Tech News — 2026-03-26#

Story of the Day#

In a landmark verdict that threatens to crack Big Tech’s liability shield, a jury found Meta and Alphabet’s Google liable for intentionally designing addictive products that harmed a 20-year-old user. The companies were ordered to pay $6 million in damages, setting a precedent that places social media platforms in a similar legal category as Big Tobacco and opening the floodgates for thousands of similar claims.

Top Stories#

OpenAI Shelves Erotic Chatbot · Financial Times / The Verge OpenAI has indefinitely killed its plans to release a sexualized “adult mode” for ChatGPT following intense pushback from investors and staff. Internal concerns mounted that users would form unhealthy, sycophantic attachments to the AI, with one advisor warning the bot risked becoming a “sexy suicide coach”. The decision marks the second major “side quest” the company has dropped this week alongside its video generator Sora, as CEO Sam Altman refocuses on core enterprise tools.

Arm Begins Selling Its Own Chips · Stratechery In a massive strategic pivot, Arm is abandoning its 35-year IP-licensing-only model to sell its own physical processors, starting with the Arm AGI CPU. Aimed directly at the booming AI data center market, CEO Rene Haas is betting that skyrocketing demands for agentic AI require high-core-count, power-efficient CPUs to keep GPU accelerators fed. Meta has already signed on as the first major customer for the new hardware.

Google Launches Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Globally · Google Blog Google is rolling out its newest real-time voice and vision agent, Gemini 3.1 Flash Live, to over 200 countries and territories. Designed to slash conversational latency below 300 milliseconds and mimic natural human cadences, the multimodal model powers the global expansion of “Search Live,” allowing users to point their cameras at objects and have fluid, real-time audio conversations with the AI.

Musk Loses Antitrust Suit Over X Ad Boycott · Ars Technica A federal judge has dismissed X’s antitrust lawsuit against advertisers who boycotted the platform after Elon Musk took over and gutted its Trust and Safety teams. The judge ruled that the boycott was perfectly legal, noting that antitrust laws protect consumers, not competitors, and that advertisers simply chose to spend their money elsewhere. The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning Musk cannot refile it.

Netflix Hikes Prices (Again) · Engadget Death, taxes, and streaming price hikes. Netflix is increasing subscription fees across all its tiers, bumping its ad-supported plan to $9 per month and its standard ad-free plan from $18 to $20 per month. The price increases, the first since January 2025, come as the streaming giant continues to pour capital into live events, sports, and a revamped user interface.

Wikipedia Bans AI-Generated Articles · The Verge English Wikipedia has officially banned the use of large language models for writing or rewriting articles. While minor exceptions exist for translation and basic copyedits—provided a human rigorously checks the output—administrators framed the move as a necessary pushback against the “enshittification” and inaccuracy of AI-generated content.

Also Worth Knowing#

• Apple Kills the Mac Pro (Engadget): Apple has officially discontinued its high-end, “cheese grater” Mac Pro desktop workstation, ending the line to focus entirely on the smaller, more successful Mac Studio.
• Uber’s Croatian Robotaxis (TechCrunch): Uber is teaming up with China’s Pony.ai and Croatian startup Verne to launch what they claim will be Europe’s first commercially available robotaxi service in Zagreb.
• Anthropic Beats Trump Ban (Bloomberg): A judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s designation of Anthropic as a “supply chain risk,” allowing the AI startup to continue doing lucrative government business.
• Lawmakers Target Data Center Power (Wired): US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley are pushing the Energy Information Administration to mandate comprehensive, annual energy-use disclosures to track the massive power draw of AI data centers.
• David Sacks Exits White House Role (The Verge): Tech billionaire David Sacks is no longer serving as President Trump’s Special Advisor on AI and Crypto after spending more than a year in the role as a special government employee.