The AI Wire ●

Alongside the wider Gemini 4 Argon release, Google added a tasks mode to the Gemini app for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers on October 13. A toggle in the main chat window switches from conversation to task assignment, and Gemini can keep working on a job after the user steps away from the computer.

Google says the app now connects to more than 40 apps, including Instacart, OpenTable, Adobe and Shopify, so tasks can run from grocery orders and restaurant bookings to design and business work. Google also says Argon answers more directly in the app, gives more frequent progress updates on longer jobs, and brings the Antigravity agentic coding interface into the Gemini app for macOS.

Tasks mode is still rolling out and is limited to select countries for Pro subscribers. It is the shipped, consumer form of the Gemini Tasks idea first reported as a desktop test in September — see the September 25 rumor, now marked confirmed, for the earlier form of the story.

Google made Gemini 4 Argon generally available on October 13, following its September announcement and months of delays. The model is live for developers and enterprises through the API in AI Studio and the Gemini platform, for Google AI Ultra subscribers in the Antigravity coding tool, and for AI Ultra and Pro subscribers in the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search.

Google positions Argon for deep, multi-step work in coding, finance, law, cybersecurity and science, and says it ranks first on the Vals Index across finance, coding, legal and tax work. Launch pricing is introductory, at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, with cached input heavily discounted; Reuters reports the rates are set to double after November 30.

Alongside the release, Google is expanding its Fairwind Program, which gives vetted cyber defenders a version of the model without its cyber guardrails, to hundreds of additional partners. It is also offering 10,000 scientists six months of free access to Antigravity's highest usage tier, on a rolling, selective basis.

ARC Prize published verified benchmark results on October 15: Argon scored 97.5% on ARC-AGI-3 using ARC Prize's provider adapter harness — a setup that keeps the model's reasoning between steps and compacts context — at a run cost of about $4,800, making Google the second lab after OpenAI to pass 95% (GPT-6 Astra holds 99.9%). Under the provider-neutral standard harness, Argon's score fell to 49.8%. Epoch AI's Capabilities Index put Argon at 165, tied with Claude Fable 5.1 and just behind Opus 5.5 at 167 and Astra at 166, while noting it still lags in math and software engineering.

A new model identifier, azure_ai/claude-fable-5-5, appeared in LiteLLM's model data on October 13, sourced from an Azure Models API listing for the East US 2 region. The listing marks the model as generally available with a December 2027 deprecation date, but nearly every other field is inherited from Fable 5.1, and no source yet states a price, capability or context figure specific to Fable 5.5.

A tipster cited by Wccftech said Fable 5.5 is slated to land this week, possibly as soon as today, barring late hold-ups. Separate chatter claimed a quiet grey-scale test in the Claude web interface, but those reports are anecdotal and unverified.

Treat this as rumor-grade for now. Anthropic's own documentation, pricing pages and newsroom still list Fable 5.1 as the newest Fable model, with Haiku 5.5 on October 7 as its most recent model announcement, and independent trackers have no Fable 5.5 page. An infrastructure listing is a classic pre-launch tell, not a launch.

Update October 16: a leaker account, Lyra, claimed on October 15 that partner companies have received Fable 5.5 for testing and guessed at a launch next week, while stressing there was no release date. Separately, the LiteLLM listing that started this rumor had been removed by October 16. Anthropic has still announced nothing, and Fable 5.1 remains its newest Fable model, so this stays unresolved.

Update October 17: TestingCatalog reported that Fable 5.5 has reportedly reached Anthropic's partners, with six early-access codenames spotted in the Devin CLI, plus one in a GitHub model picker, suggesting it may not be the only model on the way; the codename Onigiri is tipped as the favourite for Fable 5.5. Anthropic has confirmed nothing, and a launch next week is presented as plausible, not scheduled, so this stays unresolved.

Apple rounded out its October 13 home lineup with a new Apple TV 4K and a HomePod mini 2, alongside the HomeView hub covered earlier today. The Apple TV 4K costs $299, uses an A19 chip, and adds far-field microphones so viewers can talk to Siri AI without the remote; pre-orders opened October 13, with availability on November 13.

