Plus: two lawmakers call for federal probe into Polymarket over deceptive advertising. And Trump threatens 100% tariffs on European countries that impose new digital services taxes on U.S. tech companies. Julie Chang hosts.
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[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_02] Many companies are struggling to scale their AI deployments or even move them past the pilot stage. Often the problem isn't technology, but organizational misalignment around goals, processes and incentives. At the break, join Caroline Roach, Senior Partner, IBM Consulting, to learn why.
[00:00:16] [SPEAKER_00] Here's your afternoon TNB Tech Minute for Friday, June 26th. I'm Julie Chang for The Wall Street Journal. OpenAI is limiting access to its GPT-5.6 models to a small, government-approved group following discussions with the Trump administration. But the company warned that it disagrees with the recent trend of the White House restricting industry activity on national security grounds. OpenAI said it hopes to make GPT-5.6 generally available in the coming weeks.
[00:00:45] [SPEAKER_00] The Trump administration recently banned foreign access to two models by rival Anthropic. The models have been shut down for two weeks while both sides continue discussions to address the security concerns. News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content licensing partnership with OpenAI. We exclusively report that two senators are calling for regulators to probe Polymarket over deceptive advertising.
[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_00] The move comes after a journal investigation found Polymarket paid creators to stage trades on fake websites and paid to make videos go viral in the U.S. Republican Senator John Curtis and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff sent a letter yesterday to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman asking whether the CFTC is investigating Polymarket. The CFTC, which previously dropped an investigation into the company, declined to comment on whether it's currently probing the platform.
[00:01:39] [SPEAKER_00] A source familiar with the matter said the CFTC is in the midst of a continuing investigation into Polymarket. Polymarket has a data partnership with Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones. If you want to know more about the journal investigation, tune in to our Tuesday episode of Tech News Briefing. And on Truth Social earlier today, President Trump threatened tariffs of 100% on European nations if they impose new digital services taxes on American tech companies.
[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_00] Some European countries, including France, Denmark, and Portugal have already implemented such levies. Trump struck a deal with the EU last year that capped most tariffs on European goods at 15%, but left the issue of digital taxes largely unresolved. The president posted that the 100% tariff would supersede that EU trade pact. However, it's unclear if a legal authority such as the Supreme Court would allow that.
[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_00] And that's it for your TNB Tech Minutes. Check back Monday for another quick tech update.
[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_02] Scaling AI successfully requires more than the right technology. Here again is Caroline Roach, senior partner, IBM Consulting.
[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_01] The biggest thing that we were talking about a year ago is what model to use. And the biggest thing that I'm talking about with my clients now is how do I drive change within my organization.
[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_02] Companies able to identify, correct, and then avoid misalignment will be best positioned to deliver meaningful business value from AI.
[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_01] The organizations that are the most successful set very clear targets and have several priorities that are very clear across the enterprise. The technology is really good, but if you're not changing your organizational alignment, not incentivizing your people correctly, not looking at workflows, you're not going to see real value with it.
[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_02] Visit IBM.com slash think slash leadership to learn how building organizational alignment can help deliver AI deployments that scale and drive growth.
[00:03:32] [SPEAKER_00] This content was created by custom content from WSJ, a unit of the Wall Street Journal Advertising Department.