Financial Times and confirmed by others, could close any day now. MGX, an Abu-Dhabi AI investment firm backed by Mubadala/G42, may also participate independently in the deal, the reports say. The deal would be one of the biggest acquisitions of the year.
Earlier this year, Aligned raised $5 billion in equity and more than $7 billion in debt financing to expand its global footprint. GIP, which Blackrock bought in early 2024, already co-owns another data center group called CyrusOne, which it bought for $15 billion in 2021.
Tech companies and data center developers will likely break ground or advance several hundred new data center projects by the end of 2025. A ConstructConnect report found that data center construction starts reached $12.9 billion by the end of June (with $2.4 billion in June alone), a 48% increase from the prior year. OpenAIs Stargate project alone will build massive data centers on five new sites. The big money behind that project comes from Oracle, Softbank, OpenAI, MGX, and Nvidia.
Blackrock, with more than $10 trillion under management is often called a shadow bank because it manages funds for governments, pension funds, endowments, insurance companies, and corporations, as well as for individual investors.
More AI coverage from Fast Company:
How to figure out if an executive is AI fluent
Trumps coal bailout wont solve the data center power crunch
Sanders: AI may take 100 million jobs in the next 10 years
What can the rise and fall of NFTs teach us about the AI bubble?
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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney raised the prospect of reviving the contentious Keystone XL pipeline project with U.S. President Donald Trump during his White House visit this week, a government official familiar with the matter said Wednesday.
A Canadian company pulled the plug on it four years ago after the Canadian government failed to persuade then-President Joe Biden to reverse his cancellation of its permit on the day he took office. It was to transport crude from the oil sand fields of western Canada to Steele City, Nebraska.
Trump previously revived the long-delayed project during his first term after it had stalled under the Obama administration. It would have moved up to 830,000 barrels (35 million gallons) of crude daily, connecting in Nebraska to other pipelines that feed oil refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
The Canadian government official said Trump was receptive to the idea when it was talked about during their White House meeting Wednesday. The official said Carney linked energy cooperation to Canadas steel and aluminum sectors, which are subject to 50% U.S. tariffs. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Carney mentioned building major projects and unleashing Canadian energy” in a live video call with business leaders in Toronto on Wednesday.
Biden canceled Keystone XL’s border crossing permit in 2021 over longstanding concerns that burning oil sands crude could make climate change worse and harder to reverse.
A spokesperson for South Bow Corp., the oil pipeline operator that owns the existing Keystone pipeline system, said they are not privy to the ongoing discussions between the Canadian and U.S. governments.
South Bow is supportive of efforts to find solutions that increase the transportation of Canadian crude oil. We will continue to explore opportunities that leverage our existing corridor with our customers and others in the industry, the spokesperson said in an email.
Carney is under pressure from the oil-rich province of Alberta to get a pipeline built.
Former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said building a new pipeline to increase oil shipments to the U.S. Gulf Coast would be the cheapest, fastest, and least complicated route for a major oil pipeline.
Strategically, this would increase, not decrease our dependance on the US export market. But it would be a brilliant judo move to find common ground with the Trump Administration, and help him to realize that the US benefits from and needs its privileged relationship to Canada, and access to our resources, Kenney posted on social media.
Played smartly, Canadas cooperation could be strong leverage to push for reductions in Trump tariffs, he added.
Carney mentioned Wednesday in the call that tariffs on Canada’s aluminum exports are not wise, noting the country provides 60% of the aluminum the U.S. needs.
For the U.S. to produce that much aluminum, it would need the equivalent of the energy of 10 Hoover Dams, Carney said. Is making aluminum really the first best use of that power at a time when youve got the AI revolution, and youre reassuring manufacturing that you want to keep peoples electricity costs down at home.
Carney also reiterated that Canadas relationship with the U.S., which led to increasing integration over many years, has changed.
Our relationship will never again be what it was,” Carney said. We understand America first.
Rob Gillies, Associated Press
iPhone users have a new tool to combat the scourge of nuisance phone calls: a virtual gatekeeper that can screen incoming calls from unknown numbers.It’s among the bevy of new features that Apple rolled out with last month’s release of iOS 26. The screening feature has been getting attention because of the ever-increasing amount of robocalls and spam calls that leave many phone users feeling harassed.Here’s a run-through of the new function:
How to activate call screening
First, you’ll need to update your iPhone’s operating system to iOS 26, which is available to the iPhone 11 and newer models.To switch call screening on, go into SettingsAppsPhone. Scroll down and you’ll find a new option: Screen Unknown Callers.You’ll be presented with three choices. The Never option lets any unknown call ring through, while Silence sends all unidentified numbers directly to voicemail. What you want to tap is the middle option: Ask Reason for Calling.If the option isn’t there, try restarting your phone.I still couldn’t find it after updating to iOS 26, but, after some online sleuthing, I checked my region and language settings because I saw some online commenters reporting they had to match. It turns out my region was still set to Hong Kong, where I lived years ago. I switched it to the United Kingdom, which seemed to do the trick and gave me the updated menu.
