AI Briefing: Claude Cracks a Cold Case & AMD Challenges the King

Stories covered on 2026-07-24

1. Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus in talks to raise $100M

   TechCrunch · 2026-07-24

   The neolab is betting that automating routine computer tasks will soon outpace coding as AI's biggest use case.

2. Midjourney bought the astrology app Co-Star

   The Verge · 2026-07-24

   Midjourney, which has gone from generating AI cat images to full-body ultrasound scans, is getting into a new field: astrology.

3. Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Marc Pincus in talks to raise $100M

   TechCrunch · 2026-07-24

   The neolab is betting that automating routine computer tasks will soon outpace coding as AI's biggest use case.

4. 9 Mistakes I Have Made While Using Claude — I Wish I Hadn’t

   Towards AI · 2026-07-24

   A seasoned user shared common pitfalls encountered when interacting with Anthropic's Claude, ranging from insufficient prompt detail to overlooking its specific strengths and

5. Meet the New Claude Opus 5: Frontier-Class Agentic Coding and Computer Use at Unchanged Opus Pricing

   MarkTechPost · 2026-07-24

   Today, Anthropic released Claude Opus 5. It replaces Claude Opus 4.8 as the Opus-tier flagship.

6. Canadian legislator reads out apparent LLM response in floor speech

   Ars Technica · 2026-07-24

   "Here’s a more natural, flowing version of that section..."

7. Anthropic's Opus 5 is about token efficiency, not a capability leap

   Ars Technica · 2026-07-24

   Models are improving quickly, but the cheaper options are often good enough.

8. Turn Raw Data Into $13,000/Month — The Solo Data Analytics Business Built with Claude

   Towards AI · 2026-07-24

   A recent report highlights an individual's success in generating over $13,000 monthly by leveraging Anthropic's Claude LLM to automate data analysis for clients.

9. Google Ordered to Defend Robby Starbuck’s AI Defamation Suit

   Bloomberg · 2026-07-24

   Alphabet Inc.'s Google LLC lost its bid Friday to escape a court case dangling the specter of legal liability for false statements made by an artificial intelligence chatbot.

10. Did Chinese AI Steal From Anthropic, and OpenAI Loses Control of Two Models

    WIRED · 2026-07-24

    On this episode of Uncanny Valley, we dive into accusations that China’s Moonshot AI stole from Anthropic, and how the US Army needs to cut back on AI use.

11. Anthropic Just Read Claude’s Mind. Sort Of

    Towards AI · 2026-07-24

    Anthropic has detailed a new technique that allows for the partial reconstruction of a large language model's internal reasoning process during inference.

12. Why Cognition bought Poke: AI personality is becoming a competitive advantage

    TechCrunch · 2026-07-24

    The acquisition brings Poke’s conversational style and interaction model to Cognition’s coding agent Devin, reflecting a growing belief that how AI assistants interact with users

13. Meta is making its AI chatbot more like an assistant

    The Verge · 2026-07-24

    Meta is upgrading its AI chatbot with new productivity features in a bid to compete with rivals like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude.

14. SpaceX at $100 Would Imply Zero AI Value, Morgan Stanley Says

    Bloomberg · 2026-07-24

    The selloff in SpaceX shares has driven the stock near a level that would imply investors are assigning no value to its artificial intelligence business

15. Team uses AlphaFold AI to redesign gene-editing proteins to make them safer

    Ars Technica · 2026-07-24

    Google's AlphaFold can help ID what parts of a gene editing protein enable mistakes.

16. Claude Opus 5 arrives with near Fable performance at half the price

    ZDNet · 2026-07-24

    Anthropic's latest Claude upgrade targets developers and enterprises with stronger coding, better reasoning efficiency, prompt-cache-friendly tool changes

17. Anthropic Unveils More Cost-Efficient Model for Everyday Tasks

    Bloomberg · 2026-07-24

    Anthropic PBC is rolling out a new artificial intelligence model that is meant to handle workplace tasks adeptly and affordably

18. Anthropic launches Opus 5

    TechCrunch · 2026-07-24

    Opus 5 will be both cheaper and less restrictive than Fable, likely making it preferable in most use cases.

19. ‘AI communism’, rogue models, and the why Kimi K3 spooked Wall Street

    TechCrunch · 2026-07-24

    Chinese AI lab Moonshot’s open model Kimi went viral this week for reasons that had less to do with the model itself and more to do with how the U.S. AI industry reacted to it.

20. Tabular LLMs: An Introduction to the Foundation Models That Predict Your Spreadsheet

    Towards Data Science · 2026-07-24

    Tabular foundation models predict the missing column of any spreadsheet zero-shot, the way an LLM completes text

21. Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, IBM, and others back open-weight AI

    AI News · 2026-07-24

    Two dozen companies and organisations signed an open letter urging US policymakers to protect open-weight AI models.

22. Microsoft's open-weight AI push is so obviously an Azure play it hurts

    The Decoder · 2026-07-24

    Microsoft, along with Meta, Nvidia, and more than 20 other companies, is pushing for open-weight AI models in an open letter.

23. As US weighs response to Chinese AI, industry urges against broad open-weight restrictions

    TechCrunch · 2026-07-24

    AI companies, including Nvidia and Mistral, urge policymakers to avoid broad restrictions on open-weight AI models as Washington debates responses to Chinese AI and alleged model

24. Midjourney acquired the astrology app Co-Star

    TechCrunch · 2026-07-24

    The AI lab Midjourney continues to expand its purview beyond image and video generation.

25. Is AI already beyond our control? What will we tell our kids? | Fiona Katauskas

    The Guardian AI · 2026-07-24

    It’s no bedtime story See more of Fiona Katauskas’s cartoons here <a href="

26. Silicon Valley Is Completely Divided Over Chinese AI

    WIRED · 2026-07-24

    The AI “startups” worth billions of dollars are raising alarm bells about Chinese AI. The smaller players have a totally different take.

27. Bluesky’s AI assistant Attie expands into an open social research tool

    TechCrunch · 2026-07-24

    Users can now ask Attie questions about news, trends, and conversations on Bluesky and other apps on the AT Protocol.

28. Nvidia, Microsoft Lead Call for Open-Weight AI Models After Kimi

    Bloomberg · 2026-07-24

    A coalition of technology companies led by Nvidia Corp. and Microsoft Corp. called on policymakers to promote the development of open-weight artificial intelligence models

29. OpenAI pushes ChatGPT into patient health records

    AI News · 2026-07-24

    OpenAI is deploying a Health feature inside ChatGPT, giving users the option to connect Apple Health data and medical records to the chatbot.

30. The tech-broification of American science has officially begun

    The Verge · 2026-07-24

    The Trump administration unveiled the first "Genesis Mission" grants on Thursday, directing $5 billion toward hundreds of AI-driven science projects in an effort the White House