Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this tag to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW?

Claude subscribers must soon pay usage-based fees to access Anthropic's best consumer AI model--a sign that the golden era of AI subscriptions is ending. AI model developers have long offered consumers a simple deal: Use our technology for free through an online chatbot, or pay a monthly subscription to receive more usage, premium features, and advanced models. Anthropic is about to make that bargain a lot more complicated. Starting on July 12 at 11:59PM PT, subscribers to Anthropic's $20, $100, and $200-a-month plans will need to pay additional usage-based fees to access Claude Fable 5, the consumer version of the company's highly capable Mythos 5 AI model . This appears to be the first time a frontier AI lab has gated a consumer AI model behind usage-based billing.

Trump Says He'll Fast-Track Private Gas Plants to Power AI Data Centers "They can't believe it, that they're approved in a period of a matter of weeks." President Trump speaks to reporters at the White House on July 6, 2026. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. In brief remarks to reporters Monday at the White House, President Donald Trump noted that he was shocked to learn how much energy developing artificial intelligence requires and said his administration is now approving plans for energy facilities to power data centers in "a matter of weeks." After first describing his investment accounts for children, Trump responded to a question on cryptocurrency and said Big Tech leaders racing to develop artificial intelligence have told him they need access to double the country's existing energy capacity in order to advance technologies and outpace foreign competitors.

OpenAI's Chief Futurist Is Leaving the Company Joshua Achiam spent nearly nine years at OpenAI researching AI safety and made a memorable appearance in the trial. OpenAI's chief futurist, Joshua Achiam, notified colleagues on Tuesday that he is leaving the company later this month after nearly nine years, WIRED has learned. Achiam, who previously led a team tasked with upholding the organization's nonprofit mission, told OpenAI staff that his departure was not motivated by any specific reason, but was something he's been thinking about for a while. "The world is in on the secret now and it feels possible to work on the mission from outside the walls of a frontier lab," Achiam said in a note to staff obtained by WIRED. "I believe we can get to a world of peace, unprecedented prosperity, and unimaginable possibilities, social and scientific. Whatever I do next, I will continue to work with you on making this vision real."

During negotiations on Wednesday, employees voiced frustrations with what they consider an unwillingness among senior DeepMind executives to engage meaningfully with the prospect of unionization. Negotiations between Google DeepMind and its London-based employees over the possibility of unionization stumbled this week, after initial talks left union representatives feeling they had wasted their time, WIRED has learned. In May, DeepMind employees asked Google to recognize the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as joint representatives. The company later denied that request, but agreed to participate in negotiations arbitrated by a third-party body. An initial meeting on Wednesday was attended by union officers, DeepMind employees involved in the unionization push, the third-party arbitrator, and DeepMind HR representatives.

Anthropic Added a New Security Measure to Get Back Into the Trump Administration's Good Graces The government has removed restrictions on Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models--but there were strings attached. The Trump administration lifted export controls on Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 AI model after the company agreed to extend an existing guardrail to prevent users from trying to access certain restricted capabilities, according to two people familiar with the matter. The safeguard means any users trying to unlock those capabilities will be notified that their request is blocked and will have their query processed by the less-advanced Opus 4.8 AI model, the people say. Before Anthropic cut off access to Fable 5, user requests related to sensitive cybersecurity and biology capabilities were supposed to be processed by Opus 4.8. The new safeguard, the people say, will extend this guardrail to requests related to a specific behavior identified in a paper by Amazon .

The Trump Administration Is Lifting Its Export Controls on Anthropic's Mythos and Fable AI Models The White House is easing restrictions on Anthropic's most advanced AI models weeks after ordering the company to suspend access for foreign nationals. The Trump administration is lifting export controls on Anthropic's two most powerful AI models after the company reached a deal with the Commerce Department. The news was communicated in a letter sent by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to Anthropic cofounder Tom Brown viewed by WIRED. The department is lifting restrictions on both the Fable 5 model and the more powerful Mythos 5 model, which had so far been approved for release only to select companies and government agencies. "A license is no longer required for the export, reexport, or in-country transfer, including deemed export or deemed reexport, of the Mythos or Fable models," Lutnick wrote.

Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this tag to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW?

For America's 250th birthday, the U.S. government is hosting two major events hosted by rival groups. One got Trump, the other got bigger stars.

Plus: Former national security advisor John Bolton pleads guilty in classified-materials case, Microsoft helps take down major infostealer infrastructure, and more. A WIRED investigation this week offers insight into a predictive policing program in Bristol, England that has involved 23 separate models over more than a decade, intended to score the likelihood of specific individuals will perpetrate or be victims of different crimes. The investigation draws on data from public records requests and other reporting to reveal a messy law enforcement apparatus that has real implications for the community--but that most people in the area know nothing about. After the identities of members of Peter Thiel's private "Dialog" group were exposed last week, the organization claimed that a "criminal" hacker was behind the breach. But evidence shows that members' personal information--including that of a White House intelligence official and an active-duty special operations officer --was publicly accessible and likely exposed as the result of a Dialog website misconfiguration .