Daily AI Recap: Jan 16, 2026

Welcome to today's curated briefing of the most important AI developments.

• California AG sends Musk’s xAI a cease-and-desist order over sexual deepfakes: The flood of AI-generated sexual imagery has spurred concern from state and Congressional officials alike....
• ChatGPT users are about to get hit with targeted ads: OpenAI says that users impacted by the ads will have some control over what they see....
• Trump administration wants tech companies to buy $15B of power plants they may not use: In an attempt to alleviate rising electricity prices, the White House wants grid operator PJM to hold an auction for new generating capacity, and it wants tech companies to bid....
• OpenAI and Anthropic are making their play for healthcare, and we’re not surprised: AI companies are clustering around healthcare, and fast.  In just the past week, OpenAI bought health startup Torch, Anthropic launched Claude for Health, and Sam Altman-backed Merge Labs closed a $25...
• Maximum-Effiency Coding Setup: Learn how to be a more efficient programmer The post Maximum-Effiency Coding Setup appeared first on Towards Data Science....
• The rise of ‘micro’ apps: non-developers are writing apps instead of buying them: A new era of app creation is here. It's fun, it's fast, and it's fleeting....
• The AI healthcare gold rush is here: AI companies are clustering around healthcare and fast.  In just the past week, OpenAI bought health startup Torch, Anthropic launched Claude for healthcare, and Sam Altman-backed MergeLabs closed a $...
• From RGB to Lab: Addressing Color Artifacts in AI Image Compositing: A multi-tier approach to segmentation, color correction, and domain-specific enhancement The post From RGB to Lab: Addressing Color Artifacts in AI Image Compositing appeared first on Towards Data Sci...
• GuidePoint Security: Ransomware Activity Reaches New Records: New Annual Report from the GuidePoint Research and Intelligence Team (GRIT) Reveals a 58% YoY Increase in Ransomware Victims as Record Activity Becomes the New Norm GuidePoint Security, the cybersecur...
• Corsica Technologies Achieves 105% Growth, Expands Managed Services Portfolio: Strategic partnerships and AI innovation drive company’s growth in managed services bookings and overall success in 2025 Corsica Technologies, a leading national managed service provider (MSP) and ind...
• The Great Data Closure: Why Databricks and Snowflake Are Hitting Their Ceiling: Acquisitions, venture, and an increasingly competitive landscape all point to a market ceiling The post The Great Data Closure: Why Databricks and Snowflake Are Hitting Their Ceiling appeared first on...
• The truth left out from Elon Musk’s recent court filing: The truth left out from Elon Musk’s recent court filing....
• GATE DA: Study Material and Questions: The yearly GATE exam is right around the corner. For some this was a long time coming—for others, a last minute priority. Whichever group you belong to, preparation would be the only focus for you now...
• The Complete Guide to Data Augmentation for Machine Learning: Suppose you’ve built your machine learning model, run the experiments, and stared at the results wondering what went wrong....
• 10 Highest Paying Companies in India for Data Science Roles: Among the most valuable roles in the corporate world today, data science enjoys a pole position with just a handful of alternatives that can even match its scale. Record-breaking salaries are being pa...
• Soterix Systems Welcomes Paul Smith as EVP of Sales, North America: Soterix Systems, an innovator in AI-driven cloud computing software, today announced the appointment of Paul Smith as Executive Vice President of Sales. Smith’s arrival supports the aggressive expansi...
• Africa’s Data Center Ambitions Face Risks from Grid Gaps, Fragmentation: As cross-continental digitalisation developments converge to forge tomorrow’s AI economy, Africa today is united in its ambition to become a thriving, technologically empowered market where world-clas...
• HYCU® Earns Place On CRN’s Cloud 100 List For 2026: Ability to Protect 90+ SaaS Apps and Cloud Services Data, Partner-first Approach, and Innovation to Drive Customer Success and Accelerate Business Growth for Channel Partners Highlight Latest Industry...
• Forescout Named Keysight Network Visibility Tech Partner of the Year: Inaugural award highlights innovation and meaningful customer outcomes including enhanced efficiency, reduced infrastructure costs, and enhanced security Forescout Technologies, a global leader in cyb...
• Tanium and Computacenter Partner to Secure the Government of Canada: Autonomous IT leader achieves ATO for EVAS Program Tanium, a leader in Autonomous IT, and global technology and services provider Computacenter Canada Inc. have partnered to provide critical real-time...
• Anthropic taps former Microsoft India MD to lead Bengaluru expansion: Irina Ghose joins Anthropic as India managing director after 24 years at Microsoft....
• Silicon Valley’s messiest breakup is definitely headed to court: OpenAI and Microsoft tried to dodge a courtroom showdown with Elon Musk, but a federal judge on Thursday rejected their requests to dismiss the case....
• How to Build a Safe, Autonomous Prior Authorization Agent for Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management with Human-in-the-Loop Controls: In this tutorial, we demonstrate how an autonomous, agentic AI system can simulate the end-to-end prior authorization workflow within healthcare Revenue Cycle Management (RCM). We show how an agent co...
• AI: A World&Changer, or a Trap for the Unready?: Explore whether artificial intelligence (AI) will level the playing field for all or leave behind those who are unprepared. This article breaks down AI’s potential as an equalizer in education, health...
• Introducing ChatGPT Go, now available worldwide: ChatGPT Go is now available worldwide, offering expanded access to GPT-5.2 Instant, higher usage limits, and longer memory—making advanced AI more affordable globally....
• Our approach to advertising and expanding access to ChatGPT: OpenAI plans to test advertising in the U.S. for ChatGPT’s free and Go tiers to expand affordable access to AI worldwide, while protecting privacy, trust, and answer quality....

• AI journalism startup Symbolic.ai signs deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp: The startup claims its AI platform can help optimize editorial processes and research....
• Social Determinants of Health Prediction for ICD-9 Code with Reasoning Models: arXiv:2601.09709v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Social Determinants of Health correlate with patient outcomes but are rarely captured in structured d...
• The Geometry of Thought: Disclosing the Transformer as a Tropical Polynomial Circuit: arXiv:2601.09775v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We prove that the Transformer self-attention mechanism in the high-confidence regime ($\beta \to \inf...
• TimeSAE: Sparse Decoding for Faithful Explanations of Black-Box Time Series Models: arXiv:2601.09776v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As black box models and pretrained models gain traction in time series applications, understanding an...
• QFed: Parameter-Compact Quantum-Classical Federated Learning: arXiv:2601.09809v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Organizations and enterprises across domains such as healthcare, finance, and scientific research are...
• Eluder dimension: localise it!: arXiv:2601.09825v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We establish a lower bound on the eluder dimension of generalised linear model classes, showing that ...
• AI Survival Stories: a Taxonomic Analysis of AI Existential Risk: arXiv:2601.09765v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Since the release of ChatGPT, there has been a lot of debate about whether AI systems pose an existen...
• : arXiv:2601.09770v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent advances in vision-language models (VLMs) and reinforcement learning (RL) have driven progress...

• AI journalism startup Symbolic.ai signs deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp
• Blue Mantis Promotes Adam Caponigro to Senior Vice President of Services
• From OpenAI’s offices to a deal with Eli Lilly — how Chai Discovery became one of the flashiest names in AI drug development

• Lemon.io: Senior Python & LLM /AI Engineer
• Listen Labs raises $69M after viral billboard hiring stunt to scale AI customer interviews
• OnTheGoSystems: PHP Developer (Spanish, French or German speakers)
• Toptal: Embedded firmware developer
• Toptal: Network Engineer for AI automotive product
• Toptal: Technical Project Manager with Salesforce CPQ experience