Recent AI news and official updates

Simon Willison's AI Notes published: I feel a lot of things changing as working software increasingly comes out on a tap. The Jevon's paradox kicks in and I feel my own demand for software growing substantially. You can ask for anything - explainers, visualizers, dashboards, bespoke single-use apps (e.g. a full wandb that is hyper-specific just for your project), you can 10X your test suite, auto-optimize code, run giant research projects with custom HTML for the results, anything! "Free your mind" (Matrix ref). — Andrej Karpathy , on Claude Fable 5 Tags: ai , andrej-karpathy , generative-ai , llms , anthropic , jevons-paradox

TechCrunch AI published: If those same AI workloads can be handled by cheaper models without affecting quality, it would mean a massive shift in the economics of AI.

TechCrunch AI published: Apple primarily made the case for an improved experience with its long-standing Siri assistant, which like most other announcements had a hefty helping of AI.

TechCrunch AI published: Anthropic is releasing Claude Fable 5, its first Mythos-class model available to the public. The model comes with guardrails that block responses in high-risk areas like cybersecurity and biology.

TechCrunch AI published: With SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI all eyeing massive public debuts, the tech industry may soon have a new class of corporate overlords — and a new acronym to match. Say goodbye to FAANG and hello to MANGOS.

TechCrunch AI published: Sandstone's Series A comes just six months after a Sequoia-led seed round.

MIT Technology Review published: This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. David Sinclair plans to test whole-body rejuvenation drugs in the XPrize competition The outspoken longevity scientist David Sinclair has predicted that, one day, you’ll go to the doctor and get a…

MIT Technology Review published: As adoption of AI agents looks set to surge by as much as 300% in the next two years, leadership teams are carefully considering the implications of a hybrid human-AI workforce. Unlike existing enterprise-level automation that relies on manual input, AI agents are capable of autonomously coordinating complex tasks, interacting with multiple tools and environments across…

MIT Technology Review published: At SXSW London last week I gave a talk called “Five things you need to know about AI,” in which I shared what I think are the biggest themes in AI right now. I pulled a few things from our first AI10 list, an annual guide to the most important trends in this buzzy world,…

TechCrunch AI published: Can Apple's new AI glow-up put to bed accusations that it's losing an all-important industry race?

Simon Willison's AI Notes published: Given how badly burned anyone who took Apple's 2024 WWDC Apple Intelligence announcements at face value was, I'm holding to a strict "I'll believe it when I see it" policy for everything they announced today . The new Siri AI features do at least look feasible with today's technology, especially since Apple are licensing a custom Gemini-derived model that they can run on their own Private Cloud Compute . It sounds like they'll be taking advantage of vision LLMs to extract information from the user's screen, which neatly sidesteps the need for every existing application to ship custom code in order to integrate with Apple Intelligence. Vision LLMs were a much less mature category in June 2024. The new Core AI library looks like a good step in enabling developers to finally take full advantage of Apple's hardware for running their own models. It integrates with Meta's open source PyTorch ecosystem, using these Core AI PyTorch extensions : Core AI PyTorch Extensions ( coreai-torch ) is a Python package that bridges PyTorch and Core AI. You can use it to bring up an existing PyTorch model — exported as a torch.export.ExportedProgram — into a Core AI AIProgram ready to run on Apple hardware, traversing the FX graph node-by-node and mapping ATen operators to Core AI operations. You can install an iOS 27 Developer Beta today, which supposedly has the new features - but you then have to make it through a waiting list for access to the new Siri AI. Aaron Perris from MacRumors reports having made it off the waitlist so we may start seeing credible reports on how well Siri AI works in the very near future. Update : These Private Cloud Compute Gemini models are running in Google Cloud, and using NVIDIA hardware. According to Expanding Private Cloud Compute on Apple's Security Research blog: For the most demanding tasks, including agentic tool-use and complex reasoning, we worked with Google and NVIDIA to extend our PCC infrastructure to Google Cloud systems using NVIDIA GPUs, while maintaining Apple's powerful security and privacy protections. [...] PCC on Google Cloud leverages many of the same architectural security patterns as PCC on Apple silicon to implement these layered protections: initial network data parsing for each request happens in a dedicated process within its own namespace, shared inference software is recycled with a short time-to-live duration, and attested keys are held in a separate, dedicated confidential VM isolated from external inputs. [...] As with PCC on Apple silicon, all binaries will be published for public inspection. Tags: vision-llms , apple , generative-ai , ai , llms , gemini , nvidia , google

TechCrunch AI published: Tools for Humanity, Sam Altman's identity verification company, is reportedly struggling to generate revenue and will downsize its staff.

TechCrunch AI published: The vibe of Apple's 2026 WWDC keynote felt like a spouse proudly listing all the honey-do-list items tackled. One subtle example: the many AI demos of someone standing, phone in hand.

TechCrunch AI published: The filing comes a little more than a week after its main rival, Anthropic, also filed to go public, ramping up the race between the two AI firms.

TechCrunch AI published: Apple spent much of its WWDC keynote highlighting fixes, performance improvements, and long-requested features before unveiling its upgraded AI-powered Siri, signaling that the company wants users to see AI as just one part of a broader effort to improve its software.

TechCrunch AI published: As AI experimentation grows more expensive, Apple is waiving cloud API costs for developers with fewer than 2 million first-time App Store downloads.

TechCrunch AI published: Apple primarily made the case for an improved experience with its longstanding Siri assistant, which like most other announcements had a hefty helping of AI.

TechCrunch AI published: Apple is adding new AI-powered features to Safari, Shortcuts, and Password apps.

TechCrunch AI published: Shortcuts gets an AI upgrade, letting you describe the workflow you want in a prompt.

TechCrunch AI published: Apple's AI image generator is getting a makeover that could make it more competitive.