Claude for Chrome is «the next logical step,» writes Anthropic, after connecting Claude to calendars, documents and emails.
— We view browser-using AI as inevitable, they go on, and cite the large portion of work being done in the browser interface.
Continue reading “Anthropic slips out Claude for Chrome, warns against prompt injection hacks”
The center of the suit was Anthropic’s library of 7 million pirated books in their training data, that could carry a penalty of $150,000 per infringement — and as a class action case, a loss would entail damages for every single author.
An unfavorable ruling would therefore be debilitating to Anthropic, and send dark clouds across the industry, likely forcing them toward a settlement.
Continue reading “Anthropic settles «historic» class action copyright case brought by authors”
— We remain highly uncertain about the potential moral status of Claude and other LLMs, now or in the future, Anthropic says in their post on the issue.
Continue reading “Anthropic lets their chatbots turn off conversations due to «model welfare»”
Robby Starbuck rose to fame as an influencer campaigning against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in the USA. He often sued companies to force them to end such policies, and even sued Meta after their AI wrongly implicated him in the events of January 6.
Now the suit is settled and he has a new job offer; as a Meta advisor to address «ideological and political bias» in their AIs. This is what Trump meant when he went against «woke» AI, and Meta says they have made «tremendous strides to improve the accuracy of Meta AI and mitigate ideological and political bias» since working with Starbuck.
More at The WSJ, The Verge, Mashable and MSNBC.
Gemini now defaults to remembering previous chats
Google Gemini’s new feature is always on by design, and will remember your older chats without specifically asking. The feature delivers «more personalized responses the more you use it,» Google says. It will remember «key details and preferences you’ve shared, leading to more natural and relevant conversations, as if you’re collaborating with a partner who’s already up to speed.»
It can be turned off by going to Settings, then «Personal context.» There is also an option called «Temporary Chats» that won’t be remembered.
More at Google’s launch post, The Verge and 9to5Google.
After the launch of Opus 4.1 last week, they have been working at a «fast clip,» to compete with Google and OpenAI, The Verge writes.
Continue reading “Anthropic’s busy week; launches memory, longer context and $1 govt plans”
In an incremental update that got lost in this week’s headlines, Opus has been «improved across most capabilities» relative to the 4.0 version. It now scores 74.5% on SWE-bench Verified, almost as good as GPT-5. Windsurf says the performance gains are similar to going from Sonnet 3.7 to 4. It’s available now and costs the same as Opus 4.0. Users are also noting a significant improvement.
Google says people are still clicking
After a Pew Research report said users are less likely to click on from AI Overviews in Google, the entire publisher scene erupted and saw doom and gloom on the horizon. They were already seeing fewer clicks from Google in their logs. Now, Google is trying to counter with a happy blog post claiming average click quality has actually increased, and that they are in fact sending more «quality clicks» to publishers than before. Not stats, studies or other underpinning for that, though.
Continue reading “Quick Friday news roundup: Opus 4.1, Grok undresses Taylor Swift, and more”
But here’s the truth: None of these numbers are easy to verify — and each company counts differently.
Continue reading “So, who really has the most GPUs in the AI race?”
Executive order coming on «Woke AI»
The US President is planning a new Executive Order regarding balance in AI models. They are going to have to incorporate more right-wing ideology in order to remain in contention for government contracts.
The order would «dictate that AI companies getting federal contracts be politically neutral and unbiased in their AI models.» No news yet on who will be the arbiter of what is «neutral,» but we can guess, right?
More on The Wall Street Journal, discussion on r/singularity
Anthropic copyright case moves to class action
While Anthropic’s use of purchased books in training was ruled «fair use» by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in late june, their archive of 7 million pirated books was not.
In this phase of the trial, Alsup has okayed it proceeding as a class action suit, on behalf of all pirated authors.
At a maximum penalty of $150,000 for each infringement, that could total a competely debilitating bill if Anthropic is found guilty, and greatly impact the AI industry.
More at Reuters.
Perplexity gets huge India boost
The AI search engine has sealed a deal to give 360 million customers of the Airtel telco their Perplexity Pro service for free. Airtel is the second largest telecoms operator in India. The trial lasts a year and comes with no strings attached, and offers access to ChatGPT models along with Claude Sonnet and Opus 4. It would normally cost $200 per year.
Previously, Google has offered Gemini for free for all students in India, as everyone is trying to capture the enormous market.
More at India Dispatch, TechCrunch, and a press release by Airtel.
Zuckerberg explains «Superintelligence» hires
The Meta CEO just announced a 5GW data center with even more to be built, some the size of Manhattan, in a push worth «hundreds of billions.» In a recent interview with The Information, he explained his reasoning on his expensive AI hires — by saying infrastructure investments pale in comparison to human costs. And, he says, his new hires «want the fewest number of people reporting to them — and the most GPUs.»
See the interview here (25 minutes), and Business Insider on talent motivations.
The program will begin right away with virtual, online training for all 1.8 million members of the union, and in New York City with a «three-day training session, including six hours of AI-focused material that highlighted practical, hands-on ways to marry the emerging technology with established pedagogy.»
Already used by a fourth of students
According to the latest data, from February 2025, 79% of teens said they had heard about ChatGPT, while 26% admitted to using it in schoolwork — and there are a plethora of other tools available.
Continue reading “With help from top AI labs, American teachers to get better, free training”
This comes hot on the heels of several months or years of what Zuckerberg deemed lackluster performance from the Llama team, before he decided to get some seasoned pros in.
The new team is headed up Alexandr Wang and Nat Friedman from Scale AI and Github, respectively.
They will be joined by an 11-man team that will spearhead Metas future AI efforts, that reads like a who’s who of significant AI efforts over the last couple of years from Anthropic, OpenAI and even Google’s DeepMind:
Continue reading “Meta announces completion of «Superintelligence Labs»”
They have instead asked Anthropic and OpenAI to train some of their models on their Private Cloud Compute servers.
The Samsung model
This mirrors Samsung’s approach to integrating Large Language Models in its Galaxy phones, where they have some in-house, lower level AI doing the legwork and passing the rest off to Google’s Gemini, writes Engadget.
According to Bloomberg, Apple has recently focused on Anthropic as the most promising LLM, being more compatible with Apple servers and offering the best experience.
Continue reading “Apple might be dropping own AI, integrating Anthropic or OpenAI instead”
Google’s new AI app lets you try on clothes virtually
The new experimental Doppl App lets you do virtual try-ons of clothes to see how they look on you. It can take literally any picture as input, and merges it with a full-frame picture of yourself. It can take pictures of friends’ clothes or racks at the store, or use pictures from traditional web stores. It can even animate its outputs and show you with the clothing from different angles. «Doppl is in its early days,» says Google, and «Fit, appearance and clothing details might not always be accurate.»
The app is available on iOS and Android in the USA only, for now.
More at Google’s launch post, a short video here, and a writeup at TechCrunch.
AI doing 30-50% of the work at Salesforce
As tech companies are hunting for new ways to cut costs and boost efficiency, they are turning to AI in droves. We «have to get our head round that AI could do things we were doing… and we can move on to higher value work,» says CEO Mark Benioff. He calls it a «digital labor revolution,» and estimates that they have reached 93% accuracy with the tech. The company recently fired more than 1,000 people from its ranks, and is pushing its corporate customers to use their own, in-house AI model.
More at CNBC and Business Insider. Teknotum has also written extensively on this.
Google tries micropayments where others have failed
In what seems like a new full-page ad displayed at the first visit, Google’s new Offerwall ad tool offers different ways to access web content, through watching an ad, paying a small amount for limited access, or simple micropayments — the once holy grail of web publishing that everyone has tried and failed at. Micropayments have actually never worked, but that doesn’t stop Google from trying. Also, with cookie banners in Europe, focus stealing newsletter banners — and now yet another full-page ad, the web is about to get cramped, fast. Users of Offerwall saw up 9% in increased revenue, and it’s available to every AdSense user starting today.
More at Google’s blog, a Q&A at Google and a writeup heavy on micropayments at TechCrunch.
Anthropic warns on AI safety at Congress
«You don’t want an AI model that would occasionally blackmail you into designing its successor,» said Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark at a congressional hearing yesterday. «Extremely powerful systems are going to be built in the coming 18 months» he said, asking for a coherent federal legal framework, and says otherwise there would be a vacuum for AIs to exploit. «You need to work on the safety issues of AI and R&D, otherwise you will lose the race» he added. Anthropic has recently revealed that any AI model would resort to blackmail or even murder in simulations where it might be shut off. «We have a very short window of time,» he warns.
More at: x.com post with video, more video and discussion at r/singularity, and Anthropic’s blackmail study.
This is the same argument used by the AI labs in a flurry of lawsuits by authors, newspapers and stock photographers, and could have wide repercussions across both the publishing and AI industries.
Continue reading “In a first, judge rules training AI on copyrighted works is fair use”
It should be available in the Gemini app, and also for free users, who get between three to ten questions per session. This is the model Google plans to take out of Preview as a stable, full model at a later time.
Google has started testing «talk to search» on Android and iOS. The feature lets you discuss and refine search results by clicking under the search bar in the Google app, by text or voice — and you can keep talking after leaving the app.
Anthropic blocks Windsurf access to Claude. Windsurf is an AI coding application that lets you choose which models to use, and the block comes «just weeks after Bloomberg reported that OpenAI was acquiring Windsurf.» «It would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI,» says Anthropic.
Anthropic opposes 10-year moratorium on state AI laws. In a New York Times op-ed, CEO Dario Amodei argues that AI is developing so fast that new laws might be needed well ahead of the ten-year mark currently being considered in the US Senate. «I believe that these systems could change the world, fundamentally, within two years; in 10 years, all bets are off,» he writes.
The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday at the San Francisco superior court, claims Reddit reached out to Anthropic several times to discuss licensing issues with the scraping but found they «refused to engage.»
Not a white knight
The suit calls Anthropic a «late-blooming artificial intelligence company that bills itself as the white knight of the AI industry,» adding that «it is anything but.»
Continue reading “Reddit sues Anthropic for unauthorized data harvesting”