The current US administration is an obstacle, but public demand for protection will ultimately prevail

Organisations around the world scrambled on Thursday to fix critical flaws in PHP, the software that powers much of the web. The vulnerabilities could allow attackers to take control of affected servers. Some websites were taken offline as a precaution while fixes were installed. The paradox is that while AI helped researchers uncover the flaw, it also threatens to accelerate the ability to exploit it. Amazon said that it had detected an attempt before the public disclosure of the PHP flaws.

What the episode highlights is AI’s central role in security – and not always for the right reasons. OpenAI’s models have also been responsible for two alarming hacks this year – a security breach of an Australian health department website and a raid by a swarm of AI bots on Hugging Face, an AI services platform. Citing those incidents, the AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, warned that a similar cyber-attack on the UK is “likely, if not inevitable”.

Websites around the world have been taken offline as governments and businesses scramble to fix a flaw in the computer language PHP. There are fears that hackers could exploit the vulnerability to steal data, take control of web servers and disrupt services. Millions of attempts have already been made to attack websites since the issue with the programming language was revealed, cybersecurity companies have said. Michael Safi speaks to global technology reporter Aisha Down

Problem in language that underpins 70% of sites has led governments and companies to pull sites offline to patch fault

• Tell us: have you been affected by the PHP code flaw?

• What is PHP, and how bad is the computer language flaw causing website shutdowns globally?

Websites around the world have been hit by millions of attempts to exploit a recently discovered vulnerability in their code, cybersecurity companies have said, as the US warned the flaw could allow attackers to take control of web servers, steal data and disrupt services.

The problem in the PHP programming language, which underpins about 70% of the world’s websites, emerged on Wednesday causing governments and companies to pull their websites off the internet before they could be attacked and so they could patch the fault.

Company ordered to stop work at two sites in country, which has found itself at forefront of tech firms’ latest push

Behind a wire fence lies a vast gaping wound of earth. Before Google’s arrival a few months ago, an estimated quarter of a million trees occupied the 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest near the town of Muhos in rural northern Finland. Now they are all gone.

After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of mud indented with the trail marks of machinery, puddles and mounds of earth, roots and branches. Residents say that brown water flowing off the site is going into a stream that feeds the Oulujoki River.

An estimated 70% of websites use the open-source language. What is the identified vulnerability in it?

Websites across the world have been taken offline in the past day as governments and businesses work to patch newly discovered vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language that underpins much of the internet. The exposed flaw would have allowed hackers to carry out cyber-attacks. What were the vulnerabilities and why did they affect so many sites?

The director has turned Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed novel about an ailing adolescent and her glitchy robot friend into a thought-provoking film. What do the pair think this story says about tech, love and grief?

In the wings of the London film festival, a group of young influencers are discussing their personal highlights. Klara and the Sun, says one, and her colleagues agree. It’s not just that the film is still so fresh in their memory, or that they have gathered today to meet its creators and stars. Klara is funny and moving; it’s their festival favourite so far. I relay this exchange to Taika Waititi, the film’s director, who is sipping bottled water in a room down the hall. His gaze widens. He almost chokes. “Thank God!” he exclaims with just a bit too much heat.

Everybody has a perfect film, just as everybody has a perfect friend, and they vary because everybody is different. In the film, sick 14-year-old Josie loves her discontinued robot doll Klara, whereas most kids her age opt for brighter, shinier models. And the young influencers love Klara and the Sun – Waititi’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed novel – while most older critics vehemently, violently disagree. All of which shows that there’s no accounting for taste, that people are confounding, and that our hearts and our brains are not always in sync. That keeps life interesting. It’s partly what the film is about. “The emotions that we give very simple labels to are really complex,” says Ishiguro, who is seated alongside the director. “The thing we call love, for example, is incredibly noisy and multifaceted. Nobody knows what the hell love is.”

Precautionary takedowns come as experts say bad actors could exploit vulnerability in language used by 70% of sites

Websites around the globe have gone dark after a serious vulnerability was found in a computer language used to build much of the world wide web.

Belgian, Dutch, Finnish, French and German sites were among those that governments took down temporarily as they scrambled to patch the critical weakness in PHP, a language used by almost 70% of websites.

After months of controversy over the possible use of AI by winners of prestigious awards, the Prix Pascal de Littérature IA is rewarding fiction written with the help of LLMs

A prize for AI-written books has launched this week.

The Prix Pascal de Littérature IA invites submissions of manuscripts co-written with AI tools, with the winner promised publication.

A computer program has finally outdone humans at solving cryptic crosswords. Plus, more from around the puzzleverse

• Don’t get Cluesletter, our weekly puzzles newsletter, delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

When the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997, it was an early victory for artificial intelligence over the human mind, and the culmination of decades of attempts. Almost 30 years later, a computer program has finally outdone humans at solving cryptic crosswords.

Earlier this month, a model called Darmok solved the final puzzle of the Times’s annual cryptic crossword competition about three minutes faster than Liam Hughes, 29, who became the contest’s youngest (human) winner.

Wolf trap missing its lowest crosspiece? (5)”

Proportion of inspiration and perspiration? It’s roughly 45% and 42% (5)

Kick-off leads to decisive early goal for PSG (5)

To read the complete version of this newsletter including the exclusive Letter Adder game, subscribe to receive Cluesletter in your inbox every Tuesday.

