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Deezer has never been backwards about coming forwards regarding the scourge of AI slop infecting our music streaming platforms. Just days ago, the French streaming site announced that over half of all new daily uploads to its site are AI — up from 44% in April and just over 30% at the end of last year. So, things are only getting worse.

Luckily, the platform not only implements its own proprietary filter to find, label and in some cases purge AI tracks from its site; it also recently made the tech available to everyone, irrespective of your chosen streaming platform.

But how was Deezer's own in-house AI filter developed, why is Deezer so keen on tackling AI tracks, and what does the company think the future of music streaming will look like — you know, for actual humans still trying to make it their career?

I spoke with Manuel Moussallam, Deezer's Head of Research, and Jesper Wendel, the company's Head of Communications, to get their takes on all this and more.

Moussallam agreed to speak with me on the morning after the company's summer party, held at a music venue in Paris. As he was "Checking if the hangover is showing on my face", I couldn't help but think it's good to know that proper live gigs and parties still matter to a firm whose success hangs on our love of music.

How long has Deezer's research arm been thinking "Okay, this AI thing is an issue, and we have to do something about it"? Moussallam explains that the site's comprehensive AI filter, now available to anyone who wants it, has been almost five years in the making.

"It all started in scientific conferences back in later 2021 or early 2022, because the generative models that were already working for images and videos were starting to make real progress — like real scientific progress — for music," he says. "That was probably a couple of years before the first commercial services were appearing.

"So, since we participate a lot in these scientific conferences, we saw people from Google and from Meta sharing these foundation models that were starting to work quite well for creating whole pieces of music. Not just snippets of 10 seconds like before, but really whole songs. So I guessed that eventually, if you're able to generate a lot of music, you can also distribute it quite easily — and down the road, it would end up in our catalogs."

‘We made some mathematical discoveries on how AI models work, and realized that we didn't actually need a big AI to detect AI songs’

Manuel Moussallam

"I would say we started working on the project in 2022, first with some complicated methods, because that's unfortunately a reflex for people like me — to try to do AI to capture AI — but then eventually we simplified a lot because we made some mathematical discoveries on how those models work.

"We realized that we didn't actually need a big AI to understand and to detect these pieces. Just by relying on some plain signal processing and mathematical tools, we were able to actually detect these artifacts for most of the models out there.

"Yeah, I think we deployed the first version of the detector in September 2023 — and we communicated the first numbers when we were able to scale it up to the catalog a few months later."

I wonder why, given that various rival music streaming sites have implemented 'Transparency Tags' (read: optional AI badges that place the onus on distributors and labels to tell listeners that what they're listening to was not written or performed by a human), Deezer chose to create a comprehensive filter — and then to release it to all? While admirable and commendable, that's a lot of R&D budget on AI, no?

Moussallam laughs. "There are many aspects, but I guess firstly, we did it just because we wanted to see if we were able to do it. On my team, we do a lot of audio analysis. So, knowing was the first motivation."

‘I guess firstly, we did it just because we wanted to see if we were able to’

Manuel Moussallam

"But then, I think since Suno, Udio, and all these tools are trained on unlicensed catalogs, I was pretty convinced that eventually we would have to take down all this music, because it would be considered as plagiarism or copyright infringement in some sense — which may be the case if the legal battles end up that way.

"So at some point we thought that, okay, if people agree with us that it's kind of unlawful to train this model with all this music and they ask us to remove all the content from Suno in the catalog, we need to be prepared. We need to be able to do it. So, that was another big motivation.

"It didn't turn out like that — for now — but it may be that one day people tell us, 'OK, everything that was generated with that AI model prior to this date in the future, when people actually have agreements and compensate musicians for their work, all of this needs to be removed'. And we would have to be prepared for that."

‘One day, people may tell us, “OK, everything that was generated with that AI model prior to this date… all of this needs to be removed” — and we would have to be prepared for that.’

Manuel Mousallam

I mention that across all of my audio streaming subscriptions (not a flex, I simply review audio kit for a living), I tried the Deezer AI filter, and none of my playlists contained AI, bar one: my Tidal catalog listed 1% AI content — and to know what the pesky tracks are I'd need to switch to Deezer. I ask what the reception has been since the release of the software for all.

