Apple has updated its App Store rules to go after apps that use AI to make fake nude images of real people without their consent. It also tightened rules on apps that hide features from Apple's reviewers. The update was posted on October 16, 2026.

Key facts

Apple's post is dated October 16, 2026, and gives no separate effective date, per Apple.
Apple says it prevented over 150,000 apps with safety issues from reaching customers last year.
Apple also says it ended over 193,000 developer accounts for fraud and abuse last year.
9to5Mac says the new Section 2.5.19 bans hidden, dormant or undocumented features, and names code obfuscation as grounds for removal.
Apple did not name any specific apps in its post.

Corrected 19 Oct: we fixed details of this story after checking the source again.

Why it matters to you

Fewer harmful AI apps on phones, including kids' phones.

Key number: Rules updated 16 Oct 2026

Sources

Open this story on its own page

Related on our site

Apple

iPhone Duo sells out, deliveries slip to 2027

17 Oct 2026, 03:03 IST

What happened

Apple's first folding phone, the iPhone Duo, opened for pre-orders on October 16, and delivery dates slid into next year within hours. Apple called demand "nothing short of extraordinary." If you want one soon, you will probably wait.

Key facts

Price: the Duo starts at $1,999 for the 256 GB model, per CBS News. MacRumors gives a range of $1,999 to $3,199, depending on storage up to 2 TB.
Release date: October 23, 2026, according to MacRumors. The first orders are set to arrive that day.
Delays: in some countries, including Brazil, 9to5Mac says delivery estimates moved into early February.
Resale: 9to5Mac says sellers on eBay and X are asking as much as $10,000.
Analyst view: an analyst quoted by CBS News said demand is "running well ahead of supply out of the gates."

Corrected 19 Oct: we fixed details of this story after checking the source again.

Why it matters to you

Want one soon? You may wait three months.

Key number: Late January 2027 delivery; early February in Brazil

Sources

Open this story on its own page

Related on our site

Anthropic

Claude solves a 25-year-old encryption mystery

16 Oct 2026, 22:32 IST

What happened

Claude traced the secret seeds behind NIST's ECDSA curves to a random number tool, not an NSA backdoor.

Corrected 19 Oct: we fixed details of this story after checking the source again.

Why it matters to you

The locks guarding your logins and payments look safe after all.

Key number: 25 years: the curve seeds were published unexplained in 2000

Sources

Open this story on its own page

Related on our site

Reflection AI

New US lab gives away a giant AI free

16 Oct 2026, 18:52 IST

What happened

Reflection AI, a new US lab, has released the full weights of its first big model, called Beam. Anyone can download it, and the license is a very open one. That matters because a company can run a model this size on its own machines.

Key facts

Size: 501 billion parameters in total, with 23 billion active for each word it handles, according to Hugging Face. Parameters are the numbers inside a model that hold what it learned.
Memory: it can take in 1 million tokens at once (a token is a small piece of a word), as listed on the same Hugging Face post.
Coding score: 81.6% on SWE-Bench Verified for the full-size version, a test where the AI fixes real software bugs. Reflection supplied the score.
Other scores supplied by Reflection: 80.1% on Terminal Bench v2.1 and 90.6% on the GPQA Diamond science test.
Training: about two months on several thousand high-end graphics chips, says SiliconANGLE.
Smaller versions: Reflection also released two shrunken copies, called FP8 and NVFP4, that need less memory and score a little lower.

Why it matters to you

Companies can run a top-size AI on their own computers.

Key number: 501B parameters, 23B active, 1M-token memory

Sources

Open this story on its own page

Related on our site

AI News October 2026: A Reality Check Before the IPOs