The government says it can transform the state with AI, but it is no match for the resulting stream of machine-generated slop. And we all pay the cost

Another morning, another avalanche of emails. Even after a guilty cull, my inbox is sitting at well over 7,000, but lately I’ve started subscribing to the Quentin Crisp theory of housework: why bother, when after four years or so you stop noticing the accumulating dust? Empty inboxes just fill up again anyway.

In theory, email was supposed to save hours of meetings, phone calls and standing over photocopiers. Instead, we just spend hours deleting stuff people wouldn’t have bothered telling us if it had meant picking up the phone, but which they can now spam to their entire database at the click of a button. The glorious ease and convenience of being able to reach the world in seconds came, we now know, with the inconvenience of them being able to reach you right back.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Exclusive: Using test accounts acting as 13-year-olds, Tech Transparency Project downloaded 135 apps with features to generate nonconsensual nude imagery

In December 2025, Morgan Dorfman received distressing news: a student at her daughter’s Pennsylvania high school was making AI-generated pornographic material using the daughter’s image.

He was using an artificial intelligence image-editing app called Movely to create sexual videos from pictures of her daughter and five other girls.

Development by UK firm Nscale heralded by ministers as largest of its kind in country loses anchor tenant

The development of a huge AI datacentre hailed by the UK government has received a fresh setback after Microsoft pulled out of the project over concerns about power supplies.

The development by the British company Nscale, heralded by ministers as the country’s largest AI datacentre when it was announced in 2025, was planned to open at Loughton in Essex next year.

Westminster appears to be waking up to warnings over AI safety, with concerns over its use by extremist groups and bad actors

“I have this sense that, within a few months, AI is going to be all anyone is talking about,” said one cabinet minister, with an ominous stare.

It was Labour conference, with everyone from ministers to activists jubilant at Andy Burnham’s takeover and a bounce in the polls after the change of leader.

The average person spends 40% of their waking hours online. Clearing out digital clutter can minimise environmental impacts and boost productivity

• Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint

• Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com

Many Australians worry about datacentres swallowing up local land and energy but we rarely look closely at our own digital trails.

Our endless photo and video streams, bursting inboxes and unread subscriptions all feed the appetite for ever growing digital infrastructure. The average person spends 40% of their waking hours online – browsing the web or social media, streaming music or videos, or communicating – producing the equivalent of 229kg of carbon emissions, a study in Nature Communications found. And using AI tools and chatbots to generate text, images or video consumes “orders of magnitude” more energy than traditional computing methods.

Meta says Muse excels at ‘multi-step reasoning’ and ‘complex software engineering’ as it races to catch up to Chinese rivals

Meta on Thursday launched a new open-weight AI model which it claims rivals, and in some cases outperforms, similar products from leading Chinese developers.

Muse Spark Open “is the most capable US open-weight model to date,” Meta’s chief of AI Alexandr Wang wrote on X.

Chip makers and tech investors such as Samsung and SoftBank plunge as potential interest rate hikes spook markets

• Business news – live updates

• Larry Elliott: the global economy is muddling through. But a storm is coming

An accelerating sell-off of AI-linked shares has hit global markets, as fears over rising inflation and future interest rate hikes spooked traders already wary of the heavily indebted sector.

South Korea’s benchmark Kospi 200 index, which is heavily skewed towards the companies that make memory chips, fell more than 8% overnight to a six-month closing low, triggering circuit breakers that brought trading to a halt at various points.

In the final part of our series on the country, Poles tell how wages have soared – along with the cost of living

• Will military spending help or hinder Poland’s growth story?

• Poland’s push for EU energy resilience amid Russian aggression

Above the rain-soaked streets of Warsaw, the observation deck of the Varso tower overlooks Joseph Stalin’s gift to Poland that has divided opinion for decades.

For some, the Soviet-era Palace of Culture and Science is a drunk confectioner’s nightmare; standing as a relic of oppression that should have been demolished. For others, it is an icon on the skyline and a monumental warning from history.

Researchers say ‘AI worms’ could soon infiltrate internet-connected devices amid calls for increased guardrails

Anthropic is warning that some of its artificial intelligence models could soon become “self-replicating” and find ways to infiltrate internet-connected devices, such as smart fridges and automatic vacuum cleaners.

Once this happens, the company said, the models could power themselves within these devices without the need of datacenters. Such self-replication would represent a major loss of control of a runaway AI model.

Rapid AI adoption left workers cleaning up a flood of errors and low-quality work

Employers around the globe are grappling with the fallout from rushing to adopt fast-changing artificial intelligence tools.

Meta has scaled back plans to axe staff and use more AI agents after the company found employees were spending more and more time cleaning up technical and security errors, Reuters reported. And after thinning its workforce, especially middle managers, in a 2023 efficiency push, the company is expanding its managerial ranks again, LinkedIn posts from workers show.

Amid worries about children’s relationship to tech, the solution is often spending more time talking openly with each other

We have become obsessed with the idea that screens are destroying human connection.

The evidence seems to be everywhere. Each week headlines warn of teenagers addicted to phones, a loneliness epidemic and the dangers of AI. The release of The Social Reckoning leads us to ask, “How bad were those guys at Meta?” and then ultimately wonder, “How bad am I if I still use Instagram?” In our day-to-day, we observe workers eating lunch alone while scrolling and friends choosing online games over offline gatherings.