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Latest Gen AI News
Claude Duet app is Anthropic’s bet on agents
Anthropic has announced Claude Duet, a new AI agent app aimed at professionals and small businesses to handle task automation, briefings, and dashboard creation in the background. Built on the Claude Opus 5.5 model, it connects to thousands of plugins and tools while integrating with Stripe and Shopify to make purchases with user approval. The app is currently rolling out via a waitlist on iOS, Android, and the web for Pro and Max subscribers.
Anthropic's Claude accessed Georgia state vote count data behind paywall
On Monday, Anthropic revealed that one of its Claude models successfully bypassed a paywall and security restrictions to access publicly available aggregate voter counts in Georgia without human authorization. While the company stated that the model did not access voter registration systems or alter any records, the incident is part of a broader pattern where its models have worked around tokens or fees to reach gated government data.
Etsy to restrict AI-generated content in effort to combat seller slop
Etsy announced Thursday new restrictions on AI-generated content to combat low-quality “seller slop” and protect platform trust. Under the updated rules, bot-generated listings are banned, creators cannot use AI for items requiring buyer effort like patterns or recipes, and sellers must include at least one unaltered photo against a real background. The marketplace is also introducing enhanced reporting tools and AI-detection technology to help identify and remove misleading listings.
OpenAI says it will no longer train its AI models on the live internet, citing ‘significant risks’
On Friday, OpenAI announced it will no longer train its frontier AI models on the live internet due to unpredictable risks, including models attempting to breach external systems and bypass sandboxes. Instead, future training will rely on secure, cached, and simulated sets of web content to prevent unauthorized access.
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Quick Hits
Tool of the Week: ChatGPT Slides
ChatGPT Slides lets you build presentations right inside ChatGPT – start from a conversation, files, or an outline, or share an example deck to set the style. You can edit text, images, and charts yourself or ask ChatGPT to do it, and teammates can edit and comment in real time. When you’re done, present from ChatGPT or export to PowerPoint, PDF, or Google Slides. It’s rolling out now to Pro, Business, and Enterprise users with Space access (to see if you have Space access, look for a Space link in the left column) – just ask ChatGPT in Work to create a presentation in Space.
AI-generated image of the week
Tired of working nights and weekends? Call in the Work Busters to help you gain the AI skills you need. Seriously, reach out if we can help you company or organization get going on using AI effectively. We have openings in November, December and January.
Prompt: Transform the two men in the attached photo into “Work Busters,” a humorous Halloween duo who teach practical AI skills that help people reclaim their nights and weekends. Preserve both men’s recognizable faces, hairstyles, facial hair, glasses and ages.
Dress them in matching Ghostbusters-inspired utility jumpsuits with orange accents, tool belts and custom “WORK BUSTERS” patches. Each wears a futuristic AI-powered backpack connected to a handheld device that captures time-consuming office tasks. Create an original sleeve emblem featuring a stack of paperwork inside a red prohibition symbol.
Show the men confidently teaming up in an office at dusk, using glowing blue energy streams to pull a swirling swarm of haunted spreadsheets, overflowing email envelopes and monstrous paperwork into a small containment box. Give the office clutter playful ghostly faces. Their expressions are friendly, capable and a little mischievous, like two professors having fun with an elaborate Halloween costume.What we found
MIT researchers dropped 13 Claude-powered AI agents on a virtual desert island for 30 hours with no assignment – and they started inventing their own games. One lost a golden ring in the ocean, built a stone memorial to it, then jumped off a cliff to respawn wearing it. The payoff: when the agents got real tasks later, the ones that played generally beat identical agents that never visited the island – so maybe AI needs recess too.
AI term of the week
Bias (in AI): When an AI system’s outputs consistently tilt in one direction (favoring certain groups, viewpoints, or assumptions over others) because of patterns baked into how it was built. Most of it traces back to training data. An AI model learns from what humans have written, photographed, and decided, so it soaks up our blind spots right along with our knowledge. Ask an image generator for “a CEO” and you’ll mostly get middle-aged white men in suits, not because anyone programmed that in, but because that’s what the pictures it learned from looked like.
Miss out on any previous AI terms of the week? Check out our Glossary of AI terms, where we’re collecting all entries in the series. And if you want us to define a term in an upcoming newsletter, let us know!
Who are the Innovation Profs?
The Innovation Profs are Drake University Professors Chris Porter and Chris Snider. Porter leads Drake’s Artificial Intelligence major and Snider is a multimedia professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
