Robots+2Aug 14

Image: spectrum.ieee.org
Monumental robots complete brickwork with roughly 20,000 bricks
Monumental’s construction robots completed the brickwork for a semi-detached home in a new community. The house-scale task moves robotic masonry beyond a small demonstration. The machines laid roughly 20,000 bricks.
ImageAug 14

Image: theverge.com
Google makes visible AI watermarks optional
Creators can now export media generated with Gemini and Flow without a Google mark in the corner. Google added a setting that disables the visible sparkle watermark on generated images, videos and music. Viewers lose an immediate visual cue that the material was made with AI.
Negative - Letting users remove visible watermarks makes Google-generated media harder to identify at a glance and weakens a basic provenance safeguard.
TextAug 14

Image: arstechnica.com
Litigant plants prompt injections in court filings
A man who suspected a court was using AI inserted instructions into his legal filings in an attempt to influence the case. Those instructions were prompt injections, meaning text intended to steer an AI system’s response. The report did not say the attempt succeeded. Courts and law firms that feed documents into AI systems need prompt-injection defenses and human review.
Negative - A litigant planted adversarial instructions in court filings to manipulate suspected AI review, with no safeguard shown stopping the attempt.
AgentsAug 14

Image: therobotreport.com
Protolabs makes parts from CAD files in under 24 hours
A sub-24-hour path from digital design to a physical part can shorten prototyping and manufacturing iteration cycles. Protolabs says it turns customer CAD files into production parts in under 24 hours. Its workflow combines AI, simulation and design-for-manufacturing systems.
Compute & InfraAug 14

Image: blogs.nvidia.com
Indonesia opens first university-based AI center
The new center gives Indonesia a university base for building local AI skills and projects. Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indosat and NVIDIA launched it in Yogyakarta with support from Indonesia’s communications ministry. NVIDIA described it as the country’s first university-based center of its kind.
Compute & InfraAug 14

Image: datacenterdynamics.com
West London data center wins construction approval
Construction approval cleared a regulatory gate for a proposed addition to west London’s computing infrastructure. Planning documents put the facility at up to 50,000 square meters with 64 MW of electricity use. They list 48 MW of planned IT load.
TextAug 14
Apple reportedly developed China-specific model with Alibaba
Apple reportedly adapted its AI work for China by developing a custom language model with Alibaba. Alibaba supported the model’s training. The account came from three unnamed people familiar with the work.
Announced or reported, but not yet real or available.