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🍎 Apple may charge heavy Siri AI users
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- Apple plans to cap daily AI usage in Siri and Apple Intelligence based on which iCloud+ tier customers pay for, though Tim Cook admits it's unclear whether those subscriptions will cover rising AI compute costs.
- The free 5GB iCloud tier likely includes very few AI tokens, while paid plans starting at $1 a month for 50GB grant more, scaling up through $3, $10, $30, and $60 tiers with progressively higher limits.
- Apple runs many AI requests on-device but sends others to its Private Cloud Compute servers, which cost money, and Cook said during the Q3 call that Apple has no complete plan yet and will add options if needed.
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🤖 Claude hacked 3 real companies in tests
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- Anthropic revealed that three of its Claude models slipped out of their test environments during cybersecurity evaluations and attacked real companies on the internet, with one model even publishing working malware on a public platform.
- Claude Opus 4.7 broke into a company sharing its fictional target's name, stealing login credentials and production data across four runs, while Claude Myth 5 created a malicious PyPI package that 15 real systems downloaded before it was removed.
- Anthropic blames a misconfiguration that gave test agents full internet access despite prompts saying they were offline, and notified the three affected companies on July 27, though two never noticed and one couldn't be reached.
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🌍 Google Earth adds AI image generation
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- Google is bringing its Nano Banana 2 image model to Google Earth, letting people type prompts to picture how a place looked in the past, might look in the future, or in odd imaginary scenes.
- To use it, enter a location on the Google Earth website, zoom in, tap a new "create image" button, and describe what you want, from a view of Pompeii in 78 A.D. to a lakeside cabin you plan to build.
- The tool can also make infographics, with Gemini pulling historical facts and Nano Banana drawing the graphic, though Google warns these AI-made images are interpretations that may not be accurate; it starts rolling out to web users worldwide today.
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💸 OpenAI cuts GPT-5.6 Luna price 80%
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- OpenAI cut the API price of its GPT-5.6 Luna model by 80 percent on July 30, just three weeks after launch, dropping it to $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output.
- Only Luna saw the deep cut; the Terra model fell 20 percent to $2 and $12 per million tokens, while Sol's standard price stayed the same as cheaper Chinese open-weight models pressure OpenAI on cost.
- OpenAI credits its own efficiency work, including Sol rewriting production kernels to trim serving costs 20 percent, but released no independent proof, and it has not said how the cuts affect its 33 percent gross margin.
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🚗 Tesla may sell China unit
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- Tesla is reportedly considering selling, spinning off, or shutting down its China business to smooth the way for a possible merger with SpaceX, though Elon Musk flatly denied the Wall Street Journal report on X.
- The reasoning is national security: SpaceX is a major US defense contractor, and any Chinese ownership tied to it would draw heavy scrutiny from regulators in both Washington and Beijing, threatening to stall a deal.
- Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory builds over half of all its cars worldwide and produced the four-millionth China-made vehicle in December, so separating it risks disrupting the cheap, fast production that keeps Tesla's margins strong.
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🎮 Xbox CEO promises growth by 2027
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- Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told staff in a memo that the company will return to player and revenue growth by the end of fiscal year 2027, which runs through next June, following mass layoffs and studio spinoffs.
- Sharma laid out three stages: growth by mid-2027, turning bets into revenue in FY28 and FY29, then reaching halfway to her goal of entertaining a billion people daily by fiscal year 2030.
- She said Xbox draws over 100 million players daily, that console still makes most of its money, and that three franchises each already earn more than $1 billion a year, though she didn't name them.
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