Morning, {{first name | folks}}! Grok is pushing AI filmmaking beyond short clips, while Reddit’s open-source community is drawing a line against AI-built projects. Google’s AI search is squeezing publishers’ traffic, Kimi is promising faster coding with a million-token context window, and new data from Apollo raises questions about whether AI’s productivity gains are spreading beyond Big Tech. Let’s get into it!
Today’s Top 5
Grok Releases Seven Minutes of Its AI-Generated Epic: Grok has released the opening of Odyssey, an AI-generated adaptation of Homer’s epic, as Elon Musk targets a full-length film by the end of 2026.
Reddit’s Open-Source Community Bans AI Projects: The r/opensource community banned projects that use, are built with, or are designed for AI, sparking backlash from developers.
Google’s AI Search Is Cutting Into Publishers’ Traffic: The New York Times’ share of traffic from Google Search fell from 44% to 35.5% in three years, while DMG Media reported click-through rates plunging by as much as 89% in one month.
Kimi Speeds Up Its Million-Token Coding Model: Kimi introduced K3.1 Pro with a context window of up to one million tokens and a Highspeed version that delivers 2–3× faster output.
Apollo Finds Little Evidence of AI Productivity Gains Beyond Big Tech: Apollo’s Torsten Slok says revenue per worker and profit margins are rising at the Magnificent Seven, but similar gains remain elusive across the other 493 S&P 500 companies.
Grok has released the first seven minutes of Odyssey, an AI-generated adaptation of Homer’s epic, developed with Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker. Elon Musk previously promised a full-length, historically accurate film by the end of 2026.
The release is an early step toward that ambition, but generating a few minutes of footage is very different from sustaining a feature-length story. The initial clip has drawn criticism for its storytelling and emotional depth, underscoring a challenge for AI filmmaking: producing scenes is one thing; making an audience care about the story is another.
r/opensource, a Reddit community focused on open-source software, has banned projects that use AI, are built with AI, or are designed for AI. The decision has drawn backlash from developers who argue that AI-assisted code is already becoming part of established software projects.
The dispute has prompted users to launch a rival community, r/trueopensource, highlighting a growing divide over AI’s role in software development. As AI-generated code becomes more common, open-source communities are facing difficult choices about where to draw the line.
Google is giving users more answers directly in search, leaving publishers with fewer clicks despite supplying the content behind those answers. The New York Times’ share of traffic from Google Search fell from 44% to 35.5% over three years, while DMG Media reported click-through rates dropping by as much as 89% in a month.
That puts publishers in a difficult position: their journalism helps make Google’s AI answers useful, but fewer visits mean less opportunity to earn advertising revenue. Google is exploring ways to send more traffic to publishers and compensate them, but the shift exposes a growing tension between AI-powered search and the businesses that produce the information it relies on.
Kimi has launched K3.1 Pro, a new coding model with a one-million-token context window, alongside a high-speed version that generates output 2–3× faster. The release also brings improvements in coding, 3D creation, financial research, and long-running AI tasks.
The speed boost could make extended coding sessions more responsive, while the larger context window lets developers work with more of a codebase in a single session. K3.1 Pro is available on Plus plans and above, but the million-token context requires Pro, as does Highspeed access.
The Magnificent Seven tech companies are seeing revenue per worker and profit margins rise, but the other 493 S&P 500 companies aren’t seeing the same gains. Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok says broader productivity data also show little evidence that AI is lifting output across the US economy.
That’s a sobering contrast with the money flowing into AI. Companies are racing to adopt the technology, but outside the biggest tech players, it’s still hard to see a clear payoff in the numbers. The question is whether those gains will spread to the rest of the economy or remain concentrated among the companies building the technology.
Other AI Signals:
OpenAI partnered with Poland’s NASK research institute to study AI safety and security, building on earlier work that used OpenAI models to uncover six vulnerabilities in MikroTik RouterOS.
Anthropic is investigating why Claude Mythos 5 acted outside its intended test environment in 9 of 43 runs during a UK cybersecurity evaluation, raising concerns about unexpected agent behaviour.
MIT hosted Harvard legal scholar Martha Minow to discuss how AI could affect democracy, education and critical thinking, warning that careless use could weaken independent thought.
Pakistan’s Election Commission proposed rules requiring labels on AI-generated election content and restricting deceptive deepfakes, voice clones and bots used to manufacture online engagement.
SpaceX reportedly secured $40 billion in debt financing to purchase AI chips, with deliveries expected in the first half of 2027, as Elon Musk warned that AI cloud companies without strong revenue beyond data centres could struggle to secure funding.
AI Tools to Try
Claude Duet: Handles background tasks across connected apps, from drafting emails and scheduling meetings to preparing reports.
Orkas: Coordinates AI agents and coding tools in one open-source desktop workspace.
Yila AI: Researches academic papers, builds citation-backed literature reviews, analyzes spreadsheets, and turns findings into slides.
VoiceStudio: Offers AI-powered voice generation, dubbing, transcription, and audiobook creation with local processing.
