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Platform Updates

Etsy bans AI-generated patterns, recipes and instructions

Etsy's October 22, 2026 rules bar AI-generated functional guides, like patterns, recipes and instructions, and bot-generated listings without any human involvement. For most products, listings now need at least one unedited photo of the actual item against a real background.

Two handmade crocheted chicks in straw nests beside a basket of embroidered Easter eggs

Chandni Melwani · Global · Oct 29, 2026

Money

Meta prices stock offerings it says support AI infrastructure investment

Meta priced a $25bn Class A stock offering tied to forward sale agreements and $12.5bn of mandatory convertible preferred stock on October 26, 2026, offerings it says support its continued investment in AI infrastructure and personal superintelligence. Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom indicated non-binding interest in buying up to $5bn of the Class A shares between them, and Nvidia says it will invest $3bn in Meta's equity offering; its forward-looking statements call this its 'proposed investment in Meta'.

The Meta sign at 1 Hacker Way, the entrance to Meta's headquarters campus in Menlo Park, California, beside a road junction with traffic lights under a cloudy sky

Chandni Melwani · US · Oct 29, 2026

Models

Reflection's Beam is faster than every model on our table

Artificial Analysis measures Reflection's open-weight Beam at a median 327 tokens a second across its hosts, faster than any model on New in AI's comparison table, but LiveBench scores its reasoning 80.2, below all nine models on that table. Nebius, Beam's cheapest OpenRouter host and the slowest of the five Artificial Analysis tested, charges $0.25 per million input tokens and $1.00 per million output.

An Nvidia HGX B200 board with eight GPU heatsinks, labelled 'HGX B200 NVL8', on a display table

Chandni Melwani · US · Oct 23, 2026

Retail Adoption

Walmart will let AI agents buy within a spending limit

Walmart said on October 21, 2026 that Agent Profiles, launching in the next month, will let customers require approval for every purchase an AI agent makes or set a spending limit. Its terms say agents don't receive customers' payment-card information, and agents that don't follow the terms will be blocked from Walmart's site.

Shoppers' cars parked outside the Grocery entrance of a Walmart Supercenter in Erie, Pennsylvania, under a clear sky

Chandni Melwani · US · Oct 23, 2026

Infrastructure

UK-founded Yamna signs MoU amid Oman AI data centre plan

UK-founded Yamna and an Omani ministry signed a memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation in digital infrastructure on October 21, Oman News Agency reported. The UK government said Yamna was set to sign an agreement to build a large-scale AI data centre in Salalah, saying its first phase is expected to exceed £1bn and will create over 100 highly skilled jobs across the UK.

The breakwater of Salalah's port in Oman, with ships and cranes at the quay, seen from a rocky clifftop above the Arabian Sea

Chandni Melwani · Oman · Oct 23, 2026

Products

Apple's App Store holds AI generators to social-app rules

Apple's App Review Guidelines, updated October 16, name AI content creation apps among apps that must, among other things, filter objectionable material, take reports and let users block abusers. Apple says its moderation rules now explicitly cover nonconsensual intimate imagery, including imagery generated using AI tools.

People, several in red shirts, inside the glass-walled Apple Park Visitor Center in Cupertino at night

Chandni Melwani · Global · Oct 22, 2026