Artificial Intelligence

PYMNTS covers artificial intelligence as it transforms payments, commerce and financial services, from generative AI and agentic commerce to fraud detection, underwriting and customer engagement. Our reporting pairs breaking news with proprietary data and expert analysis to examine how AI is reshaping business models, operational efficiency and competitive dynamics across the connected economy.
Artificial Intelligence
Meta’s Muse Reaches 10 Million Downloads Faster Than ChatGPT
October 20, 2026

Meta’s personal artificial intelligence assistant Muse was downloaded more than 10 million times in the United States and Canada during the first 35 days it was available, digital market insights platform Sensor Tower said in a Monday (Oct. 19) post on LinkedIn. In terms of...

Artificial Intelligence
AI Labs Pay Lawyers $400 an Hour to Train Models
October 20, 2026

A civil rights attorney can now earn $400 an hour with no client involved. Recruiters are advertising that rate for attorneys, $170 an hour for condensed matter physics experts and up to $120 for software engineers, all to “help train next-generation AI systems,” Bloomberg reported....

Artificial Intelligence
DeepSeek Open Sources Inference Tech to Lower AI Costs
October 20, 2026

DeepSeek has made its in-house inference framework, DeepInfer, fully open source, saying this will help make artificial intelligence more affordable. DeepInfer powers the company’s DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash model at scale with high throughput and low latency, DeepSeek said in a Tuesday (Oct. 20) post on X. “We’re...

Artificial Intelligence
Robot Arms Finally Crack the Meal Assembly Line
October 20, 2026

For a long time, robots made little economic sense for food manufacturers juggling many recipes, each with its own mix of ingredients. Chef Robotics, a San Francisco startup that sells artificial intelligence (AI)-guided robot arms to food plants, now says its robots have handled more...

Artificial Intelligence
Mastercard Debuts Tool to Help AI Agents Purchase Digital Services
October 20, 2026

Mastercard has launched early access to Agent Pay for Machines, a tool designed to let autonomous artificial intelligence agents purchase digital services. The new offering builds on x402, an open protocol that allows digital services to request payment online, and “connects it with the trust, security...

Artificial Intelligence
Google Offers Gemini Agent to Government Workers
October 20, 2026

After introducing an artificial intelligence (AI) agent for workers in the private sector, Google is shifting its focus to public employees. The tech giant on Tuesday (Oct. 20) announced the preview of its Gemini agent for government services, following the recent launch of Gemini at...

Artificial Intelligence
OpenAI Racing to Raise $30 Billion Ahead of Anthropic Listing
October 20, 2026

OpenAI is reportedly rushing to lockdown investors before chief competitor Anthropic goes public next month. That’s according to a report Monday (Oct. 19) by Reuters, which describes the effort as “unusually fast fundraising” that could bring OpenAI’s valuation to more than $1.4 trillion. Two sources...

Artificial Intelligence
AI Agent Cuts Centalion’s Trade Finance Amendment Time 80%
October 19, 2026

Issuing a bank guarantee at a large commodity trader is still a desk job. A treasury employee checks how much room is left on a credit facility, pulls the banking details from one system, confirms the limits in another and keys the transaction into a...

Artificial Intelligence
Character.ai Bankruptcy Exposes the High Cost of AI Companionship
October 19, 2026

Character.ai, an artificial intelligence (AI) companion platform that lets users chat with AI versions of their favorite characters, filed for Chapter 11 on Oct. 12. About 12 million monthly users could not make it profitable. The company was losing $8 million to $9 million a...