The HomePod mini 2 costs $149, comes in five colours, and pairs with the new Apple TV for up to four-speaker surround sound. It goes on sale October 30, with Siri AI arriving later in a software update and requiring a paired Apple Intelligence-enabled device for personal context.

Both devices are built around Siri AI, Apple's more conversational assistant, which Apple is also bringing to older Apple TV models as a free beta update. Prices are up on the models they replace, so whether the AI features justify the step up will depend on how complete Siri AI is at launch.

Apple announced HomeView on October 13, a new home hub with a 7-inch display that combines entertainment, FaceTime calls, home monitoring and smart-home control in one device. It can sit on a tabletop or be wall-mounted, and pre-orders opened the same day, with availability beginning November 13.

The device is powered by Apple Intelligence with what Apple calls an entirely new version of Siri, described as more conversational and more capable, with on-screen awareness and richer music discovery. When paired with an Apple Intelligence-enabled device, it can also draw on personal context from apps such as Calendar and Messages.

Apple says the hub recognises users by their faces and adapts to each person, surfacing their own Messages, FaceTime, Calendar, Reminders and Find My content. Privacy and security are presented as core to the design, though the detailed data-handling terms will matter once the device ships.

Anthropic has moved its main internal monorepo off Git and onto Scion, a version-control system a seven-person team built over five months, the company said in an October 13 engineering post. A companion code-review tool is called Antique.

The driver was volume: merged changes rose from about 2,500 a day in May to more than 30,000 a day by September, a twelvefold jump Anthropic attributes largely to Claude writing and merging code. Git's model, built for human-paced work, became the bottleneck.

Scion is internal only — Anthropic says it is not a general-purpose Git replacement and will not be released as a standalone product. The company instead plans to share its architectural approach with GitHub, GitLab and open-source maintainers.

Britain's AI Security Institute has been given access to the latest advanced AI models and is evaluating them with the US government and major developers, AI Minister Kanishka Narayan confirmed on October 12. He named Google's Gemini 4 Argon among the models now under evaluation.

The confirmation follows reports last month that the White House had asked some developers to withhold new systems from British testers pending a US review, which had cast doubt on the institute's pre-deployment access. Under voluntary agreements, the institute receives models before deployment to test capabilities and safeguards.

The announcement did not list every model under evaluation. Scrutiny of agent safety has intensified in recent weeks after several labs disclosed rogue or undesired behaviour by their own systems during testing.

SpaceXAI announced The X Subscription on October 12, a single plan that bundles Grok, the Cursor coding tool and X Premium, replacing the separate SuperGrok, X Premium and Cursor subscriptions. Existing subscribers can stay on their current plans, pricing and features unless they choose to switch.

The confirmed tiers, published October 13, are Free, Plus at $8 a month, Premium at $30, Super at $100 and Ultra at $200. Paid tiers share one weekly usage pool across Grok and Cursor, managed from a common dashboard, and switching cancels the eligible existing plans with a prorated refund for unused time.

One warning from the company's own documentation: switching is permanent and cannot be reversed, so users are told to review which accounts they are combining first. The rollout is gradual, so availability may not show in every account's billing settings yet.

Day 8 of Tibo Sottiaux's 28-day Codex pledge — an improvement every day, or a full usage reset — was a reset. Tibo posted 'Day 8 / Reset' on October 12 and said the global reset would land by end of day Pacific Time, restoring usage limits for Codex and ChatGPT Work users.

It is the latest in a run of resets in the pledge, following full resets on Days 3 and 6. Trackers following Tibo's posts listed Day 9, October 13, as still waiting for its improvement or reset at the time of writing.

For users, the practical point is simple: paid Codex and Work limits were refreshed early, outside the normal weekly cycle. As with earlier resets, anyone saving leftover quota should not assume it carries over.

The Information reported on October 12 that OpenAI is in talks to revive Sora, the video model it shut down earlier this year — the consumer app, website and API were closed in March and a reported $1 billion Disney deal died with them — through a stealth startup co-founded by Hollywood producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, former Sora research lead Bill Peebles, and former Dropbox CFO Sujay Jaswa.

