News
- The Future Games Show will return with three digital showcases at Gamescom 2026
- It will air on August 26, offering a look at over 40 games
- FGS Live From Gamescom will immediately follow, and the FGS Best Of Gamescom will return on August 30
Opening Night Live has officially wrapped, but there's plenty more to come from Gamescom 2026, as the Future Games Show will return with three digital showcases — here's how you can watch.
Future Games Show at Gamescom is the first of the three broadcasts and will air the same day the industry event kicks off, on August 26 at 10AM PDT / 1PM EDT / 6PM BST / 7PM CEST / 1AM CST.
You can tune in to the digital showcase at Twitch, YouTube, X, TikTok, Facebook, and GamesRadar+.
Hosted by Resident Evil Requiem stars Nick Apostolides and Angela Sant’Albano, fans can expect a guide through more than 40 games, including 13 world premieres, exclusive reveals, and developer deep dives "from some of the industry’s most exciting and creative studios."
Some of those include a behind-the-scenes look at Tides of Annihilation from Eclipse Glow Games, a closer look at samurai swordplay action game Onimusha: Way of the Sword, a new trailer for Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault from Digital Sun Games, and a trailer for Trees Hate You, a comedy adventure, and many more.
FGS Live From Gamescom will immediately follow the main showcase on August 26, hosted by FGS channel presenters Nathan and Jules, and feature more world premieres, trailers, news, and interviews from the Gamescom Koelnmesse convention centre.
This includes Apart, a new third-person adventure horror game from Turnkey Games; Nivalis Nights, a slice-of-life sim set in a cyberpunk city; a cozy coop horror game called Haunted Paws; We Are So Cooked, a 1-4 player co-op physics-stealth game; and the sequel to retro first-person shooter (FPS) Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun.
Finally, FGS Best Of Gamescom will return on August 30 at 10AM PDT / 1PM EDT / 6PM BST / 7PM CEST / 1AM CST, and bring viewers the "best of" the Gamescom show floor, including gameplay demos, booth tours, exclusive developer interviews, and a recap of all the week’s biggest announcements.
- IBM connects two box-shaped cryogenic modules into a single environment and cooled them below 15 millikelvin, linked by a thermally shielded tunnel carrying quantum cables between cells
- The cooling technology is established dilution refrigeration; what is new is an enclosure that offers up to twelve times more wiring area and lets modules sit side by side with shorter interconnects in tow
- IBM plans to install Nighthawk chips later this year, with a roadmap targeting 1,000 programmable qubits by 2027 and establishing fault tolerance in 2029
IBM has joined two cryogenic modules into a single environment at its Poughkeepsie facility and cooled the combined system to below 15 millikelvin, bringing it as close to absolute zero as possible.
The company said this was an important milestone on the road to IBM Quantum Starling, the fault-tolerant machine it intends to deliver in 2029.
IBM said the temperature is more than 180 times colder than deep space, and it is only part of the announcement, which furthers quantum computing considerably.
A story beyond temperatureSuperconducting qubits need to sit a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, and a dilution refrigerator gets them there. To date, IBM has housed these inside tall cylindrical cryostats, one processor per can, an approach that dictates how every IBM Quantum System One in the field currently operates.
IBM has not replaced the refrigerator but rather modified the container: its new cryogenic cells are box-shaped, built from solid aluminum panels and framing, roughly three times the size of a kitchen fridge.
Their rectangular shape has an advantage: they can stand in a tight row rather than being spaced out as cylinders must be, and openings in the side walls let quantum cables run from one cell into the next. Multiple layers of thermal shielding wrap those cables to form what IBM calls a protected cryogenic tunnel, keeping the link between processors at operating temperature rather than forcing signals out through a warm gap and back down again.
IBM's achievement is demonstrating that it can run two previously independent cooling cells as one low-temperature environment, while offering 0.53 square meters of available wiring space and 2.75 cubic meters of vacuum chamber volume per cell.
IBM says this is up to twelve times more wiring room than its most widely used systems and addresses the constraint that has been quietly throttling superconducting quantum computers: every qubit you add needs control and readout lines running down into the cold, each line carries heat, and a cylinder runs out of cross-section long before one runs out of qubits.
Not only is IBM's new approach much more scalable than its previous ones, but it's goal here is different than what one would think at first glance given that It has already hit 1,000 qubits (its Condor processor already did so physically on a single chip in December 2023); its new approach is to have programmable qubits usable for computation across linked processors, a much different task than what IBM has already demonstrated.
Its 2027 target refers to qubits you can actually address and run a calculation on, spread across several chips linked together. That is a harder thing to deliver than a raw count, and IBM's roadmap, which also aims to have a fault-tolerant machine by 2029, is a reach by any measure, but one that is promising for a company that is at the forefront of quantum computing research and has just shown a bleeding-edge cooling enclosure to further its cause.
- AI authorship is increasingly employed for web pages, Pew Research Center report claims
- Over 33% of pages published since the launch of ChatGPT reportedly show signs of AI generation
- Of the 10,000-page sample used in the study, 10% of pages had signs of AI authorship
An incredible 35% of web pages published since the launch of ChatGPT show signs of AI authorship, new research has claimed.
A study from the Pew Research Center, which used automated tools to assess a sample of 10,000 web pages, also found that in the entire sample – based on data from the Common Crawl project – almost 10% of all pages had signs of AI creation.
The “How Much of the Internet Is Written With AI?” report also found that certain types of websites are more likely to feature some AI generation, while detecting some of the key fingerprints of AI-generated text, which goes beyond em dashes.
AI is writing more and more web pagesThe report – which was compiled using a machine learning model tasked with looking for signs of AI authorship – found that 9.6% of all pages in the sample of 10,000 appeared to have been written by AI. While that may seem a small amount, the sample from Common Crawl dates back to the beginning of the World Wide Web, over 30 years ago.
In keeping with other research (such as AI on the Internet), the data indicates that “large shares of recently published pages on the internet were likely written or substantially edited by AI.”
Reassuringly, the data highlights the interesting point that the majority of the suspected AI-generated web pages published in 2026 are .com domains and, as such typically commercial. In contrast, just 1% are .edu (US-based educational facilities) and 0.8% are .gov.
Is it written by AI?Using its evaluation of 490,000 English-language web pages, the Pew Research Center also established some more useful indicators (“common features”) of AI text generation.
The em dash is regularly held up as an example of AI writing, as is the use of the Oxford comma. The em dash appears “twice as frequently” in pages published since 2023, while Oxford commas have a 63% increase. The report authors note that these aren’t solitary indicators (“Humans use these in their writing too!”)
Other “tells” offer a more reliable giveaway of AI-generated writing, as demonstrated by the report. Certain words and trends are listed by the research, including "delve," "interplay," and "testament," which have apparently “more than doubled in usage.” The report lists numerous examples of “AI-typical vocabulary.”
Meanwhile, the negative parallelism, which you might have seen as “it’s not just X, it’s Y,” has almost trebled in use.