"Mostly people are happy with the tool, I think everyone just wants to know," replied Moussallam.

"Ever since we started deploying this detector, we've been talking to major labels, obviously, but also indie labels, sometimes small publishers. All of them just wanted to know. Some of them made some pretty interesting discoveries on how their members were using — or actually not using — these technologies; so overall it's really about putting this information into the hands of people who need to have it to make some decisions.

"Implementing some transparency for our users was also a main motivation for us to flag the content on the website. And then we realized that people had to come to Deezer to check an album, say, to see if it had the label. And we said, 'Okay, we can also create a tool just for you to check — you will see for yourself how contaminated your whole library is on other platforms".

Speaking to Moussallam even briefly, it become clear that he's a scientist as well as a musician (among his many accolades is a Master's Degree in Acoustics, Signal processing and Computer science applied to Music, from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie).

So when I ask how this proprietary new filter works to pick out 100% AI-generated content — which I assume is fully text-prompted music — and whether Moussallam and his team are looking to take it further, to stuff that's only 50% AI generated, say, things get more serious.

"It's a very complicated question," Moussallam concedes. "Right now, we can't really say that we only detect fully AI-generated songs, because what we detect is the presence of markers of AI generation in a song, and we detect the strength of these markers in the song.

"When we flag an album, it's because these markers are strong enough for us to be confident that it's been AI generated at some point.

"But we don't know if you wrote the lyrics for yourself, for instance. We also don't know if the song contains very few elements of human creation; that's not something that our detector is able to do right now — but that's the focus of our current research.

"So we really want to be able to boil down to the stem level and be able to make a decision based on a stem by stem case, because obviously we're seeing a lot of hybrid cases, and a lot of artists are also integrating AI tools into their creative process.

"So, these very strong markers of AI, we're starting to see them spread in human creations, and we need to be able to disentangle that from what you mentioned, like purely text-prompted music curation".

Can the markers the filter picks up recognize whether it has flagged an AI vocal, say, or artificially generated instruments — and how about stolen melodies?

"No, no, we can't go that far," admits Moussallam. "I mean, we are working on the stem by stem detection, but right now we detect markers — and we are not so sure where they come from."

He smiles. "I mean, we have ongoing research, but not something that I can publicly share. When it comes to detecting chord progressions or melodic impressions or plagiarism metrics, we are not so interested in that, because it would lead us too far. And I mean, there are so many songs that share only four chords! I think that debate is way, way out of our hands in any case."

Perhaps surprizingly for someone who's spent nearly five years building the tech to flag and potentially quash AI music tracks, when I ask Moussallam where he thinks Deezer and online music will be in 10 years time — and whether he'd like to see all flagged AI tracks gone from the site — he instead builds a quite compelling case for computation in music.

"Well, the very first piece of music that was written by a computer dates back to 1953 I think, back in the days where computers were actually whole buildings built around them.

"Ever since people built computers, they tried to make music with computers. I think that's the story of the 20th century. I'm confident people are going to make great things with these new creative tools. It enables some stuff, and I guess as long as it's being used by humans to create cool music for other humans to listen to, we are very fine with that.

‘Ever since people built computers, they tried to make music with computers; I think that's the story of the 20th century’

Manuel Moussallam

"What we're really fighting at Deezer is automated music generation, people who script computers to generate songs — I mean thousands of songs — and uploading them in batches to streaming platform to try to overwhelm and flood and basically really replace human creation with automated creation.

"So, I guess I hope music will stay artisan, as we say in French, so something that humans do to have the attention of other humans. That's really what I guess drives our motivation. If the music includes computers, that won't be a such a revolution — computers are fine, numerical instruments are fine — it's just who is using them to create that matters, in the end."

Jesper Wendell is keen to hone in on the fraudulent aspect of AI slop and the payment dilution for for artists, because that's also one of the motivations for stifling the recent development of the AI-in-music game.

‘If the music includes computers, that won't be a such a revolution — computers are fine, numerical instruments are fine — it's who is using them to create that matters, in the end’

Manuel Moussallam

"Fraud has always been there, it's just easier now with AI music," he says. "And if you upload thousands of tracks, then you can sort of spread that fraud across more and more tracks — and that's something that we want to get rid of as much as possible".

