🦞 OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI 🦞
Top open-source talent joins OpenAI, reshaping the personal agent race.

Peter Steinberger, the developer behind the viral open-source personal AI assistant OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot/Moltbot), has officially joined OpenAI to work on its next generation of personal agents. The project had amassed over 175,000 GitHub stars in just months by automating routine tasks like booking travel, managing email, and handling daily workflows. Steinberger reportedly turned down offers from Meta, calling OpenAI "the fastest way to bring this to everyone." Critically, OpenClaw will remain open source under an independent foundation, with OpenAI sponsoring development and granting access to its cutting-edge models. The hire intensifies competitive pressure in the personal AI agent space as OpenAI absorbs top community talent to build its consumer agent pipeline.

💼 Suleyman pushes Microsoft toward AI independence 💼
Microsoft's AI chief signals a strategic split from its $13B OpenAI partnership.

Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft's AI chief, has outlined plans to reduce the company's reliance on OpenAI by developing proprietary AI models, pursuing what he calls "true self-sufficiency." In a Financial Times interview, Suleyman also made the bold prediction that most white-collar work will be "fully automated by AI within 12 to 18 months" — one of the most aggressive timelines from any Big Tech executive. This could fundamentally reshape the $13 billion Microsoft-OpenAI partnership, as Microsoft moves to build competitive in-house capabilities. The shift reflects a broader industry trend of major tech players hedging against single-vendor dependency for core AI infrastructure.

⚔️ Pentagon used Claude AI in Maduro Venezuela raid ⚔️
Anthropic's flagship model surfaces in an active military operation.

Anthropic's Claude was reportedly deployed by the Pentagon in operations tied to the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, accessed through Anthropic's integration with defense firm Palantir. This is one of the highest-profile known instances of a frontier AI model used in an active military context — despite Anthropic's usage guidelines explicitly prohibiting facilitation of violence or surveillance. The revelation intensifies the dual-use AI regulation debate and puts competitive pressure on Anthropic's positioning as a safety-focused lab.

INTERESTING TO KNOW

🔒 ChatGPT ships Lockdown Mode against prompt injection 🔒

OpenAI has rolled out an optional Lockdown Mode for ChatGPT, ChatGPT Atlas, and Codex, a first for user-facing AI security controls. The feature adds "Elevated Risk" labels to capabilities that increase exposure to prompt-injection attacks — a growing concern as AI tools integrate with external data sources and third-party services. The rollout targets enterprise and developer users operating in sensitive environments and could set a pricing and access precedent for other AI providers to implement similar defensive features.

🍔 Grok powers US government dietary site — chaos follows 🍔

The Trump administration launched RealFood.gov, a new dietary guidelines website announced during a Super Bowl commercial, with xAI's Grok embedded as its AI nutritional advisor. The site promised users could "plan meals" and "shop smarter," but testers at 404 Media and Wired quickly found Grok giving wildly inappropriate advice — and even contradicting the administration's own pro-protein messaging. The White House quietly removed Grok's branding but confirmed it remains the underlying chatbot, exposing the risks of deploying unvetted AI on public government platforms.