It might be increasingly difficult to identify an AI-generated web page these days, but if it comes from a .edu or .gov domain, it is overall more likely to have been written by a human.
- The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition has released a preview of select winning images for its 62nd year
- Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London
- The full set of 100 winning images will be exhibited at the Museum following the full winners’ announcement on October 16
The winners announcement of the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is one of my favorite dates in the photographic calendar. It seems like every year the winning and commended photographers outdo themselves in capturing vivid, fascinating stories from the natural world.
One thing I also love doing is poring over which cameras the winning photographers are using to capture their spectacular shots. As such, when the Museum released this set of preview images to whet our appetites ahead of the full announcement, I headed straight to the caption information — and discovered to my great interest that the two most-used cameras on the list so far are both Nikon DSLRs!
The full list of cameras used to capture the sixteen shots on the full list is a real mixed bag. As well as a selection of pro and prosumer mirrorless and DSLR cameras, there’s also a DJI Mavic drone and a Leica Q3 43 compact. However, the two cameras that featured most prominently — with two images apiece, representing a quarter of the full list — were the ten-year-old Nikon D500 and the Nikon D850!
(Image credit: © Dewald Tromp / Wildlife Photographer of the Year)The highly commended image ‘Eye of the Storm’ by Dewald Tromp from South Africa, depicting a chameleon battling its way through a sandstorm in Nigeria (above), was captured using the Nikon D850, as was American Ralph Pace’s image of a sea hare gliding through eelgrass in Monterey Bay (below).
(Image credit: © Ralph Pace / Wildlife Photographer of the Year)Jack Crawford in the UK has been highly commended in the 15-17 Years bracket for his perfectly timed moment of a swift flying underneath the looming bulk of a 747 — shot on a Nikon D500 (below).
(Image credit: © Jack Crockford / Wildlife Photographer of the Year)And Canadian Shane Gross strapped his Nikon D500 into an Aquatica AD500 underwater housing to capture his highly commended, half-in half-out image of a school of bigeye trevally off the coast of the Seychelles (below).
(Image credit: © Shane Gross / Wildlife Photographer of the Year)One thing’s for sure — the DSLR isn’t dead just yet!
If you want to be able to see these images for yourself when the exhibition begins in October, you can grab tickets here.
The D850 and D500The Nikon D850 is a hugely popular full-frame DSLR. (Image credit: Future)The Nikon D850, released in 2017, is a wildlife photography legend. A full-frame DSLR with a generous 45.7MP resolution, its 153-point AF system may not be as sophisticated as the flagship mirrorless cameras that have succeeded it, but it’s still incredibly tenacious and accurate for moving subjects.
With its pitch-perfect handling and large optical viewfinder, the D850 is a joy to shoot with and has captured many spectacular wildlife images since. There’s a reason that when Nikon came to release its mirrorless wildlife specialist the Z8, the manufacturer branded it as a new D850.
The smaller, more affordable Nikon D500. (Image credit: Future)The D500, meanwhile, was released a year earlier — meaning it has just marked its ten-year anniversary! Even so, this capable APS-C shooter made a reputation for being a speedster, thanks to its 10fps burst rate that could go up to 200 RAW files, as well as its simply superb autofocus system. As such, it has been embraced over the years by many wildlife photographers without the budget for the D850 — and as this year’s WPOTY results go to show, this stunning camera still has its share of devotees.
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is worried that powerful companies are dominating the evolution of AI
- Altman has also expressed concern over AI’s potential for acting autonomously and possibly escaping human control
- The comments are believed to be a reference to his rival, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
Are too few companies wielding undue influence on the direction of AI? That seems to be the belief of OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who has warned against a scenario where the people don’t have a say in how AI changes the world. Speaking to the David Senra podcast, Altman expressed a desire to see "society and the models... co-evolve."
While this may seem desirable, a byproduct of this thinking might be harder to accommodate. Altman also expanded on his view that governments should not regulate AI, expressing a view that prefers the existence of liberty over the possibility of safety.
Altman is the latest tech founder to appear on David Senra’s weekly podcast, which started in 2025 with Spotify’s Daniel Ek as the guest.
Evolving togetherAltman’s view is he sees AI evolving alongside human acceptance of the technology. “Society and the model will evolve together,” he said. “The right approach is for people to deeply control the future.”
However, he revealed that things haven’t moved quite as fast as he thought they might when OpenAI first released GPT-4. “I thought when we got to GPT-4, which was back in 2023, that very quickly after that there was going to be much more disruption.” One of Altman’s expectations back then was software businesses being more widely and directly impacted by AI.
While the inertia in the economy has reduced the impact in that regard (for the moment, at least), Altman is excited about AI’s ability to unlock small business opportunities. “We are about to see the greatest boom in people starting smaller businesses than we have ever seen… AI is empowering that.”
Liberty and open modelsAltman’s view of liberty and the need for open models puts him in direct opposition to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who, in June 2026, stated that the latest Mythos model could prove a risk to the financial sector and infrastructure and present a challenge to cybersecurity.
For Sam Altman, this is the wrong way around. “There are a lot of people who are so nervous about the magnitude of those risks and get so taken by that and feel a need to protect the world,” he said. “Like, you know, ‘We should trade off a lot of liberty for safety.’”
Interestingly, most major Chinese AI companies release open-weight (the open source of AI) models, enabling them to match Anthropic and OpenAI. While Anthropic is yet to release an open weight model, OpenAI has released two: gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b.
But will the people and small businesses derive long-term advantage from OpenAI’s liberty-based open models or stick with Anthropic’s closed, "safe" models?
- Xiaomi opens reservations at JD.com for the Xiaomi Smart Storage, its first NAS, with prices starting at CNY 2,699 for a 4 TB two-bay unit
- The box pairs the same entry-level Realtek RTD1619B chip Synology used in its 2023 DS223 models with more generous RAM and faster networking than what Synology offered, in addition to an HDMI port
- The China-only launch gets considerably cheaper per terabyte as one moves up the storage ladder and currently ships in three different trims (4TB, 8TB, and 16TB)
Xiaomi has opened reservations on JD.com for its Xiaomi Smart Storage, its first Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, ahead of general availability, running from August 27 to September 26 2026.
The reservations follow an earlier crowdfunding phase, Xiaomi's usual route to market in China for new product categories, which rewards the urgency and scarcity that often come with steep discounts on its products.
Three configurations are listed for the Smart Storage NAS, all bundled with drives out of the box: the entry model is CNY 2,699 for 4 TB, made up of two 2 TB hard disks; the middle option is CNY 3,499 for 8 TB; and the top configuration is CNY 5,499 for 16 TB.
(Image credit: Xiaomi)A small, capable NAS with a competitive price tag in towThe Xiaomi Smart Storage NAS is priced extremely competitively when you factor in US NAS drive prices. Its baseline 4TB SKU, which uses 2 x 2TB HDDs, costs ~$402, while the 8TB and 16TB trims, both using a similar dual-HDD configuration, cost $521 and $818, respectively (converted using Google's published mid-market rates).