How it works
Call screening introduces a layer between you and new callers.When someone who’s not in your contacts list dials your number, a Siri-style voice will ask them to give their name and the purpose of their call.At the same time, you’ll get a notification that the call is being screened. When the caller responds, the answers will be transcribed and the conversation will pop up in speech bubbles.
You can then answer the call.
Don’t want to answer? Send a reply by tapping one of the pre-written messages, such as “I’ll call you later” or “Send more information,” which the AI voice will read out to the caller.Or you can type out your own message for the computer-generated voice to read out.If you don’t respond right away, the phone will continue to ring while you decide what to do.
Teething troubles
In theory, call screening is a handy third way between the nuclear option of silencing all unknown callers including legitimate ones or letting them all through.But it doesn’t always work perfectly, according to Associated Press colleagues and anecdotal reports from social media users.One AP colleague said she was impressed with how seamlessly it worked. Another said it’s handy for screening out cold callers who found his number from marketing databases.“However, it’s not great when delivery drivers try to call me and then just hang up,” he added.Some internet users have similar complaints, complaining that important calls that they were expecting from their auto mechanic or plumber didn’t make it through. Perhaps the callers assumed it was an answering machine and didn’t seem to realize they had to stay on the line and interact with it.I encountered a different issue the first time it kicked in for me, when an unknown caller whether mistakenly or not threw me off by giving my name instead of theirs. So I answered because I assumed it was someone I knew, forgetting that I could tap out a reply asking them again for their name.The caller turned out to be someone who had obtained my name and number and was trying to get me to do a survey. I had to make my excuses and hang up.If you don’t like call screening, you can turn it off at any time.
As for Android
Apple is catching up with Google, which introduced a similar automatic call screening feature years ago for Pixel users in the United States.Last month, the company announced the feature is rolling out to users in three more countries: Australia, Canada and Ireland.If it’s not already on, go to your Phone app’s Settings and look for Call Screen.Google’s version is even more automated. When someone you don’t know calls, the phone will ask who it is and why they’re calling. It will hang up if it determines that it’s a junk call, but let calls it deems to be legit ring through.Google warns that not all spam calls and robocalls can be detected, nor will it always fully understand and transcribe what a caller says.Samsung, too, lets users of its Galaxy Android phones screen calls by using its AI assistant Bixby’s text call function, which works in a similar way.
Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.
Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer
Americas advertising market has transformed so dramatically over the last decade that almost two-thirds of it is now in the hands of just five tech companies.
This week, MoffettNathanson released a report called “U.S. Advertising: Are We Near the AI Tipping Point?” which highlights, among other things, how generative AI is disrupting TV advertising as interest in traditional media continues to shift away.
The report suggests that the effects of AI have been prominent among some of the largest Big Tech companies, which have taken up incremental market share through improved targeting, engagement, and performant creative.
For instance, the findings point to how five major online companiesMeta Platforms, Amazon, Microsoft, Google owner Alphabet, and ByteDance-owned TikTokhave grown their share of the total U.S. ad market over the past 10 years.
According to the research, the five companies cumulatively made up 22% of the market nearly a decade ago.
However, MoffettNathanson predicts that those companies will make up 65% of the market this yearup 400 basis pointsor $260 billion dollars. The rest of the market is projected to decline by $7 billion to $143 billion.
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MoffettNathanson expects the total U.S. ad growth forecast for 2025 to be slightly above previous estimates at 6.3%, with growth continuing to be fueled by digital channels instead of traditional media.
The data also predicts that cable TV advertising will decline by 8%, while broadcast advertising revenue will decline by 9%, and total TV advertising revenue will drop by 9%.
Because of this, linear TV is expected to lose $4 billion of ad spending this year, with advertising-based video on demand (AVOD) taking back about $2 billion. Meanwhile, spendingwhich includes retailwill continue to flourish, adding nearly $32 billion to the U.S. ad market.
Kill your television, keep your phone?
Overall, the report and its findings speak to a growing trend that many in the industry have suspected for years now: linear TV is slowly dying, while avenues such as online video platforms like YouTube, and more affordable options like ad-supported streaming, are continuing to grow and expand especially among young consumers.
During the 2025-26 TV upfront season, the time when TV networks and streaming services preview their content and programming to advertisers to secure revenue, there was a major push for popular influencers and creators like MrBeast to lure advertising dollars away from traditional TV.
Other social- and mobile-friendly programming, like microdramas, have been gaining traction.
Spanish-language giant TelevisaUnivisions streaming platform ViX debuted microdramas during its TV upfront presentation, which resulted in successful streaming commitments for the company, and the format has also been gaining traction with competitors. Telemundo launched its own microdramas earlier this month.
