AI news of 19 August 2026

Amazon’s drones will soon deliver to nearly 500 US cities and towns

Amazon's drone delivery service will expand to nearly 500 US cities by year end, six times current coverage.

Prime Air is launching in Georgia, Ohio, Illinois, Idaho, and New York soon. | Image: Joseph Ciembroniewicz/Omaha World-Herald via Getty Images Amazon says its drone delivery service will reach "nearly 500 cities and towns in the United States" by the end of this year, increasing its coverage by six times compared to the current footprint. Prime Air deliveries will soon be launched in the Chicago, Illinois; Syracuse, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Atlanta, Georgia; and Boise, Idaho metro areas, according to Amazon's announcement, with "more communities to come later this year." These will join 11 locations across the US where Amazon already offers drone deliveries, with each Prime Air site serving an area of approximately 175 square miles. The service aims…

The Verge 1mo ago

AI infrastructure investment

Nvidia’s new financial strategy does not compute

Financial firms treat compute as asset class, reflecting infrastructure demands of AI industry.

The Verge 1mo ago

AI progress limits

The Download: AI’s self-improvement problem, and what’s driving the heat

AI self-improvement trajectories slower than industry predictions, raising questions about recursive progress.

MIT Technology Review 1mo ago

code generation AI

Replit expands access to software creation with GPT-5.6 Luna Opens at the publisher in a new tab

Replit launches free tier with GPT model to democratize AI-assisted software creation.

OpenAI 1mo ago

Surveillance AI

Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code Opens at the publisher in a new tab

Flock's AI-powered police surveillance system goes beyond license plate tracking to identify people and activities.

Wired 1mo ago

AI watermarking, EU regulation

Coders Say They Already Found Workarounds to Claude’s Invisible Watermarks Opens at the publisher in a new tab

Developers bypass Anthropic's watermarking system within hours of announcement.

Wired 1mo ago

deepfakes, content moderation

Meta ran ads for an app promising to nudify female politicians

Meta's platform hosted ads for deepfake pornography app targeting female politicians.

Ars Technica 1mo ago

OpenAI, data privacy

Offering Zero Data Retention for frontier models Opens at the publisher in a new tab

OpenAI confirms zero data retention for API customers and previews privacy-preserving safety features.

OpenAI 1mo ago also at OpenAI

autonomous warfare

Ukrainian drones overwhelm Russian tanks’ new active protection system—for now

Ukrainian drones defeat new Russian tank defense systems designed to counter aerial threats.

Ars Technica 1mo ago

model optimization

LFM2.5 Q4\_0 Checkpoints from Quantization-Aware Distillation Opens at the publisher in a new tab

Model checkpoints released from quantization-aware distillation research.

Hugging Face 1mo ago

Amazon’s drones will soon deliver to nearly 500 US cities and towns

Nvidia’s new financial strategy does not compute

The Download: AI’s self-improvement problem, and what’s driving the heat

Replit expands access to software creation with GPT-5.6 Luna Opens at the publisher in a new tab

Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code Opens at the publisher in a new tab

Coders Say They Already Found Workarounds to Claude’s Invisible Watermarks Opens at the publisher in a new tab

Meta ran ads for an app promising to nudify female politicians

Offering Zero Data Retention for frontier models Opens at the publisher in a new tab

Ukrainian drones overwhelm Russian tanks’ new active protection system—for now

LFM2.5 Q4\_0 Checkpoints from Quantization-Aware Distillation Opens at the publisher in a new tab

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