If you're looking for a robot companion and you have somewhere between US$ 17,000 and US$ 146,000 burning a hole in your pocket, UBTech Robotics has just what you need. The China-based tech company recently unveiled its UWorld U1 Series, a line of life-sized, hyper-realistic robot with silicone skin and human features.

UBTech is mainly known for commercial and industrial robotics, but these new humanoid robots are meant to offer companionship, including physical assistance, social assistance, lifestyle aesthetics, and emotional support.

The robots are able to recognize 20 emotional states with over 90 percent accuracy through voice, gestures, and interaction, and they are capable of exhibiting up to 90 ppercent of basic human movements.

They are for adults only, which raises some eyebrows, and come in tiers basic (Lite) to high-end (Ultra), hence the price range. The high-end models are 990,000 yuan or roughly US$ 146,000 with the cheapest at 119,800 yuan or US$ 17,600. Pre-orders opened June 30, and the first shipments are expected in September, if the company delivers.

An on-stage presentation mixed the various robotic models and real human actors, meanwhile demos use generative AI to represent the robots. Scenes show an AI model genuinely using a phone — "hit me up if you want to talk" — and holding the off-screen viewer's hand.

Another scene, also GenAI, shows a female model frolicking on a sunny beach with its owner. Although, modern robotics companies are no strangers to odd presentations, earlier this year, Unitree's robots were part of a demonstration that felt like a sci-fi nightmare or fever dream.

Collectively, the U1 Series makes use of an end-to-end technology stack, with physical hardware — like the biomimetic skin and system-level manufacturing under-the-hood — and intelligence hardware, using a proprietary operating system, and emotion-driven large language models (LLMs) for processing.

UBTech claims the intelligence powers a "biomimetic fast-and-slow brain architecture" which draws on cognitive neuroscience to enable extremely fast, 500-millisecond, response times along with deep reasoning and reactivity. There are a lot of buzzwords there, but these robots should be capable of a wide variety of applications from hospitality and customer service to elder care, to education and in-house domestic services.

Though, these aren't the first "humanoid" robots to market, they appear to be some of the first that are intelligently advanced, on the software side. The Walker C and Walker S1 are also full-size humanoid-like robots from the company, albeit meant to provide customized hospitality or commercial services. They straight-up look like robots, however. Another human-like robot that sparks the uncanny valley feel in your home is Moya, from DroidUp. Altogether, China has so many humanoid robots it had to create a unique ID system for them all.

UBTech also introduced its "Human-Robot Companionship Initiative." China has a large population of adults living in isolated conditions, over 90 million adults living alone and 118 million empty-nest seniors. In addition, 10 percent to 20 percent of them suffer from mental health disorders, such as dementia or severe depression, who may require attentive emotional and physical care.

UBTech says: "Combined with multimodal situational awareness, the robots are designed to provide structured psychological support services." The company plans to donate 100 of its U1 Series models to mental well-being programs in 2026.

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It was only a matter of time, but xAI has a new name now that it's under the SpaceX banner. Say hello to SpaceXAI. No, you don't have to give points for creativity to Elon Musk for this one — though it's a pretty obvious change, given the journey xAI has been on over the past several months.

To recap, Musk's SpaceX acquired also-Musk-owned xAI in February. It's a move Musk has become known for in recent years, having merged X (formerly Twitter) into xAI in 2025. Now, nearly all of Musk's various companies (except Tesla) are under the same company, which helped push SpaceX to a massive IPO last month that briefly made Musk a trillionaire.

In any case, SpaceXAI made things official on X this week, debuting a new logo to boot.

We are now @SpaceXAI. pic.twitter.com/ema66xDWC9

— SpaceXAI (@SpaceXAI) July 6, 2026

It's a change that we've known was coming for a little while. In May, Musk said xAI would be "dissolved as a separate company, so it will just be SpaceXAI, the AI products from SpaceX." Now, the combined rocket-slash-AI company is focused on plans to put AI data centers into orbit, with the goal of potentially demonstrating the launch of AI satellites by the end of 2027.

