This week in AI: 19 Oct 2026 to 25 Oct 2026

27 stories this week across 11 categories. Each links to the official announcement, filing or paper it is based on.

A handheld dermatoscope with its light switched on, lying on a grey surface. — GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5.1 lose to a 2015 CNN in a dermatologist's skin cancer test

AI Research25 Oct 2026, 09:00 UTC

Dermatologist Magnus Lynch said on 25 October 2026 that a fine-tuned Inception v3 named 62% of 200 skin lesions correctly, against 42% for two frontier LLMs.

Summary

Dr Magnus Lynch, a consultant dermatologist at Guy's Hospital and honorary reader at King's College London, published a test on 25 October 2026 comparing GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5.1 with Inception v3, a 2015 image network fine-tuned on public skin images. On 200 biopsy-proven lesions, the network named the right diagnosis 62% of the time, against 42% for both LLMs. The study is small and not peer reviewed.

A brass Cabinet Office sign on a stone wall in Whitehall, London, with a red bus reflected in it. — UK opens AI Biosecurity Lab backed by £100M and up to £200M from OpenAI and Anthropic

AI Policy & Regulation24 Oct 2026, 09:00 UTC

The UK Cabinet Office announced the AI Biosecurity Lab on 24 October 2026 with £100M of public funding and up to £200M in credits from OpenAI and Anthropic.

Summary

The UK Cabinet Office announced the AI Biosecurity Lab on 24 October 2026, calling it the world's first dedicated AI biosecurity organisation. The government is putting in £100 million. OpenAI commits £100 million in compute and model credits, and Anthropic up to £100 million in model credits, both with trusted model access. Google DeepMind and Basecamp Research join as research partners. The lab will focus first on early detection of biological threats and faster vaccines and treatments.

Two men stand side by side in a bright office lobby with wooden booths and a large indoor tree. — MCP TypeScript SDK 2.4.0 ships the Skills extension so servers can publish agent skills

AI Agents23 Oct 2026, 18:32 UTC

The official MCP TypeScript SDK 2.4.0, released on 23 October 2026, lets servers publish folders of agent skills and lets clients list, read and verify them.

Summary

The Model Context Protocol maintainers released version 2.4.0 of the official TypeScript SDK on 23 October 2026. Its main addition is the Skills extension from SEP-2640: a server can publish a folder of agent skills, and a client can list, read and verify them by size and digest. The release also adds an opt-in OAuth scope on token refresh for Microsoft Entra ID and tightens three behaviours that developers should check before upgrading.

