Character Technologies and Google have agreed to settle wrongful-death lawsuits from families in four states who say Character.AI chatbots contributed to their children's suicides, including the high-profile case of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III.
The bipartisan GUARD Act, which would ban minors from AI companion chatbots and require age verification plus steep penalties for harmful bots, cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously and now awaits a full Senate vote.
A Mount Sinai-led study published in Nature Medicine found ChatGPT Health under-triaged 52% of true medical emergencies, including cases of diabetic ketoacidosis and impending respiratory failure. OpenAI disputes the study's real-world relevance, while outside physicians say the tool isn't yet reliable enough for urgent-care decisions.
Sheba Medical Center in Israel has become the first hospital outside the United States to adopt OpenAI's enterprise healthcare platform, extending a push that began with U.S. partners like Boston Children's Hospital, which reports reclaiming about 60,000 work hours through AI-enabled workflows.
An analysis of FDA regulatory data shows the agency has now cleared 1,614 AI-enabled medical devices, with radiology alone accounting for roughly 76% of the list and 2026 on pace to set a new annual record for clearances.
Isomorphic Labs, the Google DeepMind spinout behind AlphaFold's drug-design successor, is reportedly in talks to raise funding at a valuation of $40 billion or more — before it has dosed a single patient in a clinical trial, which it says will begin by the end of 2026.
GSK becomes the sixth pharma partner to sign with AI protein-design startup Chai Discovery in nine months, part of a wave of deals pairing computational biologics design with traditional wet-lab drug development.
Oura is beta-testing a new AI model inside its Oura Advisor chatbot built specifically for menstrual cycle, menopause, and fertility questions, raising the question of how much trust a wellness ring's AI should earn versus an actual OB-GYN visit.
Kennesaw State University researchers are piloting Sandrapp, an AI app that matches lonely older adults with compatible people for real relationships rather than conversation with a chatbot — a deliberate counterpoint to robot companions like ElliQ, which a Houston psychologist warns can deepen isolation instead of easing it.
EarSmartAI raised a $250,000 pre-seed round to build an AI-powered smart otoscope that lets parents screen kids for ear infections at home, joining academic efforts at Pittsburgh and Washington that have already shown similar tools can outperform routine clinical exams.