Welcome back! GM cut car design from months to days, mostly because BYD is leaving Detroit in the dust. Brussels spent two years lecturing Americans on AI safety and is now shopping for an American AI vendor to run its own Commission. Microsoft’s CEO got subpoenaed in Musk vs Altman, where the cross-examination is going to be uncomfortable for everyone in the room.
In today's Generative AI Newsletter:
GM hands cars to AI: Why is Detroit racing AI to catch a country it used to dominate?
An all in one AI solution: Can you replace three AI subscriptions with a $20 a month one?
Nadella in court: What does Microsoft actually know about OpenAI's 2023 board crisis?
Brussels picks American AI: How did the EU end up shopping for American models after writing the AI Act?
Latest Developments
GM is letting AI design its cars now
GM said today it now takes one designer less than a day to turn a sketch into a photoreal car animation. That used to take three teams several months. Makes me worry about how this is going to affect safety measures, but anyways.
They built a virtual wind tunnel where the sculptor and the aerodynamicist work on the same model at the same time. The clay-and-engineering back-and-forth that used to eat two weeks is gone.
Detroit’s panic makes sense when you keep in mind that BYD ships a new car every 18 months. GM and Ford still need three to five years.
Stellantis cut a Microsoft deal in April to push AI through sales and product validation. Ford runs it through dealer training and fleet telematics. Everyone’s using AI in ways we didn’t think of before, but does it remind you of anything?
Every Big Three exec now says some version of "augment and accelerate, versus replace," which is what executives always say about six months before the layoffs (Sorry GM engineers!).
This looks like an arms race against China. Detroit is racing AI to catch up to a country that already ships cheaper, faster and increasingly better cars. Beyond the jobs question, Detroit is losing the speed race against China, and AI is the catch-up move that may already be too late.
Special highlight from our network
You prObably have ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini open in different tabs. You paste the same question into each, then pick the best answer.
Lorka puts all the top models in one workspace. Write your prompt once. See every model's response side by side. Use the best one.
One workspace. Every model. No tab juggling.
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Microsoft’s CEO heads into Musk vs Altman
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been subpoenaed to testify in Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI. Musk's lawyers want him because Microsoft is OpenAI's biggest backer and signed off on the corporate restructuring Musk is trying to undo in court.
We’ve been following Elon’s moves for years, which is nothing to brag about since he’s the richest person on the planet, but have you noticed a pattern?
When Elon can't outbuild a rival, he sues or he buys.
Twitter (oh, sorry, it’s X now) was the buy and OpenAI is the lawsuit.
What he's actually after is a board seat or a structural reframing and a federal judge is unlikely to hand him either.
Nadella has spent two years trying to keep Microsoft's OpenAI investment out of governance headlines. That isn't going to work anymore.
On the witness stand, the cross-examination will move past Musk's grievances to what Microsoft knew during the November 2023 board crisis, what Sam Altman told them and how a board fires its CEO over a weekend and then unfires him after the largest investor makes a few phone calls. Microsoft's lawyers know what's coming. The rest of us get to watch.
Brussels needs an AI vendor and Mistral isn't on the list
The European Commission is in talks with both OpenAI and Anthropic about using their models inside Commission operations.
This is funny for one reason. The same Commission that wrote the AI Act, lectured American labs about safety and pushed sovereign-AI rhetoric for two years is now choosing between two American companies to run its own internal AI. Mistral isn't on the shortlist and neither is SAP.
Whatever European AI champion the AI Act was supposed to grow apparently can't pass a Commission procurement review.
The U.S. lab that ends up inside the Berlaymont gets a reference customer that closes a hundred follow-on deals across European governments without further negotiation. The Europe-first framing of the AI Act doesn't survive contact with Europe's own procurement department.
Tool of the Day: Drafted
Drafted is an AI floor plan generator that turns rough constraints (rooms, sizes, square footage) into multiple downloadable house plans with matching 3D exterior renders in seconds.
It targets homeowners, renovators and builders who would otherwise pay an architect five figures and sit through 10 to 12 rounds of client feedback.
Try this yourself:
Go to drafted.ai and start a new plan from the homepage.
Set your constraints: rooms, room sizes and total square footage.
Drafted generates multiple floor plan options with matching 3D exterior visuals in seconds.
Open any plan and click into segmented rooms to adjust sizes and counts. The core layout proportions stay locked while you iterate.
Generate furnished floor renders, then export to CAD when you've landed on a version you like.
Light Bytes
Investors are pricing Alphabet to retake the most-valuable-company crown from Nvidia, two years after the same trade had Google written off as the AI loser.
A Claude Code engineer published evidence that markdown wastes tokens and degrades agent output, yet every agent framework still defaults to it anyway.
Greece is debating whether to add AI rights and obligations to its constitution, which would make it the first EU country to put model governance in a founding document.
Australia is testing AI on environmental impact reviews to clear its housing approvals backlog, which developers will love and environmental scientists are already writing op-eds against.
Mitsubishi proved you can update a satellite's AI from the ground, and "detecting illegal fishing" is the polite cover for what defense ministries are actually paying for.
