This week on The Friday Download, Dr. JR covers the top AI stories of late January 2026.

• The Weird: Razer's "Project Ava" holographic AI and Lenovo's Auto Twist nodding laptop (CES 2026). Brands like Almond Breeze and Equinox lean into "AI Slop" to mock generative tech.
• The Cool: ESA's AI finds 1,300 new cosmic objects, including the "Hamburger" galaxies (NASA/ESA, Jan 2026). Nvidia acquires Groq for $20B to dominate the inference market (Jan 2026).
• The Tech Snack: DeepSeek-OCR 2 launches with the new DeepEncoder V2 architecture, allowing AI to read documents with "human-like" reasoning (DeepSeek, Jan 27, 2026).
• Policy: EU’s mandatory AI labelling and the rise of self-verifying agentic AI.