For context, one of the cheapest 8TB NAS drives on Amazon costs about $250, and the highest-end Xiaomi offering includes two of these, suggesting you get a capable NAS without drives for about $300 at the top end of the offering.
The math is even more skewed when one considers that two 2TB NAS HDDs cost nearly as much as the entry-model NAS offering, making Xiaomi's offering essentially free, at least by US standards once you deduct the cost of storage.
The dual-bay unit is small compared to other NAS offerings, at 200.5 by 85 by 161 mm and about 2.3 kg, wrapped in an aluminum alloy frame. Its two SATA bays accept either 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch drives, and it runs a Realtek RTD1619B quad-core ARM processor with 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of onboard storage, plus 2.5-gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, and USB-A.
The underlying RTD1619B isn't new: it is the same quad-core Cortex-A55 running at 1.7 GHz that Synology put in the DS223 and DS223j, its entry-level two-bay boxes, back in 2023. Anyone expecting Xiaomi's first NAS to arrive with something exotic will be disappointed.
That said, Xiaomi has been noticeably more generous with the chip than Synology was. The DS223j shipped with 1 GB of RAM and the DS223 with 2 GB, both over a single gigabit Ethernet port. Xiaomi gives users 4 GB and a 2.5-gigabit port, plus an HDMI output that neither Synology model has. This makes it a meaningfully better configuration on the same foundation, and the HDMI port makes sense since the Realtek part descends from the company's media processor line and supports media playback.
Xiaomi advertises a relatively modest maximum capacity of 60TB (2 x 30TB drives) and also sells a companion UPS accessory for 349 CNY. Xiaomi's competitors have been advertising 124 TB and 132 TB support on similar hardware. The reservation window for Chinese customers interested in grabbing it closes on August 27. Independent testing and any verdict on the software that Xiaomi integrated will have to wait until units are in reviewers' hands, however.
- Company chiefs are farming off more work to AI than their underlings, a new study suggests
- Almost 40% of C-suite leaders are relying on AI to complete tasks, despite privacy and security implications
- The survey, by Adobe Acrobat, explored the use of AI in workplaces across the UK
New research has demonstrated a an apparent disconnect between AI use and responsibilities concerning sensitive data.
Adobe Acrobat's “The Rise of AI Documents in the Workplace” report surveyed 2,000 UK adults on their use of AI in the workplace, claiming found that almost 75% of C-suite leaders are happy to share their work documents with AI tools for tasks that include marketing, translating, and data analysis. These are all documents that are likely to hold confidential information.
Conversely, just 20% of non-management employees are comfortable with this type of AI use, with a sizeable chunk (almost two-thirds) avoiding AI tools completely.
Wide AI adoptionThe report highlighted several revelations about the adoption of AI within companies in the UK. While the 74% of C-suite leaders using AI might be a surprise, it’s just the first of several stats from the report that paint a picture of widespread AI adoption in among company chiefs.
Within that group, 37% use AI to save between 3 and 5 hours of work each week, and 35% use the technology to perform analytical tasks (which might include data).
Yet the figures concerning employees outside of the C-suite paint a different picture. Here, 59% don’t use AI tools at all. This figure is not unusual throughout the report, which illustrates that in most cases, AI use among those with “non management responsibility” is considerably lower – often more than 50% less.
Could this be due to a general reluctance to use AI, or perhaps something more specific, such as feeling AI use is banned, or its use might highlight weaknesses within a team?
Secure-suite?The results also highlight concerns over AI use and training, with 19% of respondents highlighting a “lack of training or clear guidance.” This is something that probably needs addressing, not least from a security and privacy angle.
For IT departments and anyone tasked with information management and data security, the report’s findings make for difficult reading. The obvious conclusion to draw is that company chiefs are dropping sensitive information into AI chatbots, potentially saving time – but also risking other issues.
Adobe Acrobat’s survey found 22% of organizations adopting AI tools had data security and privacy as their biggest concerns and challenges. Similarly, 20% were concerned about accuracy and errors generated in AI outputs.
- Plug-in solar kits become legal in the UK from August 27
- These lower-cost solar panels are ideal for renters and flat owners
- We want to hear from you in our poll below — will you be buying one?
Plug-in solar kits become legal in the UK from August 27, which makes that date a pretty significant one in the UK's energy history.
That's because these kits are, in theory, a much more affordable and user-friendly way to bring the bill-cutting benefits of solar power to your home. The UK government estimates that plug-in panels could save households up to £70-£110 a year on their energy bills.
For renters and flat owners with little roof space, they represent a long-awaited new alternative to pricey rooftop installations. Instead, as their name suggests, you can theoretically plug them directly into your mains electricity, and place them outdoors in places like balcony railings, fences, garden sheds or patios.
However, despite their promised savings, early plug-in solar kits aren't exactly cheap. Early options that have gained regulatory approval, such as the UKSOL Plug-In Solar Pro Compact 460W Ground Mount Kit, will start at £699 from retailers, and it isn't yet clear when we'll be able to buy them directly from the likes of Lidl, Amazon and Currys.
(Image credit: Getty Images / imageBROKER / Robert Poorten)Other potential drawbacks include limitations on where you can actually install plug-in solar (in some cases, you may need planning permission) and the fact that you can't currently connect your panels to a battery, without professional help. For many, plug-in batteries are the real game-changer, and some will be waiting for those to become legal before diving into plug-in solar.
But now we want to hear from you — are you planning to buy a plug-in solar kit when they become legal on August 27? Vote in our poll below and let us know your thoughts in the comments too.
- Executive producer Jon Bloch reveals Metro 2039's audio system has been rebuilt and "reimagined"
- Bloch says the new system supports the game's "dense atmosphere"
- 4A Games' newest game engine also offers a sense of realism in both visuals and audio
4A Games has confirmed that Metro 2039's audio system has been rebuilt to offer a deeper sense of immersion.
In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, where creative director Andriy Shevchenko and executive producer Jon Bloch discussed Metro 3039 at length, the pair revealed that the newest version of the studio's engine has allowed the team to take things to the next level, whether that's improving the visual density of the game, having full ray-tracing, or an overhauled audio system.
When asked how the audio design is key to bringing the game's post-apocalyptic world to life, Bloch called it "hugely important," and said the audio team will come in after the level designers have completed their work to add in all the effects players will hear.
"They need to see what elements are in there," Bloch explained. "If there's water that needs to be dripping or, you know, if there's a machine in the corner, like that kind of stuff, like they have to wait for level artists to do their thing first.
"But it's hugely important, and it's one of the reasons why we spend so much time and energy overhauling the audio system; the entire audio system has been rebuilt."
Bloch continued, explaining that the audio system hasn't necessarily been built from the ground up, but built upon and "reimagined in a way to really support thick, dense atmosphere" on top of the refined visuals.
"The audio system is more dense," the developer said. "There's a lot more going on. There are a lot more things you can hear. There's a lot more variety when it comes to, you know, even simple things like footsteps on different materials on the ground. Every bush makes a sound when you touch it.
