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Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI companies are privately war-gaming scenarios for public and political backlash following a catastrophic AI event, most likely a large-scale cyberattack disrupting financial services, internet, or power and water. Many top AI researchers believe such an incident is inevitable within six to twelve months. Planning focuses on educating Congress and shaping future regulation. A recent case saw a hacker use Anthropic's Claude Code to sell data stolen from tens of thousands of South Korean bank customers.

Midjourney is testing a new "Thinking Mode" for image generation on its Alpha website at alpha.midjourney.com. Users can access it by opening the lightbox for a job and clicking "Rerun (Thinking)" in the lower right corner. Internal tests show the mode improves prompt accuracy, typography, and image coherence. Midjourney may eventually offer it broadly or as an add-on after generation. The team is seeking user feedback via the #ideas-and-features channel.

Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni, three safety researchers fired by OpenAI last week, published an open letter denying misconduct allegations and warning their dismissal is chilling internal safety culture. OpenAI claimed they violated policies by mishandling sensitive company information, but the researchers say their actions were normal and sanctioned. They called on OpenAI to uphold commitments to third-party safety audits and model monitorability, warning that employees who raise concerns or collaborate with outside safety groups now risk termination without explanation.

Johns Hopkins astrophysicist Brice Ménard, also a researcher at Anthropic, used Claude Science to create the first complete ultraviolet map of the entire sky. The project combined data from NASA's GALEX mission, Swift, South Korea's FIMS/SPEAR, and ESA's Gaia satellite. Claude orchestrated multiple AI agents to calibrate, merge, and inpaint roughly one-third of the sky never observed in UV, achieving predictions within 10% of real measurements. The map reveals dust clouds, stellar explosion rings, and Magellanic Cloud structures.

OpenAI has released GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast alongside an improved instant steering feature, announced on Day 4 of what appears to be a rolling release event. The upgraded steering system now reacts much faster to user adjustments, enabling real-time course corrections without the model wasting computational effort on unwanted directions. GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast and the instant steering capability are noted to work especially well together, improving overall responsiveness and control during model interactions.

Anthropic has launched the Anthropic Cyber Mission, a long-term initiative to defend critical infrastructure and open-source software using AI. The program introduces two tools: the Critical Infrastructure Defense Program (CIDP), which deploys Claude models, on-site engineers, and threat research to partners including CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Dragos, and Deloitte; and OSS Scanner, a free opt-in service that scans open-source projects for vulnerabilities using Anthropic's strongest models, targeting a 90% true-positive rate.

Anthropic has launched OSS Scanner, a free opt-in vulnerability detection service for open-source projects, powered by its strongest Claude models including Claude Mythos. Built on experience from Project Glasswing, the scanner has already identified over 29,000 candidate vulnerabilities across major projects. Reports include reproducers, explanations, and candidate patches, without human review. Early testers like PostgreSQL, OpenSSL, and wolfSSL reported high signal quality. Eligible projects can enroll via a GitHub pull request following OSS-Fuzz-style criteria for critical infrastructure impact.

OpenAI has launched Ultrafast mode for GPT-6.1 Sol, rolling out today across the API, Codex, and ChatGPT Work. The mode delivers near-Astra intelligence at up to 8x faster speeds than Sol Standard, targeting use cases like debugging outages, agents navigating apps, and live experiences. API pricing is $12 per million input tokens and $60 per million output tokens. In Codex and ChatGPT Work, access requires Pro 500, eligible Enterprise, or credit-based Edu plans, with Enterprise admins needing to enable it manually.