TNB Tech Minute: Meta Unveils Its Own Coding Agent

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
What happens when work becomes too much work? The disconnected systems, the updates, the scramble to make every customer feel like your only customer. But right now, Virgin Voyages is using Gemini Enterprise to turn millions of data points into a virtual concierge that fields endless guest questions. So crew members can focus on world-class hospitality at sea. No more digging, scrolling or scrambling. Work is less work with Gemini Enterprise from Google Cloud.

**Imani Moise** (0:31)
Here's your morning TNB Tech Minute for Thursday, August 6th. I'm Imani Moise for the Wall Street Journal. Meta announced a new coding agent yesterday, called Muse Code, that it's pitching as a cheaper alternative to competitors. Meta's AI chief said some employees are already using the tool internally, and the company expects internal usage to ramp up. Investors have pressed Meta to show returns from lavish spending on AI talent and computing power. The Muse Code agent has two price tiers. One that's the same as this general Muse Spark model, and another that is less than one-tenth the cost. To access a less expensive tier, which costs 20 cents per million output tokens, users must agree to provide feedback to help improve the agent. Anthropix Cloud Code and OpenAI's Codex come bundled in pricing plans that cost roughly $20 a month, with more expensive plans for increased usage.
In other Meta news, the company said one of its AI models went rogue during cybersecurity testing and hacked a third-party service. The latest in a drumbeat of disclosures that suggests such incidents are becoming widespread. Meta said one of its AI models was able to access the internet because of a misconfiguration in a hacking test conducted by a third-party testing company, Irregular.
According to a person familiar with the matter, the same benchmark test was behind some of the earlier autonomous AI hacking incidents involving Anthropic and OpenAI.
Meta declined to release other details, such as which model was responsible, when the hacking happened, or which company its model hacked. The tech giant said it was investigating and would publish a report.
And SoftBank said today it's used its stake in OpenAI to borrow $10 billion from a group of banks, dialing up risk on its giant bet on the AI pioneer. The global tech investor plans to use the cash to help fund an even bigger stake in OpenAI. The firm is poised to pay another $10 billion for shares in the ChatGPT maker by October, the final chunk of a $30 billion investment announced earlier this year. The loan comes as the Japanese group embarks on a wave of hefty new AI spending commitments. The deal is an unusual move as backers of OpenAI and other large startups typically don't invest using debt. And that's your TNB Tech Minute. We'll be back this afternoon with more.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:56)
What happens when work becomes too much work? The disconnected systems, the updates, the scramble to make every customer feel like your only customer. But right now, Virgin Voyages is using Gemini Enterprise to turn millions of data points into a virtual concierge that fields endless guest questions. So crew members can focus on world-class hospitality at sea. No more digging, scrolling or scrambling. Work is less work with Gemini Enterprise from Google Cloud.