All posts tagged: model behavior

The 70-Person AI Image Startup Taking on Silicon Valley’s Giants

The 70-Person AI Image Startup Taking on Silicon Valley’s Giants

Published by skeptic

Standing inside the HumanX conference in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, it’s hard not to feel like you’re at the center of the AI universe. Technology leaders swarm the building, and the headquarters of OpenAI and Anthropic are just down the block. But a 70-person startup headquartered 5,000 miles away in Germany’s Black Forest—a region famous for its ham—has become a top competitor to Silicon Valley’s leading labs in AI image generation. In December, Black Forest Labs raised funds at a $3.25 billion valuation, after signing deals to power AI image-generation features in Adobe and the graphic design platform Canva. It has even struck agreements with major AI labs like Microsoft, Meta, and xAI to power similar features in their products. Nearly two years after launch, Black Forest Labs can afford to be picky about who it works with. In 2024, Elon Musk’s xAI tapped Black Forest Labs to power Grok’s first image generator. That partnership put Black Forest Labs on the map but generated a lot of controversy due to the chatbot’s limited safeguards. It …

Cursor Launches a New AI Agent Experience to Take On Claude Code and Codex

Cursor Launches a New AI Agent Experience to Take On Claude Code and Codex

Published by skeptic

Cursor announced Thursday the launch of Cursor 3, a new product interface that allows users to spin up AI coding agents to complete tasks on their behalf. The product, which was developed under the code name Glass, is Cursor’s response to agentic coding tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex, which have taken off with millions of developers in recent months. “In the last few months, our profession has completely changed,” said Jonas Nelle, one of Cursor’s heads of engineering, in an interview with WIRED. “A lot of the product that got Cursor here is not as important going forward anymore.” Cursor increasingly finds itself in competition with leading AI labs for developers and enterprise customers. The company pioneered one of the first and most popular ways for developers to code with AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google—making Cursor one of these companies’ biggest AI customers. But in the last 18 months, OpenAI and Anthropic have launched agentic coding products of their own, and started offering them through highly subsidized subscriptions that have …

Meet the Tech Reporters Using AI to Help Write and Edit Their Stories

Meet the Tech Reporters Using AI to Help Write and Edit Their Stories

Published by skeptic

When technology reporter Alex Heath has a scoop, he sits down at his computer and speaks into a microphone. He’s not talking to a human colleague—Heath went independent on Substack last year—he’s talking to Claude. Using the AI-powered voice-to-text service Wispr Flow, Heath transmits his ideas to an AI agent, then lets it write his first draft. Heath sat down with me last week to showcase how he’s integrated Anthropic’s Claude Cowork into his journalistic process. The AI tool is connected to his Gmail, Google Calendar, Granola AI transcription service, and Notion notes. He’s also built a detailed skill—a custom set of instructions—to help Claude write in his style, including the “10 commandments” of writing like Alex Heath. The skill includes previous articles he’s written, instructions on how he likes his newsletters to be structured, and notes on his voice and writing style. Claude Cowork then automates the drafting process that used to take place in Heath’s head. After the agent finishes its first draft, Heath goes back and forth with it for up to …

Google Shakes Up Its Browser Agent Team Amid OpenClaw Craze

Google Shakes Up Its Browser Agent Team Amid OpenClaw Craze

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Google is shaking up the team behind Project Mariner, its AI agent that can navigate the Chrome browser and complete tasks on a user’s behalf, WIRED has learned. In recent months, some Google Labs staffers who worked on the research prototype have moved on to higher-priority projects, according to two people familiar with the matter. A Google spokesperson confirmed the changes, but said the computer use capabilities developed under Project Mariner will be incorporated into the company’s agent strategy moving forward. Google has already folded some of these capabilities into other agent products, including the recently launched Gemini Agent, the spokesperson added. The change comes as Google and other AI labs rush to respond to the rise of highly capable agents like OpenClaw. While these tools are mostly used by developers today, Silicon Valley believes they could soon power general-purpose assistants for people and businesses. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang compared the buzzy tool to a new operating system for agentic computers. “Every company in the world today needs to have an OpenClaw strategy,” he said …

Google Is Not Ruling Out Ads in Gemini

Google Is Not Ruling Out Ads in Gemini

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Second is advertiser tools. If you’re a small business, you’re not thinking about all the queries people are going to type in. AI is great at figuring out which keywords to use, what’s the optimal creative, and generating all of that. The third piece is the most nascent: ads in new experiences. The general philosophy we have is to build a great consumer product, then figure out monetization. Because the business is so strong and healthy, that’s a luxury we have. What have you learned from experiments around ads in AI Mode? Ads are always separate from organic results and clearly labeled. If we don’t think any ad is relevant, we don’t show any ads. Probably the biggest principle of all is that ads should be useful. What [ads in AI Mode] have shown is mostly intuitive things. If it’s relevant, a user will click on it. If not, they won’t. At Davos, Demis Hassabis said that Google has no plans to bring ads to Gemini. How are you thinking about it now? The reason …

