Welcome to Jumble, your go-to source for AI news updates. This week, OpenAI is turning Apple's own messy security habits into its best legal defense, while scientists used AI to design sixteen brand-new viruses that don't exist anywhere in nature. Let’s dive in ⬇️
In today’s newsletter:
🕵️ Apple vs OpenAI heats up
🧫 Scientists use AI to design sixteen brand-new viruses
🛰️ A Chinese AI model breaks out of a safety test
🏙️ Data center rents in Hong Kong nearly double
💬 Weekly Challenge: audit who still has access to your data
🔓 Apple's Own Security Habits May Undercut Its Case
OpenAI just filed to dismiss Apple's trade secrets lawsuit, and its defense is blunt: Apple's own security practices are the real problem here. New court filings argue Cupertino left the door open for former employees to keep helping old colleagues long after they'd left the building.
Would you buy OpenAI's "the door was unlocked" defense?
🔑 iCloud Never Got Locked Down
OpenAI's filing includes text messages showing an Apple manager stayed logged into a departed engineer's personal iCloud account to pull files and ask him technical questions months after he'd left. Apple never revoked the access. OpenAI also released text messages publicly in their blog post titled, ‘Apple is getting this wrong.’
📵 A Weak Foundation for "Trade Secrets"
OpenAI argues Apple's own offboarding failures undercut its claim that the information ever qualified as a protected trade secret. The filing frames former Apple staff as simply helping old teammates, not stealing anything.
🧬 AI Just Designed Sixteen Viruses Nature Never Made
Stanford and Arc Institute scientists used an AI model called Evo to generate thousands of brand-new viral genomes, then built and tested roughly 300 of them in the lab. Sixteen turned out to be fully functional viruses that don't exist anywhere in nature.
🦠 Built to Fight Superbugs, Not Humans
The new viruses are bacteriophages that only infect E. coli, and a mix of them beat antibiotic-resistant strains that natural phage mixes couldn't touch. None of them can affect humans.
⚠️ A Milestone That Cuts Both Ways
Researchers say one virus carried changes that would've taken evolution millions of years to stumble on naturally, which is exactly why biosecurity experts are asking hard questions about misuse.
Do you think this is a positive or negative development?
Weekly Scoop 🍦
🔐 Weekly Challenge: Audit Your Own Access Trail
Challenge: This week's lawsuit turns on access nobody bothered to revoke, so let's make sure you're not leaving any doors open of your own.
Here's what to do:
📋 Step 1: Pull your access list Head into your Google, Apple, or Microsoft account security settings and grab the list of apps and services that still have access to your account.
🧭 Step 2: Ask AI to flag the risks Paste the list into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini and ask which entries look old, unused, or risky to still have connected.
🧹 Step 3: Revoke and reset Work through the list and cut access for anything you don't recognize or haven't touched in months, then set a reminder to do it again in six.
Would you want your own old messages read back to you in court someday? And are AI-designed viruses a medical breakthrough or a biosecurity nightmare in the making? See you next time! 🚀
Stay informed, stay curious, and stay ahead with Jumble!
Zoe from Jumble
