The long-awaited sequel by developer Rockstar Games is expected to drop in November - 13 years on from the record-breaking GTA V. The game was due to be released in autumn 2025 but was pushed back to May 2026 before once again being delayed. Rockstar said the extra time would allow the team to "finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve". Once launched, players will be returning to the Miami-flavoured metropolis of Vice City in the fictional state of Leonida. The Bonnie and Clyde-style story will follow criminal couple Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos - the first playable female character in the series' history. GTA has always poked fun at American culture, with, arguably, some aspects of the nation's past decade of politics like something out of the game. GTA VI looks certain to continue the series' tradition of satire, and from the footage released so far it appears no expense has been spared in regards to bringing the sun-soaked streets of Vice City to life. The GTA series - which was created in Dundee, Scotland - is one of the biggest franchises in the industry. GTA V became the fastest entertainment product in history to make $1bn (in its first three days) and has since sold more than 220 million copies worldwide - making it the second best-selling video game of all time after Minecraft. GTA VI is similarly expected to be snapped up across the globe and achieve colossal sales. If history repeats itself, GTA Online will be the moneymaker. The persistent online world offers endless monetisation opportunities - with gamers enticed to splash out on new vehicles, weapons, properties, businesses and cosmetic upgrades. Expert research analyst Michael Pachter previously told Sky News he believes Rockstar and parent company Take-Two Interactive Software will be able to charge $100 (about £75) for the base game alone with little complaint. However, the GTA series boasts two winning ingredients that some other games do not have - brand power and fan loyalty. If other AAA (Triple-A) game publishers attempt to follow suit and raise their own starting prices, they may find that any accepted GTA increase is the exception rather than the rule. As career criminal and former bank robber Trevor Philips (GTA V character) nicely put it: "I said something nice, not expensive." Fable The long-awaited Fable reboot is expected to drop sometime in 2026 following a delay from its initial 2025 release window. It will be the first new instalment in the action-RPG franchise since Fable: The Journey in 2012. The series has been on a hiatus since Microsoft's cancellation of Fable Legends and the subsequent closure of original developers Lionhead Studios in 2016. Playground Games, behind the successful Forza Horizon series, is developing the reboot for parent company Xbox Game Studios. Still set in the fictional world of Albion, the series will be updated with contemporary gameplay mechanics and visuals in a bid to attract a new generation of players. From the footage released so far, fans can expect a classic fantasy adventure filled with "life and death stuff". The storybook-styled world features scenic horseback riding, magical creatures, playful dialogue, and player-driven choices. As well as action-heavy combat, Fable's signature chicken-kicking option appears to be alive and well. While not much is known about our hero, British comedians Richard Ayoade and Matt King will be playing a giant and a once-great champion turned mentor respectively. The game will release on Xbox Series X/S as well as Xbox on PC and will be playable from day one via Games Pass. Given the IP (intellectual property) is owned by Microsoft, it's unlikely the game will make its way to PS5 any time soon after its initial release. 007 First Light 007 First Light is a James Bond origin story and will follow the resourceful recruit during his time within the MI6 training programme ahead of becoming the world-famous spy we know and love. The action-adventure game is due to be released in May - having been pushed back from March - and is inspired by Ian Fleming's novels and short stories. The original narrative is expected to follow Bond as he embarks on a mission that will earn him his licence to kill. This is the first Bond game since 007 Legends in 2012. The franchise went on an extended hiatus after previous publisher Activision had its non-exclusive licence to produce James Bond video games revoked by Eon Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 2013. IO Interactive, best known for developing the Hitman and Kane & Lynch franchises, is behind 007 First Light. Expect a heart-pumping blend of close-quarters combat, car chases, stealth kills, glamorous locations, gadgets galore, and appearances from the likes of M, Q and Miss Moneypenny. At The Game Awards 2025, famed musician Lenny Kravitz was unveiled as Bond villain Bawma. The "unpredictable and charismatic" antagonist has been described as someone who "rose from nothing, broke free, and built his own Kingdom of Aleph". The game should whet fans' appetite ahead of Bond 26 - which Denis Villeneuve is set to direct and will mark a new era of 007 films following the conclusion of Daniel Craig's run. Resident Evil Requiem Capcom takes us back to Raccoon City with Resident Evil Requiem. The survival horror game is scheduled to be released in February, with the developers promising a "heart-stopping experience that will chill you to your core". Fans will be introduced to a new leading lady - FBI intelligence analyst Grace Ashcroft, who is the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft from the Resident Evil Outbreak games. Grace's nightmare begins after she is dispatched to investigate a mysterious death at an abandoned hotel where her mother was murdered eight years prior. As Grace investigates the team's person of interest - Victor Gideon - her path converges with that of veteran agent Leon S. Kennedy. The fan favourite returns to the series as a playable character, with both Grace and Leon forced to face their pasts in a bid to uncover the truth behind the Raccoon City incident that changed the world forever. The game follows on from Resident Evil Village, with players once again expected to go head-to-head with the horrors that await through combat, puzzle-solving and resource management. Previous antagonist Lady Dimitrescu proved to be a social media hit, so the next relentless stalker monster has big boots to fill.

