Amazon’s App Store for Bots

Amazon’s rolling out a new AI marketplace next week. And while it’s not exactly something your aunt’s gonna use, it could make Amazon a lot of money.

Here’s the deal: AWS is launching a place where companies can buy ready-made AI agents from other companies—kind of like an app store, but for bots that actually do stuff. Customer service, data crunching, workflow automation—you name it.

Instead of sinking time and money into building your own AI or gambling on a sketchy startup, you can now just hop on Amazon, browse the options, pick what fits, and get back to doing literally anything else.

Big picture: Everyone from Microsoft to Google is racing to make AI easier to plug into your business. Amazon’s just doing it the Amazon way—by letting everyone else build the tools and taking a cut when they sell.

Why it matters:

For everyday folks like you and me? It doesn’t. You’re not logging into AWS to buy an AI agent anytime soon.

But in the bigger picture of the AI arms race, this move says a lot.

First, Amazon’s staking its claim on the business side of AI. They saw who’s already using AWS, noticed the gap between the AI haves and have-nots, and decided to close it—by dropping a marketplace exactly where those businesses already live. Classic “rich get richer” play. And yeah, it’s smart.

Second, don’t sleep on Anthropic. Everyone knows ChatGPT. But the cool, slightly more paranoid crowd? They’re obsessed with Claude. And Claude’s just one piece of Anthropic’s growing puzzle. Partnering with Amazon and showing up in this new marketplace is a smart play—chasing enterprise clients, locking in big contracts, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the biggest cloud player in the game.

Bottom line: Amazon turned AI into shelf space. And Anthropic made sure they’re standing right next to the checkout line.

Rapid Fire

🚗 Tesla is expanding its robotaxi program to Phoenix, hot on the heels of Waymo, its biggest rival in the self-driving game, who got there first. This move comes just weeks after Tesla launched in Austin, where, predictably, things got messy. With Elon Musk involved, every slip-up gets amplified. Whether it's Teslas running stop signs or getting into minor scrapes, the internet is watching and posting every second of it.

Still, the race is on. The robotaxi market is worth maybe one to two billion dollars today, but it is expected to explode to forty to fifty billion by 2030. In an industry this young, every city is a strategic foothold. These early launches are not just about testing tech, they are about locking in customer loyalty. And if Phoenix tells us anything, it is that Tesla and Waymo are locked in a game of follow the leader.

🍟 McDonald’s just had a massive data leak, and the culprit was its AI hiring bot, Olivia. Hackers gained access by guessing applicant usernames and using the password 123456. That simple move gave them access to McHire, a system used by over 90 percent of McDonald’s franchisees to process applications. From there, they found a flaw in the backend that let them pull data from over 64 million applicants, some dating back years. It took just 30 minutes to find the vulnerability. Researchers confirmed the data was real by contacting people whose information they accessed. McDonald’s patched the issue quickly and said there is no evidence criminals got to it first, but still, the fact that default logins worked at all is embarrassing.

This is a gut check for how companies are using AI in hiring. These bots are already known for being clunky, impersonal, and hard to communicate with. Now they are also a risk to your personal data. Applicants are handing over names, emails, phone numbers, work history, and more, all to a system that could be cracked by someone typing in the word password. If AI is going to run the front door of hiring, it needs to be built with the same security and care companies would apply to their customer data. Right now, it is not even close.

🏁 Apple wants the US rights to stream Formula 1 and they are ready to drop at least 150 million dollars a year to make it happen. Starting in 2026, don’t be surprised if you are watching the Monaco Grand Prix on your iPhone instead of ESPN. Disney is reportedly out of the race, not even bothering to match the offer. And yes, this comes right after Apple’s Brad Pitt F1 movie cleared 300 million dollars at the box office. That is not a coincidence.

This is not just about fast cars. It is Apple stacking up live sports like trading cards. Baseball, soccer, now Formula 1. One by one, they are pulling major events off cable and sliding them into Apple TV Plus. If you thought there were already too many apps to watch stuff, Apple would like a word. They are not just chasing views. They are quietly trying to own the weekend.

Polling Zone

Tech Radar

Meta is basically telling the EU to deal with it. Despite warnings of daily fines and fresh antitrust charges, the company has no plans to change its pay or consent model any further. That is the system where users in the EU get two choices: pay a monthly fee to use Facebook and Instagram without ads, or keep it free and agree to be tracked for targeted ads. Critics say that is not really a choice. It is just a polite way of saying give us your data or your money.

The EU is not buying it. Regulators say this setup breaks the spirit of the Digital Markets Act, which is supposed to limit Big Tech’s control and give users more say over how their data is used. Meta already got hit with a 234 million dollar fine earlier this year and made a few small tweaks, but the core deal stayed the same. Now the EU is threatening daily fines worth up to five percent of Meta’s global revenue, and Meta’s response is basically a shrug. This is not really about ads anymore. It is a power struggle, and neither side wants to be the one to blink.

Recently Deployed

In a social age where every screenshot gets side-eyed for fakery, Mockly just made things way more complicated. The new tool lets anyone generate fake DMs that look eerily real—across 13 different platforms, not just iMessage. We're talking Instagram, Discord, X, WhatsApp, Tinder, even Slack. It’s the most user-friendly fake message generator to date, and that’s exactly what makes it dangerous. Unlike the clunky malware-ridden sites people used to rely on, Mockly is clean, simple, and actually works—which means meme-makers and internet trolls just got a massive upgrade.

Not every template is perfect—Slack looks a little empty, and most of the interfaces mirror web versions instead of mobile. But even with those flaws, the tool is good enough to confuse someone with a quick scroll. And in a time when AI-generated videos are already fueling misinformation, this kind of tool only blurs the line between real and fake even further. Whether you’re trying to make a harmless joke or push a viral lie, Mockly gives you the power to do both.

That’s a wrap.

Amazon turned AI into an aisle at Costco. Meta’s throwing shade at the EU and daring them to hit back. McDonald’s just reminded us that 123456 is still a thing. Apple wants to own your Sunday mornings. And somewhere out there, someone’s generating fake DMs to cook up internet chaos.

It is a weird time to be online. We are just trying to make sense of it.

Catch you again tomorrow.