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The latest from Ai on Digital Blog.
Microsoft's Elevate for Educators lands in Australia with 12,500-teacher pilot
Microsoft has launched its Elevate for Educators program in Australia, with Brisbane Catholic Education's 12,500-staff Copilot rollout across 140 schools serving as the flagship pilot for a national AI skilling push that includes a pledge to train three million Australians by 2028.
Apple outsources Siri to Google's Gemini in $US1b-a-year AI deal
Apple has confirmed a multi-year partnership with Google to rebuild Siri on Gemini AI models, targeting a launch later this year despite testing delays that have already pushed the rollout from March to at least mid-2026.
AWS and Versent sign five-year AI cloud pact
Amazon Web Services and Sydney IT consultancy Versent have signed a five-year Strategic Collaboration Agreement aimed at accelerating AI and cloud adoption across Australian government and enterprise.
Google Search hit by widespread outage across Australia and Asia
Google Search experienced a major outage on Monday afternoon, with thousands of users across Australia, India, and Southeast Asia reporting internal server errors that left the search engine unusable for more than two hours.
Atturra joins AI business platform startup monō ai as founding partner
Australian consulting firm Atturra has joined monō ai, the AI business platform founded by Lendi Group co-founder David Hyman, as a founding partner — pairing enterprise consulting reach with a platform built to close the gap between AI pilots and production deployment.
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Adobe's Firefly AI Assistant is a platform bet, not a feature launch
Adobe's Firefly AI Assistant can run six Creative Cloud apps from one prompt. The 100-tool integration is a platform play — and it only works if the reliability holds.
National AI Plan commits $460m, but SMEs told to carry the load
The Albanese Government's National AI Plan lays out three pillars and $460 million in existing funding, but industry groups warn small and medium enterprises have been left without a clear starting point.
ADFA places fourth at Australian Rover Challenge, claims community engagement award
A 14-strong team from the Australian Defence Force Academy has finished fourth at the 2026 Australian Rover Challenge in Adelaide, taking the community engagement award in a field of 30 international teams.
Google Search hit by widespread outage across Australia and Asia
Google Search experienced a major outage on Monday afternoon, with thousands of users across Australia, India, and Southeast Asia reporting internal server errors that left the search engine unusable for more than two hours.
Atlassian opens Teamwork Graph to third-party agents at Team '26
Atlassian opened its Teamwork Graph to third-party AI agents and pushed an expanded Rovo product line into general availability at the Team '26 conference in Anaheim. Chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes told customers institutional memory, not raw model quality, was the new competitive moat in enterprise AI.
IREN signs $US3.4b Nvidia AI cloud contract, founder slams Australian regulation
Sydney-founded IREN has signed a five-year, $US3.4 billion managed cloud deal with Nvidia, and used the announcement to renew its founder's public criticism of Australian listing rules, planning timelines and grid connections.
Firefly, Midjourney, or DALL-E? An Australian's guide to AI image generators
Adobe Firefly is the AI image generator that comes with IP indemnity and Creative Cloud integration, making it the default pick for Australian professionals. Midjourney leads on image quality. ChatGPT is the easiest on-ramp. Here is how to choose.
Cursor is the AI code editor to beat. Where Copilot still wins.
Cursor has more than 1 million daily users and a reported $US2 billion in annual recurring revenue. It is also no longer the only serious option, with GitHub Copilot, Claude Code and Windsurf each carving out a slice of the Australian developer's daily workflow.
Mary Technology adds drafting and financial analysis to FMS platform
Sydney legal-tech start-up Mary Technology has added bank-statement analysis, custom chronologies and template-based drafting to its Fact Management System. The two-year-old company says more than 3,000 lawyers across 100-plus Australian firms now use the platform.
WA extends $A4.6m ClassmAIte AI lesson-planning pilot through 2027
Western Australia commits an additional $A4.6 million to push its ClassmAIte teacher AI tool through 2027 and past 100 schools by end-2026. Premier Roger Cook and Education Minister Sabine Winton announced the funding in the 2026-27 state budget.
Canva pauses 5,300 staff for AI Discovery Week with OpenAI, Anthropic and Google
Canva paused normal work for its 5,300 staff this week to run a five-day program of artificial intelligence learning and hackathons. Speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google joined the second annual AI Discovery Week at the Sydney design giant.
ElevenLabs opens Sydney office, names Damian Naughton ANZ general manager
Voice AI company ElevenLabs has opened its first regional office in Sydney and named former Slack executive Damian Naughton as ANZ general manager. The London-headquartered firm plans to triple local headcount as Australian enterprise demand for voice agents accelerates.
AMD launches Instinct MI350P PCIe card for enterprise AI inference in standard servers
AMD on Wednesday launched the Instinct MI350P, a PCIe accelerator card built so enterprises can run AI inference inside the air-cooled servers they already own, instead of rebuilding a data centre around liquid-cooled racks.
National AI Centre launches AI.gov.au platform for safe AI adoption
The federal government on Friday launched AI.gov.au, a single platform pulling AI guidance, tools and case studies into one place. The site, delivered by the National AI Centre, is aimed first at SMEs and not-for-profits.
ASIC demands urgent cyber uplift as frontier AI Mythos accelerates threats
ASIC told every licensee on Friday to urgently strengthen cyber resilience, citing risks from frontier AI such as Anthropic's Claude Mythos. Commissioner Simone Constant said the clock is at 'a minute to midnight'.
Anthropic donates Petri AI alignment tool to Meridian Labs
Anthropic has transferred development of its open-source AI alignment testing tool Petri to Meridian Labs, an independent AI evaluation nonprofit. Version 3.0 restructures how the tool tests large language models for deception and sycophancy.
Anthropic locks in SpaceX Colossus 1 for 300MW of new Claude compute
Anthropic will take all available capacity at SpaceX's Colossus 1 data centre in Memphis, adding more than 300 megawatts and 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs within a month. The Claude maker also lifted rate limits on its paid plans the same day.
Apple agrees $US250m settlement over Siri AI features that didn't ship on time
Apple has agreed to pay up to $US250 million to settle a US class action over Apple Intelligence and the upgraded Siri it has yet to fully ship. The settlement covers iPhone 16 and 15 Pro buyers in the US only.
Sweden's Legora buys Melbourne legaltech Graceview, plans Australian build-out
Stockholm-based legal AI company Legora has acquired Melbourne regulatory-monitoring startup Graceview, its third bolt-on in three months and its first foothold in Australia. Terms were not disclosed.