2026-09-03
Three sites manufactured 215,128 “best software” pages so Perplexity would cite them
Perplexity’s “sources” include three ghost sites that exist so AIs will believe them.
Researchers asked Perplexity for the best products in 380 software categories. Nearly 60% of the cited sources sat outside the 100k most-visited sites. Three nearly identical domains, none of which existed before late 2023, had generated 215,128 machine-written “best X software” pages; two even titled their homepages “Facts & Grounding Page.
What Happened
Trellner Research report (2 Sep 2026); Hacker News (448+ pts). Primary URL: https://trellner.com/reports/manufactured-sources-behind-ai-recommendations/
2026-09-03
The U.S. government told a court that training ChatGPT on the New York Times is national security
Washington just argued that letting ChatGPT read the New York Times is a matter of national defense.
The Justice Department filed its first brief in the AI copyright wars, backing OpenAI against the New York Times and other publishers. Training on news articles is fair use, it argued, because the public benefits and U.S. AI dominance outweigh harm to newspapers.
What Happened
DOJ statement of interest filed 2 Sep 2026; NYT, Reuters, AP, Politico. Primary URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/technology/justice-department-openai-copyright-suit.html
2026-09-03
Nvidia signed a $13B deal for Hugging Face and promised to keep the model zoo open
The company selling the picks and shovels just bought the mining camp and promised not to put up a fence.
Nvidia entered a definitive agreement to buy Hugging Face for about $12.9–13B. The filing commits to keeping the platform open and supporting other silicon vendors.
What Happened
NVIDIA 8-K (2 Sep 2026); Engadget, Reuters, The Information. Primary URL: https://www.engadget.com/2250197/nvidia-buys-hugging-face/
2026-09-03
China’s first fully AI-made drama hit prime-time TV and sent the broadcaster’s stock up 64%
Journey to the West, generated by AI, just made a TV stock the hottest in Asia.
A 30-episode AIGC series, *Beyond Wukong*, aired in Hunan TV prime time. Mango Excellent Media shares jumped as much as 64%.
What Happened
Bloomberg (3 Sep); Mango TV / Hunan Satellite premiere 31 Aug. Primary URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-03/ai-drama-frenzy-sends-china-broadcaster-mango-soaring-64
2026-09-03
Google shipped a cyber model only available to “trusted defenders
The Gemini that finds and patches zero-days is invite-only—for people Google trusts to defend, not attack.
Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber is tuned for autonomous vulnerability discovery and patching. It is gated through the Fairwind Program for governments, critical infrastructure, and software maintainers.
What Happened
Google DeepMind blog (2 Sep 2026); Ars Technica. Primary URL: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/3-8-flash-and-3-8-flash-cyber/
2026-09-03
Anker put a 26-TOPS local LLM and 48TB of your life in a home hub
A home hub just offered to keep 48 terabytes of your life and a local AI agent off the internet.
Anker unveiled MindBase, a Matter/HomeKit hub with an in-house local LLM, 64GB internal storage, and bays for up to 48TB of local disks.
What Happened
IFA 2026; The Verge, Tom’s Guide, HomeKit News.
Sources
- No public source URL captured yet.