OpenAI begins rolling out GPT-6 Astra with staged access for enterprise customers, presenting it as one of its most advanced systems and a key step in its long-term AI roadmap. The launch includes cybersecurity guardrails and a limited initial release, signaling a cautious deployment strategy as OpenAI expands its most capable models into business use.

Several major AI chatbot platforms experience outages at roughly the same time, disrupting access for users of services including ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok. The multi-platform failure highlights how heavily people now rely on these systems for daily work and information, and how vulnerable that dependence becomes when widely used AI services go offline together.

Apple is facing a £2 billion collective lawsuit in the U.K. over its App Tracking Transparency rules, which govern how apps track users across other apps and websites. The claim argues Apple enforces those restrictions more harshly on outside developers than on its own advertising-related services, raising a fresh competition challenge to its platform policies.

Thomson Reuters says an unauthorized party accessed files in its C-Track court case management platform, affecting data viewed by appellate courts in several U.S. jurisdictions and in Ontario. The company says it detected the activity in its cloud environment on June 30, underscoring continued cybersecurity risks for systems that support critical public institutions.

Google releases WeatherNext 3, an updated AI forecasting model built by Google DeepMind and Google Research to generate higher-resolution weather and precipitation predictions. The company says the system better captures atmospheric changes and makes forecasts more frequently, reflecting the widening use of AI in scientific modeling and operational forecasting.

Anker launches the MindBase, a local AI smart home hub designed to manage connected devices, security tools, and automations through a single system. With Matter support and built-in network-attached storage, the product emphasizes on-device processing for tasks such as event analysis and response triggers instead of depending mainly on cloud-based AI.