AI News: Sunday, May 17, 2026

Guides & explainers published May 17, 2026

• Agent Skills: The Secure, Validated Registry for Professional AI Coding Agents

  A deep dive into Agent Skills, the managed skill registry solving the security crisis in AI agent extensions. Learn how threat modeling, static analysis, and human curation make it safe to extend Antigravity, Claude Code, Cursor, and other professional coding agents with zero-trust workflows.

• DreamServer: Your Complete Local AI Stack for LLM Inference, Chat, and Voice

  DreamServer provides a self-hosted AI infrastructure with LLM inference, multimodal chat, voice transcription, and autonomous agents—all running locally without cloud dependencies.

• Ghost CMS: The Open-Source Publishing Platform Built for Professional Content Creators

  Ghost CMS delivers a modern, Node.js-based publishing platform with a focus on performance, membership management, and newsletter infrastructure for independent publishers and content teams.

• Shadowbroker: The Open-Source OSINT Platform Bringing Global Intelligence to Everyone

  A deep dive into Shadowbroker—an open-source platform that combines global OSINT telemetry (flights, ships, satellites, CCTV, conflicts) with a decentralized mesh network, AI agent integration, and SAR ground-change detection. Everything from Air Force One tracking to encrypted intelligence sharing, all on one self-hosted map.

Key questions from May 17, 2026

What was the biggest AI news on May 17, 2026?

The top AI stories explainx.ai reported on May 17, 2026 were 60% of PC gamers shelve build plans as AI crunch drives; arXiv imposes one-year ban for unchecked AI errors: What; and OpenAI to give all Malta residents free ChatGPT Plus. A Tom's Hardware survey found 60% of PC gamers have no build plans for the next two years, citing punishing component costs. Memory prices have nearly doubled quarter-over-quarter, motherboard makers have slashed forecasts by 25–37%, and AMD expects gaming revenue to drop 20% as fabs prioritize high-margin AI chips.

How much have PC component prices increased in 2026?

32GB DDR5 memory kits that sold for under $100 in 2025 now cost $360 or more at U.S. retailers. TrendForce projected PC DRAM contract prices could nearly double quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2026, with further increases of 45–50% in Q2. A 16GB memory module that cost $40 last year now costs $170+. MSI plans to raise gaming hardware prices by 15–30% over coming months. Full story →

Is arXiv banning the use of AI tools entirely?

No. Mathematician Thomas Bloom clarified that arXiv is 'not banning the use of AI, or papers which used AI to generate proofs, code, etc.' The policy targets only papers containing obvious evidence that AI-generated content was not checked or verified—such as hallucinated citations, fabricated results, or plagiarized text. Full story →

How do Malta residents get free ChatGPT Plus access?

Maltese residents must complete a free AI literacy course to receive a full year of ChatGPT Plus access at no cost. The program begins in May 2026 and is also open to Maltese citizens living abroad. OpenAI did not disclose the financial terms of the partnership with the Maltese government. Full story →

• ToolCodeGraph

  Supercharge Claude Code with Semantic Code Intelligence.

• ToolGhost

  Ghost is a powerful open-source headless CMS designed for professional publishing.

• ToolShadowbroker

  Shadowbroker is a decentralized intelligence platform that aggregates real-time OSINT telemetry into a single dark-ops map interface.

• ToolOpen Generative AI

  A free, open-source platform for generating AI images and videos using over 200 models without content filters or subscription fees.

• ToolCal.diy

  Cal.diy is the community-driven, open-source scheduling platform designed for self-hosting.

• LLMPerception 1.0

  Perception 1.0 is the core model layer behind Ceptory's enterprise video intelligence, enabling natural language search, multimodal analysis, and operational monitoring. It provides structured outputs ready for API inte…