Find relief from back pain and muscle tension with picks our contributors love, like slip-on shoes and thick cushions

• Seven essential gadgets to live with when you have back pain, from grabbers to lap desks

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

In another world, pressing play on a “heal overnight manifestation” video or taking a nice hot bath would be enough to relieve our tech necks and tense muscles. Instead, we usually need real, everyday support.

At the Filter, we’ve tested a lot of gadgets to soothe our own achy bodies: eight seat cushions, 18 massage guns and countless products for sleep aid. Below we’ve selected six practical items from our coverage that may help ease your aches and pains.

Under new rules, tech companies will be asked to share AI models with government for review before public release

Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a voluntary framework for the federal government to vet powerful new AI models before they are released. Tuesday’s highly anticipated order represents an attempt by the president to tighten his grip on cybersecurity and national security threats posed by AI, tacking against his earlier deregulatory stance. But the voluntary nature of the framework shows that, while Trump has toed a more cautious line on AI than when he first took office last year, he is still reluctant to impose regulations on the tech industry.

Under the new guidelines, tech companies would be asked to share their AI models with the government for a voluntary review, up to 30 days before a public release. The Trump administration says doing so will allow them to improve national security, particularly with regards to cybersecurity.

Markets take note as world’s biggest equity fundraiser bids to garner more money than three biggest-ever IPOs combined

• Kenneth Rogoff: will AI create a permanent underclass?

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has said it plans to raise up to $80bn (£59bn) in equity to fund its vast artificial intelligence infrastructure investments, raising further questions over the economics of the AI boom.

The move, the largest equity fundraising ever according to analysts, includes a $10bn share sale to the US investment group Berkshire Hathaway, which was led until last year by Warren Buffett.

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

• Anthropic confidentially files for initial public offering on US stock market

In a landmark moment, gold has overtaken US government bonds as the world’s top reserve asset, according to calculations from the European Central Bank.

The ECB says that gold made up 27% of total official foreign reserves at the end of 2025, ahead of US Treasuries (22% of reserves) and the euro (15%).

Forces of fragmentation are becoming more pronounced. Geopolitical tensions continue to drive strong central bank demand for gold.

In nominal terms, the gold price surged by around 60% and 30% in 2025 and 2024 respectively, which mechanically increases the share of gold in total official foreign reserves.

Correcting for such valuation effects by using the gold price at the end of 2023, the share of the euro (16%) remains at par with the share of gold (16%), while the share of US Treasuries continues to be markedly higher (26%).

State sues maker of ChatGPT and CEO Sam Altman, alleging company ‘allowed a dangerous product to reach millions’

Florida filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and its CEO, Sam Altman, on Monday alleging that the company concealed serious safety risks with its chatbot. Florida is the first US state to sue the artificial intelligence company.

The 83-page suit was brought by Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, and alleges that OpenAI “aggressively marketed” ChatGPT to the public while ignoring safety warnings and possible dangers of the product.

In today’s newsletter: Its software is used from health services to militaries. But controversies and criticism of the $375bn company are leading some to ask if Palantir is too powerful

Good morning. The Peter Mandelson story keeps unfolding. Peter Walker explains here what is in the latest release of documents, and Henry Dyer takes a look at the key papers missing from the latest disclosures. Today we are covering another major story: Palantir.

Few companies attract controversy more than Palantir. Since the pandemic, the US data analytics company has grown voraciously, using its AI-driven software to make sense of intractable datasets for customers around the world. For the NHS, it analyses patient records; for the US military, it’s focused on targets in Iran. Palantir’s products are widely used, with the business now worth $375bn.

UK politics | Peter Mandelson was receiving sensitive security briefings about the Foreign Office’s work, and was in discussions with the head of MI6, before he had completed the developed vetting process, documents reveal.

Ukraine | Russian air raids on major Ukrainian centres including Kyiv, Dnipro and Kharkiv killed at least five people and wounded dozens by early morning on Tuesday, authorities said.

Environment | More than a million jobs, higher wages, nearly half a trillion pounds in investment in the pipeline – the UK’s green economy is powering ahead, according to research by the country’s leading business organisation.

US news | Donald Trump is reconsidering whether to keep pressing for a $1.8bn fund to compensate his allies, a person familiar with his thinking said, as the justice department paused the program to comply with a court order.

UK news | Sir Alan Bates has said that the schemes set up to compensate post office operators over the Horizon IT scandal have been an “utter disaster” and that the government should not be involved in running them.

Breach of high-profile accounts raises concerns about reliance on AI for security measures such as passwords

Hackers used Meta’s AI-powered support chatbot to infiltrate high-profile Instagram accounts, the company has confirmed, saying it resolved the problem after researchers exposed it.

The targets ranged from Barack Obama’s White House account to the beauty retailer Sephora and the US Space Force chief master sergeant, John Bentivegna, according to reporting from 404 Media. Everyday users complained of similar hijackings on Reddit and X over the weekend.

Financial stakes of AI race rise as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are slated to go public this year

Anthropic has filed confidentially for an initial public offering on the US stock market, the company announced on Monday. The AI firm makes the Claude chatbot, popular with software engineers and other business clients, and has seen a meteoric rise this year.