I punched it hard in the chest and felt a jarring sensation running back up my arm. It was like hitting a brick wall. Things got better when I started kicking it. I gave it a good shove with my foot and it went reeling back into the ropes of the ring. At this point, a human might have given up, but robots are indefatigable. It bounced straight back up, ready for further punishment. So I kicked it again. Reader, I am not proud of this, but in my defence, it was the robot or me. I couldn't let humanity down. To clarify, the robot was fine with all this. Well, its owners were anyway - I didn't exchange many words with my opponent, mainly because it couldn't talk. Robot didn't stand a fighting chance Chinese robotics company Unitree invited me to fight one of its G1 units live on stage at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the world's biggest technology fair. The event was arranged as a demonstration of the robot's ability to work alongside humans. It had no chance of beating me or even landing a blow. Once I'd recovered from the bout, I was able to appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of the technological achievement I'd just witnessed. Balance is tricky for robots, but the G1 was able to get back up even after a hefty kick. What it lacked was agility. It wasn't able to dodge my blows the way a human might. In part, this was by design - Unitree wants the humans to enjoy the experience, which means letting them win. But at the same time, this reveals a basic technological challenge faced by any humanoid robot manufacturer: making a robot nimble and light on its feet means equipping it to deal with unexpected instability. Humans don't just balance - we rethink the task mid-motion. For the most part, robots are still figuring that out. The question of balance could stand for the field of robotics as a whole. Robot butler still a long way off I came to CES to uncover the truth about robots. The hype around physical AI is almost overwhelming, and not without good reason - the success of self-driving cars shows that machines can be taught to perform as well, if not better, than the human equivalents. Nvidia boss Jensen Huang summed up the mood when I asked him about robots earlier this week. We will have robots with human capabilities "this year", he said, "because I know how fast the technology is moving". But, as I found, the fantasy of the robot butler rushing around the house to do all the chores is still a long way off, simply because human bodies and behaviours are so hard to reproduce. Laundry-folding robot One of the most impressive technical achievements I saw during my visit to CES was a robot folding laundry. The awareness and dexterity needed to manipulate soft materials have always been beyond robots, until now. However, when I investigated the laundry-folding robot further, I found that it required four days of remote operation just to get it used to the new table and lights of the unfamiliar CES setting. Dyna, the company behind it, rents it to hotels at $3,000 to $5,000 a month - and you can see the appeal because the robot can fold for 16 hours a day. Why not 24? Because it can't take the laundry away. It hasn't learnt how to do that yet. Wherever you turn, you see both how far robots have come and how far they have to go. Over the last few days, I have seen dozens of robot hands, trying to replicate all the different facets of the incredible tool we are gifted at birth. Touch, for instance, is something technologists do their best to replicate by planting tactile sensors on the robot's fingers. Or the way that human fingers have a bit of give to them, which allows them to absorb impact rather than fighting against it. In robots, the ability to yield rather than lock up is called "back-driveability", and is one of the cherished goals of the industry. A humanish-feeling handshake South Korean company WiRobotics showed me their new actuator - the robotic term for muscle - which has in-built force recognition designed to create back-driveability. "It can absorb the impact and even utilise the impact," says Dr Yong-Jae Kim, founder and CEO of WiRobotics. His robot achieved a rare feat: a humanish-feeling handshake. That's extremely impressive from a technical point of view, but it should give you an indication of how far away we are from robot Jeeves. Even if robots do achieve perfect back-drivability, that's just the beginning. Human hands aren't always yielding. We constantly switch between softness and rigidity - gripping a phone gently, then bracing to lift a suitcase. That dynamic switching is the real goal. And at this stage, it still feels some way off. Read more from Sky News:Changes to Musk's AI bot 'insulting', No 10 saysThe 40 jobs 'most at risk' from AI - and 40 it can't touch What's changed is that now, thanks to generative AI, there's a path to get there. Every roboticist I spoke to was in agreement: generative AI has revolutionised the industry. "Robotics has completely changed. We can make robots feel more like people. We can make them do things we've never been able to do before," says Aya Durbin, humanoid application product lead at Boston Dynamics. It does seem now as if humanoid robots are going to get here. It might just take a bit longer than many people hope and fear.

