ChatGPT’s AI agent that’s designed to get things done can now sign in to websites to do things like book a DMV appointment, cancel a reservation, or fill out a job application without OpenAI ever seeing your login credentials.
The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg report that Chris Malone, a “key executive” leading OpenAI’s massive build-out plans, left the company last week. The WSJ reports that Malone, who held similar roles at Meta and Google before joining OpenAI in early 2025, had previously reported directly to OpenAI president and cofounder Greg Brockman, but that changed earlier this year amid other reshuffling.
Proposals for new gas-fired power capacity tied to data centers nearly doubled in the first half of 2026, according to a Global Energy Monitor report. Nearly a third of that new capacity would come online in Texas, more than in any other state or country.
Anthropic has added memory to Cowork, and it’s the same one Claude’s chatbot already uses, making it easier to pick up tasks without re-explaining important information. Memory is on by default, but won’t save sensitive topics like health or beliefs unless you manually enable that setting.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Anthropic is “likely to tell investors its potential revenue opportunities are above $30 trillion” — topping SpaceX’s fever dream of a mere $28.5 trillion. It would be funny only if we were talking about Monopoly money.
[The Wall Street Journal]
Unlike the computer-controlling AI tool Perplexity launched earlier this year, the Portable Computer feature runs AI models fully locally and will ask for permission if it needs to access the cloud “for more advanced research and reasoning.” It will be available on Nvidia’s DGX Spark first, before rolling out to PCs with compatible Nvidia RTX GPUs.
[Perplexity]
Along with a financial research agent, Google says its new AI legal tool can help law firms draft legal briefs, manage upcoming regulations, and verify citations — something that’s become a big problem as more lawyers adopt AI.
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[Google Cloud Press Corner]
After an AI-produced song reached number four on two separate charts in July, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) has now updated its Code of Practice to require that songs made with generative AI tools are “substantially human made.” ARIA admits it can only detect AI usage if “you tell us,” however.
[Australian Recording Industry Association]
A Russian drone fitted with an Nvidia chip and guided entirely by AI killed three Ukrainian civilians in July, according to the New York Times. Though AI is already a standard feature of modern warfare, with both sides of this conflict having experimented with battlefield automation, it could mark the first time AI both guided a drone and selected a target.
Alibaba’s Wan3.0 AI video model is now generally available, which the company says is capable of generating 30 second clips based on text, image, video, and audio inputs — including web pages, PDFs, and slide decks. This might be yet another AI model with copyright concerns given its promotion of at least one video featuring Tom Cruise.
One of the most interesting parts of the OpenAI chief’s appearance on David Senra’s podcast is him trying to explain why he avoids the company’s digital assistant Codex for work as if it’s a kind of personal failing. “It makes no sense,” he said. Altman admitted “I don’t really know” when asked what it would take for him to adopt Codex more deeply.
The open web is rife with AI-generated text, according to new data from Pew Research. Older English-language webpages show fewer signs of AI authorship, but over one-third of pages published after ChatGPT was released on November 22nd, 2022, “were likely written or substantially edited by AI.”
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times are both reporting on politicians like Greg Abbott and Josh Shapiro suddenly bashing types of projects they once championed. The Washington Post has a chart showing how online posts about data centers from both Democrat and Republican politicians have shifted from being mostly positive in early 2025 to being mostly negative.
On Sunday, Abbott appeared on ABC’s This Week, saying that by moving too fast, the industry “…basically dug their own grave for the problem that’s been caused for them, and that’s why they got the backlash they deserve.”
