Google's AI Matryoshka; FTC drops case over Microsoft Activision Blizzard deal; Pope Leo XIV's call to tame AI
Google's AI Matryoshka
Google's annual I/O developer conference in 2025 was less a showcase of disparate product updates and more a systematic unveiling of an AI-centric future. The unspoken theme was that of a Matryoshka doll: at its core, a refined and potent artificial intelligence, with each successive layer representing a product or platform drawing life from this central intelligence. Google is not merely sprinkling AI across its offerings; it is fundamentally rearchitecting its vast ecosystem around it.
The result is an increasingly interconnected and agentic experience, one that extends to users, developers, and enterprises alike, prompting a re-evaluation of the firm's responsibilities concerning the data that fuels this transformation. Yet, as each layer of this AI Matryoshka is peeled back, the data upon which this intelligence is built, the copyrighted material ingested by its models, and the implications for user privacy are brought into sharper focus, forming a critical, if less trumpeted, narrative.
FTC drops case over Microsoft Activision Blizzard deal
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission dropped a case that sought to block Microsoft's $69 billion purchase of 'Call of Duty' maker Activision Blizzard, saying on Thursday that pursuing the case against the long-closed deal was not in the public interest. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson is seeking to use the agency's resources for cases that fit with President Donald Trump's agenda, such as a probe related to whether advertisers colluded to spend less on X first reported by Reuters on Thursday.
Ferguson is beginning to shut down some efforts started by his predecessor Lina Khan, including dropping a case on Thursday that had accused PepsiCo of price discrimination that favored Walmart. The FTC lost an appeal on May 7 seeking to reverse a judge's decision declining to block the Microsoft-Activision deal, which closed in 2023. The Activision Blizzard transaction marked the largest-ever acquisition in the video gaming market.
Pope Leo XIV's call to tame AI
Pope Leo XIV singled out the challenges of artificial intelligence as he took office this month, underscoring religious leaders' hopes to influence a technology freighted with both vast hopes and apocalyptic fears. The pope was cited by Protestant American Evangelical leaders who launched an open letter to President Donald Trump published Wednesday, calling for an 'AI revolution accelerating responsibly' while warning of 'potential peril'.
He had 'addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution', said the pope. Today, 'the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence,' he added. Letter from the Evangelicals called for the development of 'powerful AI tools that help cure diseases and solve practical problems'. But it also warned of 'autonomous smarter-than-human machines that nobody knows how to control.'
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