Today’s Digest discusses the UK seeking broader Apple user data according to a legal filing, out-of-home ad revenue dipping, and Microsoft debuting its first in-house AI models.

UK sought broader Apple user data, legal filing shows

The UK government tried to force Apple to give broader back-door access to private user data than was known before, a newly revealed court document shows. The legal filing, reviewed by the Financial Times, shows the Home Office has not changed its demand for Apple to give access to data from customers outside the UK. This contrasts claims from the Trump administration last week that the UK government had agreed to drop its request. The filing, published by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (TCN), says the order applies to iCloud data worldwide, not only UK users. It included obligations to maintain access to backups, messages, and passwords.

Critics call the law a “snooper’s charter”, yet the UK government says it is needed to fight terrorism and child abuse. The court will hear Apple’s challenge early next year. The UK government refuses to confirm or deny the order.

OOH Ad revenue dips in H1

UK out-of-home (OOH) advertising revenue dropped slightly in H1 2025. Trade body Outsmart reported a 0.2% year-on-year decline to £644.9m.

Digital OOH rose 0.3%, while classic formats fell 1.3%. Digital held a 66% share of revenue, unchanged from last year. The slowdown marks a sharp contrast with H1 2024, when revenue surged 17% to £646m, the strongest first half on record.

Q2 performance was weaker than Q1. Revenue fell 1.2% to £350.4m in Q2, compared to a 1% rise in Q1. Digital slipped 0.7% in Q2, and classic OOH declined 2.2%. OOH ad revenue hit £1.4bn in 2024, up 7.7% year on year.

According to Justin Cochrane, chair of Outsmart, “The figures reflect OOH’s resilience in a period of economic uncertainty.Whilst we’ve seen a short-term focus across the media market recently, OOH continues to be uniquely placed to deliver on advertisers’ real-world needs as confidence grows.”

Microsoft AI debuts first in-house models

Microsoft AI has launched its first in-house models, marking a major step in its consumer AI strategy. The company introduced MAI-Voice-1, a speech model that generates one minute of audio in under one second on a single GPU. It is already powering Copilot Daily, which delivers news summaries, and podcast-style discussions in Copilot.

Microsoft also revealed MAI-1-preview, trained on 15,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. The model is designed for instruction-following and delivering helpful responses to everyday queries.

Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman said the company is focused on building models for consumer use rather than enterprise. He pointed to Microsoft’s strong data signals from advertising and consumer telemetry as key advantages.

Both models show Microsoft’s intent to strengthen Copilot with proprietary technology rather than relying solely on external partners.