Australian regulators are weighing a proposal that would compel app stores to block AI chat services that do not implement age‑verification systems. The move aims to protect younger users from mature content and could be enforced as early as March 9. Non‑compliant services may face fines up to A$49.5 million. The policy reflects a broader global debate over who should bear responsibility for safeguarding children online, with the United States seeing platform operators lobby against store‑level restrictions. Read more →

Anthropic's AI assistant Claude has surged to the number‑one position on Apple’s Top Free Apps chart, overtaking OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. The surge follows President Trump’s directive that bans federal agencies from using Claude after the company refused to relax certain guardrails. The move sparked a wave of public support that boosted downloads, while Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth labeled the company a supply‑chain risk. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman criticized the decision, calling it a very bad one, but expressed hope for a better resolution. Read more →

Anthropic faced a large‑scale disruption affecting Claude.ai and Claude Code, with thousands of users unable to log in. The company said the issue was tied to login/logout paths and that the Claude API remained functional while a fix was being implemented. The outage occurred as the Claude app surged to the top of the App Store, overtaking ChatGPT, and as the company faced scrutiny from the U.S. government over its AI safeguards for defense use. Read more →