In brief: From Las Vegas, the latest trends and innovations at CES 2026. What this is BBC’s Tech Now is highlighting product demos and early signals from CES 2026 — one of the biggest consumer-tech trade shows, where brands test ideas and compete for attention. What CES usually tells us (beyond the hype) Direction of […]

Summary: The UK government is consulting on the idea of a social media ban for under-16s, alongside measures intended to reduce phone use in schools and curb features that drive compulsive behaviour. The immediate political question is “should we ban?” The harder policy question is “what exactly would that mean, and would it work?” Bans

Summary: OpenAI is starting to test adverts inside ChatGPT for some users, alongside a new lower-priced subscription tier (ChatGPT Go). That’s a major shift because it changes the “business logic” of consumer AI from a pure subscription product into the familiar internet model: attention + targeting + monetisation. OpenAI says ads won’t influence answers and

Summary: Google is appealing the US antitrust ruling that found it illegally held a monopoly in online search—and it’s asking the court to pause the remedies ordered so far. The debate is now less about whether Google is powerful (it is) and more about whether the proposed fixes change anything meaningful. A useful way to

Summary: Google has appealed a landmark US antitrust ruling that found it illegally held a monopoly in online search. On paper, appeals are routine. In practice, this one sits at the centre of two overlapping shifts: regulators trying to unwind “default” power in tech markets, and generative AI changing what “search” even is. The most

Summary: The UK government is consulting on a social media ban for under‑16s, alongside related measures aimed at making schools “phone-free by default” and forcing platforms to consider stronger age checks and limits on features that drive compulsive use. The policy pressure is real. But the evidence base is still developing, and the implementation details

Summary: Snap settled a social media addiction lawsuit just days before trial — a case that claims algorithmic product design contributed to addiction and mental health harms. Snap is out (in this case). Meta, TikTok and YouTube remain, with a trial still scheduled. The settlement matters because it shows these cases are moving from abstract

Summary: Blue Origin says it will launch more than 5,400 satellites to build a new global communications network called TeraWave, positioned as a rival to Starlink. The company is framing it as an enterprise/government-grade network for moving huge amounts of data, rather than consumer broadband. The larger story is that low-Earth orbit is turning into

Summary: TikTok’s deal to split its US app from its global business is a high-stakes compromise: it keeps TikTok running for 200 million Americans while trying to satisfy national security concerns about Chinese ownership. The technical heart of the deal is the algorithm — licensed to US owners and retrained on US data — and

Summary: TikTok has a new US ownership-and-governance structure designed to address Washington’s national security concerns — and that will likely change how the app is operated, secured, and updated for its roughly 200 million American users. The big promise is continuity (same app, same creators, broadly the same experience). The big question is whether a