AI Intelligence Report
Top Stories
Anthropic commits to spending $200 billion on Google’s cloud and chips
Anthropic — the maker of Claude — has agreed to spend $200 billion with Google Cloud over five years. The deal gives Anthropic access to Google’s specialised AI chips (called TPUs) and its data centres, locking in the compute power it needs to keep up with OpenAI and others. For context, that’s roughly the GDP of New Zealand, paid by one AI company to one cloud provider. It’s the clearest sign yet that infrastructure — not just models — is now the central battle in AI.
U.S. government will test AI models from Google, Microsoft and xAI before public launch
The U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation (housed in the Commerce Department) has signed agreements with Google DeepMind, Microsoft and Elon Musk’s xAI to evaluate their AI models before public release. They join OpenAI and Anthropic, who agreed earlier. This isn’t full regulation — it’s voluntary pre-launch review — but it’s the most coordinated U.S. oversight step to date, and one Cam’s team will want to track as a template other governments may copy.
OpenAI quietly rolls GPT-5.5 Instant out as the new default ChatGPT model
OpenAI replaced GPT-5.3 Instant with GPT-5.5 Instant for all ChatGPT users. OpenAI says the new model “reduces hallucination” — making up facts — in sensitive areas like law, medicine and finance, while remaining fast. It can also pull from past conversations, files and Gmail to personalise answers. ChatGPT now shows the “memory sources” it used in any reply, a small but meaningful transparency change.
OpenAI launches GPT-5.5-Cyber, one month after Anthropic’s “Mythos” cybersecurity model
OpenAI is rolling out a cybersecurity-focused variant of GPT-5.5, available only to vetted security teams. It follows Anthropic’s “Claude Mythos Preview” — a model the company says excels at finding software vulnerabilities, released last month under a programme called Project Glasswing. Both labs are now selling defensive cyber capability directly to large companies and governments, raising the same dual-use question Cam’s team has flagged before: tools that find weaknesses can also be used to exploit them.
AI isn’t “taking” your job — but it is reshaping who gets hired
A CNN analysis published yesterday argues the simple “AI is replacing workers” framing misses what’s actually happening. Companies aren’t doing mass layoffs; they’re slowing hiring for entry-level roles where AI now handles much of the work, while keeping experienced staff. The narrative shift matters for communications: expect more coverage that frames AI as a hiring-funnel story rather than a layoff story.
Siemens wins push to ease EU industrial AI rules
Siemens and other European industrial companies have successfully lobbied the EU to soften parts of the AI Act before it fully takes effect on August 2, 2026. They argued the rules — fines of up to 7% of global revenue for the worst violations — would put them behind rivals in the U.S. and China. It’s the first sign of meaningful retreat on what was billed as the world’s strictest AI law.
AI News Roundup
Substack Highlights
Inoreader AI Folder
OpenAI may not be able to IPO in 2026
OpenAI’s CFO Sarah Friar — who last month said the IPO should be delayed to 2027 — has been making the case more loudly. OpenAI’s S-1 filing would force it to disclose unit economics that Pivot To AI describes as “hilariously terrible.” Adds important colour to the “OpenAI Stack Sweep” framing in The Signal.
Running Codex safely at OpenAI
OpenAI published an unusually detailed post on how it runs Codex — its agentic coding tool — internally: sandboxing every action, requiring human approvals for sensitive operations, network policies, and agent-native telemetry. A useful reference for any internal Tencent piece on responsible agent deployment.
How ChatGPT learns about the world while protecting privacy
OpenAI’s clearest public statement to date on what data feeds model training, how it reduces personal data exposure, and how users can opt out. Cam’s comms team will want to read this carefully — it’s the template OpenAI is offering regulators worldwide.
Advancing youth safety and wellbeing in EMEA
OpenAI launched a European Youth Safety Blueprint and an EMEA Youth & Wellbeing Grants programme. A defensive positioning play timed to EU AI Act enforcement.
Using Gemini Deep Research to map Strait of Hormuz blockade impacts
Detailed walkthrough of using Gemini Deep Research for global-scale geopolitical analysis when the question is bigger than the model’s context window. The technique — chunking the problem into linked deep-research jobs and stitching summaries — is directly relevant to issues-management briefing work.
Microsoft VS Code now says Copilot AI wrote all your code
Microsoft’s code editor VS Code, owned by Microsoft, has begun showing a notice attributing portions of code to Copilot — even when the human user wrote most of it. Critics argue it’s marketing dressed as transparency. A revealing case study in how AI attribution is being reframed in tech products.
AI just found 15 years’ worth of bugs in Firefox. In weeks!
AI-assisted security tooling identified vulnerabilities in Firefox’s codebase dating back over a decade in a matter of weeks. The concrete example security teams have been waiting for.
GPT-5.5 remembers (mostly)
Hands-on review of the new ChatGPT memory and Gmail-context features: works well for personalisation, struggles when the model needs to admit it doesn’t remember. Also flags Samsung’s quiet entry into the trillion-dollar AI infrastructure club.
Comparing Gemini’s theoretical estimates vs. actual benchmarks
Tested Gemini’s recommendations for cloud CPU selection against actual benchmarks. Gemini’s theoretical advice was directionally right but often off by 20–40% on price-performance. Useful caution for anyone using LLMs for infra decisions.
