Today in AI
Oracle and Meta talk a $20B compute deal, WhatsApp borrows Instagram's Reels, and data-center power becomes a Washington mandate.
October 24, 2026 · 5 stories
In an early-Wednesday Truth Social post, President Trump said large data centers are 'mandated by me to make their own electricity' and suggested they pay host communities a 'dividend' — a shift even from his earlier pro-data-center stance, amid bipartisan voter backlash over power bills. Experts note only states, not the federal government, can actually mandate such requirements.
Source: The Wall Street JournalGemini Notebook now works as a Connected App inside the Gemini app: users can create, edit, delete and query notebooks directly in chat via '@Gemini Notebook', with Gemini auto-detecting when a prompt is relevant. It's on by default globally except in the EEA, where it's off by default — available to all personal Google accounts and Workspace tiers.
Source: 9to5GoogleThe British bank said ~5% of its workforce will go by year-end as it pushes 'organizational simplification and technology change efficiency driven by AI' — with 1,000 cuts already done and 4,000 more to come. About 60% of the cuts hit support functions, 'including fewer developers as AI makes our people more productive.' CEO C.S. Venkatakrishnan called AI 'the icing on the cake' of a wider modernization plan.
Source: ReutersOracle is in talks to supply Meta with computing capacity for training and deploying AI models in a deal worth about $20 billion over several years, a person familiar told Reuters. It would add to Meta's existing cloud providers and follows the reported $300B OpenAI–Oracle contract a week earlier.
Source: ReutersA dedicated Instagram Reels button is appearing in WhatsApp's chat attachment menu for some Android beta testers (v2.26.42.9), letting users browse Recents, Saved and Liked reels and share them into chats without leaving the app. It requires linking WhatsApp in Meta's Accounts Center; no stable release date announced.
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