According to Tech Digest, new research from Morgan Stanley shows the UK is seeing an 8% net job loss due to AI adoption over the past year, the highest rate among leading economies like the US, Japan, Germany, and Australia. Apple is reportedly planning to unveil its newly revamped Siri, powered by Google’s Gemini AI, at an event next month, with a beta starting in late February and a public rollout in March or April. Over the weekend, Google acknowledged widespread Gmail issues involving “misclassification of emails” by its automatic filters, though a fix is now rolling out. Elsewhere, Ofcom has opened a formal investigation into Meta for potentially failing to comply with legally binding information requests about WhatsApp Business, and an AI-generated “goth girl” named Amelia is becoming a far-right meme phenomenon on social media.
UK AI Job Carnage
That 8% net job loss figure in the UK is stark. It basically means for every job AI is creating over there, it’s wiping out more than one. And the research looked at companies that have been using AI for at least a year, so we’re not talking about speculative fear—this is observed impact. The weird thing is, why is the UK getting hit harder? You’d think a more service-heavy economy might be more vulnerable, but so is the US. Maybe it’s a mix of less aggressive retraining programs and the types of industries surveyed? Here’s the thing: if this trend holds, the political and social pressure around AI regulation is going to get intense, and fast. It’s one thing to talk about displacement in theory, another to have Morgan Stanley data showing it’s already happening at scale.
Siri’s Long-Overdue Upgrade
Finally, right? Siri has been a punchline for years, lagging so far behind Alexa and the Google Assistant it wasn’t even funny. Outsourcing its brains to Google’s Gemini is a huge, humbling admission from Apple. I mean, they’re putting a rival’s core AI tech at the heart of the iPhone experience. It’s pragmatic, sure—Google is ahead here—but it’s also a massive strategic shift. The question is, how “Apple” will it feel? Will it just be a Gemini voice wrapper, or will Apple’s famed integration and privacy focus actually make it something unique? And let’s be skeptical: a beta in late February for a March/April launch seems incredibly aggressive. AI integrations are messy. Don’t be shocked if this gets delayed or arrives with some serious limitations out of the gate.
The Weekend’s Gmail Glitch
This was a weird one. Gmail’s filters are usually so good they’re almost invisible. For them to just… break… and start misclassifying emails en masse is a rare and pretty significant failure. It shows just how much we rely on these automated systems, and how a small bug in a complex AI model can cause widespread chaos. Was it a bad update? Some edge case in the spam model that went haywire? Google’s not saying, but the fact it took a full day to get a fix rolling suggests it wasn’t a simple toggle to flip. Makes you wonder what got through that shouldn’t have, and what important mail got lost in the spam folder. A little reminder that the cloud isn’t perfect.
The Rest of the Digest
Ofcom investigating Meta is a slow-burn regulatory story, but it matters. They’re asking for data on how WhatsApp Business competes in commercial messaging—the boring but critical backend of modern commerce. If Meta is stonewalling, it’s because that data is probably very valuable and potentially revealing. On the darker side, the story of “Amelia,” the AI-generated racist schoolgirl meme, is a perfect case study in how bad actors use generative AI. They’re not building complex deepfakes of politicians; they’re creating simple, shareable characters to spread ideology through memes. It’s insidious, cheap, and frighteningly effective at slipping through content moderation. And as for the Musk vs. O’Leary spat? It’s just rich guys yelling. Nothing to see there, really.