In brief

GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5.1 lose to a 2015 CNN in a dermatologist's skin cancer test Dermatologist Magnus Lynch said on 25 October 2026 that a fine-tuned Inception v3 named 62% of 200 skin lesions correctly, against 42% for two frontier LLMs.
UK opens AI Biosecurity Lab backed by £100M and up to £200M from OpenAI and Anthropic The UK Cabinet Office announced the AI Biosecurity Lab on 24 October 2026 with £100M of public funding and up to £200M in credits from OpenAI and Anthropic.
MCP TypeScript SDK 2.4.0 ships the Skills extension so servers can publish agent skills The official MCP TypeScript SDK 2.4.0, released on 23 October 2026, lets servers publish folders of agent skills and lets clients list, read and verify them.
Google ADK 2.13 promotes 12 features to stable and adds MongoDB sessions and memory Google released ADK for Python 2.13.0 on 23 October 2026, promoting 12 experimental features to stable and adding MongoDB sessions, memory and classifier routing.
Pathos AI closes $237M Series E led by Bristol Myers Squibb at about a $3B valuation Pathos AI closed a $237 million Series E led by Bristol Myers Squibb at about a $3 billion post-money valuation and signed an Alzheimer's data deal with Tempus.
Google DeepMind maps the world's forest types at 10 m, correct 90% of the time Google DeepMind and partners released ForTy on 22 October 2026, a 10-metre global map of six forest and land-use types, correct 90% of the time in checks.
ServiceNow says Thrive reached 73% first-contact resolution and saved 21,000 hours with AI ServiceNow said on 22 October 2026 that managed services provider Thrive routes 315,000 tasks every six months with AI, saving 21,000 hours of manual work.
ETH Zurich builds lab-grown muscle robot that jumps a third of its body length ETH Zurich researchers reported a 1.5 cm robot driven by lab-grown muscle that jumps about 5 mm and walks at 6.2 mm/s, designed first in simulation.
Meta reports $64.6B Q3 revenue, up 26%, and keeps 2026 AI capex at up to $145B Meta reported Q3 2026 revenue of $64.6 billion, up 26%, with $34.9 billion of capex, and narrowed its 2026 capex outlook to $135 billion to $145 billion.
Microsoft says China-aligned Storm-0940 used ARTEX AI agents to reach 2,250 tenants Microsoft said on 21 October 2026 that Storm-0940 used ARTEX AI agents in the ConnectWise compromise, gaining privileged cloud access in under 3 hours.
Google Cloud sets A5X Vera Rubin launch with clusters of up to 960,000 GPUs Google Cloud said on 21 October 2026 that A5X bare-metal instances on NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 reach general availability next month, scaling to 960,000 GPUs.
Elucid wins FDA 510(k) clearance for FFR-IQ, an AI FFR-CT tool with 92.2% sensitivity Elucid said on 21 October 2026 that the FDA cleared FFR-IQ, AI software that estimates coronary blood flow from CT scans and adds plaque data to the estimate.
NVIDIA plans 2.5x substrate capacity and doubled chip testing with six supply partners NVIDIA said at GTC Berlin on 21 October 2026 it will raise substrate capacity 2.5x in three years and double testing capacity with six supply chain partners.
NVIDIA adds Agile ONE SN reference humanoid and Isaac Lab 3.0 to its robotics platform NVIDIA said on 21 October 2026 that Agile Robots will build a Jetson Thor reference humanoid for early 2027, and released Isaac Lab 3.0 and Isaac OS.
Bank of Ireland says AI screens 2.9 million transactions a day as Copilot reaches 7,000 staff Bank of Ireland said on 21 October 2026 that AI checks about 2.9 million transactions a day for fraud and that almost 7,000 staff have Copilot training.
Claude Duet opens as a proactive agent app for US Pro and Max subscribers by waitlist Anthropic opened a Claude Duet research preview on 21 October 2026: an app where Claude briefs you and works in the background, for US Pro and Max users.
Legora raises $550M Series E at an $8.8B valuation as legal AI ARR passes $200M Legal AI company Legora raised a $550 million Series E at an $8.8 billion post-money valuation, led by Atreides Management, and says ARR tops $200 million.
Microsoft Research mathematicians prove the 31-year-old KLS conjecture with AI agent help Microsoft researchers said on 21 October 2026 that they proved the 1995 KLS conjecture in convex geometry, using AI agents to explore about 100 research paths.
NVIDIA expands Cosmos world models with Data Factory blueprints and training framework NVIDIA said on 21 October 2026 that Cosmos gains five Data Factory blueprints, a robot model training framework and Cosmos 3 NIM with faster inference.
Google adds a small business hub and saved brand styles to the Gemini app for all users Google added a business landing page, saved brand styles, finance tools and apps such as Shopify and Xero to the Gemini app on 20 October 2026, for all users.
Salesforce agrees to buy Braze for $5.66B, or $47.50 a share in cash, to add AI marketing Salesforce agreed on 20 October 2026 to acquire Braze for about $5.66 billion in enterprise value, paying $47.50 a share in cash, to add real-time AI marketing.
Hugging Face runs Transformers and Diffusers natively on Google TPUs through TorchTPU Hugging Face said on 20 October 2026 that Transformers, Diffusers and Kernels run natively on Google TPUs through TorchTPU, replacing the torch_xla route.
Make announces MakeOS and Celonis-powered Process Intelligence at Waves '26 Make announced MakeOS and Make Process Intelligence, built on Celonis technology, at Waves '26 on 20 October 2026, plus new governance and agent tools.
Visa, BILL and Billtrust launch a live pilot for AI agents that pay supplier invoices Visa, BILL and Billtrust started a live pilot on 20 October 2026 in which a registered AI agent pays approved invoices through supplier portals without shared logins.
Waymo starts driving in Madrid ahead of a planned 2027 robotaxi launch in Spain Waymo said on 20 October 2026 that it is preparing a fully autonomous ride service in the Region of Madrid and aims to welcome its first riders there in 2027.
INTERPOL launches deepfake scam campaign with three AI-generated videos and a safe-word tip INTERPOL launched a public campaign on 19 October 2026 warning that AI deepfakes now target ordinary people through fake calls, romance and investment scams.
Notion rebuilds its agents for 24-hour tasks and moves Notion AI to a new credit system Notion said on 19 October 2026 that its agents can now run tasks for 24 hours, Auto cuts costs about 90%, and seats get 1,500 Standard and 500 Select credits.