The ai models & agents stories our desk judged worth your time, written so anyone can follow them.
Adobe says AI agents and bots now outnumber people online, and a small business website that software cannot read may lose sales without knowing it.
Read more: Software shoppers are coming, and small business sites must be readyNumbersGame's tool now reaches Stripe, Square and Ramp data, so accountants using Claude or ChatGPT can ask questions about payments and spending.
Read more: Accounting firms can now ask Claude or ChatGPT about Stripe, Square and Ramp dataFello AI published a guide comparing ChatGPT Plus and Pro, the two paid plans, to help you avoid paying for a tier you will not use.
Read more: ChatGPT Plus or Pro: How to Pick the Right Paid PlanAngle Health says AI voice agents handled about 80% of provider calls in a pilot, freeing nearly 9,000 staff minutes a day. Here is what it shows for any business that takes calls.
Read more: A health insurer's AI phone agents now answer most doctor-office callsEngineer Venkatesh Rao argues AI could raise demand for human thinking, and says the real fight is over who gets access to it, not only which jobs vanish.
Read more: One engineer says AI could make people think more, not lessOpenAI's new Locked Chats feature hides private ChatGPT conversations behind a four-digit PIN, but it is built for convenience, not true secrecy.
Read more: ChatGPT now lets you hide private chats behind a PINAI shopping assistants are hitting walls at Amazon, Walmart and others. Some blocks are on purpose, some are accidents, and money tasks carry real risk.
Read more: Shopping AI assistants keep getting blocked by the stores they useAn upcoming Gemini setting could let you choose Chat or Tasks as the screen the assistant opens to, which could save a tap or two each time.
Read more: Gemini may let you choose Chat or Tasks as your defaultChatGPT had an outage, with many people unable to log in or use the app and Codex. Here is what is known, who is hit and what to watch for.
Read more: ChatGPT hit by outage: login, app and Codex not working for manyA sponsored Business Insider piece says AI agents stumble on conflicting company records, so check that your own customer and order data agree first.
Read more: AI agents fail on messy company data, not weak technologyMore than half of US teens use AI for schoolwork, and a Fast Company story asks whether ChatGPT or Claude helps students cheat better.
Read more: Students and teachers are using AI at school, and cheating is the worryA small AI on a decade-old PC went from 4 to 11 correct answers out of 13 after getting an offline Wikipedia, a useful trick for private AI on modest hardware.
Read more: Giving a small home AI an offline Wikipedia made it far more accurateSynthesia built a plug-in for ChatGPT that turns documents you already have into marketing videos, giving small teams another option beyond OpenAI's Sora.
Read more: Synthesia's ChatGPT add-on turns your documents into marketing videosChatGPT now offers a virtual try-on that shows clothing on a photo of you, a sign that chatbots are becoming a place to shop, not just search.
Read more: ChatGPT can now show how clothes might look on you before you buyOpenAI says future US data centers will use less electricity when the grid is strained, a response to fears that AI could raise power bills.
Read more: OpenAI says its new data centers will cut power use when the grid is strainedAthenahealth patients who pay for Claude Pro or Max can now let the AI read their health records and answer questions about them, with limits.
Read more: Athenahealth patients can now ask Claude about their health recordsAlex Stamos, Meta's former security chief, says handing AI apps your financial logins is 'totally insane', and a top bank CEO says the risk may land on you.
Read more: Ex-Meta security chief warns against giving AI helpers your bank loginsInc. says businesses should try to break an AI agent before real customers or data are at risk, and build limits in from the start.
Read more: Test Your AI Helper by Trying to Make It Fail Before You Use ItA new report finds fewer than half of AI analytics insights improve a business. Context is the biggest gap, and it matters if you let AI suggest or take actions.
Read more: AI analysis tools still get most business advice wrong, survey findsWalmart has added new AI shopping tools just before the holidays, but details are thin. Here is what is known and what to check in the app before you rely on them.
Read more: Walmart rolls out new AI shopping tools ahead of the holidaysGoogle's Gemini AI can read your Gmail to summarize and draft replies, often by default. Here is what Google says it does with that data and what you can change.
Read more: Gemini can read your Gmail. Here is how to switch it offAnthropic's Claude Code now has instructions to refuse recreating a specific existing video game, even if you rename it. Here is what still works and the legal risk.
Read more: Claude now refuses to rebuild existing video games for youAWS added OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Terra at a much lower price and now lets AI agents run business workflows a company already has, which could cut costs.
Read more: Amazon's cloud adds a cheaper OpenAI model and lets AI run old workflowsGoogle's Mandiant says thieves are hijacking company AI accounts and running up charges of $100,000 a day, so a leaked key can get expensive fast.
Read more: Hackers are running up huge AI bills on company accounts