"The dynamics of how the player moves and what you hear in his equipment and his suit, like things that might normally be forgotten as a really important thing in some games, like the level of detail, the granularity that the audio department can get to is more than we've ever been able to do in Metro games, certainly."
Metro 2039 launches in February 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.
- Metro 2039 creative director Andriy Shevchenko discusses how the Russia-Ukraine war has impacted the game
- The developer says, "We are not afraid to call evil evil"
- He adds that there are "no gray zones" in the story
Metro 2039 creative director Andriy Shevchenko has shared how the events of the Russia-Ukraine war have manifested in the upcoming first-person shooter.
The next installment in the Metro series was revealed earlier this year and is expected to deliver another dark survival story set in the heart of the Moscow metro, where the last survivors of the nuclear apocalypse struggle to exist.
At the time, Bloch explained that the team at Ukrainian studio 4A Games had everything planned for the next chapter, until it all changed in 2020, and "more significantly in 2022" with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
As a result, the studio "changed the story to be even more about choices, actions, consequences, and what you have to pay to have a future."
"Now war is our reality, and our message has shifted to be about the circumstance, the cost of silence, the horrors of tyranny, and the price of freedom," Shevchenko said.
Now, in a new interview with TechRadar Gaming alongside executive producer Jon Bloch, the developers explained how the real-life impact of the ongoing war has influenced the game's messaging and the story's moral core.
"We are not afraid to call evil evil," Shevchenko said. "If you see evil, we now have a protagonist [The Stranger] who can talk, who can share his own thoughts. He will call this character, this situation, this story element evil. It is bad. And there are no gray zones."
While neither could delve into the details, the creative director said the game will feature enemies, and the antagonist, Führer Hunter, has enemies as well, and "the enemies must be destroyed from both sides."
"But who is your enemy?" he teased.
Metro 2039 is slated to launch in February 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.
- Metro 2039 creative director Andriy Shevchenko says the new game engine allows for "billions" of objects
- Executive producer Jon Bloch reveals it enables 4A Games to create a realistic and dense world
- Bloch says the team is working to optimize the game for lower-spec, as well as high-spec, systems
Metro 2039 creative director Andriy Shevchenko has revealed that 4A Games' latest game engine allows for "billions" of assets to create a dense, realistic world.
In a new interview with TechRadar Gaming, Shevchenko, alongside executive producer Jon Bloch, discussed how the new engine enabled the team to overhaul the game's audio system, enhance ray-tracing, and improve visual immersion by increasing the density of objects and characters.
"We're able to push so much more into the world to make it that much more realistic, that much more alive feeling, that much more tactile," Bloch said, adding that these improvements also come with challenges of balancing these features and ensuring the game is "performant."
"I would say probably the most striking on the surface thing is going to be the density of what you see in the picture of all the objects," he said.
Shevchenko added that during the development of Metro Exodus, the game engine could support up to 30 million objects, but it supports "billions of objects" for Metro 2039.
"It's all to give freedom for level art, level design, all [the] people working on this level, [to] do whatever you want," the creative director said. "We have almost endless limits. And we are reaching these limits every time."
As Bloch said, these impressive technical leaps also come with challenges, with Shevchenko explaining that there's some "black magic of balancing" and "getting rid of something really unnecessary and focusing on really cool things. But it's a really user-friendly engine," with "limits only in your head."
Metro 2039 will be multiplatform, launching on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC, and Bloch explained that it's one of the team's priorities to make sure the game is optimized across all platforms.
"We don't develop on PC and then port later to consoles," he said. "We're developing constantly across everything that we're going to support. So from day one, we're running on console, and so we're keeping all that in mind.
"We're optimising to the low end, to the lowest spec, and then also trying to push things as far as we can with the other platforms that allow us to push, particularly obviously with PC when new kinds of video cards come out; we're like, 'Oh, what can we do with this now?' While still making sure that the lower-spec hardware can still handle things."
Metro 2039 arrives in February 2027.
- Metro 2039 will feature the return of the claustrophobic metro tunnels
- Executive producer Jon Bloch says the game "goes back to the roots" of the series
- However, the team didn't want to "ditch everything that we did in Metro Exodus," and the game will still offer open-world zones
Metro 2039 executive producer Jon Bloch has explained how 4A Games has balanced the return of claustrophic metro tunnels and open-world zones.
In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Bloch explained that it was a priority to bring back the tunnels, which were mostly absent from the previous game, Metro Exodus, since most of the experience takes place above ground.
"Metro 2039 goes back to the roots," he said, "and brings back a lot of that deep, dark, claustrophobic, thick atmosphere tunnels, like the spookiness, all that stuff that we love from those first two games."
Bloch continued, saying, "We didn't want to ditch everything that we did in Metro Exodus that was great and all the things that we learned. So there are different elements throughout the game.
"This game is a story-driven game. It's like we've said before, it's a very personal story. He's [The Stranger] on a singular mission, and in order to tell that kind of story, we're able to actually utilize a lot of the design methodologies from the earlier games. And in order to really make sure that the story is compelling, it's immersive."
Creative director Andriy Shevchenko added that the games are all in the same universe and the team took "the best parts" from each for Metro 2039, explaining that players will feel "freedom" and the danger from the open-world zones.
"Every step forward, the farther away you are from your station or from your safe place, the more dangerous it's supposed to be," Shevchenko said. "But as John mentioned, we are a story-driven game, and to drive story without bottlenecks or our pure metro corridors is almost impossible."
The developer reiterated that it's impossible to translate that sense of danger in just an open world, saying, "That's one of the reasons we're getting back to our dark underground roots."
Metro 2039 arrives in February 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC. The developers have also confirmed that the team has prioritized optimization across all platforms, not just PC.
- Metro 2039 will have a speaking protagonist called The Stranger at the center of the game's story
- Executive producer Jon Bloch says players will learn how the character feels about unfolding events
- He adds that a silent protagonist wouldn't have allowed 4A Games to tell the story properly
Unlike the core Metro trilogy, Metro 2039 will feature a new speaking protagonist, The Stranger, which allowed 4A Games to tell a darker, more personal story.
In an interview with TechRadar Gaming about the real-life impact the Russia-Ukraine war has had on the studio's upcoming game, creative director Andriy Shevchenko and executive producer Jon Bloch also touched on the sequel's new protagonist and how his motivations are at the center of the story.
"We've also gone way darker with the story," Bloch said. "It's a lot more personal story. The story is directly about our protagonist, The Stranger, about him, about his history, about the things he struggles with, about his singular motivation for what he's doing."
Artyom is the established main character of the preceding games, Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, and Metro Exodus, and is a silent protagonist, while Metro 2039's The Stranger is fully voiced, allowing players to hear his thoughts throughout.
According to Bloch, this shift enabled 4A Games to more deeply explore who the character is, how he feels about unfolding events, and "what's inside of him."
"It goes hand in hand with telling a personal story," he added. "If we stuck with the silent protagonist method, we wouldn't be able to tell this story properly."
