This Week in IT News
Welcome back to the itpick weekly news roundup — your no-nonsense digest of the tech stories that actually matter if you’re running a small business or just trying to keep your home setup safe and sensible. It’s been a busy one. Let’s get into it.
OpenAI Says We’ve Hit AGI — Meet GPT-6 Astra
The biggest headline of the week by some distance: OpenAI has launched GPT-6 Astra, and the company is calling it the beginning of the AGI era. AGI — artificial general intelligence — is the long-held goal of building AI systems capable of outperforming humans across most economically valuable tasks. OpenAI reckons GPT-6 Astra gets them there.
Now, there’s plenty of debate about whether that label is warranted, and we’d encourage a healthy dose of scepticism. But what’s not in doubt is that AI tools are getting dramatically more capable, and that has real implications for how small businesses work day-to-day. If you’re not already experimenting with AI writing or productivity tools — something like Notion AI or Grammarly, for instance — now’s a genuinely good time to start.
What this means for you: The AI landscape is shifting fast; keeping an eye on what’s improving means you can make smarter decisions about which tools are actually worth paying for.
A USB Hack That Should Make Every Traveller Nervous
This one’s a bit James Bond, but it’s completely real. A Chinese state-linked hacking group targeted executives attending an agricultural industry conference in China this spring. Rather than sending dodgy emails or exploiting a network, the attackers broke into hotel rooms while executives were at dinner, then booted their laptops from a USB stick — effectively bypassing the normal operating system entirely.
What makes this particularly galling is that a fix for the underlying vulnerability already existed. Companies just hadn’t applied it. The attack was uncovered by CrowdStrike, which has been tracking this group for some time.
Even if you’re not travelling to international conferences anytime soon, the lesson here is universal: physical security matters as much as digital security, and keeping your systems fully updated is non-negotiable. Full-disk encryption, BIOS passwords, and boot-device restrictions are not just for IT departments — they’re sensible precautions for anyone carrying a work laptop.
What this means for you: If you travel with a laptop for work, make sure it’s encrypted, fully patched, and that you’re not leaving it unattended in hotel rooms — even briefly.
AI-Powered Malware Is Now Sorting Victims by Bank Balance
Here’s a nasty one. Security researchers have identified a new piece of Windows malware called VOLTA that doesn’t just steal your data — it uses AI (including Claude and Google’s Gemini, among others) to automatically assess how financially valuable each victim is, then ranks them accordingly. It hoovers up passwords, browser cookies, Outlook data, Slack messages, and more, then lets criminals prioritise who to target first based on potential profit.
This is a worrying development because it makes large-scale attacks far more efficient from the criminal’s perspective. Previously, attackers had to manually sift through stolen data. Now AI does the legwork for them.
The best defence remains the basics: use a reputable password manager (NordPass is a solid option) so that stolen cookies can’t easily lead to account takeovers, keep your security software up to date, and be cautious about what you store in browser-saved passwords.
What this means for you: AI isn’t just a productivity tool — criminals are using it too, which means your passwords and login details are more valuable to attackers than ever.
Microsoft Launches a Speech Recognition Model Worth Watching
Rounding things out on a lighter note: Microsoft has quietly released MAI-Transcribe-2, a speech-to-text model it claims is faster, more accurate, and cheaper than rivals from OpenAI, Google, and ElevenLabs. For small businesses that rely on transcription — meeting notes, customer calls, dictation workflows — this could be genuinely useful, especially as it filters into Microsoft’s wider product ecosystem.
What this means for you: Better, cheaper transcription tools are on the way, which could save real time for anyone who spends their day in meetings.
That’s your week in IT. Stay patched, stay sceptical of anything plugged into your laptop by a stranger, and maybe have a poke around whatever AI tools are on your radar — because the pace of change isn’t slowing down anytime soon. See you next week.