IT Brief UK

Global Tech Advocates has launched the Centre for Global Tech Advocacy, a new institute to support a network spanning more than 45 tech hubs and 40,000 advocates worldwide. The centre is intended to act as a global digital institute, giving more formal structure to a largely volunteer-led network that has operated for 14 years. It was unveiled at the group's summit in Istanbul, following earlier global gatherings in China and India.

Ecommpay has published a white paper urging merchants to use artificial intelligence on payments data beyond fraud prevention, arguing that payment service providers can help identify lost revenue in transaction data. The report says many eCommerce businesses are using AI too narrowly and overlooking broader uses for payment information across marketing, demand forecasting, corporate strategy, and customer experience.

Axiologik has increased its headcount by one third in 2026, as the Leeds digital consultancy marks its 10th year. The recruitment drive included nine hires in August and expanded teams across architecture, delivery, product, engineering and AI, service operations, and cyber resilience. Demand for digital transformation, AI, and cyber resilience work drove the increase. The staff growth follows what Axiologik described as its strongest period of expansion to date.

TCL has issued new guidance on what buyers should prioritise when choosing a television. It centres on five factors the company says matter more in day-to-day viewing than long specification lists. The advice focuses on lighting control, brightness and contrast, colour reproduction, motion handling, and sound quality, as TV makers continue to market sets with a growing range of technical terms such as Mini LED, QLED, local dimming, and refresh rate.

Writer's Toolbox has introduced a handwriting recognition feature for its school writing platform to support the Department for Education's Writing Framework. The feature lets pupils draft work by hand, photograph the page and upload it to the platform for further work and feedback. The system converts handwriting into editable text, including crossed-out or less legible passages, while preserving the pupil's original spelling, grammar and punctuation.

Backbase has launched Conversational Banking, now generally available to banks. The software lets customers complete routine banking requests through chat or voice, with an AI agent carrying each task through to resolution within rules set by the bank. Examples include blocking a lost card, disputing a payment, requesting a credit-card limit increase within policy, or starting a loan application.

CONTEXT said European business notebook buyers are shifting towards lower-memory models as memory cost pressures weigh on purchasing decisions. Its latest channel data also showed that higher-memory devices still generated a disproportionate share of revenue. Data from Europe's five largest markets showed that eight-gigabyte business notebooks accounted for 25% of unit sales through retail chains and 20% through small and medium-sized resellers.

Sapiens has launched an insurance AI maturity index based on a global survey of senior insurance professionals. The study found that 67% of respondents expect AI in insurance to become fully autonomous within two to three years. The index places insurers in four groups: Reactive, Enabled, Operational, and Autonomous. It measures progress in cloud adoption, master data strategy, AI governance, and HR strategy.

Sapiens has launched Sapiens Brain, an artificial intelligence foundation for the insurance industry that sits at the centre of its SapiensAIP platform. The product is designed to embed Sapiens' insurance data, software logic and documentation into an AI layer for insurers. The aim is to reduce model drift and hallucinations by grounding outputs in insurance-specific information built up over more than four decades.

AI will cost people jobs. That is no longer a statement leaders should soften into "AI will free people for higher-value work". Some of that will happen. So will redundancy. The management failure is treating those outcomes as if they are mutually exclusive. AI can augment thousands of people and still remove enough work to shrink teams, collapse layers and eliminate roles. The question for leaders is not whether disruption arrives.