How Apple's AI Strategy Changes with a New CEO

**Nathaniel Whittemore** (0:01)
Today on the AI Daily Brief, how Apple's new CEO might change or not their AI strategy.
Before that, in the headlines, a new feature that used to be controversial might become very commonplace soon.
The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and conversations in AI.
All right, friends, quick announcements before we dive in. Right now, I've got an AI Credential Survey live. If you would do that, it'll take you about 10 seconds and would very much help us plan some next moves. But we got a loaded slate of headlines today, so let's dive in.
We kick off today with an interesting new feature announcement from OpenAI. The company has shipped a new memory feature in Codex called Chronicle. This is something that we've seen a couple of times from a couple of different companies, although it's usually been surrounded by some amount of controversy, and in the case of Microsoft, a withdrawal of the feature entirely.
Chronicle uses screen captures to build a running memory of your workflow. The feature runs as a background agents, taking screenshots and deciphering them to build memory as you work. Now, OpenAI framed the feature as being a quality of life improvement by improving Codex's understanding of your work. They write, with Chronicle, Codex can better understand what you mean by this or that, like an error on screen, a doc you have open or that thing you were working on two weeks ago. Over time, it helps Codex learn how you work, the tools you use, the projects you return to, and the workflows you rely on. Now, they did warn that because Chronicle runs as a background agent, it will chew through usage limits. Screenshots also carry some privacy and access concerns. All my old Bitcoin buddies are screaming at their screens right now as I talk about this. Yet it's pretty clear that OpenAI is aiming this at professionals who are working on secure systems with their company picking up the tab on usage. Apparently the feature is impressed internally with President Greg Brockman writing that it feels, quote, surprisingly magical to use, and Sam Altman saying the internal working name for this was telepathy and it feels like it. Codex developer Tebow wrote, This is early and consumes quite a bit of tokens, but it has changed how I and many folks at OpenAI use Codex. Now, like I said, when these types of features were first announced, they were announced as general Windows type features as opposed to something very discrete for a specific type of builder in a specific use case, and maybe for people to balance on the value of that context changes how people will receive it. I've always thought that this was one of those features that one group who is used to an old way of doing things will think is a complete privacy nightmare, but in the future people will just assume is completely normal.
Staying on new features for a moment, Anthropic has shipped a new feature for Cowork that they're calling Live Artifacts. The feature allows users to build dashboards and trackers using live data feeds from connected apps. Cowork developer Felix Riesberg showed off the flexibility of the new feature. In one example, the feature produced a personalized morning brief, including a meeting schedule, correspondence summary and key status indicators. In another, the feature produced a dashboard for a fictional lunar mission. It feels to me like a lot of these features, from both Anthropic and OpenAI, are in some ways quote-unquote just UX upgrades on stuff you could already do. But given that the whole point is allowing you to do more faster and better, UX upgrades that cement and simplify workflows can be significant unlocks for the people using them.
Speaking of Anthropic, CEO Dario Amore met with key White House officials on Friday to talk through the cybersecurity implications of mythos. Among others, the White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were there. In a statement, the White House called this a productive and constructive introductory meeting. They released a very milk toast generic kind of statement. But given the hostile rhetoric towards Anthropic recently, many viewed this as the administration walking back hostilities in recognition that Anthropic's technology has big implications for national security. Anthropic's lawsuit against the Pentagon is still ongoing, and the State Department, Health and Human Services, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency have all terminated Anthropic contracts. Of course, at the same time, over the weekend, Axios reported that the NSA is actively using the Mythos Preview Model despite their parent agency, the Department of Defense, insisting that Anthropic is a supply chain risk. Axios writes, The government's cybersecurity needs appear to be outweighing the Pentagon's feud with Anthropic. Adding more evidence to the idea that there may be a detente forming, President Donald Trump himself this morning said, They, Anthropic, came to the White House a few days ago and we had some very good talks with them, and I think they're shaping up. They're very smart. I think we'll get along with them just fine. Now the administration's actions mirror a fairly significant response to mythos on Wall Street. Central bank heads across the globe have put financial institutions on high alert and the mythos preview has expanded to cover numerous other banks. When it launched, the preview was only extended to JP Morgan, but around a dozen major banks across the US and the UK are now participating. To be perfectly honest, the whole conversation feels a little bit like big institutions just breaking up to the fact that models in general have gotten really good, as opposed to there being some massive leap with this one specifically. But we did kind of get a preview this week of what a heightened pattern of security incidents might look like. Two big ones were AI development platform Vercell disclosed a major security incident. Describing the attack on Sunday, Vercell said that hackers had gained access to an employee's credentials through a third-party tool. The hackers then accessed additional Vercell systems and exfiltrated user data. Vercell said the incident impacted only a limited group of users who had been contacted. The attack was attributed to criminal hacking and extortion group Shiny Hunters. The group has carried out dozens of sophisticated attacks since 2020, claiming responsibility for last year's Jaguar and Land Rover and Ticketmaster attacks, and more recently hitting Rockstar Games through their Snowflake integration. Vercell CEO Guillermo Roche commented, We believe the attacking group to be highly sophisticated and, I strongly suspect, significantly accelerated by AI. They moved with surprising velocity and in-depth understanding of Vercell.