Cyber flashing is when someone sends a non-consensual explicit picture - best known as a "dick pic". It's most often women on the receiving end and, according to research by dating app Bumble, the adults most likely to receive those images are women between 40 and 45 years old. That being said, it's an extremely common experience online, with one in three teenage girls saying they've received an unwanted sexual image, according to YouGov data. What changes now? Under the Online Safety Act, which began being fully enforced in July last year, online platforms have to make sure they're not hosting illegal content. If they are, they can be fined 10% of their revenue by Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, or £18m, whichever is higher. By making cyber flashing a priority offence, the government is signalling to the regulator and tech firms that it takes this crime particularly seriously. "The bar is much higher on what platforms need to do," Kanishka Narayan, the minister for AI and online safety, told Sky News. Platforms like dating and social media apps will now need to do three things: 🞗 Assess the risk of cyber flashing specifically🞗 Proactively take steps to prevent it, rather than reacting after it's happened🞗 Build safety features against cyber flashing into the design of their products Can tech firms actually stop cyber flashing? Cyber flashing isn't particularly hard to stop, from a technology point of view. Bumble has been filtering lewd messages since 2019 and open-sourced the technology four years ago. "We trained it on a lot of data sets of both lewd, non-lewd images and that's how we've been able to achieve a model with about 98% accuracy," said Namrata Haribal, product manager for safety at Bumble. Read more technology news:Illegal child abuse material generated by GrokRobots with human-type capabilities are comingPorn users 'still seeing porn with no age checks' Almost all major platforms now have some sort of technology like this in place, designed to spot explicit images and intervene before they're seen by someone who doesn't want to see them. Mr Narayan insists the upgrading of cyber flashing to a priority offence is crucial, though. "Whilst there's been a drop in cyber flashing as a result of it already being an offence under the Online Safety Act, by making it a priority offence, we want to stamp it out even further," he said. "Because we also heard that despite the drop, there are still too many instances of women and girls in particular experiencing this." Will cyber flashing becoming a priority offence make a difference? The minister says yes, but Professor Clare McGlynn, professor of law at Durham University, is not so sure. She has been campaigning for better cyber flashing rules for years. "This is a very welcome first step," said Prof McGlynn to Sky News. "But the most significant aspect is, is it going to be enforced? That comes down to the regulator Ofcom." Rape pornography and non-consensual intimate imagery are also both priority offences, and yet both types of image abuse can still be found online, says Prof McGlynn. "That's because the Online Safety Act and Ofcom have just not enforced it properly."