I mention that from the perspective of the consumer (i.e., me), the key annoyance is tracks making it into our recommended playlists and ultimately usurping streaming royalties — small amounts maybe, but still — which we'd prefer would go to a band that we actually like.

Moussallam emphatically agrees. "That’s really something we wanted to avoid. Anyone listening to AI music without knowing that it's AI music, like just feeding it to people in a recommendation? That's something that was very clear for us from the beginning we wanted to avoid. Because that's an awful feeling, I think for everyone".

‘Fraud has always been there, it's just easier with AI, and if you upload thousands of tracks, you can spread that fraud across more and more songs’

Jesper Wendel

Given that Tidal only recently drew its anti-AI line in the sand, Bandcamp's strong and concise stance was set out in January of this year, and Spotify's Verified by Spotify badge certifies that an artist is human but doesn't help filter out the slop from any generated playlists, I think it's safe to say that Deezer is leading the charge here.

Based on Reddit threads I see every day, I think I speak on behalf of thousands of music lovers when I say we're grateful for everything the Deezer team is doing to combat the AI infestation trying to take hold on our streaming sites. Where do we go from here? For now, trust in Moussallam's work.

Confusion is the typical first reaction. They hold the new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 in their hands, marveling at the passport-sized cover screen, and ask without irony or sarcasm, "Is this new?"

I'm finding that people think the Z Fold 8's design is both familiar and completely alien. They roll it over in their hands and, initially, appear unaware that it also unfolds to reveal a far larger, and yet also oddly shaped, inner display.

It's, for all intents and purposes, the Nokia Feature phone of modern foldables. It's a completely new device featuring modern hardware, components, tech innovation, and AI that also somehow harkens back to an era of weird Nokia phones that proudly peacocked their oddball aesthetics.

Back in the early oughts when most thought the state of cellphones had been well-worked out and we'd settled on small-ish screens and an endless array of keyboard styles, Nokia was king of the hill. There was no one-size-fits-all in the world of cell phones. Your phone's physical design was an expression of your personal style. The tiny Nokia 31000 had virtually nothing in common with a T-Mobile Sidekick or a BlackBerry 7230. Nokia's designs, though, were fun (if not always practical — looking at you, Nokia N-Gage) and they made us think differently about mobile phones and what we should expect when using them.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, which Samsung unveiled last week in London at Samsung Upacked (and that I'm carrying today), is perhaps serving a similar function now, trumpeting the very existence of foldable phones and why they might matter to you.

In my discussions with Samsung about why they made the Galaxy Z Fold 8, it became quite clear that this was a phone and form factor designed to attract customers disinterested or dissatisfied with the current relatively vanilla set of folding phone options, not only available from Samsung, but also from its rivals at Motorola, Oppo, and Huawei.

After all, you had either the candybar style that opens into a mini tablet or the communicator flip-style. Camera arrays might all look different, but the basic size and shapes are all the same. And none of them were moving the market — foldables held just 1.6% of the global smartphone market in 2025. None of them appear to be making people stop and think. There was, until now, no Nokia Effect.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, though, is fun to show off. I've seen people stop, smile, scratch their heads, and be generally interested in a way they weren't with recent Folds and Flips or even the new Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra I'm also carrying around. One coworker called it "dreamy". How often have you heard someone describe a smartphone like that?

They notice, for instance, that in its folded size, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is a much better fit for smaller hands, and how it actually fits all the way in a pocket (not for nothing, the 201g size doesn't hurt for portability, either). Even opened and in portrait mode, the 7.6-inch display is more palmable than the Z Fold 8 Ultra's 8-inch display.

Its inherent cuteness is an unintentional nod to the phones of a bygone era. When folded, the cover display and even the back with its smaller camera array say, "Look at me, I'm adorable."

Samsung will be leaning into this, and where the Z Fold 8 Ultra is a mobile multi-tasking and content capture and creation workhorse, the Z Fold 8 is a friend who tells you stories in a compact form. It's a lean-back reading experience, and a less letterboxed full-screen video viewing companion.

And yet, it's also a better confidant, letting you share your thoughts and texts in a virtual keyboard that's wider and more comfortable to use than one on even the Galaxy S26 Ultra or iPhone 17 Pro Max.

