Retailers are redesigning their websites to accommodate AI-powered product discovery and recommendations in 2026, while strategically working to keep transactions on their own platforms to maintain control over valuable customer data and future sales opportunities.
NHS England has issued an apology and acknowledged that employees from Palantir and other suppliers have access to identifiable patient data, contradicting previous transparency claims that only NHS staff could view such sensitive information. The admission has prompted NHS England to revise how it evaluates the controversial £330 million Palantir platform deal amid staff concerns.
The Federal Trade Commission, Utah, and Los Angeles County sued telehealth company Hims & Hers Health for allegedly misleading consumers about its products and sharing private health information with advertisers. Shares fell 10% following the announcement.
Patreon has shifted from using robots.txt files to request AI bots not scrape creator content to actively blocking unauthorized AI training crawlers through Cloudflare's Crawl Control technology. The platform reports the new enforcement approach has significantly reduced scraping activity while still allowing legitimate search and discovery bots.
Meta unveiled multiple AI products in July 2026, including the Muse Spark 1.1 coding model for developers, a new AI image generator integrated into Instagram and chatbot services, and its first paid AI model tier. The releases triggered privacy backlash as Instagram began automatically allowing users' public posts to be used for AI training unless they opt out.
Microsoft has limited internal employee access to Anthropic's newly released Claude Fable AI model, citing concerns about data retention policies. The restriction comes shortly after Anthropic launched Claude Fable, described as its first Mythos-class AI model.
A bipartisan parliamentary committee has issued a report criticizing Britain's reliance on U.S. tech company Palantir in the public sector, warning that the dependency on the $375 billion data analytics firm represents an 'unacceptable point of weakness' for the country.
Singapore Health Minister Ong Ye Kung and healthcare industry experts warn that public distrust could derail AI implementation in healthcare, calling for balanced approaches to patient data and responsible deployment frameworks. Singapore is piloting AI clinical decision support tools through its SIMFONI initiative for chronic disease management.
A joint investigation by four Canadian privacy regulators concluded that OpenAI violated federal and provincial privacy laws when training its ChatGPT model, resulting in the collection and use of sensitive personal information without proper consent or safeguards.
A Bloomberg investigation revealed that state health insurance marketplaces, including those in Virginia and Washington, D.C., shared users' personal information including citizenship and race data with advertisers through embedded ad trackers. Virginia and D.C. paused the data collection and sharing following the report.
Trump administration reversed the 2024 HHS restructuring of technology functions, restoring the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) name and reorganizing how AI, data, and cybersecurity policy are coordinated across the department.
