Innovation Profs - 10/28/2025

Latest Gen AI News

Anthropic draws fire from White House with AI warnings

A few weeks back, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark published the essay “Technological Optimism and Appropriate Fear”, which was based on a speech he had given earlier, in his newsletter Import AI. Notably, in laying out both grounds for technological optimism and appropriate fear in the face of rapidly developing AI systems, Clark explicitly suggested that we need policy solutions to some of the challenges raised by AI.

Perhaps more notably, White House officials caught wind of Clark’s remarks and have forcefully responded, as White House AI and cryptocurrency czar David Sacks accused Anthropic of “running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fearmongering” and fueling a “state regulatory frenzy that is damaging the startup ecosystem.” Sacks further added that Anthropic had adopted a “government affairs and media strategy to position itself consistently as a foe of the Trump administration.”

In response, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei tried to tamp down these criticisms: “Anthropic is committed to constructive engagement on matters of public policy. When we agree, we say so. When we don’t, we propose an alternative for consideration. We do this because we are a public benefit corporation with a mission to ensure that AI benefits everyone, and because we want to maintain America’s lead in AI.”

We’ll continue to watch this back-and-forth closely.

Microsoft Copilot gets more human-centered

The new “Fall Release” of Microsoft Copilot focuses on making AI more personal, useful, and human-centered. The approach shifts from AI replacing human judgment to AI empowering human potential. Among the new features are shared group sessions for up to 32 people, long-term memory and cross-service connectors, and a friendly avatar called Mico (more on that below). Privacy and user control remain foundational, with explicit consent required for data access. The release demonstrates Microsoft’s vision of AI built in service of people, aiming to deepen human connection, help learning and health, and integrate into everyday tools on Windows and Edge.

OpenAI, valued at $500bn, reportedly working on generative AI music tool

Watch out, Suno! According to The Information, OpenAI is reportedly working on their own music generation tool that will create music from text prompts or audio inputs. Also included in the report by The Information is the tidbit that “OpenAI has been working with students at the prestigious Juilliard School of music, with the students annotating music scores to create training data.”

Quick Hits

Tool of the week: Mico

Microsoft Copilot just got a new avatar for voice interactions. Mico is a visual companion for Copilot that appears during voice mode sessions. The blob-shaped avatar is designed to make interactions feel more natural and engaging. It reacts to your voice and changes color based on tone.

There’s even a fun Easter egg? Mico transforms into Clippy if you tap it repeatedly.

AI-generated image of the week

We tested out Ideogram’s logo creation options for an Innovation Profs’ Halloween event. Don’t get too excited, though. It’s not a real event.

Prompt: logo for an event called "Innovation Profs'
Halloween Spooktacular" with bats, trees and a haunted house in front of a moon in the background

What we found

This Teriyaki Madness ad was made using AI tools. More specifically, it used Nano Banana, Photoshop, Seedance Pro, Kling AI, Veo 3, ElevenLabs, Premiere Pro, After Effects and more.

Learn about the whole process that was used.

We tried it

Google Veo 3.1 is now available in Google’s Flow tool, with new features including ingredients-to-video, the ability to extend clips up to 60 seconds and first-and last-frame controls. In addition, you can add and remove elements from a video.

We tested out the ability to build a video from ingredients. We used the ingredients below to build this video.