Welcome to the newest edition of ID Tech’s AI update. Here’s the latest big news on the shifting landscape of AI and identity technology:
AI was a key agent in Operation Spiderweb, a Ukrainian drone attack that damaged a huge portion of Russia’s fleet of military aircraft, including bombers and surveillance planes. The drones were remotely piloted by Ukrainian warfighters, but were designed to switch to AI-powered autonomous flight if they lost signal during the operation.
Amazon is developing software for humanoid robots that could replace its delivery drivers, according to a report from The Information. It’s currently building a testing facility at its San Francisco campus dubbed “humanoid park“. In the near term, the robots are expected to work alongside human colleagues.
Anthropic’s CEO is pushing against a Republican proposal to ban AI regulations for 10 years. Writing in a New York Times op-ed, Dario Amodei argues that such a ban would be “far too blunt an instrument” given the rapid pace of AI advancement. He instead suggests a regulatory regime focused on transparency, such as by requiring AI companies to disclose testing protocols and risk mitigation strategies.
Snowflake plans to acquire Crunch Data in a $250 million deal. Snowflake, a cloud data company, is looking to leverage Crunch Data’s specialized database technology to offer its clients a toolset enabling them to build their own AI agents and other applications without having to manage the infrastructure themselves.
Brookfield plans to invest up to $10 billion in a Sweden-based AI data center. The 750-megawatt data center will be located in Strängnäs, about 50 miles west of Stockholm, and is expected to be the first “AI factory” in the Nordic region. Construction will take 10-20 years.
Meta has sealed a 20-year deal to source nuclear power from Constellation Energy’s Clinton Clean Energy Center in Illinois. The energy will be used in large part for Meta’s AI efforts, and the deal comes after Constellation’s announcement last September that it would reopen its infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania after inking a similar deal with Microsoft.
ElevenLabs has launched a more powerful version of its AI voice model that can create even more realistic synthetic voices. The company has been highlighting Eleven v3’s sophisticated text-to-speech capabilities, but the platform also has a powerful voice cloning feature that can create a highly accurate replica of a real person’s voice.
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has announced a new regulatory initiative focused on AI and biometrics. Dubbed “Preventing harm, promoting trust: our AI and biometrics strategy,” the effort entails a planned statutory code of ethics for developers along with a regime of regular audits. Things like automated facial recognition, agentic AI, and emotion inference will be under scrutiny.
Police in Vietnam busted a large-scale money laundering operation that used AI to spoof banking systems. After Vietnamese authorities introduced face-based authentication requirements in banking last year, the criminals allegedly used AI-generated deepfakes to bypass such security systems. The criminal network behind the operation is thought to have laundered about $39 million over a seven-month period.
The chatbot’s take: We asked GPT-4o for a historical comparison:
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June 6, 2025 – by Alex Perala
