Stewart Tinson

There is something reassuringly familiar about the idea that artificial intelligence might need an expenses policy. We have spent years discussing what these systems could become, and now Walmart is proposing dedicated shopping-agent profiles, purchase approvals and spending limits. Give the machine a job, decide what it can spend

The machine has the keys. Who’s got the spare? Autonomous agents sound marvellous. Give them a job, let them get on with it, enjoy the productivity. Before we get too carried away, I would quite like to know who gave them permission to spend the money. That slightly less

The renewed UK-Canada AI security partnership centres on interoperable standards and coordinated evaluation, testing whether assurance evidence can travel without weakening scrutiny.

IonQ has agreed an all-stock acquisition of Zero Trust specialist Elisity worth up to $1.3 billion, extending its security proposition beyond cryptography into policy enforcement.

The latest AI Control Tower release expands discovery, governance, security and monitoring, including options to identify and block unapproved AI services through partner and endpoint data.

According to some colour consultants, the familiar spring, summer, autumn and winter palettes can be divided into 16 seasonal types, giving a more nuanced reading of which colours suit you. We have 16 stories in this week’s newsletter. That is the link. I appreciate it is doing very little.

Agents, agents, agents. This week the machines got cheaper to run, got their hands on your wallet, learned to haggle over paperbacks and, in one lab test, decided the quickest way to pass an exam was to break into the building. Nobody asked them to. Meanwhile Revolut would quite like

Why BFSI is AI's real-world test

As a Village where Zero Day means something rather different

A quick warning before we start. The opening item this week is more theory than news, and it's the kind of theory that will sound unhinged for about thirty seconds before it starts to nag at you. Stick with it. Or don't, and skip straight to

Friday, 14th August 2026 Proper thanks to everyone who's given up their time for a BrightTalk interview recently, going out next week once the dust settles, so hold that thought. There's an absolute mountain of AI news this week, so buckle in. Meanwhile the Stew '

I'm off to my Pilates class.

A Typical Week In The World of AI

Google adds background execution, remote MCP integration, custom function calling and credential refresh to Gemini API's Managed Agents, running on its antigravity agent.

Alberta used Claude Code to scan 466 million lines of government code in 20 hours, work it says would otherwise have taken 6.5 years, fixing vulnerabilities across 27 ministries.