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Good morning! Today's edition is about oversight: who is watching the AI, and who is paying for it. Let's get into it.
AI "Journalists" Are Rewriting Canadian News, and Google Pulled the Site
A site run by AI personas with bylines and a "Quebec correspondent" has been repackaging real newsrooms' work across 100+ Canadian cities. Experts say cheap AI and hosting make it hard to stop. See how Canadian Press tracked it down →
Six AI Giants Sign a Voluntary Safety Accord as a New White House AI Task Force Launches
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia and SpaceX's AI division agreed to audits and board-level reviews, but no enforcement has been reported. See who is on the new task force and what was signed →
Blu Dot surpasses 2,000% ROAS with self-serve CTV ads
Home furniture brand Blu Dot blew up on CTV with help from Roku Ads Manager. Here’s how:
After a test campaign reached 211,000 households and achieved 1,010% ROAS, the brand went all in to promote its annual sales event. It removed age and income constraints to expand reach and shifted budget to custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.
The results speak for themselves. As Blu Dot increased their investment by 10x, ROAS jumped to 2,308% and more page-view conversions surpassed 50,000.
“For CTV campaigns, Roku has been a top performer,” said Claire Folkestad, Paid Media Strategist, Blu Dot. “Comping to our other platforms, we have seen really strong ROAS… and highly efficient CPMs, lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”
Using Roku Ads Manager, the campaign moved from a pilot to a permanent performance engine for the brand.
HSBC Backs Model ML to Automate Bank Research, but the "$100 Million" Is Not What It Seems
The headline figure is total funding to date, not the new round, and HSBC's check size was never disclosed. See what the deal actually says →
Reco Raises $55 Million After Finding 21,000 Unknown AI Agents at One Fortune 100 Company
At least two dozen vendors are now chasing the same problem, and AT&T is both an investor and a customer. See the numbers behind the agent security race →
B.C. Towns Say AI Data Centres Pay the Same Tax as a Coffee Shop
Mackenzie's mayor says reclassifying one 80-megawatt facility as light industry could roughly triple the town's revenue from it. See what the province said →
📚 From the AI Knowledge Hub
Claude API Pricing 2026 — Every model's cost per token, plus caching and batch savings
AI Code Detector — How accurate these tools really are, and where false positives land
Claude Code Skills — How to build them and avoid the most common mistakes
📢 The Signal Behind the Noise
Today's five stories all ask who is checking the work. A news site with no real reporters, agents running inside companies that nobody inventoried, and a data centre taxed like a café all point to rules written for how things used to work. The responses so far are a voluntary accord, a tax-class request and a new security product category, and none has been tested yet. The practical question for any business is whether you can list the AI tools running inside it today, and who is responsible for each one.
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