AI briefing: 'Open your doors for AI': German chancellor urges businesses to embrace AI as Nvidia announces new investments

Welcome to Castilume. Tuesday, 20 October. I'm Nova, Atlas is here, and the world of tech did not sit still overnight.

Four stories, all double-sourced. Let's keep it tight.

Next, from the AI desk. 'Open your doors for AI': German chancellor urges businesses to embrace AI as Nvidia announces new investments.

CNBC Tech reports: Nvidia announced planned investments in four German startups as Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged businesses to embrace AI at an industry summit in Berlin. Nvidia is increasing its investments in Europe's artificial intelligence sector, unveiling plans to back four German startups as the country pushes to strengthen its position in industrial AI. The investments are part of the U.S. chipmaker's nearly $10 billion commitment to invest in companies, universities and research institutions across Europe, as announced at the Invest in Germany Summit in Berlin on Monday. The four startups are Agile Robots, Avelios Medical, Mirelo and Reflex Aerospace.

Also reported by Reuters, Free Malaysia Today and deutschland.de.

The test for a business in the region: is it available here, what does it cost, and who sees your data? No clear answers yet means it's one to watch, not one to buy.

On to AI. Meta tweaks its new terms of service after backlash against scraping.

Here's what Engadget is reporting. The changes have alarmed publishers and others with business accounts. Meta has tweaked its terms of service for business accounts after a swift backlash against an update scheduled to take effect later this month. The company removed a reference to AI training from its commercial terms, but there are still questions about its ability to scrape the websites, including those of publishers, that have business accounts on the platform. The social media company initially shared a planned update to its commercial terms last week.

Also reported by Quartz, Mumbrella and People Matters Global.

Bottom line for a small team: wait for pricing and real availability before you change any plans.

Here's number three. Popular WordPress SEO Plugin Rank Math PRO Hijacked to Deliver Self-Restoring Backdoor.

Per The Hacker News: Copies of Rank Math PRO, the paid version of the Rank Math SEO plugin for WordPress, that were downloaded from rankmath.com or delivered as updates between 20:02 UTC on October 15 and 07:12 UTC on October 16 contained malware, Rank Math said in a security notice published on October 16. Any site that installed and activated one of those copies should be treated as compromised, and the malware can recreate its hidden backdoor whenever someone visits the site. Rank Math has removed the affected files and released a clean version, 3.0.124. Installing it replaces the plugin but does not remove files, administrator accounts, or scheduled tasks the malware may already have placed elsewhere on the server, Wordfence said in an advisory on October 17.

And from BleepingComputer: Some downloads of the Rank Math PRO WordPress plugin from the vendor's official website carried malware that planted hidden backdoors in a supply-chain attack last week.

The practical step: check whether you run the product named in the reports. If you do, read the vendor advisory and patch. If you don't, no action today.

Story four, security. OpenCode Console Breach May Have Exposed OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google API Keys.

According to The Hacker News: An intruder reached a legacy system at OpenCode on the night of October 16 and may have exposed the third-party AI provider keys that users had saved in OpenCode Console, the company said. Console is OpenCode's optional hosted service: a workspace saves its own OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google key there, and Console uses that key to call the provider so team members can use the models without ever seeing the key. The affected group is 1.4% of Console users, all of whom have an outside provider linked, and OpenCode has told them via email to revoke those keys with each provider and replace them. The email went out on the morning of October 17 under the subject line "Action Required: Potential provider key breach." Anyone who did not get one was not affected, OpenCode said in a post on X later that day.

BleepingComputer adds: The open-source AI coding project OpenCode has notified a small number of users that API keys they used with external providers were exposed in a security breach.

Quick check for your team: do you run anything exposed to the internet that matches this report? If yes, lock it down and patch today. If not, keep an eye on it.

That's your tech day, sorted. I'm Nova.

And I'm Atlas. Catch you on the next Castilume.