Increasingly, White House Calls Shots on AI You Get to Use
As bleeding edge AI gets ever more adept at finding security vulnerabilities in everyday software, the White House is playing a decisive role in when you actually get to use that AI.
Cases in point: The makers of ChatGPT and Claude both deferred to the U.S. government to decide when the latest versions of their AI would get a green light for distribution to the general public.
Observes writer Samantha Subin: “Last month the Trump administration blocked Claude Mythos 5 and Fable 5 due to ‘national security concerns,’ reinstating access after weeks of intense negotiations with Anthropic. (And) OpenAI last month said it would limit new AI models to ‘trusted partners’ to comply with government requests.”
In other news and analysis on AI writing:
*Anthropic to K-12 Teachers: C’mon and Take a Free Ride: The maker of ChatGPT competitor Claude is granting K-12 teachers in the U.S. free access to the AI.
Observes writer Zac Hall: “Claude for Teachers includes access to both Claude Cowork and Claude Code — giving educators access to the latest AI technologies from Anthropic.
“The company also recently published a fluency guide for educators interested in using AI in the classroom.”
*China’s New Free AI Nearly as Good as ChatGPT et al: Consumers smarting from what they see as pricey rates for U.S.-created AI can now use a Chinese alternative, which can be downloaded and used for free – provided you have the computing power to run it.
Observes lead writer Meaghan Tobin: “Moonshot said that the model, Kimi K3, was the world’s largest open-source AI system, allowing anyone to use, modify and build on it freely.
“According to benchmarks run by Vals AI, an independent company that evaluates the performance of AI models, Kimi K3 performs just below Anthropic’s Fable 5 model while outperforming OpenAI’s flagship GPT-5.6 Sol model.”
Both Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol are currently the very best that AI Anthropic and OpenAI have to offer.
*AI Email Provider Superhuman Upgrading Its AI Replies: While the pursuit of the perfect AI email reply continues, Superhuman is apparently getting closer to that ideal, according to writer Ivan Mehta.
Observes Mehta: “In the last few days, after gaining access to the beta, I have sent emails with little-to-no-editing for some generated drafts.”
The in-development upgrade is designed to learn from how you use the auto-reply feature – and ideally, get better at drafting reply emails for you.
*Microsoft Pushing Its Own AI Over More Established Competitors: While the Microsoft ecosystem offers access to a number of AI engines, the company has decided to push its own, in-house developed AI over alternatives like ChatGPT and Claude.
Microsoft’s pitch: Our AI is more efficient and less expensive than ChatGPT and Claude – a claim that engenders skepticism among many experienced users.
*Study: AI Agents Still Unreliable: Despite the relentless hoopla over AI agents, a stubborn fact remains: They don’t work very well.
For example, a new Cisco study finds that while 85% of enterprises are developing AI agents, only 5% of those businesses are actually using those AI agents in day-to-day operations.
Observes writer Michael Nunez: “For enterprises stuck in pilot purgatory, the path forward starts with a mindset shift: Stop asking whether your agent can do something impressive once, and start asking whether it can do it correctly a thousand times in a row.”
*Great News for Consumers: Some AI Titans in Price War: The makers of ChatGPT, Grok and Muse Spark are in a price-slashing free-for-all – which hopefully will spell cheaper AI costs for all consumers down the line.
Observes lead writer Lorelei Smillie: “The rhetoric is notably different from a year or so ago, when OpenAI executives were publicly musing about one day charging thousands of dollars for monthly subscriptions to top-tier AI models to better reflect the growing value they provide to businesses.”
*Novelist: ChatGPT is Silencing a Generation of Students: Not one to mince words, novelist Dave Eggers believes the advent of ChatGPT will end-up discouraging a generation of students from writing.
Observes writer Vincent Lautier: “Providing ready-made prose at the click of a button eliminates, in his view, the very concept of thinking for yourself and finding your own voice.”
As for ChatGPT’s impact on teachers, in Eggers’ view:
“ChatGPT’s effect on teachers’ lives is nothing short of ‘catastrophic,’ because the tool now makes it impossible to know whether an essay was written by a student or spat-out by a machine,” according to Lautier.
*ChatGPT’s Maker Reportedly Developing Portable, AI-Powered Speaker/Companion: OpenAI is apparently working on a kind of ChatGPT-powered speaker you can tote around – which also learns about you over time by monitoring your emails and other digital interactions.
Like ChatGPT, the in-development portable speaker has a personality and is being designed to feel like a companion, according to writer Barry Elad.
*ABC News: All-in On AI Writing: In a remarkable move, ABC News has issued AI writing tools to staff, which they’ll be using to author articles based on ABC News radio bulletins.
Observes writer Cam Wilson: “The broadcaster says AI will assist staff and not supplant editorial decision-making — but the union representing journalists says management refused to commit to a provision that AI would not replace workers.”
Unthinkable just four years ago, ABC’s decision to unabashedly embrace AI news writing is a watershed moment in the integration of AI and journalism.
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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.