News — 2026-05-27

Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has unveiled a new online platform that lets residents report AI data center projects in their neighborhoods. The site, featuring an interactive map, has already logged 2,716 submissions, most of them from Texas, where a massive 3‑gigawatt facility by MSB Global is sparking legal battles and community outrage. Users cite water depletion, rising electricity costs and health worries as their chief concerns. Brockovich, famed for her 1990s groundwater case, hopes the tool will give locals a louder voice and pressure developers to address environmental impacts. Read more

Robinhood announced new AI agentic features that let users create dedicated accounts for autonomous trading bots and grant them a virtual credit card for payments. The beta service links agents to a pre‑loaded wallet, limits their spending, and provides real‑time notifications and fraud monitoring. While only stock trades are supported today, the firm plans to expand to options, crypto and other markets later. The virtual card is initially available to Robinhood Gold Card holders, with monthly caps and optional approval prompts. Read more

Beijing has begun requiring its leading artificial‑intelligence scientists, startup founders and private‑sector executives to obtain government approval before traveling abroad. The move, reported by the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, signals a broader effort to curb brain drain and keep AI talent under state control as the United States and China vie for dominance in the technology. Restrictions have intensified around the stalled Meta‑Manus deal, and officials are also tightening rules on foreign capital flowing into Chinese AI firms. Read more

Voice‑AI startup ElevenLabs rolled out Music v2, its second‑generation music‑generation model, capable of changing genres within a single track. The system handles complex vocals, multilingual lyrics and non‑musical sound effects while letting creators edit specific sections without disturbing the rest of a song. Built on licensed data and cleared for commercial use, Music v2 is available through ElevenCreative and the forthcoming ElevenAPI. The launch comes roughly ten months after the original model and follows a wave of AI‑driven music tools from Google, Stability AI and Suno. Read more

Box founder Aaron Levie warned that tech CEOs are experiencing an "AI psychosis," a disconnect between hype and the gritty work still required to deliver value. In the first five months of 2026, layoffs hit 115,430 employees across 152 tech firms, a pace that rivals the entire previous year. Executives cite AI as a driver, yet research from UC Berkeley, MIT and the National Bureau of Economic Research finds little concrete productivity gain. The clash between lofty AI promises and harsh workforce reductions is reshaping the sector. Read more

Major AI chatbot providers have rolled out tiered subscription plans that range from under $10 a month to several hundred dollars for power users. OpenAI’s ChatGPT offers Go, Plus and two Pro levels; Google’s Gemini provides Plus, Pro and two Ultra tiers; Microsoft’s Copilot comes in Personal, Family and Premium versions; Anthropic’s Claude, Perplexity and Grok each have multiple paid options with varying usage limits and feature bundles. The new pricing structures aim to balance broader access with premium capabilities such as higher usage caps, advanced models, integrated storage and special tools. Read more

OpenRouter, the AI gateway startup founded in 2023, closed a $113 million Series B led by CapitalG, Google’s growth fund, pushing its post‑money valuation to roughly $1.3 billion. The round follows a $40 million Series A a year earlier and comes as the company reports 8 million users, access to more than 400 models and a five‑fold surge in token processing. OpenRouter’s platform, which lets enterprises swap AI models to balance cost and performance, signals a shift toward a multi‑model AI ecosystem. Read more

Security researchers have uncovered a severe vulnerability, dubbed BadHost (CVE-2026-48710), in the Starlette web framework that powers FastAPI and dozens of AI‑related Python packages. The flaw allows a malicious HTTP Host header to bypass path‑based authorization, giving attackers access to servers that store valuable credentials for AI agents. Starlette versions before 1.0.1 are vulnerable, and the issue affects an estimated 325 million weekly downloads. The fix arrived Friday, and a joint scanner from X41 D‑Sec and Nemesis now lets operators test their deployments. Read more

A recent examination of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, which addresses artificial intelligence’s societal impact, indicates that large portions could have been generated by AI. Researchers using the Pangram detector flagged up to 100 percent of some sections as machine‑written, while other parts appeared wholly human. Vatican officials have not responded to requests for comment. Read more