What Samsung has almost miraculously done with the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is create a foldable that will finally get people talking. Further, it's done so months before Apple enters the foldable ring. Imagine that, a knockout punch delivered by Samsung before the fight begins.

It won't be that easy, of course; I fully expect Apple to deliver something truly extra on the foldable front. It should share this unusual form factor, especially since Samsung is probably supplying the display. Samsung has told us that it's unconcerned about Apple's entry and actually welcomes it. Maybe that's just pole-position talk.

Will the freshness of this form factor evaporate when the iPhone Ultra arrives? Maybe, or maybe it'll be too late for Apple because surely Samsung has already cracked the code. All it had to do was take a look back and remind itself why people loved weird cellphone designs and how that might, if not shape, at least inform its expansion of the Z Fold line.

• Ukraine approves indigenous turbojet-powered guided bombs for frontline combat operations
• Domestic guided bombs now strike military objectives up to 200 kilometers away
• Seven Ukrainian manufacturers now build guided bomb conversion systems domestically

Ukraine has officially approved several domestically built guided aerial bombs for combat use, including turbojet-powered versions capable of striking objectives up to 200 kilometers (125 miles) away.

Brig. Gen. Andrii Lebedenko, deputy commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said several of these designs have already seen use on the battlefield, while others remain in testing.

“We already have systems that use more than just gliding. They now carry turbojet engines to increase their employment range to between 100 and 200 kilometers,” said Lebedenko.

The program began in 2024 as an effort to convert older unguided aerial bombs into precision-guided weapons after Ukraine lacked domestic manufacturers capable of producing such systems.

Ukrainian officials now say the country has seven manufacturers producing guided bomb systems, compared with none when the initiative was first introduced.

“This task was set in 2024. We did not have any such manufacturers in the country. Now there are already seven. They already know how to do it,” said Lebedenko.

He also confirmed that Ukraine already operates aircraft capable of launching domestically produced weapons, while expanding manufacturing capacity has become the next priority for the defense industry.

According to Ukrainian officials, the program has also created a growing community of engineers capable of designing glide kits and propulsion systems for increasingly sophisticated aerial munitions.

“Moreover, a school of specialists and engineers has emerged who know how to create gliding systems. They know how to make them with engines,” said Lebedenko.

Some of the latest variants are no longer limited to gliding after release because turbojet engines continue powering the bombs toward military objectives at greater stand-off distances.

Alongside upgrading older munitions, Ukraine has also developed entirely indigenous guided aerial bombs, expanding its domestic precision strike capability.

Ukraine's Brave1 defense innovation platform announced the country's first indigenous guided aerial bomb after approximately 17 months of development.

The weapon carries a 250-kilogram warhead designed to strike fortified positions, command centers, and other military objectives located dozens of kilometers away.

Developers have described the weapon as a completely original Ukrainian design rather than an adaptation of an existing foreign guided bomb.

Ukrainian military officials have also indicated that improving strike accuracy remains more important than producing larger numbers of guided bombs for operational use.

“We are looking toward precision so that we can effectively destroy enemy command posts, drone control centers, infrastructure, and other targets,” said Lebedenko.

Ukraine has also disclosed expanding manufacturing capacity, growing engineering expertise, and longer operational reach for its guided bomb program.

However, independent verification of battlefield performance remains limited because operational details surrounding combat employment have not been publicly released.

Via United24Media

The CIA has never confirmed or denied the following story.

The only evidence we have that it happened at all is a 1997 article in Popular Science Vol. 250, Issue 1, where journalist Dawn Stover spoke to the mastermind behind one of the best-kept secrets of the Cold War.

The year is 1963. Kennedy still sits in the White House. Khrushchev holds the Kremlin. The Cuban Missile Crisis is still fresh in everyone’s mind. Paranoia runs high on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

And a repairman strolls unnoticed through the halls of a mansion in the capital. He steps into a busy administrative office used by Russian diplomats and the KGB. His bag of tools clunks with every swing. The man pauses at a large, boxy machine in the corner of the room. It hums and whirs.

Launched just three years prior, the Xerox 914 was the company’s first successful photocopier - with a troubling tendency to catch on fire. But that’s not why the repairman is here today.