AI Workflows & Tool Watch
Perplexity Personal Computer goes general availability on Mac
Perplexity’s “Personal Computer” agent — which can read local files, drive apps and run multi-step workflows on macOS — is now open to all Mac users on Pro/Max plans. Reviews suggest it’s most useful for research-and-summarise loops that span email, Notes, PDFs and the web. Worth a half-hour test against your usual Perplexity + DEVONthink loop.
Claude Code’s May update: ZIP-and-URL plugin loading + better MCP handling
Claude Code now accepts a --plugin-dir pointing at a ZIP archive and a new --plugin-url flag that fetches a plugin from a URL for the current session. The /mcp command now shows tool counts per server and flags servers that connected with zero tools — small but useful when an MCP server silently fails. There are also OAuth refresh fixes that should end the parallel-session 401 errors several Reddit threads have complained about.
Reddit MCP server — community-built integrations now stable
Composio’s Reddit MCP server is being widely adopted as a way to give Claude direct, read-and-post access to Reddit. A widely-shared r/ClaudeAI case study from this week showed an agency manager cutting weekly Reddit Ads reporting from 4 hours to 30 minutes by chaining the Reddit MCP with Claude Code. Same pattern could work for monitoring product communities or competitor mentions.
Obsidian + n8n: local agentic AI that sorts fleeting notes overnight
An Obsidian forum thread that gained traction this week walks through a fully local setup: Obsidian’s Post Webhook plugin pushes new fleeting notes to a self-hosted n8n instance, which runs a small local model that routes each note into the right Obsidian folder, applies tags, and links it to existing notes — overnight, with no cloud dependency. A very promising starting point for anyone whose note system has outgrown manual curation.
n8n workflow: Obsidian notes read aloud as a private podcast feed
An n8n template that takes new Obsidian notes (or a chosen tag), runs them through OpenAI’s text-to-speech, and publishes them as a private podcast feed you can subscribe to in Apple Podcasts or Overcast. Useful for revising drafts during a commute or treadmill walk — and for catching weak phrasing the way print won’t reveal.
Perplexity Computer is now available inside Microsoft Teams
For comms teams that live in Teams (rather than Slack), Perplexity now ships as a native Teams app — meaning you can ask it to assemble research, draft a memo or summarise a long thread directly from a Teams channel. Pairs cleanly with the Mac Personal Computer release for cross-device continuity.
Prompt patterns: forcing AI to give blunt, not flattering, answers
Bagel Bots published two prompt templates this week worth saving as Drafts snippets: one that instructs the model to “critique my reasoning, refuse to flatter,” and one that has the model write a first draft, then critique it, then rewrite. Both produced visibly tighter output in side-by-side tests vs. a default prompt. Useful for any media-statement or crisis-line drafting where flattery becomes a hazard.
Workspace agents land in ChatGPT Enterprise — scheduled, sharable, template-based
OpenAI’s new “Workspace agents” let an organisation build reusable agents (from templates or scratch), share them inside the workspace, and run them on a schedule across connected apps including Slack. For Cam’s team this is the simplest “scheduled brief” pattern OpenAI has shipped yet, and a possible alternative for any colleagues who can’t or won’t move to Claude.
Tencent Mentions
Tencent unveils Hy3-preview as its most powerful Hunyuan model yet
Hy3-preview is a “fast-and-slow-thinking fused” Mixture-of-Experts model with 295 billion total parameters (21 billion activated per query) and a 256K context window. Tencent says it delivers a 40% improvement in inference efficiency vs. its predecessor. The model has been listed on OpenRouter with two weeks of free access — a clear bid to grow international developer awareness. It is also integrated with the open-source agent frameworks OpenClaw, OpenCode and KiloCode.
Tencent Video and iQiyi expect China’s first AI-generated blockbuster drama in H2 2026
Executives at China’s two largest streaming platforms — including Tencent Video’s CEO — said this week that they expect the first premium AI-generated long-form drama to be released in the second half of 2026, with one production team having already completed a “high-quality” series. Significant for media-and-AI communications angles, and a potential narrative win for the company.
SCMP: Tencent positions Hy3 as the first flagship from its rebuilt AI organisation
South China Morning Post frames Hy3-preview as a key proof point for the AI organisation rebuild led by Yao Shunyu, the former OpenAI researcher who joined Tencent last year. The article notes the model is on par with leading Chinese rivals but “still lagging behind” frontier U.S. flagships from OpenAI and Google — a framing Cam’s team may want to monitor as it spreads.
Tencent Cloud raises AI compute prices by ~5% effective May 9
Tencent Cloud joined Alibaba and Baidu in raising prices for AI compute, container services and EMR products by around 5%, with the changes taking effect on May 9, 2026. The move reflects industry-wide compute scarcity in China and may surface as a “Chinese AI inflation” angle in foreign coverage over the coming weeks.
Tencent and the UK Department for International Trade sign a strategic cooperation MOU in London
On May 9, Tencent and the UK DIT signed a Memorandum of Understanding for strategic cooperation in the cultural creative industries. Worth confirming with the UK and Europe teams whether there’s a press angle worth amplifying beyond the announcement itself.
Tom’s Hardware: Tencent and ByteDance reportedly offering 150% pay rises to AI talent
Tom’s Hardware aggregates Chinese reporting that Tencent and ByteDance are offering pay rises of up to 150% and bonuses of 35% to retain and attract AI talent. The story will likely be repeated in Western outlets framed as a “Chinese AI war for talent” headline.
Generated by Claude · AI Intelligence Report for Cam MacMurchy
Sources include web search, 143 Substack subscriptions, Inoreader AI folder, Reddit, Discourse forums, Hacker News, and Product Hunt.