Metro 2039 will release in February 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.
Am I surprised that Reacher season 4 isn't just dominating Prime Video, but the internet itself? No. Am I surprised that fan opinions feel more contradictory than ever? Absolutely.
In case you've not caught up yet, new episodes are following Reacher (Alan Ritchson) as he becomes embroiled in a CIA conspiracy after suspecting a woman on a New York City subway train is actually a suicide bomber. Unlike our first three seasons, this political espionage plot has got us thinking in a way we're not used to.
But of course, there's not that much thinking happening. The general story arc of Reacher getting involved in something that's much bigger than he first thought and punching his way out of it is very much alive and well.
Reacher coming close to — yet never quite reaching — The West Wing or The Diplomat levels of political severity seems to be causing a new tear in the fabric of the fandom. Some Reddit users have branded season 4 as the worst of all time, while others think that it's Reacher's strongest outing since season 1.
I've got a feeling that this all comes down to one important point... and it's something we've forgotten (or we are choosing to overlook). On top of that, it begs a question: do we no longer allow our TV programs to be silly for silly's sake?
Letting Reacher be a bit of an idiot is key to getting the most out of season 4(Image credit: Prime Video)Let's face it: Reacher is a borderline idiotic, light-hearted crime drama that was never meant to be anything else. It's as superficial as superficial gets, and anybody looking for something grittier or more meaningful underneath is baseline is sadly misguided.
If I'm being completely honest, this is something I found grating when I first discovered Reacher-world. We're spoilt for choice when it comes to gripping crime dramas, both on streaming services and linear TV. So surely to be the best, a show needs to be critically engaging at all times, leaving no stone unturned in the process.
We expect everything to be Sherlock-levels of enigma-solving in order to be worth our time, but is this actually the case? Reacher season 4 is just the latest installment to prove otherwise... if you're willing to accept the series for what it is.
The actual storyline, and whatever whodunnits need solving along the way, is the least important cog in the machine. Reacher himself is what draws viewers in (and keeps them watching), with his authentic mix of a troubled military background, hidden personality and abs chiseled to high heaven the unique selling point that keeps on giving.
All in how he interacts and builds meaningful relationships with his sidekicks for the season, and you're watching for the people, not the plot. There has yet to be a single connection that Reacher has fostered that I haven't enjoyed or been invested in, and that speaks volumes about what we're actually watching.
Yes, we want to see Reacher pumping iron before battering a load of bad guys, making the lives of those around him better in the process. No, we don't actually need anything else. If Reacher season 5 sticks to this tried and tested format, there won't be any less satisfaction — but will you be open to it?
- Watch UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 free on YouTube (select countries)
- Unlock your stream with Surfshark (save up to 85%)
- UCI Mountain Bike World Championships: Wed, Aug 26 – Sun, Aug 30
Watch UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 live streams, as Tom Pidcock, Valentina Höll and Mathieu van der Poel headline the action at Val di Sole in the Dolomites. The five-day event covers five disciplines: Cross-Country Olympic (XCO), Cross-Country Relay (XCR), Cross-Country Short Track (XCC), E-Mountain Bike (E-MTB) and Downhill (DHI).
Day 1 begins with the Women’s Elite E-Mountain Bike Cross-Country from 4am ET / 9am BST, followed by the Men’s Elite E-Mountain Bike Cross-Country from 5.30am ET / 10.30am BST, and the Mixed Team Relay from 11am ET / 4pm BST.
Reigning champion Anna Spielmann is in fine form, and her closest challenger in Valais last time out, Kathrin Stirnemann, has since retired. Jerome Gilloux is out for a hat-trick after winning each of the past two editions of the race, dating back to Vallnord two years ago. 2023 winner Joris Ryf is expected to challenge, having finished second to Gilloux last year.
The Mixed Team Relay sees each nation field a rider from all six mountain bike classes – Elite Women, Elite Men, U23 Women, U23 Men, Junior Women and Junior Men – in any order of their choosing, to race around a 2.4km circuit with 120m of elevation gain. France, Italy and Switzerland made the podium 12 months ago.
Here's how to watch UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 from anywhere in the world. We've also listed the schedule and reigning champions below.
Can you watch UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 for free?Yes. Free UCI Mountain Bike World Championships coverage is available via the UCI YouTube channel in places where Val di Sole 2026 hasn't picked up a broadcasting partner, such as New Zealand.
Free coverage is also available via VRT and RTBF (Belgium), RSI/RTS/SRF (Switzerland), RAI (Italy) and L'Équipe (France).
Traveling abroad right now? You can use a VPN to watch UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 for free as if you were right at home.
Use a VPN to watch UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 live streamsA VPN is a handy piece of software that can make your device appear as if it's back in your home country and unlock your usual streaming services. The best VPN right now? We recommend Surfshark – it does everything and comes with up to 85% off.
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How to watch UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 live streams in the USCycling fans in the US can stream UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 live on FloBikes.
A subscription costs $155.88/year or $39.99/month.
If you're traveling outside of the US, you can make use of Surfshark to catch the action.
How to watch UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 live streams in the UK(Image credit: Other)In the UK, live UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 coverage is being provided by TNT Sports.
You can add TNT Sports to your Sky, Virgin Media or EE TV package, or get an HBO Max plan that includes TNT Sports. Prices start at £25.99/month if you commit to a year.
If you're out of the UK but still want to tune in, explore the VPN route set out above, which will help you access your accounts from anywhere.
How to watch UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 live streams in Australia(Image credit: free)Stan Sport is showing the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Australia.
Stan Sport costs AU$20/month on top of a Stan subscription, which itself starts at AU$9.99/month. It's also home to the Premier League, Rugby's Greatest Rivalry, Super Rugby, Six Nations and Nations Championship.
Visiting Australia from New Zealand? Use Surfshark to watch free-to-air Val di Sole 2026 coverage.
How to watch UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 live streams in Canada(Image credit: Other)In Canada, FloBikes is showing UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026.
A subscription costs CA$49.99/month or CA$215.88/year.
Not in Canada right now? You can simply use a VPN like Surfshark to watch all the action as if you were back home.
UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 Q&AUCI Mountain Bike World Championships schedule 2026Click to see more ▼
(All times UK)
Wednesday, August 26
9am – Women’s Elite E-MTB Cross-Country
10.30am – Men’s Elite E-MTB Cross-Country
4pm – Mixed Team Relay
Thursday, August 27
8.30am – Women’s Junior Cross-Country Olympic
10am – Men’s Junior Cross-Country Olympic
2.30pm – Women’s U23 Cross-Country Short Track
3.30pm – Men’s U23 Cross-Country Short Track
4.45pm – Women’s Elite Cross-Country Short Track
5.30pm – Men’s Elite Cross-Country Short Track
Friday, August 28
9.30am – Women’s Junior Downhill qualification
Followed by Men’s Junior Downhill qualification
2.30pm – Women’s Elite Downhill qualification
Followed by Men’s Elite Downhill qualification
Saturday, August 29
8.15am – Women’s Junior Downhill
9am – Men’s Junior Downhill
12.20pm – Women’s Elite Downhill
2pm – Men’s Elite Downhill
Sunday, August 30
8am – Women’s U23 Cross-Country Olympic
10am – Men’s U23 Cross-Country Olympic
12pm – Women’s Elite Cross-Country Olympic
2.15pm – Men’s Elite Cross-Country Olympic
Mountain Bike World Championships reigning champions
Men's champions
- Cross-Country Marathon – Keegan Swenson (6:01:44.3)
- Downhill – Jackson Goldstone (2:54.153)
- Electric Cross-Country – Jerome Gilloux (48:28)
- Electric MTB Enduro – Adrien Dailly (31:32.11)
- Enduro – Richard Rude Jr (29:37.67)
- Pump Track – Eddy Clerte (20.023)
- Cross-Country Short Track – Victor Koretzky (21:26)
- Cross-Country Olympic – Alan Hatherly (1:30:30)
Women's champions
- Cross-Country Marathon – Kate Courtney (7:10:11.1)
- Downhill – Valentina Höll (3:27.136)
- Electric Cross-Country – Anna Spielmann (44:08)
- Electric MTB Enduro – George Swift (38:06.55)
- Enduro – Elly Hoskin (35:13.67)
- Pump Track – Sabina Kosarkova (22.424)
- Cross-Country Short Track – Alessandra Keller (20:43)
- Cross-Country Olympic – Jenny Rissveds (1:21:35)
We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example:1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service).2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad.We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.
Across a network of front-line healthcare facilities in Zambia, health workers used a mobile app to be guided by basic clinical prompts and entered symptoms and observations as part of routine primary care encounters.
The syndromic patterns emerging from thousands of consultations indicated a cholera outbreak was on its way, months before confirmed diagnoses appeared.
No new laboratory. No field hospital. No breakthrough treatment. Just real and ordinary information, recognized early enough to matter.
We have seen the same principle at work in Abu Dhabi.
Last year, AI indicated that the influenza season was likely to arrive sooner than usual and highlighted the communities most at risk.
We acted on those insights by launching our vaccination campaign earlier, strengthening preparedness and expanding access for priority groups before cases began to rise.
A powerful reminderIt is a powerful reminder that AI's greatest value lies not in replacing clinicians or public health experts, but in giving them the information they need to make better decisions before a crisis escalates.
The question is no longer whether AI can help detect the next global health threat. In many cases, it already can. The real challenge is whether health systems are prepared to turn those insights into timely action before a local outbreak becomes a global emergency.
The need has never been greater. People are moving into cities faster than ever. Climate change is changing how infectious diseases emerge and spread, and international travel means an outbreak can move across continents in a matter of days. Yet many health systems still operate much as they always have, responding once illness becomes visible rather than monitoring for when the earliest warning signs appear.
By the time a threat appears in confirmed diagnoses or official reports, valuable time has already been lost. AI offers an opportunity to change that—not by replacing doctors, nurses or public health teams, but by helping them recognize patterns that would otherwise go unnoticed. Much of that picture now sits outside hospitals and laboratories.
Millions of people generate health data every day through wearable devices that track heart rate, sleep, activity and other physical signals. One person's data tells an individual story. Combined, they have the potential to help health systems identify risk and intervene earlier.
Health systemsHealth systems also produce huge amounts of data through clinical records, laboratory results, environmental monitoring, vector surveillance, and population trends. These sources often sit in separate places and rarely tell the full story. AI can connect them, revealing patterns that would be almost impossible to detect manually.
Those insights allow health systems to prepare services, target prevention efforts and direct resources before an emerging threat becomes a wider public health emergency. This belief—that better information should lead to better decisions—is also what underpins Future Health – A Global Initiative by Abu Dhabi.
When the Future Health Challenge was launched in collaboration with the US-led social enterprise MIT Solve, nearly 400 teams from 68 countries entered. Each explored how AI could strengthen prevention and earlier intervention.
What stood out wasn't one miracle technology, but a shared focus: identifying problems before they become crises.
ThinkMD, the Australian team behind the Zambia example and winner of the Future Health Challenge, equips frontline health workers with AI-enabled clinical decision support, allowing routine patient consultations to contribute to a broader understanding of population health.
VectorCam, a Distinguished Finalist from the USA, applies AI to mosquito surveillance helping public health teams identify changing disease risk before outbreaks take hold.
Huna, a Brazilian health technology company and Distinguished Finalist, uses AI to analyze routine blood tests to identify elevated cancer risk earlier and guide individuals into appropriate screening and care.
These tools tackle different problems but share the same aim: spotting risk where there is still time to act.
So, if the technology is already this capable, what is holding it back?
Complex, cautious, and overstretchedHealth systems are complex, cautious, and often overstretched. Data remains fragmented across organizations. Procurement cycles can be slow. Clinical staff have little time to absorb new tools and healthcare rightly demands strong evidence before new algorithms become part of clinical or public health decision-making.
These are not barriers to innovation. They are the conditions for adopting it responsibly.
An alert is only useful if someone knows what it means, trusts the evidence behind it and has a clear pathway to act. Earlier detection achieves little unless it leads to earlier action.
The next phase of AI in healthcare is likely to be defined less by new algorithms and more by stronger systems. That means building the infrastructure that connects information securely across organizations. It means designing AI that fits naturally into clinical workflows rather than adding complexity. It means creating policy frameworks that reward prevention alongside treatment.
Most importantly, it means bringing together clinicians, researchers, innovators and policymakers to solve implementation challenges collectively.
No technology will prevent every future outbreak. Nor should AI ever replace strong public health infrastructure. But earlier, better information can change the course of an emergency. It can influence where testing is deployed, where resources are directed and how quickly interventions begin.
In public health, timing matters.
The ability to detect earlier warning signs is increasingly within reach. The task now is to build health systems that are ready to respond.
AI will never replace human judgement, nor should it. Its real promise lies in strengthening decision-making and helping health systems respond with greater confidence, precision and speed when it matters most.
We've featured the best Electronic Health Records software.
This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.
The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit
As a regular runner, I sign up to quite a few organised races, from trail runs to marathons. During most of them, headphones are not permitted — with a few exceptions.
Those exceptions are open-ear headphones and bone conduction headphones, which allow runners like me to hear the world around them while listening to motivational tunes, podcasts, and taking calls. Open ears allow you to hear traffic, pedestrians and other hazards on training runs, and instructions from marshals and guides during races.
I met one runner at an event who runs as a guide for blind runners, and in-ear headphones means his shouts and whistles for them to get out of the way and mind the blind runners fall on (literally) deaf ears. Open-ear headphones are about more than just your own safely, but others' safety too.
Shokz is the biggest name in open-ear headphones, and right now is offering a selection of 'back-to-school' deals until 31 August. I often use both the Shokz OpenFit true wireless earbuds and Shokz OpenRun bone conduction series, and there are deals on the budget options from both lines here, making them even better value.