OpenAI Had Banned Military Use. The Pentagon Tested Its Models Through Microsoft Anyway

OpenAI Had Banned Military Use. The Pentagon Tested Its Models Through Microsoft Anyway

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is still in the hot seat this week after his company signed a deal with the US military. OpenAI employees have criticized the move, which came after Anthropic’s roughly $200 million contract with the Pentagon imploded, and asked Altman to release more information about the agreement. Altman admitted it looked “sloppy” in a social media post. While this incident has become a major news story, it may just be the latest and most public example of OpenAI creating vague policies around how the US military can access its AI. In 2023, OpenAI’s usage policy explicitly banned the military from accessing its AI models. But some OpenAI employees discovered the Pentagon had already started experimenting with Azure OpenAI, a version of OpenAI’s models offered by Microsoft, two sources familiar with the matter said. At the time, Microsoft had been contracting with the Department of Defense for decades. It was also OpenAI’s largest investor, and had broad license to commercialize the startup’s technology. That same year, OpenAI employees saw Pentagon officials walking through …

Perplexity’s Retreat From Ads Signals a Bigger Strategic Shift

Perplexity’s Retreat From Ads Signals a Bigger Strategic Shift

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Perplexity is abandoning plans to put ads in its AI search product as the industry looks for sustainable business models that won’t hurt user trust. The changes are part of a larger strategic shift for the company, which has long focused on disrupting Google Search’s business. “Google is changing to be like Perplexity more than Perplexity is trying to take on Google,” said a Perplexity executive at a press briefing on Tuesday. Executives spoke to the press on the condition of anonymity. Instead of chasing mass adoption, Perplexity will lean into its subscription business, with a focus on becoming the most accurate AI service for developers, enterprises, and consumers willing to pay a monthly fee. The company also plans to make partnerships with device-makers a bigger part of its business moving forward. The move marks a major change for the company, which was one of the first AI firms to start experimenting with ads in 2024. CEO Aravind Srinivas said on a podcast that year that he predicted ads would eventually be the company’s core …

OpenAI’s President Gave Millions to Trump. He Says It’s for Humanity

OpenAI’s President Gave Millions to Trump. He Says It’s for Humanity

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OpenAI’s president and cofounder Greg Brockman doesn’t consider himself political, which is surprising, because he was one of President Trump’s biggest individual donors of 2025. Greg and his wife, Anna Brockman, gave $25 million to MAGA Inc—a super PAC that supports President Trump—in September of last year. The pair also gave $25 million to a bipartisan AI super PAC, Leading the Future, which says it plans to oppose politicians that jeopardize Americans’ “ability to benefit from AI.” The Brockmans have pledged to give an additional $25 million to Leading the Future in 2026, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. According to Brockman, these political donations are in service of OpenAI’s founding mission: to develop highly capable AI systems and distribute the benefits to all of humanity. “This mission, in my mind, is bigger than companies, bigger than corporate structures,” he says in an interview with WIRED. “We are embarking on a journey to develop this technology that’s going to be the most impactful thing humanity has ever created. Getting that right …

Loyalty Is Dead in Silicon Valley

Loyalty Is Dead in Silicon Valley

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Since the middle of last year, there have been at least three major AI “acqui-hires” in Silicon Valley. Meta invested more than $14 billion in Scale AI and brought on its CEO, Alexandr Wang; Google spent a cool $2.4 billion to license Windsurf’s technology and fold its cofounders and research teams into DeepMind; and Nvidia wagered $20 billion on Groq’s inference technology and hired its CEO and other staffers. The frontier AI labs, meanwhile, have been playing a high stakes and seemingly never-ending game of talent musical chairs. The latest reshuffle began three weeks ago, when OpenAI announced it was rehiring several researchers who had departed less than two years earlier to join Mira Murati’s startup, Thinking Machines. At the same time, Anthropic, which was itself founded by former OpenAI staffers, has been poaching talent from the ChatGPT maker. OpenAI, in turn, just hired a former Anthropic safety researcher to be its “head of preparedness.” The hiring churn happening in Silicon Valley represents the “great unbundling” of the tech startup, as Dave Munichiello, an investor …