Slack Adds New AI Capabilities

Anthropic has taken a definitive stance against OpenCode, explicitly blocking its access, which raises concerns about competition and collaboration in the AI sector. This decision reflects a strategic move amid the company's ongoing efforts to establish itself as a leader in artificial intelligence technologies.

Z.ai's open-source GLM-Image has outperformed Google's Nano Banana Pro in complex text rendering, showcasing its capabilities in generating intricate, text-heavy graphics, although it falls short in aesthetic quality. This development highlights the competitive landscape of AI image generation technologies.

The US Senate has passed a bill aimed at assisting victims of sexualized deepfakes, amid rising public outrage over the proliferation of nonconsensual images on platforms like Elon Musk's X. This legislative move comes in response to reports highlighting X as a leading site for such harmful content, prompting calls for accountability and protection for affected individuals.

In 2026, significant initial public offerings (IPOs) are anticipated from major tech companies, including SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, potentially transforming the financial landscape of Silicon Valley and Wall Street. SpaceX is reportedly aiming to raise over $30 billion, with a valuation target of approximately $1.5 trillion, which could make it the largest IPO in history.

Security startup depthfirst has successfully raised $40 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel, with partner Sara Ittelson highlighting the investment as a long-term commitment for the firm. This funding will enable depthfirst to enhance its AI security solutions amidst growing concerns over cybersecurity threats.

Anthropic has introduced Cowork, a new tool that leverages its AI model Claude to assist non-experts with coding tasks, allowing users to simply communicate their needs and have the AI execute plans and tasks as a colleague would. This initiative aims to make advanced coding capabilities more accessible to everyday users.

Recent vulnerabilities in Python libraries utilized by leading AI and machine learning tools, including those from Nvidia and Salesforce, have been identified and fixed, prompting experts to advise users to implement patches immediately to mitigate risks.

Google Research has introduced a new prompting technique that significantly enhances the accuracy of Large Language Models (LLMs) by up to 76% on non-reasoning tasks. This technique involves simply repeating the input query, which has shown consistent performance improvements across models like Gemini, GPT-4o, Claude, and DeepSeek.