He drops his bag to the floor. The diplomats and KGB agents ignore him, the clerical staff barely see him, the hawkish security guards notice nothing out of the ordinary. The repairman diligently begins, as he always did, his routine maintenance work.

When he’s finished the job, he slips away as quietly as he came. He leaves behind a single trace of his presence.

The repairman has just become one of the CIA’s best assets.

But the real story begins the year before in New York, at a disused bowling alley so anonymous you wouldn’t give it a single glance, let alone two. It’s far away from prying eyes.

Inside, Xerox’s head of government programs Donald Cary meets with four engineers. They’re not there to bowl. The Xerox men selected for the mission are Douglas Webb, Kent Hemphill, James Young, and thirty-six-year-old Ray Zoppoth, who knows the Xerox 914 inside out. He should do. He helped create the photocopier in the first place.

It’s exactly the expertise the CIA needs if the agency’s plan is to work.

Because the plan is to heist as many files as they can from the Soviet Union embassy, located within the Mrs. George Pullman House in downtown DC. With security so tight, not even a repairman, however inconspicuous, could hope to walk out unfrisked with stolen files stuffed down his pants.

So, the secret service has to get creative.

For days, the engineers discuss potential ways to capture images of the files being photocopied on the Xerox 914. Finally, Zoppoth hits upon an answer. Like all great ideas, it’s as maddeningly simple as it is cunning.

Mount a battery-powered home-movie camera with a zoom lens inside the copier. Aim the lens at the mirror used to reflect images onto the drum. And start taking pictures.

According to Stover’s piece, Zoppoth suggests the team “Mount a battery-powered home-movie camera with a zoom lens inside the copier. Aim the lens at the mirror used to reflect images onto the drum. Add a photocell that would prompt the camera to snap still frames whenever the photocopier lit up. And start taking pictures.”

Every time someone lays a document on the bed and presses 'Copy', the photocopier lights up, triggering the camera.

Easier said than done, but the Xerox engineers are excited by the breakthrough. They set to work installing a Bell & Howell 8mm movie camera inside a copier located in Xerox’s New York campus.

The noisy, bulky 914 is, it turns out, perfectly tailored to the role of spying device. It’s so impossibly large, it conceals the camera even when the maintenance panels are removed, and the operational sound as staff make copies masks the whir of the camera. No-one has any idea they’re being covertly watched.

The test run proves a success. Ray Zoppoth and the rest of the research team can see everything passing through the photocopier. “When we developed the pictures, we found recipes and copies of music and cartoons and jokes and all kinds of things,” he later tells Popular Science.

Weeks later, Ray Zoppoth finds himself deep inside a building used by the CIA. He's led into a basement room allegedly code-named ‘Disneyland East’. Zoppoth shows the spooks the Xerox invention. He teaches them how to fit the camera inside the 914. They, in turn, train the embassy’s regular repairman to install the camera and extract the film each time he returns.

Then, one day, in 1963, a familiar face arrives at the Soviet Embassy to carry out routine maintenance work. He holds a bag containing tools and, in its depths, an innocent 8mm home-movie camera. He’s waved through the gates without a thought.

The rest is history.

With lips tightly sealed and files classified, we’ll never know what was learned. The Cold War dragged on for another 27 long years.

But shortly after the project ended, Zoppoth confessed that the secret service again tapped up Xerox. This time, they want cameras hidden inside the more streamlined Xerox 813 desktop photocopier, used by ministries, agencies, and diplomatic offices around the world.

If the story is true - and only Zoppoth admitted it, with his colleague confirming but refusing to go on record - it suggests the joint operation was a success.

It remains a reminder that even the unsexiest machine in the office can be a security risk. We think of digital surveillance as a relatively modern fear. We worry that our phones are spying on us. That CCTV watches our every move. Even laptops have physical privacy covers to mitigate security risks. But it turns out, this goes back at least 60 years - right to the heart of the Soviet embassy in Washington DC.

For a long period during the early 21st century, Apple was the envy of the technology industry – pumping out a series of excellent products and seemingly unable to put a foot wrong. When the iPad came along, it had many detractors, chief among them the former CEO of its industry rival, Microsoft.

Bill Gates was a huge advocate for the tablet computer and had long attempted to thrust this form factor into the mainstream.