You can get the older Shokz OpenRun discounted from £129.99 down to £94 on Amazon, while the true wireless Shokz OpenFit Air are discounted from £94 down to just £64 on Amazon. The OpenFits would be my budget running headphones pick, but you can view both deals below.
Today's best Shokz dealsYou can save £35 on the original and still-very-good Shokz OpenRun, available in slate blue or fetching grey. Immersive stereo audio is delivered to your ears via transducers, and 8 hours of playtime will see you through runs and commutes alike.
Small head? Get the OpenRun Mini for the same price. View Deal
A great deal, and my budget pick. These true wireless earbuds allow you open-ear freedom, although they use speakers to project sound rather than bone conduction, but they still sound great. We rated the Shokz OpenFit Air 4.5 stars out of 5 in our review. View Deal
Autumn is in the air and now's a great time to start thinking about warm weather gear. A number of big outdoor retailers are running major sales right now, and amongst them are some seriously strong down jacket deals.
A good down jacket is one of the best investments I've made. I wear mine constantly over the colder months, to keep me comfortably warm on everything from big hikes to short dog-walks. A great down jacket will provide an impressive warmth-to-weight ratio — they're lightweight and pack down small, but offer cosiness levels on par with much bulkier options.
My personal brand of choice is Rab — I'm on my second Rab down jacket; the first one got lost, and I replaced it immediately. Rab is the main brand on sale right now, but there are also lightweight down jackets from other major outdoor brands like Patagonia and Arc'Teryx. These are the brands that consistently impressed me during my years as an outdoor gear tester, and I'd happily buy from them.
Scroll down for my top down jacket deal picks. And if you're in the mood to completely upgrade your autumn/winter wardrobe, I've also rounded up the best waterproof jacket deals and the best fleece jacket deals I've spotted — I assume all of these bargains when the cold weather actually arrives, so I wouldn't spend too long deciding.
Men's down jacket dealsHop to the women's down jacket deals section
Rab Men's Microlight Jacket — Black Patagonia Men's Nano Puff Hoodie Jacket — Gem Green The North Face Men's Hathersage Insulated Light Down Jacket Rab Men's Microlight Alpine Jacket, Dark Pollen Berghaus Men’s Claggan Jacket Arc'teryx Men's Cerium Hooded Jacket — Nightscape Rab Men’s Microlight Alpine Down Jacket Rab Men's Microlight Alpine Jacket — Beluga Montane Men's Composite Hooded Down Jacket Montane Men's Anti Freeze Lite Hooded Down Jacket Rab Men's Microlight Alpine Jacket — Tempest Blue Jack Wolfskin Men’s Passamani Down Hooded Jacket Women's down jacket deals Rab Women's Microlight Alpine Jacket — Watermelon Rab Women's Microlight Alpine Jacket — Deep Ink Rab Women's Microlight Alpine Down Jacket Rab Women's Microlight Alpine Jacket — Steel Berghaus Women's Talmine Long Insulated JacketAlthough many people would think of phishing as a malicious email containing a suspicious link or attachment, hackers have now moved far beyond this to target trusted business tools including calendars and meeting invites.
We spoke to Soundharya Bharani Poomalai, Associate Threat Analyst, Barracuda, to find out more.
- Why are attackers increasingly turning to calendar invites and .ics files as phishing vehicles, and what has changed in the threat landscape to make this an attractive attack surface now?
Calendars have become part of daily business admin and are used far beyond meeting scheduling. People now get invites for things like policy acknowledgements, handbook reviews, benefits enrolment windows and compliance training reminders. A calendar invite referencing an HR update or a payroll action doesn't look out of place, and this allows attackers to blend in more easily than a suspicious email ever could.
There's also a structural advantage. Calendar entries get added automatically with little or no interaction from the recipient, and they tend to persist even if the original email is deleted or quarantined. Mobile adds another layer to this. A lot of calendar notifications get handled on phones, which often sit outside the reach of desktop-focused security tools.
- How significant is the visibility gap between what an email security system can inspect and what is rendered by a calendar application?
It is significant, and it’s something many organisations haven't accounted for. Traditional email security is built to scan the message body, subject line and attachments, whereas an .ics file often slips through as a calendar object and doesn’t receive the same level of inspection.
The problem is that .ics files carry much more than a date and time. They can include event descriptions, organiser details, locations, attachments, URLs and custom metadata fields, and any of these can be used to hide phishing content. Once the calendar app renders that content, the recipient sees corporate branding, instructions or a QR code that looks entirely legitimate. If the victim then enters their credentials and completes MFA, the attackers can intercept the username, password and session data, giving them full access to the account.
That mismatch between what security tools check and what the user sees is why these attacks succeed.
- Are calendar phishing attacks fundamentally a new technique, or are they an evolution of the same social-engineering and evasion techniques we've seen in email phishing – such as QR codes, impersonation and adversary-in-the-middle attacks?
They’re an evolution rather than an invention. The building blocks are familiar. QR codes hide a destination, brand impersonation builds trust, and adversary-in-the-middle platforms intercept credentials and session data in real time once someone signs in. None of this is new.
What's changed is the delivery container as they’re wrapped inside a calendar invite instead of an email. A QR code buried in an .ics file benefits from all the same advantages it has in a PDF or email body because it avoids text-based detection. It also gets the added benefit of sitting somewhere security tools are paying less attention.
- What does the rise of .ics phishing tell us about how organisations need to redefine what constitutes ‘malicious content’?
It tells us that malicious content is no longer confined to a bad link or attachment. Security teams have traditionally focused on email bodies and file attachments because that's historically where the risk sat. Calendar invites increasingly need to be factored into this as a phishing vehicle. The format of the content is not what determines the risk now, it’s what the content does when it reaches the recipient.
All of this means organisations need to start thinking about any workflow that can display or trigger content on a user's behalf.
What should organisations be inspecting inside a calendar file, and what are the technical challenges involved in doing that effectively at scale?Calendar files need the same level of scrutiny as a traditional attachment. In practice, this involves parsing the metadata fields, analysing any embedded links or attachments, inspecting HTML-rendered content, and decoding QR codes to check where they lead to.
The technical security challenge is that .ics files were built for interoperability. The format allows an event title, description or organiser field to carry rich content across Outlook, Google Calendar and Apple Calendar, and that flexibility is what makes it hard to inspect consistently at scale.
There's also the matter of what happens after delivery. A calendar entry can sit in someone's diary for days or weeks before a link becomes relevant, so inspection can't just happen once at the point of delivery. It needs to hold up over time.
If a malicious calendar invite gets through, what should the incident-response process look like? Is deleting or quarantining the original email enough?Deleting or quarantining the original email doesn't remove the calendar entry itself. Because invites are typically added automatically, the event can remain live in someone's calendar even after the source email is long gone, which means the malicious link or QR code is still sitting there and waiting to be clicked on.
