BoE predicts budget measures will lower inflation, and denies uncertainty caused unusual bond market volatility – as it happened

Senior members of the Bank of England are appearing before the Treasury committee now.MPs will hear from deputy governors Clare Lombardelli and Sir Dave Ramsden, as well as two external members of the Monetary Policy Committee – Swati Dhingra and Catherine Mann.The quartet are without governor Andrew Bailey, who isn’t available due to “an unavoidable international commitment”.They will discuss the Bank’s decision to maintain interest rates at 4% in November, and also its latest Monetary Policy Report.Time to recap

Moonpig’s use of AI to design and personalise cards drives up sales

The online card service Moonpig has reported a bump in sales thanks in part to its increased use of AI to help design cards, personalise customers’ messages and answer queries.The company said sales rose 6.7% to £169m in the six months to 31 October and had remained strong in the weeks since then, largely as a result of increased orders and spend per order at its main Moonpig brand.“AI is now designing a lot of cards for us,” said its chief executive, Nickyl Raithatha. He said technology had helped create everything from baby and birthday cards to corporate greetings linked to a particular business

EU opens investigation into Google’s use of online content for AI models

The EU has opened an investigation to assess whether Google is breaching European competition rules in its use of online content from publishers and YouTube creators for artificial intelligence.The European Commission said on Tuesday it would examine whether the US tech company, which runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet, was putting rival AI owners at a “disadvantage”.The commission said: “The investigation will notably examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to such content, thereby placing developers of rival AI models at a disadvantage.”It said it was concerned that Google may have used content from web publishers to generate AI-powered services on its search results pages without appropriate compensation to publishers and without offering them the possibility to refuse such use of their content.The commission said it was also concerned as to whether Google had used content uploaded to YouTube to train its own generative AI models without offering creators compensation or the possibility to refuse

Australia launches a social media ban – and is AI a bubble about to pop?

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, writing to you from a New York City that feels much colder than last December. 🥶In a world first, Australia implemented a ban on social media use for people under 16. It’s the first country to take such a far-reaching measure. Starting on 10 December, children and teens under 16 will not be allowed to use social media in Australia

Claressa Shields to open $8m deal with Detroit rematch against Crews-Dezurn

Claressa Shields will defend her undisputed heavyweight championship in Detroit on 22 February, returning home for a rematch with Franchon Crews-Dezurn in her first fight since signing a landmark $8m promotional deal. The bout will headline a Dazn card at Little Caesars Arena, the home of the NBA’s Pistons and NHL’s Red Wings where Shields attracted a near-sellout crowd for her most recent fight last July.Shields (17-0, 3 KO) and Crews-Dezurn (10-2, 2 KO) first met nearly a decade ago when they made their professional debuts against each other on the undercard of Andre Ward’s victory over Sergey Kovalev in 2016. Shields won a four-round unanimous decision that night in Las Vegas, a moment she still sees as formative. “I had just come off winning two Olympic gold medals, fresh out of the amateurs, and finding an opponent was tough,” she said in a press release announcing the fight

Peter Nichols obituary

My friend and former sports-writing colleague at the Observer Peter Nichols, who has died from Parkinson’s-related dementia aged 79, was a man of many talents: drama teacher, Time Out cabaret correspondent, athletics correspondent, London Marathon international race organiser, publisher and award-winning radio scriptwriter.Pete was a sporting Google long before Google was invented. He was a sharer, the go-to source at the seven Olympiads he covered. “Pete was utterly invaluable,” recalls the former Guardian head of sport Ben Clissitt. “His input was the Guardian playbook for our Olympic coverage