AI News for July 15, 2026 — 7min.ai

[NEWS] New York enacts nation's first statewide AI data center moratorium: Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order pausing all new hyperscale data centers of 50MW or more for up to a year, making New York the first state to halt AI infrastructure construction.
[NEWS] OpenAI's first device is a screenless speaker built to 'feel alive': OpenAI's debut hardware product will be a portable, screenless smart speaker pitched internally as a "humanlike AI companion that lives in the home," per a Bloomberg report.
[NEWS] 26 workers sue Meta, alleging AI tools drove mass layoffs: Twenty-six current and former Meta employees sued the company, alleging it used a "constellation" of internal AI systems, including its Metamate chatbot, keystroke and activity monitoring, and AI-token-usage dashboards, to score, rank, and select workers for its May cut of roughly 8,000 jobs.
[NEWS] Hassabis calls for a US-led global watchdog for frontier AI: Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis proposed a new "Standards Body" to evaluate frontier models before release and coordinate an industry-wide slowdown if any are judged too dangerous.
[NEWS] DeepSeek chases $71B valuation weeks after first funding round: DeepSeek is in early talks to raise a new round at roughly a $71 billion pre-money valuation, just weeks after closing its first external round of about $7 billion at a $52 billion valuation.
[NEWS] IBM loses a quarter of its value as AI spending reshapes IT budgets: IBM shares plunged 25% in their worst single-day drop ever after preliminary Q2 revenue of $17.2 billion came in up just 1% and below forecasts, with infrastructure down 7%.
[TOOLS] Google Images gets Pinterest-style redesign and AI image generation: For Google Images' 25th anniversary, Google is turning the search page into a browsable, dynamic gallery of web images tailored to each user, with saveable collections, echoing Pinterest and aiming to keep users on its platform.
[NEWS] Alibaba and Honor deepen tie-up to build AI agentic devices: Alibaba Group and Honor, the smartphone maker spun off from Huawei, are deepening their partnership on an operating system for AI-powered agentic devices.
[NEWS] Publishers sue Google over Gemini AI training: Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier, and author Scott Turow filed a class action accusing Google of copying millions of copyrighted books to train Gemini in "one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history." The suit claims Google repurposed titles supplied for Google Books, Play Books, and Scholar, and internally flagged exposure to "$10Bs-$100Bs in potential fines." The complaint argues Gemini can generate a substitute for an original work, citing a 100-page murder mystery produced in 20 minutes for 39 cents.
[TOOLS] Canva launches Code 2.0, free AI website building for 265M users: Canva rolled out Canva Code 2.0, a major upgrade to its AI coding tool that lets users build interactive websites, apps, and experiences from plain-language prompts, then edit results with drag-and-drop as easily as a Canva presentation.

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