The battle for AI dominance has left a large footprint—and it’s only getting bigger and more expensive.

In the AI boom, chatbots and GPTs come and go quickly. (Remember Llama?) GPT-5 had a big year, but 2026 will be all about Qwen.

Big AI companies courted controversy by scraping wide swaths of the public internet. With the rise of AI agents, the next data grab is far more private.

A surge of AI-generated content is frustrating Pinterest users and left some questioning whether the platform still works at all.

WIRED spoke with DeepMind’s Pushmeet Kohli about the recent past—and promising future—of the Nobel Prize-winning research project that changed biology and chemistry forever.

Users of AI image generators are offering each other instructions on how to use the tech to alter pictures of women into realistic, revealing deepfakes.

The company made 80 times as many reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children during the first six months of 2025 as it did in the same period a year prior.

Videos such as fake ads featuring AI children playing with vibrators or Jeffrey Epstein and Diddy-themed playsets are being made with Sora 2 and posted to TikTok.

Two decades ago social media promised to connect people with pals far and wide. Twenty years online has left us turning to AI for kinship. IRL companionship is the future.

In today’s episode of Uncanny Valley, we dive into five stories—from AI to DOGE—that encapsulate the year and give us clues as to what might unfold in 2026.