Users were able to upload a picture and ask Grok to alter the image, but the AI system now replies to requests with this message: "Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers." It comes after the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) warned criminals used Grok to create child sexual abuse imagery. On Friday, Downing Street said changes to limit the use of chatbot Grok's image editing tool to paying users are "not a solution" but prove the social media platform can move quickly when it wants to. The prime minister's spokesman said the move "simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service". "It's not a solution. In fact, it's insulting the victims of misogyny and sexual violence," he said. The Liberal Democrats called for regulator Ofcom to immediately block X from operating in the UK and for the National Crime Agency to launch a criminal investigation into the site. Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said Ofcom "should use the full powers of the law that parliament has given it" and if that means blocking X then "they would have the full backing of the government". She said: "I think the images being produced are despicable and abhorrent and sexualizing images of children is one of the worst crimes imaginable. And I think it is insulting to say that you can still access this service if you pay for it. So Ofcom should use the full powers of the law that Parliament has given it. "X needs to get a grip and get this material down, and I would remind them that in the Online Safety Act there are backstop powers to block access to services if they refuse to comply with the law for people in the UK. And if Ofcom decides to use those powers, they would have the full backing of the government." Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer previously said Grok being used to create illegal images was "disgraceful" and "disgusting". He told X to "get their act together" and "get a grip on this". "If another media company had billboards in town centres showing unlawful images, it would act immediately to take them down or face public backlash," his spokesman added. X and xAI, both owned by billionaire tycoon Elon Musk, have come under fire in recent days after numerous users, mainly women, posted saying they had seen AI-generated sexual images of themselves on X. Ngaire Alexander, head of hotline at the IWF, said on Thursday: "Following reports that the AI chatbot Grok has generated sexual imagery of children, we can confirm our analysts have discovered criminal imagery of children aged between 11 and 13 which appears to have been created using the tool." Regulator Ofcom said it made "urgent contact" with X following these reports, with the prime minister's spokesman saying that "all options" are on the table, including for Ofcom to use its powers to "take any action". "We urgently made contact on Monday and set a firm deadline of today to explain themselves, to which we have received a response," an Ofcom spokesperson said on Friday. "We're now undertaking an expedited assessment as a matter of urgency and will provide further updates shortly." 'Not good enough' Grok's move to limit the editing of pictures to paid subscribers was "not good enough", Hannah Swirsky, head of policy at the IWF, said. "This move does not undo the harm which has been done. We do not believe it is good enough to simply limit access to a tool which should never have had the capacity to create the kind of imagery we have seen in recent days." She said companies should create products that are "safe by design" and urged government and regulators to "force them" to design safer tools. "Sitting and waiting for unsafe products to be abused before taking action is unacceptable," she added. Read more from Sky News:Robots with human-type capabilities are comingPorn users 'still seeing porn with no age checks' On Wednesday, Musk said a new version of Grok had been released and urged users to update their app, although it was not immediately clear what updates the new version contained. X insisted on its X Safety account that "anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they uploaded illegal content". The company said it takes action against illegal content, including child sexual abuse material, "by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary".

Hours before, the space agency cancelled a spacewalk that was scheduled for Thursday. A NASA spokeswoman said the astronaut, who wasn't named for medical privacy reasons, was ‌in a stable condition on the ISS. "It's not an emergency evacuation, but we are erring on the side of caution for the crew member," said Dr James Polk, NASA's chief health and medical officer. Crew-11 has been on the ISS since August last year and was due to return around May this year. The station's designated commander, Mike Fincke, and Zena Cardman, the flight engineer, were supposed to conduct a 6.5-hour spacewalk on Thursday to install hardware outside the station. A NASA spokeswoman told Sky News earlier on Thursday that safety was the "highest priority", and the agency "was actively evaluating ‍all options, including the possibility of an earlier end to Crew-11's mission". Spacewalks are dangerous and take a lot of planning. It's not uncommon for NASA to cancel them if something isn't quite right. In 2024, a spacewalk was cancelled last-minute because an astronaut experienced "spacesuit discomfort". In 2021, astronaut Mark Vande Hei called off his spacewalk over a pinched nerve. The four-person Crew-11 crew includes the US astronauts Cardman and Fincke, as well as Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. Read more about space:Inside the lab trying to protect the astronauts of the futureRacing to replace the International Space Station Some of the crew had volunteered to take part in experiments to address health challenges astronauts may face on deep space missions, according to NASA - although there is no suggestion this is linked. The crew are taking part in simulated moon landings, as well as eye and brain tests, MRI scans and other medical exams. There's been a constant presence on the ISS for over 25 years, with astronauts rotating in and out on missions that can last over a year. Generally, though, missions last between six and eight months. In order to bring a crew home early, the space agency will need to coordinate its replacement.