A response will only be effective if it removes both the delivery message and the associated calendar entry from every affected mailbox. Teams also need to check identity activity around the time the invite landed and look for things like sign-ins from unfamiliar devices, unexpected MFA prompts, new session creation or OAuth consent activity. If someone did interact with the invite, credentials or session tokens may already be compromised, so containment can't stop at cleaning up the calendar.
(Image credit: Getty Images / Westend61)What are the three most practical things security and business teams can do today to reduce their exposure to calendar-based phishing without disrupting legitimate use of calendars?First, treat calendar invites as active content rather than passive scheduling data. Apply the same inspection standards to .ics files that already exist for attachments, including checking embedded links, attachments and any QR codes inside the event itself.
Second, strengthen identity security so a successful phishing attempt doesn't automatically become a successful breach. Phishing-resistant MFA such as FIDO2 or WebAuthn, conditional access policies, and the ability to monitor sessions and revoke them quickly all reduce the impact if someone does click through.
Third, update user awareness so people know calendar invites can be malicious too. Employees should be wary of QR codes inside calendar events and treat unexpected HR, payroll or policy notifications arriving as .ics files with the same suspicion as an unusual email.
Are we reaching a point where organisations need to stop thinking of email as the attack surface, and instead think about all the trusted applications and automated workflows that email can trigger?Yes, and calendar phishing is a good example of why. An email triggers a calendar entry, a calendar entry contains content, and that content leads somewhere else entirely, whether that's a fake sign-in page or a malicious QR code.
Every one of those steps happens in a different application, often with a different set of security controls, or none at all. Attackers are simply following that chain to find the weakest link, and the weak link tends to sit wherever inspection stops.
Organisations that only defend the inbox are defending one part of a much longer chain.
Across organizations, AI adoption is entering a new phase. What began as experimentation and isolated use cases is rapidly evolving into enterprise-wide deployment, with AI becoming embedded across operations, customer experiences, decision-making and business strategy.
This shift is creating significant opportunities for growth, productivity and innovation, while also presenting a growing challenge for business and technology leaders: ensuring governance, oversight and operating models keep pace. As organizations scale AI, the question is no longer just what the technology can do, but whether the structures, processes and controls are in place to manage it effectively.
The growing governance gapIn many organizations, AI adoption is expanding beyond the direct oversight of central technology teams. Business units are deploying AI-powered tools to improve efficiency, streamline workflows and accelerate decision-making.
While this democratization of technology can unlock innovation, it can also create complexity. Leaders may find themselves accountable for outcomes generated by systems distributed across multiple teams, platforms and environments. The pace of adoption only intensifies this challenge.
Organizations are under pressure to move quickly as competitors invest in AI capabilities and employees increasingly expect access to AI-powered tools. The urgency is reflected in the UK government's AI Opportunities Action Plan, which highlights IMF estimates that AI could boost UK productivity by up to 1.5 percentage points annually, potentially generating £47 billion in economic gains each year.
As a result, deployment often progresses faster than governance frameworks can evolve.
This creates a fundamental tension between speed and control. Businesses want to capture the benefits of AI quickly, but moving too fast without appropriate safeguards can introduce operational, security and compliance risks. The challenge is not simply deploying AI at scale, but ensuring it can be managed responsibly once deployed.
As investment accelerates, expectations riseAs AI becomes more deeply integrated into business operations, its influence extends beyond execution. AI is increasingly shaping how work gets done, how decisions are made and how organizations allocate resources. In some cases, it is helping leaders identify opportunities and risks that may not have been visible through traditional approaches.
This growing influence means AI is no longer just a technology initiative. It has become an organizational capability that touches every part of the business. Decisions about AI deployment are therefore also decisions about governance, accountability and risk management.
The scale of momentum behind AI is clear. Earlier this year, the UK government highlighted £14 billion in private-sector AI investment commitments and more than 13,000 planned jobs as part of its ambition to establish the UK as a global leader in artificial intelligence.
This reflects a broader shift in how organizations view AI: no longer as an experimental technology, but as a strategic capability expected to drive growth, productivity and competitive advantage.
As investment accelerates, so too does the pressure to deliver measurable outcomes. Yet many leaders are discovering that success depends on more than deploying new AI tools. Without clear accountability, visibility and governance, the benefits of AI can be undermined by operational complexity, fragmented decision-making and increased risk.
The organizations that realize the greatest value from AI are likely to be those that invest as heavily in governance and oversight as they do in the technology itself.
Security, data and trust at scaleSecurity remains a critical consideration. As organizations integrate AI into business-critical processes, they must address issues such as data protection, model integrity and regulatory compliance. A single failure can have consequences that extend beyond technical disruption, affecting customer trust, brand reputation and regulatory standing.
Public expectations for responsible AI are high, with 72% of the British public saying that laws and regulation would make them more comfortable with the use of AI, underlining the importance of strong governance and oversight.
The challenge is heightened by AI's dependence on large volumes of data drawn from multiple environments and applications. Without visibility into how data flows through these systems, organizations may struggle to assess risk or respond effectively when issues arise. Robust governance and transparency therefore become essential components of any AI strategy.
Alongside security concerns, organizations are also facing greater financial scrutiny. Unlike traditional technology projects, AI programs often evolve rapidly, with new models, services and use cases introduced continuously. This can make it difficult to maintain oversight of spending, performance and risk, particularly as AI becomes embedded across multiple business functions.
These pressures are driving a reassessment of operating models. Traditional approaches to governance were largely built around systems that changed predictably and remained relatively static once deployed. AI introduces a different dynamic: models evolve, outputs vary and operating environments can change rapidly.
Building adaptable AI governanceAs a result, organizations are increasingly recognizing the need to build adaptability into their AI strategies. Governance cannot be treated as a one-time exercise. It must become an ongoing capability supported by continuous monitoring, clear accountability and the ability to respond quickly to emerging risks and opportunities.
The organizations seeing the greatest success with AI typically view governance and innovation as complementary objectives rather than competing priorities. They focus not only on deployment, but also on visibility, control and resilience. By establishing clear frameworks from the outset, they create an environment where AI can scale responsibly and deliver sustainable business value.
Infrastructure strategy also plays a key role. Many organizations operate across multiple cloud environments and technology platforms, creating challenges around integration, portability and control. As AI workloads increase, flexibility becomes increasingly important.
Businesses need the ability to deploy, move and manage workloads efficiently without becoming constrained by fragmented architectures.
Scaling AI with confidenceUltimately, the challenge facing leaders is not whether AI should scale, but how it scales. As adoption accelerates, organizations must look beyond deployment and focus on creating the conditions for sustainable success.
That means investing in governance, strengthening visibility across increasingly complex environments, improving financial accountability and ensuring organizational structures evolve alongside technological capabilities.
AI has the potential to transform how organizations operate, compete and create value. However, realizing that potential requires more than implementing new tools. It requires building the frameworks that allow innovation and control to coexist.
As AI becomes more deeply embedded across the enterprise, the organizations that achieve the greatest success will be those that can balance agility with accountability, enabling them to innovate confidently while maintaining oversight, resilience and trust.
We've featured the best AI chatbot for business.
This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.
The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit