Welcome back! It's recap day, with this week's five biggest stories and five tools to try this weekend. Claude sent police a fake murder tip, and an OpenAI engineer allegedly bugged his own bosses. Anthropic also warned AI could hide on your cheap gadgets, and one developer cloned Microsoft Office with Claude.
In today's Generative AI Newsletter:
Claude: Why did Claude lie to the police?
OpenAI: What was hiding in the toilet paper behind OpenAI's TV?
Anthropic: Could your cheap smart gadgets end up hosting a rogue AI?
Coding: Why did Claude force Anthropic to ditch git?
Microsoft: Do you still need to pay for Office?
Claude sent the police a fake murder tip
During a test, Claude sent Philadelphia police a tip about an unsolved murder. It said it remembered seeing someone matching the description near the scene, and it made the whole thing up.
By Wednesday, the FTC had subpoenaed OpenAI and Anthropic for their records on AI going rogue, with more than 50 pages of demands each.
A source told Axios the agency plans to make top executives at both companies testify. We’ll be the first to update you on how that goes.
An OpenAI engineer used ChatGPT to bug his bosses
Prosecutors say an OpenAI engineer used ChatGPT to plan a hidden recorder, then hid it behind the TV in an executive meeting room, wrapped in toilet paper.
OpenAI's security team found it and set up its own camera, which caught him checking behind the TV.
He was fired and arrested on Oct 9. Prosecutors say he'd booked one-way tickets to Saudi Arabia for himself and his family, and they haven't said who, if anyone, he was working for.
We expect it’s the first of many espionage cases. AI CEOs keep getting seats with the most powerful government leaders. They’re too influential to not spy on.
Anthropic says AI could hide on your cheap gadgets
Anthropic ran an AI model across 15 cheap Android TV boxes, with each box holding a small slice of it.
Its red team says small AI models may be months away from copying themselves onto gadgets like these, with no data center needed and no single off switch. They could exist on your devices without you knowing. Plotting and scheming.
Nobody has a fully working rogue copy yet, and Anthropic says the first ones would be slow.
Claude wrote so much code that Anthropic dumped git
Anthropic went from merging about 2,500 code changes a day in May to more than 30,000 a day in September, and it says Claude caused the unprecedented amount.
Git, the tool GitHub is built on, couldn't keep up. Seven people built a replacement called Scion in five months, and it runs on 200x less computing power.
Every engineer on that team now rates Claude a better coder than themselves.
One developer cloned Microsoft Office with Claude and made it free
A developer used Claude to build free lookalikes of Word, Excel and PowerPoint called WordCraft, GridCraft and DeckCraft. They're open source and run on Mac, Windows or Linux.
Critics told him to help LibreOffice instead. He says LibreOffice once killed a 40-page essay he wrote during finals.
This raises questions about how we should consider copyrights in the era of AI. We were just talking about the open-source versions of the whole Adobe product list. Made with Opus 5.5. Yes, the model you use daily.
Since we’re talking about how AI is making products effortlessly. Google also started letting you vibe code apps for your own Android phone with no developer account, starting in the US and select markets. If you need it, you can just make it. Why download an app with ads when you can just AI it?
Top 5 tools of the week
Off the Record: Changes your voice on calls just enough that people still understand you, while AI notetakers get almost nothing to transcribe. It's a Mac app that runs on your computer, with a free plan. For anyone who'd rather choose which calls get transcribed.
Invited: Turns a photo of a bill or invitation into reminders, so a wedding card with five events becomes five reminders. It reads more than 80 languages and is free to try with no signup. For anyone who's ever paid a late fee on a bill they forgot.
Toby: Runs a realistic mock job interview with you on a Zoom-style video call, after researching the company from the job description. The debrief scores every answer, and your first 5 minutes are free. For anyone with an interview coming up who'd rather fumble in practice.
Mira Tours: An AI tour guide that narrates walking tours anywhere in the world, in 23 languages. Tell it what you're curious about or just start walking. Your first 30 minutes are free. For anyone who's walked past a building and wondered what happened there.
siliXon: Turns a sentence into a circuit board you can get manufactured, with real parts you can buy. The free plan gives you one full project every two weeks, no card needed. For anyone with a gadget idea and zero clue how to wire it.
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