Recently, SpaceX has been showing off a prototype of a "handset-like device" to investors, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.

The device is reportedly focused on bringing AI capabilities to users, running on the company's own operating system and integrating xAI's technology to power its AI features. It's been described as having a "sleek design" and being "slimmer than an iPhone." The device is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset.

However, Musk weighed in on the Wall Street Journal report, calling it "utterly false" on his social media platform, X, without elaborating any further.

Musk has previously denied reports from earlier this year that SpaceX was working on a phone that would connect directly to Starlink satellites.

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OpenAI has just introduced GPT-5.6, a new family of large language models led by its flagship Sol model, alongside Terra and Luna variants built for different performance and cost requirements. However, the company is limiting the initial rollout to a small group of trusted U.S.-based partners after a request from the U.S. government.

The GPT-5.6 series introduces a new naming system, with Sol representing the highest capability tier, Terra offering GPT-5.5-level performance at half the cost, and Luna targeting lower-cost, faster AI applications. OpenAI said the models will become generally available through ChatGPT, Codex, and its API in the coming weeks.

GPT-5.6 Sol also introduces a new maximum reasoning mode that gives the model more time to solve complex tasks. OpenAI is also launching an Ultra mode that uses subagents to tackle sophisticated workflows beyond the capabilities of a single AI agent.

The company said GPT-5.6 Sol delivers its strongest performance yet in coding, biology, and cybersecurity while introducing its "most robust safety stack to date."

According to OpenAI, GPT-5.6 Sol achieved a new state of the art on TerminalBench 2.1, a benchmark for command-line coding workflows. In biology, the company said the model outperformed GPT-5.5 on GeneBench v1 while using fewer output tokens.

OpenAI also highlighted gains in cybersecurity. On ExploitBench, GPT-5.6 Sol matched the performance of Anthropic’s Mythos Preview while using roughly one-third of the output tokens. On ExploitGym, developed by researchers at UC Berkeley with OpenAI and other frontier AI labs, all three GPT-5.6 models showed improved cyber capabilities as reasoning increased.

Despite those gains, OpenAI said GPT-5.6 Sol does not cross the Cyber Critical threshold under its Preparedness Framework.

"GPT-5.6 Sol is better at helping people find and fix vulnerabilities than reliably carrying out end-to-end attacks," the company said.

The company also introduced a layered safety system that combines model-level protections, real-time misuse detection, account-level monitoring, differentiated access, and extensive automated and human red-teaming. OpenAI said it dedicated more than 700,000 A100-equivalent GPU hours to automated red-teaming to uncover jailbreak techniques before release.

Unlike previous launches, GPT-5.6 will initially be available only to a select group of trusted partners.

"As part of our ongoing engagement with the U.S. government, we previewed our plans and the models’ capabilities ahead of today’s launch," OpenAI said.

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There was a time when it is easy to tell when a face was generated with artificial intelligence (AI). Whether it was a distinctive uncanny sheen, impossibly smooth skin, eyes that didn't quite make sense or a conspicuous third ear, older AI models' facsimiles of human faces were simple to spot and easy to dismiss. That's just not true anymore.

Now, AI image generators can produce portraits so convincing that even careful observers struggle to distinguish fact from figment. That's why apps such as Zoom and Tinder allow their users to submit biometric identification, such as retinal scans, to help prove that a real person exists behind a profile picture. But a new study suggests you can train your brain to get better at spotting fakes.

Past attempts to teach people to spot AI faces have focused on training viewers to look for visual glitches or statistical fingerprints left behind by a particular image generator, such as a wonky ear or an eye with two pupils. The problem is that those clues can disappear with a software update or by simply using a different prompt.

"The AI is getting too good," said Amy Dawel, an associate professor at Australian National University and the lead author on the study, in a press release. "And fraudsters may avoid using pictures with obvious flaws anyway." The result is an endless technological arms race humanity seems destined to lose.

