Google on Wednesday said it would withhold its most powerful artificial intelligence model from the public for now, releasing Gemini 4 Argon only to a vetted group of cybersecurity experts to avoid misuse by hackers. "Safely releasing frontier capabilities at this level requires a phased approach," wrote Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google's chief AI architect, in a blogpost announcing the model. Google said it was voluntarily giving the US government early access to the model and would gather feedback from testers before making it widely available. The cautious rollout mirrors the approach of rival Anthropic, which has kept its most advanced model, Claude Mythos Preview, restricted to a small number of trusted organizations. Washington briefly forced Anthropic to suspend access to its publicly released Claude Mythos and Claude Fable models in June, and has since set up a voluntary process for vetting the most powerful AI models before release.

Anthropic pushes for opt-out model for Australian content as ABC warns of'cannibalisation' of news But Australia's public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, have strongly criticised AI firms, calling on the government to enact strict new rules to compensate media organisations and protect public interest journalism. Everything Australians put online could be scraped for AI under proposed new rules. How will you be affected? The ABC and SBS also suggested the government include AI companies in the news bargaining incentive, which would require them to make commercial deals with large media outlets to support journalism. "As publishers, AI-based services are currently unregulated and receive more favourable treatment than established Australian media. This unequal treatment will accelerate the cannibalisation of the Australian news industry," the ABC said in its submission.

Trump's AI Safety'Accord' Is a Fancy Pinky-Swear Six major AI companies signed a voluntary agreement with the White House this week vowing to implement safeguards. On Tuesday, executives for Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI, and Nvidia all signed "The White House Accord on Super Intelligence," which was announced following a luncheon held by President Donald Trump. The effort was an act of "tremendous self-regulation," as Trump put it, but the agreement is not the sweeping AI regulation that people inside the companies themselves have been asking for. And while failing to honor these public commitments could count as illegally lying to consumers, even that wouldn't be enough to trigger massive reforms. The statement says that companies "should implement" several things: First, they should ensure they have "robust internal controls" to monitor their models' capabilities and ability to not go rogue or hack things in unintended ways.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an investigation into several major artificial intelligence companies amid a wave of recent rogue artificial intelligence agents -- AI systems that can make decisions and take actions on behalf of users -- from firms and claims by former industry insiders that AI could end humanity within the next decade. The FTC launched the investigation several weeks ago. It was first reported on Wednesday by the New York Post and has since been confirmed by other outlets, including the Washington Post and the Reuters news agency. The probe marks the first enforcement action by a federal agency examining rogue agents. The investigation was launched amid a wave of incidents, first reported in July, of agents going rogue in testing, including when an OpenAI agent broke out of containment during testing, hacking into the AI firm Hugging Face.

In her new book on biological warfare, Annie Jacobsen didn't even discuss AI because scientists can already warp Mother Nature to create extinction-level events. We've been hearing a great deal recently about the specter of AI-driven human extinction . Maybe our misplaced trust in AI intelligence will set off World War III . Or AI agents will unleash widespread cyberattacks and take over the internet. Given too much autonomy, the machines will run amok. They may seek to deceive their creators--wait, that's already happened . Suppose they conclude, like Agent Smith in, that "human beings are a plague, and we are the cure." Or perhaps the chatbots help bad humans unleash a literal plague--a biological weapon .

Mashable Selects Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more In My Bag Look Up Creator Playbook Say More AI at School Safety Net Versus Trending Now Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age All Series Reuters reviewed Anthropic's IPO prospectus, revealing new details about the AI company's financials. Matt Binder joined Mashable's tech vertical in 2018, where he covers social media, tech policy, cybersecurity, online scams, cryptocurrency, AI, creator news, weird tech, and other related tech beats. Anthropic lost billions of dollars last year, according to its prospectus to potential investors. Anthropic, one of the biggest AI companies in the world, is currently gearing up to go public. As the Claude-maker prepares for a potential blockbuster IPO later this year, Reuters has got its hands on the company's prospectus, which lays out Anthropic's financials and risks for investors.

Anthropic Says It Discovered a Crispr-Like System. "The experiments are still in the queue. The PR is already live," says one expert. Tech executives have long touted the potential for their AI models to accelerate the pace of biology discoveries. Last week, they announced one.

Is ChatGPT your new Google Workspace alternative? Radhika Rajkumar is a senior editor at ZDNET based in New York City. While last year focused on major releases like apps inside ChatGPT and an agent builder, this year's announcements seem to be fleshing out a long-held suspicion that OpenAI is coming for Google Workspace . Here's what's new for Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans. ChatGPT Space is "a new home for your team to collaborate with AI to get work done," OpenAI said in a blog .

Mashable Selects Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more In My Bag Look Up Creator Playbook Say More AI at School Safety Net Versus Trending Now Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age All Series What we know so far. Eric Miller is the editorial director of Mashable. Anthropic's Claude is reportedly down on Tuesday morning. More than 10,000 users began reporting issues shortly after 10 a.m. Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Claude Sonnet 5.5 is here. This prompt, straight from Anthropic's own docs, helps curb that bad habit. The latest version of Claude Sonnet--Anthropic's workhorse AI model--has just landed, and with it comes a prompt that could help keep any AI agent from leaping into action before making a plan first. Available now on the web, the Claude desktop app, and other Claude platforms, Claude Sonnet 5.5 is Anthropic's middle-of-the-road model, It's a step below Opus 5.5 but apparently just as capable as Fable 5.1 (Anthropic's pricey frontier flagship) and a step above Haiku 5 (a fast but basic Claude model that's due for a 5.5 upgrade).