The company did not disclose the valuation it will target on the stock market, nor did it make public other terms of the offering. The startup announced on Thursday that it had raised $65bn in funding to value the company at $965bn post-money. Anthropic was valued at $380bn in February.

Record-breaking box office for Backrooms and Obsession has opened the door for twentysomething YouTube creators as the industry rethinks what audiences want

At this time last year, the idea of a wide-release feature film-maker cutting their teeth on YouTube was, if not unheard of, certainly still a niche origin story. Siblings Michael and Danny Philippou had just released Bring Her Back, the follow-up to their surprise horror hit Talk to Me, to pretty-good reviews and OK box office; clearly they would continue to work, but the slightly diminished returns didn’t predict a YouTube explosion. Nor did the outright lousiness of Shelby Oaks, from longtime YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann, when it premiered in theaters later in 2025. Generous horror-festival buzz died down as more people actually laid eyes on the movie; Stuckmann was an obvious enthusiast, and some saw promise in his first effort, but a clumsy found-footage pastiche without much emotional sense didn’t seem like the next big thing, either.

But in 2026, something has shifted. In January, YouTuber Markiplier self-released his adaptation of the video game Iron Lung to theaters, and it outgrossed any number of big-studio titles. Then Curry Barker, whose comedy sketches have been a YouTube fixture, unveiled his feature debut Obsession. The film, made for under a million dollars, has become the box office phenomenon of the summer so far, managing a virtually unheard-of feat when its second and third weekends actually outgrossed its first. Obsession is sharing multiplex space with Backrooms, directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, who previously brought the spooky internet meme to life in a series of YouTube shorts. Despite being set in a series of purgatorial, sparsely furnished, fluorescent-lit “liminal spaces”, it was the top movie at the North American box office this weekend, poised to become the biggest-grossing movie from distributor A24 in a matter of days. Backrooms also opened to bigger numbers than any number of starrier or bigger-brand 2026 titles like Wuthering Heights, Scream 7, The Devil Wears Prada 2 or the last Pixar movie. That makes three YouTube-trained film-makers who have presided over some of this year’s biggest and/or most surprising hits. With them have come countless social media posts about how YouTube, not film school, provides the real training tomorrow’s directors need.

From Google co-founder Brin spending $82m to fight a billionaire tax to Google and Meta funding a joint Super Pac, Silicon Valley is engaged in an existential fight for its political power at home

Tech billionaires have shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars ahead of the 2 June primary election in California, in an unrivaled attempt to influence who gets to run the state that Silicon Valley calls home.

The industry has used a cover-all-bases approach, funding candidates and ballot measures big and small, contributing to what looks to be the most expensive primary season in California history. The goal, experts say, is to gain both political and regulatory leverage that will perpetuate dominance in business.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has spent $82m since January, more than any other donor, to fight a billionaire tax that’s up for a vote on the November ballot.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahan has received more donations than any other candidate, including from top executives at Google, Amazon, Snap, LinkedIn, Reddit and Palantir.

Crypto mogul Chris Larsen has funded three Super Pacs with $26m to sway campaigns across California, including giving $1m to back a primary candidate for state insurance commissioner.

Google and Meta have collectively funded a Super Pac with $10m to back assembly and senate candidates in local district races across the state.

Silicon Valley money is flowing toward city primaries as well as state-level ones, with tech-backed Pacs sponsoring voter guides suggesting how to vote on local tax measures.

As temperatures soar across the UK, chill your space – and avoid energy-guzzling aircon – with our pick of the best fans, from tower to desk to bladeless

• The best portable neck and handheld fans

Our world is getting hotter. Summer heatwaves are so frequent, they’re stretching the bounds of what we think of as summer. Hot-and-bothered home working and sweaty, sleepless nights are now alarmingly common.

Get a good fan and you can dodge the temptation of air conditioning. Aircon is incredibly effective, but it uses a lot of electricity … and burning fossil fuels is how we got into this mess in the first place. Save money and carbon by opting for a great fan instead.

Best quiet fan for the bedroom and best overall:
AirCraft Lume

Best fan for cooling:
Dreo TurboCool misting fan 765S

Launching in the UK this month, this new pint-sized console revives the motion-controlled video game boom of the 00s – with better, safer tech

For a wonderful moment in the noughties, video games became a truly universal pursuit. As I witnessed my controller-phobic aunt swing a Wii remote and nail a tennis serve, while my great-grandmother furrowed her brow over sudoku puzzles on her Nintendo DS, it seemed my long-derided hobby had finally gone mainstream. The Nintendo Wii flew off the shelves, inspiring a wave of competitors such as the Xbox Kinect camera that encouraged people to play games by moving their bodies. But the tide turned: outside of still-niche VR gaming and the odd controller-waggler on the Switch, motion-controlled gaming has barely been seen for more than a decade.

