The AI Intelligence Report: Today’s Top News (Feb 17, 2026)

From the busy halls of the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi to breakthroughs in pediatric oncology, the AI landscape today is defined by a shift from "chatbots" to "integrated systems." Here is the breakdown of the most significant developments in the last 24 hours.

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🔬 Major Research & Innovation

• AI Liquid Biopsy for Pediatric Cancer: Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital published a landmark study in Nature Cancer today. Their new AI-powered tool, M-PACT, can identify 92% of pediatric brain tumors through a simple liquid biopsy (blood/fluid test), eliminating the need for invasive surgeries to monitor treatment or detect relapses.

• Pharma’s "Platform-Led" Pivot: A major report released at BioAsia 2026 today highlights a fundamental shift in drug discovery. The industry is moving away from one-off breakthroughs toward "AI-native R&D stacks." These reusable discovery engines use shared data across multiple programs to predict clinical success before a single lab test is conducted.

• "Experience-Cumulative" Learning: Research into Test-Time Scaling (TTS) has reached a new milestone. Emerging models are now demonstrating the ability to "learn" from their own internal reasoning attempts during a single prompt, drastically reducing hallucinations in high-stakes scientific fields like chemistry and law.

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🚀 Product Launches & Software Updates

• Infosys x Anthropic Strategic Alliance: Infosys and Anthropic announced a major collaboration today to bring specialized Claude-powered agents to highly regulated industries like telecommunications and financial services. The partnership focuses on "trustworthy AI" that can navigate complex compliance audits automatically.

• Pumas 2.8 with Embedded AI: PumasAI released version 2.8 of its leading pharmacology platform today. The update integrates "next-generation estimation" tools that allow pharmaceutical researchers to use AI to turn raw clinical data into life-saving dosage decisions up to 5x faster than previous versions.

• ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0: Dominating the Lunar New Year tech releases in Asia, ByteDance (parent of TikTok) has officially launched Seedance 2.0. The tool is specifically gaining traction for its high-fidelity video generation capabilities, which are being positioned as a direct competitor to Hollywood-grade creative suites.

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⚖️ Regulatory & Governance Developments

• India’s 3-Hour Takedown Rule: New IT rules in India move toward final implementation this week. The regulation mandates that platforms must remove "unlawful" AI-generated content (including deepfakes) within just 3 hours of a report. Civil rights groups are raising concerns that this rapid timeline may lead to "preemptive censorship."

• The U.S. "Constitutional Clash": The federal AI Litigation Task Force has begun its official review of state-level AI transparency laws in California and Texas. The Department of Commerce is evaluating whether state-level mandates on training data disclosure interfere with federal interstate commerce protections.

• EU AI Act "Code of Practice": The European Commission is currently finalizing the first draft of its transparency code. By August 2026, all major AI models in the EU will be required to carry "manifest and latent watermarks" to ensure users always know when they are interacting with synthetic media.

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📈 Notable Industry Trends

• The $650B Capex Question: Investors are closely watching the "Big Four" (Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft) as they commit a staggering $650 billion to AI infrastructure this year. Despite the massive investment, market volatility remains high as analysts wait for evidence that "Agentic AI" will generate a proportional boost in enterprise revenue.

• Agentic AI as the "Digital Coworker": 2026 is seeing a shift in terminology. Firms are moving away from "AI assistants" to "AI Integration Architects." These new roles focus on embedding autonomous agents into core business workflows—like supply chain management—rather than just using them as simple search tools.

• Greenwashing vs. Generative Power: A new environmental report released today at the Delhi AI Summit warns that tech companies are "greenwashing" their impact. Analysts argue that while traditional AI helps optimize energy grids, the massive energy demand of generative video and reasoning models is currently outpacing those savings.