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OpenAI's Sam Altman said the company will amend its deal with the Defense Department (or the Department of War) to explicitly prohibit the use of its AI system on mass surveillance against Americans. Altman has published an internal memo previously sent to employees on X, telling them that the company will tweak the agreement to add language to make that point especially clear. Specifically, it says:
"Consistent with applicable laws, including the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, National Security Act of 1947, FISA Act of 1978, the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals.
For the avoidance of doubt, the Department understands this limitation to prohibit deliberate tracking, surveillance, or monitoring of U.S. persons or nationals, including through the procurement or use of commercially acquired personal or identifiable information."
Altman has also claimed in the memo that the agency affirmed that its services will not be used by its intelligence agencies, including the NSA, without a modification to their contract. He added that if he received what he believed was an unconstitutional order, he would rather go to jail than follow it.
In addition, the OpenAI CEO has admitted in the memo that the company shouldn't have rushed to get the deal out on Friday, February 27, since the issues were "super complex and demand clear communication." Altman explained that the company was "trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome" but it "looked opportunistic" in the end. If you'll recall, OpenAI announced the partnership shortly after President Trump
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Anthropic is bringing another paid feature to Claude's free tier. The next time you chat with Claude, you'll have the option to have it reference your previous conversation to inform its outputs. Anthropic first made its chatbot capable of remembering past interactions last August, before giving it the ability to compartmentalize memories in the fall. Making memory a free feature is well-timed; earlier today Anthropic made it easier for users to import their past conversations with a competing chatbot to Claude. If after enabling memory you decide to turn it off, you can either pause the feature, preserving Claude's memories for use down the road, or completely delete them so they're not saved on Anthropic's servers.
Claude is enjoying new-found popularity, having recently jumped to the number one spot in the App Store's free app charts. This comes while Anthropic is engaged in a high-stakes contract dispute with the US government over AI safeguards. On Friday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth labeled the company a "supply chain risk" after it refused to sign a contract that would allow the Pentagon to use Anthropic models for mass surveillance against Americans and in fully autonomous weapons. Following Hegseth's announcement, Anthropic vowed to challe
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X is rolling out a built-in "Paid Partnership" label that creators can apply to sponsored posts, replacing the hashtag workarounds they've had to rely on until now. The feature, announced by the platform's head of product Nikita Bier, adds a toggle that places a disclosure label directly below a post's content. It can also be applied retroactively.
The label is meant to help creators comply with years-old FTC regulations requiring clear disclosure of sponsored content. The agency sent out letters reminding influencers about this requirement in 2017, and Instagram added a disclosure feature that same year. Without a native tool, X creators had been left to use hashtags like #ad and #paidpartnership.
X has been trying to court creators for some time with tools like ad-revenue sharing and creator subscriptions, but the platform still struggles with major image issues following a string of scandals like Grok creating CSAM. The Elon Musk-ow
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On its own, at 4.9mm thin, Tecno's modular phone concept barely feels like a smartphone. It has a screen, a basic camera module, four low-profile pogo-pin connectors and that's about it. From there, you can seemingly build your conceptual phone however you want.
At its booth at MWC 2026, Tecno had two families of modular components in two different colorways, which is surprising at this concept stage. The chunky telephoto lens and housing must weigh over three times as much as the base phone, adding up to 20x zoom capabilities, even if it was a little glitchy during my hands-on. The barrel also offers manual focus, which is always a nice touch. The lens itself is huge, though, making even Vivo's latest 400mm telephoto lens peripheral look reasonable by comparison.
Image by Mat Smith for Engadget
There are more subtle camera modules, including ultrawide options and a more streamlined periscope telephoto. There's even an action cam that can attach through Wi-Fi and be used on its own. Depending on the module, transmission is also done through Bluetooth and even mmWave. One module has an antenna that folds out, turning the phone into a walkie-talkie messenger… thing th
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President Donald Trump has ordered all US government agencies to stop using Claude and other Anthropic services, escalating an already volatile feud between the Department of Defense and company over AI safeguards. Taking to Truth Social on Friday afternoon, the president said there would be a six-month phase out period for federal agencies, including the Defense Department, to migrate off of Anthropic's products.
"The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution," the president wrote. "Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow."
Before today, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had threatened to label Anthropic a "supply chain risk" if it did not agree to withdraw safeguards that insist Claude not be used for mass surveillance against Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. In a post on X published after President Trump's statement, Hegseth said he was "directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic."
Anthropic did not immediately respond to Engadget's comment request. Earlier in the day, a spokesperson for the co
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