Under the talks, the startup would get deep access to customize Sora and would sell software or services built on it to the film industry, aimed at professional filmmakers rather than the general public. OpenAI would take an equity stake if a deal closes. It is unclear whether the startup would receive Sora's model weights, though sources say the access discussed would be deep enough for extensive customization.

Nothing has been signed and there is no timeline. This is a single-source report about private negotiations, with no comment or announcement from OpenAI, so it stays rumor-tier until the companies say something themselves.

OpenAI said on October 12 that it will create 200 additional jobs in Ireland, including roles supporting a new Applied AI Lab at its EU headquarters. The announcement was made alongside Ireland's Taoiseach and the head of IDA Ireland during International AI Summit week.

The new roles add to 250 announced in July, taking OpenAI's total commitment in Ireland to at least 450 roles, on top of more than 120 people already employed there. The jobs will be based at the Tropical Fruit Warehouse, which the company is due to occupy from December 2026.

Technical hiring for the lab includes forward deployed engineers who work directly with customers, plus solutions and privacy engineers. OpenAI is also hiring across sales and user operations in Dublin.

OpenAI is taking DevDay beyond San Francisco with a series of smaller DevDay Exchange events in eight cities. The tour starts in Bengaluru on October 16, then Tokyo on October 20, Seoul on October 22, Berlin on October 26 and Paris on October 28.

It continues to London on November 3, Sao Paulo on November 6 and Mexico City on November 10. Each event is listed as starting at 2 p.m. local time, with venues and full programmes shared after applications are approved.

OpenAI says the exchanges will feature technical sessions with its product and engineering teams, demonstrations of real projects and Codex workflows, and hands-on guidance. The company has not promised new product launches at each stop; the tour follows the September 29 San Francisco DevDay that launched GPT-6.1 Sol and Dots.

OpenAI announced on October 12 that it will create 200 additional jobs in Ireland, including roles supporting a new Applied AI Lab at its EU headquarters in Dublin. The investment is supported by IDA Ireland.

The new roles add to 250 announced in July, bringing OpenAI's total planned Irish job creation to at least 450. The company currently employs more than 120 people in Ireland and will move into its new headquarters at the Tropical Fruit Warehouse from December 2026.

Technical roles in the lab include forward deployed engineers who work directly with customers to build and deploy AI applications, plus solutions and privacy engineers. Hiring also spans sales and user operations.

Microsoft is retiring Themes by Copilot, the AI-generated visual themes in the new Outlook, starting in mid-October 2026. Copilot licence holders will lose the generated themes by late October; a theme already applied stays in place until the user changes it.

The retirement is part of a wider simplification of Copilot inside Outlook. Microsoft has told admins the Outlook Copilot experience will move in October to a simpler, chat-centred design with improved navigation and Work IQ controls, after the feature had spread across a floating button, the ribbon, compose, search and a full chat pane.

Copilot itself is not leaving Outlook: it remains in the ribbon and can be turned off, and drafting and rewriting help in compose stays. The change is Microsoft pulling back a decorative feature and consolidating the surfaces where Copilot can be triggered.

Microsoft unveiled its Azure Maia 300 chip at the OCP Global Summit in San Jose on October 12, the newest step in its plan to rely less on Nvidia and AMD for AI inference. The company says Maia 300 will join Maia 100 and Maia 200 in multigigawatt deployments beginning next year.

Microsoft claims the chip delivers about 40% more tokens per megawatt than leading GPU-based systems, and that a 96-chip rack offers roughly seven times the rack-scale token throughput of Maia 200. Those are company figures, not independent benchmarks.

Maia 200 already runs production workloads including Microsoft 365 Copilot and OpenAI models. If Maia 300 ships on the stated schedule from 2027, Microsoft says its Maia family will become its primary AI inference system for its own products and services.

Update (October 13): Reuters reports Microsoft plans to deploy potentially more than a million Maia 300 chips next year to back its internal AI services. That scale, if it holds, makes Maia core inference infrastructure rather than a side project, in a year when Microsoft expects capital spending above $175 billion.