AI News Flash for February 18, 2026 at 05:00 UTC.

Topics:

1. Tesla Drops Autopilot Branding, Dodges California DMV Suspension

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/17/tesla-dodges-30-day-suspension-in-california-after-removing-autopilot/

2. Cohere Tiny Aya Multilingual AI Models for 70+ Languages

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/17/cohere-launches-a-family-of-open-multilingual-models/

3. South Korea Prosecutors Expand Generative AI for Criminal Justice

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/02/17/prosecution-service-generative-ai-tools/8361771387872/

4. India AI Impact Summit - OpenAI Reveals 100M+ Weekly Indian Users

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/16/all-the-important-news-from-the-ongoing-india-ai-summit/

AI News Flash for February 18, 2026 at 04:00 UTC.

Topics:

1. Warner Bros Discovery vs ByteDance Seedance 2.0 Copyright

https://deadline.com/2026/02/seedance-warner-bros-cease-and-desist-letter-1236727850/

2. NVIDIA India AI Startup VC Partnerships

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/18/nvidia-india-ai-vc-data-center-partners.html

3. Celestica Raises 2026 Outlook to $17B

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/celestica-lifts-2026-outlook-ai-021221509.html

4. Meta In-House Chip Doubts Amid NVIDIA Deal

https://siliconangle.com/2026/02/17/meta-agrees-buy-millions-ai-chips-nvidia-raising-doubts-house-hardware/

AI News Flash for February 18, 2026 at 03:00 UTC.

Topics:

1. Perplexity Drops Advertising, Goes All-In on Subscriptions

https://www.ft.com/content/6eec07a5-34a8-4f78-a9ed-93ab4263d43c

2. YouTube Suffers Major Outage Due to Recommendation System Failure

https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/youtube-is-down-for-thousands-of-users-in-the-us-020718165.html?src=rss

3. Starboard Pushes Riot Platforms to Accelerate AI Data Center Pivot

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-18/starboard-is-said-to-urge-riot-to-speed-up-shift-to-data-centers

AI News Flash for February 18, 2026 at 02:00 UTC.

Topics:

1. Pentagon vs Anthropic AI Weaponization

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6389495719112

2. California AI Oversight Unit

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/california-builds-ai-oversight-unit-presses-xai-investigation-2026-02-18/

3. Mesh Optical Technologies $50M

https://siliconangle.com/2026/02/17/mesh-optical-technologies-raises-50m-mass-produce-american-made-data-center-links/

4. Promptware Kill Chain

https://www.scworld.com/brief/promptware-kill-chain-a-new-framework-for-ai-llm-attacks

AI News Flash for February 18, 2026 at 01:00 UTC.

Topics:

1. Tesla Grok Rollout to 9 European Countries

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/17/tesla-adding-grok-ai-uk-europe.html

2. Ireland DPC Opens GDPR Investigation into Grok

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-grok-eu-investigation-ireland-ai-generated-nonsconsensual-images

3. AI Super PAC Battle for Midterms

https://thehill.com/newsletters/technology/5742670-battle-over-ai-regulation-hits-airwaves-ahead-of-midterms/

4. SF Fed Daly on AI Hiring Transition

https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2026/02/18/mary-daly-ai-hiring-transition-phase

AI News Flash for February 18, 2026 at 00:00 UTC.

Topics:

1. Meta Patent for AI Posting on Behalf of Deceased Users

https://mashable.com/article/meta-patent-ai-dead-bot-llm

2. Miko AI Toy Adds Off Switch After Political Pressure

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/ai-toy-company-miko-adds-ai-switch-political-pressure-rcna259401

3. Microsoft $50B AI Divide Investment Plan

https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2026/02/17/acting-with-urgency-to-address-the-growing-ai-divide/

4. US Department of Labor AI Literacy Framework

https://www.executivegov.com/articles/dol-ai-literacy-framework

AI News Flash for February 17, 2026 at 22:00 UTC.

Topics:

1. Meta × NVIDIA Massive GPU Partnership

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/17/meta-nvidia-deal-ai-data-center-chips.html

2. Unilever × Google Cloud Five-Year AI Deal

https://www.unilever.com/news/press-and-media/press-releases/2026/google-cloud-partnership-pioneers-next-generation-of-consumer-goods-technologies/

3. SEC AI Sandbox Innovation Exemption

https://fedscoop.com/sec-ai-sandboxes-paul-atkins/

4. AI Selloff Pause and Software Stock Rebound Signs

https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/global-stocks-markets-dow-news-02-17-2026-a8663bbe

AI News Flash for February 17, 2026 at 21:00 UTC.

Topics:

1. Pentagon JETMS AI Task Management for 150K Users

https://defensescoop.com/2026/02/17/pentagon-ai-joint-enterprise-task-management-system-jetms/

2. JPMorgan Says AI Costs May Trigger Bank Mergers

https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2026/jpmorgan-chase-analysts-predict-ai-costs-could-trigger-bank-mergers

3. AI Shifts SaaS From Subscriptions to Consumption

https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2026/ai-moves-saas-subscriptions-consumption

4. Stanford HAI Flags AI Sovereignty Definition Gap

https://hai.stanford.edu/news/ai-sovereigntys-definitional-dilemma

AI News Flash for February 17, 2026 at 20:00 UTC.

Topics:

1. SF Fed Daly "The AI Moment" Speech

https://www.frbsf.org/news-and-media/speeches/mary-c-daly/2026/02/the-ai-moment-possibilities-productivity-and-policy/

2. HII and Path Robotics Physical AI Shipbuilding

https://hii.com/hii-teams-with-path-robotics-to-integrate-physical-ai-into-manned-and-unmanned-shipbuilding

3. Render Raises $100M for AI Agent Cloud

https://www.pymnts.com/news/investment-tracker/2026/render-raises-100-million-to-build-cloud-tech-for-ai-agents/

4. JPMorgan's "AI-Resilient" 19 Software Stocks

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jpmorgan-flags-ai-resilient-software-193032806.html

AI News Flash for February 17, 2026 at 19:00 UTC.

Topics:

1. Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.6 Release

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/17/anthropic-ai-claude-sonnet-4-6-default-free-pro.html

2. Warsh AI Interest Rate Argument

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/17/economy/federal-reserve-ai-job-market-rates

3. AI Productivity Paradox

https://fortune.com/2026/02/17/ai-productivity-paradox-ceo-study-robert-solow-information-technology-age/

4. AI Startup Brutal Work Culture

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2026/feb/17/ai-startups-work-culture-san-francisco