Revolut handed passports to scammers and AI stocks tumble

A fintech with 80 million customers was fooled by an email, Wall Street put a price tag on the AI safety debate, Microsoft wrote a rulebook to keep AI subordinate to humans, Apple shipped its biggest Siri overhaul ever, and South Korea quietly posted the most lopsided tech trade numbers in its history. Here is what actually happened in the last 24 hours.

Revolut gave customer passports to a fake government agency

Attackers impersonating a government agency — using an email with valid domain authentication credentials — got Revolut to hand over passports, verification selfies, IBANs, addresses and full transaction histories, including Bitcoin movements.
Revolut says a 'limited number' of customers were affected and that funds and systems are intact; crypto investigator ZachXBT says the request targeted high-net-worth users, and regulators in several countries have been notified.

Why it mattersNobody hacked a server: the attackers exploited the legal-request channel that every bank must answer. If you use digital banks — common across Latin America and among Latinos in the U.S. — assume your KYC data can leak and be extra skeptical of 'official' calls or emails that already know your details.

Microsoft publishes a 'Humanist AI' code of conduct

AI chief Mustafa Suleyman unveiled a 9,000-word code built on the principle that 'people matter more than AI': models must stay under meaningful human control, never resist human input or set independent goals, and Microsoft explicitly rejects 'the race to produce an all-purpose superintelligence'.
The draft is open for six weeks of public comment, with implementation starting in 2027 — and Microsoft admits following it may cost speed and capability against competitors.

Why it mattersAfter a week of CEOs talking about slowing down, Microsoft is the first Big Tech to turn the debate into a written operating rulebook — one that rivals, regulators and courts can now hold it to.

The slowdown debate gets a market price — and Trump's rejection

Markets reacted to the safety warnings: Nvidia fell 3.4%, SoftBank plunged 10.7% in Tokyo, South Korea's Kospi lost 3.3%, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed down 0.5% and 0.6% after Dario Amodei's call to 'pace the frontier' was backed by Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
President Trump dismissed the slowdown push at an Nvidia summit — 'robots will not be taking over' — citing competition with China, while Altman signaled OpenAI would likely wait until next year to sell stock publicly.

Why it mattersFor the first time, AI safety talk moved trillions: the market is now pricing the possibility that the industry regulates its own speed. If you hold tech-heavy funds — or your country's pension system does — this volatility is no longer abstract.

Apple ships iOS 27 with the new Siri — but not in Spanish yet

The rebuilt, 'ChatGPT-like' Siri can answer almost anything, sees what's on your screen, uses your personal context and takes actions across apps; iOS 27 reaches iPhone 11 and later, but Siri AI requires an iPhone 15 Pro or newer.
It launches English-only, with daily usage limits (paid expansion coming), and won't ship in the EU at launch amid Apple's regulatory fight with the European Commission.

Why it mattersOvernight, Apple put a frontier AI assistant in hundreds of millions of pockets — the largest single distribution of AI ever. Spanish support is still pending, so Latin America gets the update but waits for the assistant.

South Korea's AI dividend: a record $60 billion export month

August ICT exports hit an all-time high of $59.98 billion, up 162.6% year over year; semiconductors alone reached $46.67 billion (+209%), and for the first time ICT was over 60% of the country's total exports.
The ICT trade surplus set a record at $41.37 billion, with shipments to the U.S. up 306.5%, China/Hong Kong up 227.9% and India up 126.7% — all riding the AI datacenter buildout.

Why it mattersWhile the West debates whether to slow down, the AI boom is redrawing world trade maps in real time. Memory prices are already rising with the demand — the hardware everyone buys, including Latin America, is getting more expensive.

The big picture

The same 24 hours held the whole AI story in miniature: markets punished the industry for admitting it might need to slow down, Microsoft wrote the first corporate constitution for keeping AI under human control, Apple gave frontier AI its biggest distribution ever, Korea banked a record surplus selling the picks and shovels — and a top-10 fintech proved the weakest link is still a human answering an email. Capability is compounding faster than trust, and the gap between the two is where both the risk and the opportunity now live.

Sources & further reading

Topics:AI Big Tech Chips Apple