Instead, the researchers taught the participants how to recognize broader patterns in how AI systems generate images. "Our training directs people's attention to global qualities that differ between AI and human faces," Dawel said.

Current AI image generators are themselves trained on datasets composed of millions of images. When prompted to generate a face, they don't copy specific faces, but instead compose a new face that is based in part on the mathematical patterns shared across the faces in that data set—these allow the AI to construct a "typical" human face.

The result is that AI-generated faces often drift toward statistical averages. They're not overly unrealistic, so much as a little too balanced, a little too generic, and a little too conventional. Individually, none of these traits are necessarily suspicious. But together, the whole is blander than the sum of its parts—a subtle banality humans can often implicitly sense.

"Even relatively short training sessions helped participants improve their accuracy," says Tanya George, a student researcher at Australian National University who trained the study's participants. "Research like this can help people navigate increasingly complex online environments."

Compared with real faces, AI-generated faces tend to be more symmetrical, more proportional, and more attractive—while also being less expressive, less distinctive and significantly less memorable. When the researchers trained participants to look for these six markers instead of fleeting artifacts like malformed ears or mismatched jewelry, their ability to spot the AI face almost doubled.

In other words, AI gravitates to the center. Real people do not. Our faces are shaped by countless small deviations from the norm—our subtle asymmetries, distinctive features, and expressions make us memorable. Those imperfections are not flaws. They are our signature.

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There's a new update available for all iPhone users today, but don't expect any big new features. Rather, this update is focused on fixing lots of vulnerabilities, mostly having to do with the WebKit engine for your web browser. The version number is iOS 26.5.2, and it's available to download now.

In total, there are 29 security fixes with today's update, and you can find the full list of them in Apple's official documentation.

As Apple notes, these fixes were originally included with the iOS 26.6 betas, but they've been released on their own with this update. Most of the vulnerabilities patched in this update prevent malicious websites from exploiting your device.

The iPhone update isn't the only one rolling out from Apple's servers today. You'll also find a similar set of fixes available for both iPadOS and macOS, both of which also carry the 26.5.2 version number. You should be able to download them on your Mac and iPad now.

While Apple still may have minor updates coming, including iOS 26.6, you shouldn't expect any big new features until iOS 27 lands this fall. That update will feature a revamped Siri and lots of new Apple Intelligence features, along with some UI tweaks and more. It should launch alongside Apple's iPhone 18 (and folding iPhone) lineup later this year.

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Most Robots can now pick up boxes, sort packages, and screw in bolts without breaking a sweat. Some of them can even walk and run like humans. Hand one a floppy, slippery piece of raw salmon, though, and everything starts falling apart.

A team at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology set out to solve that problem. The result is the Sashimi-Bot, a three-armed robot that can prepare sashimi from a raw salmon loin without a chef in sight.

It divides the job neatly between its three arms. The first arm stabilizes and positions the salmon on the cutting board. The second holds a chef's knife and slices. The third picks up each finished slice with chopsticks and transfers it to a serving tray.

What makes this more than just clever arm arrangement is how the robot learned to do it. Lead researcher Sverre Herland and the team trained it using deep reinforcement learning inside a virtual simulation.

The technology let the robot practice thousands of movements and learn through trial and error, without any practice on real fish.

The knife arm also carries a GelSight tactile sensor, a soft gel surface with an embedded camera that tells the robot exactly when it has reached the cutting board.

During testing, the robot cut 34 slices of salmon. It successfully grasped 26 of the 28 slices that fell onto the cutting board with chopsticks. An additional six slices that had stuck to the knife blade were retrieved directly from it.

Each cut cycle averaged 27.9 seconds. The study is published in npj Robotics (via TechXplore). While most robots do best with rigid, predictable objects, the Sashimi-Bot is more significant than its culinary application suggests.

It is an example of robots handling delicate, irregular materials by making real-time movements and adjustments.

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