Anthropic has released Cowork, a new feature that extends Claude’s capabilities beyond coding to general knowledge work. The tool is available as a research preview for Claude Max subscribers on macOS. Cowork allows users to grant Claude access to specific folders on their computer. The AI assistant can then read, edit, and create files within …
Google has introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard designed to enable AI agents to handle various aspects of online shopping. The company developed the protocol in collaboration with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart. The protocol allows AI agents to manage different stages of the customer journey, from product discovery to post-purchase …
Meta has acquired Manus, a Singapore-based AI startup, for more than $2 billion. The deal represents one of the first major acquisitions by a U.S. tech company of a startup with Chinese roots, according to the Wall Street Journal. Manus builds general-purpose AI agents that autonomously execute complex tasks such as market research, coding, data …
Anthropic’s Claude AI model recently took over the management of a vending machine in the Wall Street Journal newsroom. The experiment aimed to test the autonomy and business logic of AI agents in a real-world setting. Joanna Stern reports for the Wall Street Journal that the project quickly devolved into financial chaos and social engineering. …
Anthropic has released Agent Skills as an open standard, making the technology available across different AI platforms. The company first introduced skills in October as a way to teach Claude repeatable workflows. Now the system works beyond Claude, with Microsoft, Cursor, and other platforms adopting it. Skills are folders containing instructions and scripts that tell …
Anthropic has transferred ownership of its Model Context Protocol to the newly established Agentic AI Foundation, a directed fund under the Linux Foundation. The foundation was co-founded by Anthropic, Block, and OpenAI, with additional support from Google, Microsoft, AWS, Cloudflare, and Bloomberg. The Model Context Protocol serves as a universal standard for connecting AI applications …
Microsoft has introduced Fara-7B, a new artificial intelligence agent designed to perform complex computer tasks directly on a user’s device. The model is small enough to run locally, which enhances data security and privacy by keeping sensitive information on the user’s personal computer. As Ben Dickson reports for VentureBeat, Fara-7B operates by visually interpreting the …
A new study by the online work marketplace Upwork shows that artificial intelligence agents frequently fail to complete professional tasks on their own. However, their performance improves dramatically when they collaborate with human experts, with project completion rates increasing by up to 70 percent. Michael Nuñez reports for VentureBeat that this is the first major …
The AI company Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4.5, its latest flagship model. The launch is accompanied by a significant price reduction, new product features, and performance claims that position it competitively against models from rivals like OpenAI and Google. According to Anthropic, Claude Opus 4.5 delivers state-of-the-art performance, particularly in software engineering and complex …
Google’s latest artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3, represents a significant step beyond conversational chatbots. The model functions as an agent that can understand complex goals and execute multi-step tasks on a computer. Ethan Mollick writes for his Substack newsletter “One Useful Thing” about his tests of the new system. He concludes that AI is evolving …