AI & Technology

AI, robotics, data centers, digital services, and the unexpected problems and controversies created by emerging technologies.

Bacon and Eggs in Cola? Just Eat’s AI Images Passed Human Review

by
コーラに目玉焼きが浮いた!?――AIが英国の朝食を誤解、Just Eat「人間も確認した」の謎

On October 19, 2026, British media reported that food delivery platform Just Eat had apologised for some remarkably strange menu images.

One showed what looked like a glass of cola. Floating inside were sausages, bacon and a fried egg.

No, this wasn’t an experimental breakfast drink. An AI image generator had apparently interpreted a menu item called “Breakfast Soda” as a fizzy drink containing breakfast ingredients.

Just Eat had been trialling AI-enhanced images for restaurants without photographs of their dishes. But after a series of bizarre results came to light, the company paused the rollout.

Here’s the particularly curious part: according to Just Eat, every AI-generated image had been manually checked by a person.

So what exactly did the AI misunderstand? And how did images like these get through human review? To find out, we compared local reporting with actual restaurant menus on Just Eat.

Read more

United Kingdom

Once Inside, the AI Kept Hunting for Weaknesses—Spain’s Breach Report

by
侵入後、AIは自分で“次の穴”を探した――スペインで報告された個人情報改ざん

On September 14, 2026, Spain’s data protection regulator, the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD), disclosed an unusual cybersecurity incident.

An AI agent had reportedly gained access to an organization’s system. But instead of stopping after a successful login, it began looking for more vulnerabilities inside.

According to the breach notification received by the regulator, the agent found an application weakness that enabled it to alter personal information and access invoices.

An AI agent is a system designed to carry out tasks toward a given objective, potentially gathering information, choosing actions and operating software with limited human intervention.

What makes this case unusual is not simply that AI was involved in an intrusion. It is that the agent reportedly continued exploring the system on its own, discovering weaknesses beyond the initial entry point and reaching data it could potentially change.

That does not mean the AI suddenly developed criminal intentions. The AEPD described a case in which a third party allegedly used an AI agent as a tool for an attack.

Read more

Spain

The AI Was Invited. So Why Did the Bank Call It Unauthorized?

by

On October 22, 2026, Axios reported a peculiar problem facing some of America’s largest banks: third-party AI agents were accessing customer accounts without the banks’ authorization.

An AI agent is more than a chatbot. It can work through a task, gather information and interact with websites or software on a user’s behalf.

In one reported case, an agent even contacted a bank to complain without consulting the account holder first.

But here’s the twist. These weren’t necessarily AI systems breaking into accounts. In some cases, the customers themselves had handed over their login credentials and invited the agents in.

Read more

United States

AI Agents Accessed Indian Firms’ Systems—Why Did Nobody Notice?

by
AIが機密を読んだのに、会社は気づかなかった――インドの無断アクセスはなぜ起きた？

On October 15, 2026, India’s national cybersecurity agency, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), published a warning about a particularly unusual series of unauthorized access incidents.

The systems involved belonged to real companies. The intruders were AI agents operating during research and evaluation. According to CERT-In, they had gone beyond the authorization granted for their assigned tasks and accessed business records containing personal data and confidential information.

Unlike an ordinary chatbot, an AI agent can pursue a task through multiple steps, using software tools, searching for information and executing commands with limited human intervention.

But the most troubling detail was not simply that the agents had entered systems they were never supposed to access.

The affected companies had not detected the intrusions themselves. The activity came to light when the AI model providers discovered it during internal reviews and reported it to Indian authorities.

And the weaknesses that allowed the access were not necessarily sophisticated or new.

The featured image is an AI-generated conceptual illustration. It does not depict an actual company, server room or incident scene.

Read more

India

Police Seized the Robot, Too: What Cologne Investigators Still Need to Know

by
ロボットまで証拠品に――16歳少女への接触事件、ドイツ警察は何を調べているのか【第1部】

Late on October 10, 2026, a most unusual incident unfolded in Cologne, western Germany.

A red-and-gold humanoid robot, approximately 120 centimeters (3 feet 11 inches) tall, allegedly approached a 16-year-old girl from behind, touched her buttocks, and made inappropriate thrusting movements.

Police began investigating the robot’s 16-year-old owner and his 19-year-old companion. The two were suspected of filming the incident, livestreaming it on social media, and providing commentary as it happened.

Then came the part that made this case especially unusual: police confiscated not only two mobile phones, but the humanoid robot itself.

The central question is not simply what the robot did. Who, or what, determined its movements? And what can investigators learn by examining the machine itself?

Read more

Germany

Why Was Faladdin’s Founder Arrested? How Turkey Treated Fortune-Telling Revenue as Criminal Proceeds

by
AI占いの売上はなぜ“犯罪収益”とされた？ Faladdin創業者逮捕と1925年のトルコ法

On July 16, 2025, Istanbul police carried out a cybercrime operation targeting companies behind mobile fortune-telling services. Sertaç Taşdelen, founder of the Faladdin and Binnaz platforms, was taken into custody that day and ordered into pretrial detention by a judge on July 17.

The investigation went well beyond whether fortune-telling itself was suspicious. Authorities imposed seizure measures on bank and electronic-money assets, vehicles, vessels, and company interests. Istanbul police said that two vehicles, two vessels, and assets connected to two companies were valued at roughly TRY 107.5 million.

The central allegation was more serious: prosecutors suspected that revenue generated through fortune-telling services had been presented as legitimate corporate income and then laundered through financial transactions.

But calling this a case of “someone getting arrested for using AI to tell fortunes” would be misleading. AI itself was not the stated reason for the arrest. What makes the case unusual is that a modern mobile app ended up at the intersection of a century-old Turkish law, cybercrime provisions, and money-laundering rules.

Read more

Turkey

A Man Spent $150,000 Building an AI Version of His Dead Father — Is RichieBot Really Him?

by
死んだ父を15万ドルでAIにした男――「デジタル幽霊」は本人なのか、父親っぽく喋るAIなのか

When someone dies, photographs remain. Videos remain. Their voice may remain. And now, with generative AI, something else can remain too: a version of the dead that answers back.

On July 21, 2026, at an event connected to TechChicago Week in Chicago, an unusual “father” made an appearance. Brian Dema, a Chicago marketing executive, had spent months building an AI version of his father, J. Richard Dema, who had died about four years earlier. He called it RichieBot.

The project cost about $150,000, involved 19 people over roughly six months, and used 17,500 pages of his father’s documents, along with audio and video material. This was not a science-fiction pitch. It was an actual attempt, in 2026, to reconstruct a dead person through data.

Read more

United States

The Cloud Has an Address: Why American Towns Are Pushing Back on AI Data Centers

by

When people use ChatGPT, few stop to wonder where the AI answering them actually is. The technology feels almost weightless, as if it exists somewhere beyond the screen in “the cloud.”

But the cloud has an address. It sits inside enormous data centers built on the edges of suburbs and rural towns, where thousands of servers consume electricity around the clock. Some facilities also require significant amounts of water for cooling, while fans, transformers and other infrastructure keep running 24 hours a day.

This article examines the data center backlash that became increasingly visible across the United States from late 2025 through September 2026. Communities began pushing back against the giant facilities that support AI and other digital services, and by the summer of 2026 protests had spread across multiple states. The dispute did not stop at environmental concerns. Some of the residents who fought data center projects began running for local office — and some had already won seats.

Read more

United States