This article is part of TechRadar Pro's QOTD project to provide an insight into the minds of the brightest and most recognized figures in the technology industry today and in years gone by. Read the full series here.

However, in comments to the now-defunct web magazine BNET, the Microsoft co-founder played down the impact he felt that Apple's first edition of the iPad would have. One month after its launch, he suggested it wouldn't catch on because many users would long for physical elements in such a device.

The iPad, however, proved a stellar success in the months and years that followed, so much so that Microsoft followed this trend in 2012 with the first edition of its now popular Surface device, called Surface with Windows RT.

Although Microsoft's attempt to compete with Apple in the tablet market felt reactive at the time, the company, under Gates' leadership, played a big role in first introducing this strange form factor to the world.

The origins of the tablet are disputed, with Steve Jobs even envisioning such a device in 1983 – and even earlier examples in papers, proposals and blueprints. The first tablet with pen input and handwriting recognition, however, was the 1987 Linus Technologies Write-Top. But this type of device didn't catch on.

More than 10 years later, Microsoft attempted to reinvigorate interest in the tablet with its Microsoft Tablet PC, with the first device launching in 2003. Again, the devices were a commercial failure. Although Apple was the first to bring this concept back from the dead, today's Microsoft Surface Pro devices are outstanding in their own right and have earned a place in a very competitive market.

A new NYT Strands puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Tuesday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Strands hints and answers for Tuesday, July 28 (game #877).

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

• Today's NYT Strands theme is… A made man

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• QUEST
• NEST
• BRAT
• MANIC
• STIR
• FETA

• Spangram has 10 letters

• First side: left, 5th row

• Last side: right, 5th row

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

The answers to today's Strands, game #878, are…

• DOLL
• PUPPET
• DUMMY
• MANNEQUIN
• FIGURINE
• STATUE
• SPANGRAM: FABRICATED

• My rating: Easy
• My score: Perfect

A made man could mean a titan of industry, a mobster or if taken literally a scarecrow or indeed a PUPPET.

My first two words had double letters, a pattern that continued with DUMMY and the slightly more challenging MANNEQUIN — a word that I would have struggled to spell without the helper.

With the search virtually cracked I saw FABRICATED — although for full disclosure I should reveal that I missed it completely while collecting “fabric” as a non-game word.

• COMPLETE
• UNDEVIDED
• FULL
• TOTAL
• WHOLE
• ENTIRE
• SPANGRAM: ITSALLTHERE

Strands is the NYT's not-so-new-any-more word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable that has been running for a year and which can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

I've got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you're struggling to beat it each day.

A new Quordle puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Tuesday's puzzle instead then click here: Quordle hints and answers for Tuesday, July 28 (game #1646).

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 4*.

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 1.

• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today's Quordle answers.

• The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 2.

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

• G

• A

• A

• L

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1647, are…

• GAWKY
• ALLOY
• AUDIT
• LATCH

Another game where I came close to losing.

As it is common with words ending in Y I was convinced that i was looking for a word with a double letter, but after trying the unlikely “gammy” and “gappy”, I fortunately ran out of options and arrived at the correct answer.

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1647, are…

• PRIOR
• WHINE
• VENOM
• MEATY

• Quordle #1646, Tuesday, 28 July: SMITE, ROACH, RUDDY, GLOBE
• Quordle #1645, Monday, 27 July: TAFFY, FIGHT, GUILD, WAGER
• Quordle #1644, Sunday, 26 July: STOMP, LIMIT, FUNKY, STEAD
• Quordle #1643, Saturday, 25 July: SALON, SHEEN, BURST, GOURD
• Quordle #1642, Friday, 24 July: DOLLY, EDIFY, LAGER, PRANK
• Quordle #1641, Thursday, 23 July: LADEN, EVICT, WOVEN, SHIRE
• Quordle #1640, Wednesday, 22 July: COYLY, SINGE, AWASH, AWOKE
• Quordle #1639, Tuesday, 21 July: TRUSS, AXIAL, SWINE, THING
• Quordle #1638, Monday, 20 July: ICING, SLICK, GAILY, RISEN
• Quordle #1637, Sunday, 19 July: SPURT, ACRID, THRUM, BLEEP
• Quordle #1636, Saturday, 18 July: KNAVE, TIGHT, BLEAT, CHAOS
• Quordle #1635, Friday, 17 July: CUMIN, PALER, GRASS, INBOX
• Quordle #1634, Thursday, 16 July: IGLOO, PLAIT, YEAST, AROMA
• Quordle #1633, Wednesday, 15 July: PROXY, BRICK, BROTH, SURGE
• Quordle #1632, Tuesday, 14 July: EBONY, AVOID, RODEO, CUTIE
• Quordle #1631, Monday, 13 July: VOICE, BISON, BURNT, BUILT
• Quordle #1630, Sunday, 12 July: STAIN, BINGO, LARVA, DICEY
• Quordle #1629, Saturday, 11 July: WORTH, PRONG, DINGO, DRUID
• Quordle #1628, Friday, 10 July: GREET, STEAK, DUSKY, HAUTE
• Quordle #1627, Thursday, 9 July: CRUMP, PHONE, SHINY, STONY