Now, 20 years later, a new console is aiming to get the whole family flailing in front of the TV once again: the Nex Playground. Launching in the UK later this month, the first thing that struck me about this family-friendly device is just how tiny it is. The size of two and a half Rubik’s Cubes taped together, this impressively unintrusive device swaps cumbersome controllers for camera-controlled minigames, putting you and your family directly in the game. Using a wide-angle lens and AI-powered tracking tech, the Nex Playground offers over 50 games that track players’ bodies as they leap, flail and dance about the living room. It’s not hard to see the appeal.

The roots of AI in rightwing ideology is examined in Valerie Veatch’s enjoyable doc, including an array of colourful, often crazed, figures

Director Valerie Veatch made her name with documentaries such as Love Child (about an online gaming-addicted couple whose child died of malnutrition) and Me at the Zoo (about American vlogger Cara Cunningham), films that explore the intersection of real-world subcultures and internet communities. Her latest continues in this vein, although its self-set remit is a bit broader, more urgent and germane to everyone right now: the pursuit of artificial intelligence, its dark history in eugenics and highly debatable utility today (despite the stock-market bubble pushing the value of a half-dozen companies towards the stratosphere).

The thrust of the film is largely polemic, guiding the viewer towards AI-sceptical conclusions one persuasive soundbite at a time. Nevertheless, it also serves as a very useful, straightforward primer on AI history, touching on a dazzling array of colourful, often crazed figures, including Victorian British eugenicist Francis Galton, Silicon Valley founding father and overt racist William Shockley and current-day jillionaire jerk Elon Musk. Sadly, the film is not so up-to-date that it covers Musk and former friend-turned-foe Sam Altman’s recent courtroom brawl, but that doesn’t detract from the thrust of Veatch and her interviewees’ arguments.

Firm says its RTX Spark PC chip for Microsoft Windows will let AI agents replace the mouse and keyboard

• Business live – latest updates

A new front has opened up in the battle for dominance in AI chips, as Nvidia said its latest development could replace the mouse and keyboard in how people use computers.

The $5tn (£3.7tn) US semiconductor company has launched a “superchip” that puts AI capabilities into laptops and desktop computers, a move that will pit it against Intel, Apple, Qualcomm and AMD.

Coalition of more than 100 organisations says move could lead to more children ending up in adult detention facilities

A coalition of more than a hundred refugee children’s organisations has said controversial plans to use AI to assess the age of young asylum seekers could lead to more children wrongly ending up in adult prisons or detention centres.

The warning follows a Home Office announcement on Friday of a contract to roll out AI facial age estimation technology on young asylum seekers whose age is disputed.

Sarah Wynn-Williams did not speak during event after lawyers warned of possible sanctions from tech firm

Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams was forced to sit in silence on stage at an event at Hay festival, after lawyers advised her not to speak because of ongoing legal action brought by Meta.

Wynn-Williams, whose bestselling memoir, Careless People, details her years working at Facebook, was due to appear in conversation with the investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu.

A new belief set is uniting some of the wealthiest men in the world around a ‘transhuman’ future – actual humanity be damned

Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, took to the Internet a few years ago to propose that homo sapiens would be the first species “to design our own descendants”. In his best case scenario, the “merge” between humans and artificial intelligence occurs at some point over the next 50 years. The alternative, where we remain simply human and the machines follow their own path, is more ominous. “If two different species both want the same thing and only one can have it – in this case, to be the dominant species on the planet and beyond – they are going to have conflict,” he wrote.

More recently, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who at one point last year was granted the power to reconfigure the US federal government, argued on his social media platform, X, that “it increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence” – our role in the history of the cosmos reduced to that of the low level code that boots up a computer before you can run sophisticated programs on it.

From digital twins to models ‘sculpted’ by programmers, generative AI has been popping up all over the fashion industry. When an Australian e-commerce retailer started using AI-generated models to sell products, lifestyle editor Alyx Gorman had to see if the garments were more than mere pixels.

The Iconic, which sells the dress worn in this video, said in a statement: ‘Where AI-generated imagery is used to advertise products for sale on our platform, our expectation is that it is clearly labelled and that the product itself is represented as accurately as possible for customers.’

Meanwhile, Atoir, the designer, said: ‘The Australian fashion industry is highly competitive, particularly for independent brands. We believe that when used responsibly, tools like this can help smaller businesses to operate with greater agility while still maintaining the creative standards and product integrity that matter to both the brand and the customer’

• Calling all fashion models … now AI is coming for you

While companion robots are being introduced and virtual experiences hope to ‘take loneliness away’, one expert agrees tech should never replace the human element

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

“You’ll never get rid of humans,” Prof Wendy Moyle says, during a discussion about robots and other technology in aged care and residential homes.

Then, a beat later, she adds: “Well, I don’t think we’ll get rid of humans.”

Experts say AI firm’s engagement with Vatican risks creating ‘feelgood’ discourse that lacks critical examination

Why did Anthropic’s founder sit beside the pope during a warning about AI?

In the first major written teaching of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV took artificial intelligence to task. The pontiff delineated the technology’s most concerning threats to humanity: replacing workers, accelerating war and exploiting the environment. At a ceremony honoring the holy teaching the day of its release at the Vatican, the pope was flanked by an unusual guest speaker: Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, one of the people behind the AI boom so worrying Leo.