Statcounter’s November 2025 data places ChatGPT as the clear leader in Australian chatbot referrals. This market snapshot frames a week of competitive releases, including Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Audio and Microsoft’s integration of GPT-5.2 into Copilot, as providers vie for user attention through browser and voice features.

Copper prices on the London Metal Exchange set a new benchmark high of USD 11,952 per tonne on 12 December 2025, capping the metal’s strongest annual rise since 2009. The rally is driven by a projected 124,000-tonne market deficit and structural demand growth from the expansion of AI data centers and electrical grids.

The IETF has released RFC 9700 to update OAuth 2.0 security guidance, responding to the growing capabilities of AI agents. This overview explains how the 2025 standards and the in-progress OAuth 2.1 framework aim to secure user data against emerging threats like prompt injection in connected applications.

Adobe confirmed that it has integrated Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat into ChatGPT. This update allows users to execute common design and PDF tasks through conversational prompts, with the option to move projects to full Adobe apps for advanced editing.

OpenAI has launched GPT-5.2, marking a historic milestone as the first model to achieve a verified 100% score on the AIME 2025 math benchmark without external tools. Released on December 11 amid intensifying competition with Google's Gemini 3, the update introduces "Thinking" capabilities and a massive 400,000 token context window.

A Nature News report details a new approach combining AI with physics-based climate models. The "AI plus RES" method estimates rare extreme heat events 30 to 300 times faster than conventional simulations, aiming to improve climate risk analysis.

Australia’s new laws banning social media for under 16s have come into force, placing the burden on major platforms to enforce age limits or face significant civil penalties. As access to mainstream apps tightens, safety commissioners and researchers warn of a potential migration to AI companion tools, which are currently less regulated and increasingly used by vulnerable youth for advice and support.

Researchers have published two separate studies detailing artificial neurons that utilize ion motion to closely mimic biological signal processing. By operating at low voltages around 60 millivolts and integrating with chemical sensors, these components aim to reduce the power and circuit overhead required for running artificial intelligence on edge devices.

An AI-generated act mimicking King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard briefly surfaced on Spotify, bypassing safeguards despite the band’s 2025 catalogue removal. The incident highlights the ongoing challenge of detecting "sound-alike" content, even as Spotify reports removing 75 million spam tracks in its recent policy update.

A new paper published in NPJ Digital Medicine argues that general-purpose AI chatbots are effectively functioning as unregulated medical tools. Highlighting a "psychologist" character with 47.3 million interactions and recent safety incidents, researchers from TU Dresden are calling for clinical-grade oversight, age verification, and "guardian" systems to protect vulnerable users seeking therapy from AI.

OpenAI and NEXTDC have announced a collaboration to develop a "sovereign" AI campus at the S7 site in Western Sydney. Targeted for delivery in 2027, the project is designed to support critical government and enterprise workloads with onshore processing. The facility will prioritize sustainability through closed-loop liquid cooling technology.

Newcastle-based Cypher IQ has introduced the "Scan and Store Workflow Wizard," an AI-powered tool designed to streamline document capture for managed print fleets. By automating metadata tagging and filing to cloud destinations, the solution aims to reduce manual data entry and improve compliance for industries moving from paper-based to digital workflows.

Google differentiates its artificial intelligence offerings by positioning AI Mode as a search-integrated tool for real-time queries and Gemini as a standalone assistant for creative and multimodal tasks. This report explores their diverging roadmaps, subscription tiers, and functional boundaries within the broader competitive landscape.

Google’s December update for NotebookLM mobile introduces direct camera capture, allowing users to add photos as sources for grounded AI analysis. While the app now leverages a 1 million token context window to process these images, Mind Map generation remains limited to the web experience.

Athena Security has announced a new AI model designed to detect disassembled drone components — such as motors and batteries — within existing X-ray screening workflows. The system targets pre-assembly risks at checkpoints, aiming to mitigate threats before unmanned aircraft can be constructed and launched near critical infrastructure.

Mark Zuckerberg has appointed longtime Apple executive Alan Dye to head a new creative studio at Meta Reality Labs. Tasked with treating artificial intelligence as a core "design material," Dye will oversee the development of next-generation smart glasses and wearables intended to rival the smartphone as a primary computing interface.

Spotify and major music rights holders have launched a collaboration to build "artist-first" generative AI products. Announced October 16, 2025, the deal aims to establish a licensed framework for AI in music, emphasizing consent and compensation following a period of industry litigation.

A new survey commissioned by Trinity College London indicates that young workers in the UK currently view social hurdles as a greater challenge than automation. With 42% of respondents citing anxiety regarding unfamiliar colleagues and 38% dreading small talk, the findings suggest that hybrid work patterns may be impacting interpersonal confidence, even as AI anxiety ranks lower than in comparable US studies.

The United States and Australia have spearheaded a multinational effort to secure artificial intelligence in critical infrastructure. The newly released 25-page guidance details four sequential principles for operators to evaluate and deploy AI within operational technology, balancing innovation with strict safety and security protocols.

The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) has begun field trials of the Deployment Guidance System (DGS), an AI-enabled workflow that automates the placement of juvenile corals. Designed to scale restoration efforts, the system uses real-time computer vision to select optimal seeding sites across the Great Barrier Reef, responding to the urgency of back-to-back mass bleaching events in 2024 and 2025.