• AMD and Cerebras will split inference across two machines, with Helios racks handling prompt processing and the Wafer-Scale Engine generating tokens, available through Cerebras Cloud in H2 2026
• Nvidia is also doing something similar by licensing AI chip startup Groq's SRAM decode technology for $20 billion
• The move sees AMD and Cerebras claim 5x higher tokens per watt versus a standalone Cerebras WSE configuration

AMD and Cerebras Systems have announced a technical partnership which pairs the former's Helios rackscale system with the latter's Wafer-Scale Engine in what both companies call a disaggregated inference solution.

The move has enabled a combined AMD Helios and Cerebras WSE configuration to deliver up to five times the tokens per second per watt (TPS/W) in internal testing by both chip designers.

The move aims to address a Cerebras WSE efficiency challenge by offloading prompt processing to AMD's rackscale offering.

Both AMD and Cerebras Systems are painting the news as a win, and it very well might be, given the latter's efficiency gains in play and the former's ability to get access to SRAM decode technology without spending the $20 billion Nvidia shelled out at the end of last year for a non-exclusive deal.

It must, however, be noted that the efficiency claims of 5 tokens per second per watt are compared against an existing Cerebras WSE (Wafer-Scale Engine) as the baseline, while running the open-source Kimi 2.6 1T model, making them impressive, but without a direct comparison to figures for an Nvidia rackscale offering, one that lacks context, especially when efficiency is the metric.

The idea itself is sound and well established in the industry, with WSE known to struggle with the 'prefill' part of the equation while handling the 'decode' segment relatively well, essentially substituting AMD's hardware where Cerebras' equipment falls short.

The choice of Kimi 2.6, however, deserves a second look. Moonshot AI's model, released on 20 April 2026, is a mixture-of-experts design with one trillion total parameters but only 32 billion active per token, and it ships natively in INT4. At INT4, the full weight set runs to roughly 500 GB. A single Cerebras wafer holds 44 GB. Even before KV cache, a Cerebras-only deployment needs somewhere north of a dozen wafers just to hold the model, while one Helios rack could hold it around sixty times over.

That asymmetry means the five-times figure is measured on a model that is close to the least favorable for a WSE-only configuration. A dense model small enough to sit resident on a handful of wafers could flatter Cerebras considerably more. None of this makes the number wrong, but it does make the case for additional testing to demonstrate both its strengths and weaknesses for different models.

More importantly, the absence of any financial information might very well be a future story, especially at a time when there are increasing concerns about 'circular financing' in an industry where Nvidia's recent move to backstop OpenAI's data center purchases was seen as a net negative by Wall St, which is already concerned about AI spend and the sustainability of such transactions.

AMD has also, in the past (and more recently with Anthropic), linked purchases of its own hardware to investments or stakes it would take in AI companies, moves that the market welcomed earlier but might view with a bit more hostility lately.

The announcement comes at a time when Cerebras might need it more than AMD: Cerebras listed on Nasdaq in May, priced at $185, opened at $350, and closed its first day at $311.07 before falling back to around $227 by late June 2026.

AMD stock, on the other hand, is up 121.48% year-to-date (YTD) as investors continue to bet heavily on its new Instinct AI processors, and the Cerebras partnership allows it to further consolidate its gains, as this might be seen as another vote of confidence in its current direction by one of its prospective customers.