We're waiting for AI models like they're Taylor Swift albums
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Stock: Getty Images
All the online chatter about new AI models is starting to resemble the hype over the next Taylor Swift album or where LeBron James might end his career.
Why it matters: This is far more serious than a sports team or a mixtape. These AI models can fundamentally change how millions of people work, think, and make decisions — with widespread impact on geopolitics, the economy, and international policy.
How it works: The frenzy might start with a post from "leo," a reliable AI leaker with more than 34,000 followers. ("Leo" even has a Discord channel where people can talk about the leaks).
- That post gets picked up by "Chubby" (Kim Isenberg) — who has more than 130,000 followers and has the quickest guns on X for aggregating AI chatter.
- An AI writer, investor or CEO (like "Theo - t3.gg") might throw in some speculation based on Chubby's post.
- The timeline then becomes a free-flowing river of rumors, information and theories — resembling the nights when Drake and Kendrick Lamar went back-and-forth with rap beef releases.
Case in point: On Tuesday, speculation emerged that Anthropic has been testing Fable 5's successor, likely Fable 5.1, across some accounts, a possible sign of imminent broader release.
- The responses resembled hype over a new Future mixtape: "Dario is cooking something.." one person wrote.
- Another remarked, "It's Anthropic's style to drop updates unceremoniously like that."
About a day earlier, SemiAnalysis founder Dylan Patel theorized that Anthropic's Mythos 2 was already trained and that it was being used to train Mythos 3.
- Like with a heavily teased album, one commenter wrote: "Ant gonna release that shit before end of the year lmao."
- Now, AI news accounts are sharing the rumor with siren emojis.
- So. Many. Siren. Emojis.
Yes, but: Some posters realize that they might be taking it too far.
- A post from an OpenAI employee about Codex bred Taylor Swift-level speculation about when the new Astra model would drop, with some resorting to numerology to guess the release date.
- "We all need to touch grass man," one person replied.
Zoom out: It's not incidental that clues surface on X; it's become the de facto AI town square.
- Along with "Chubby," "leo" and "Haider," accounts like TestingCatalog (73,000 followers) posts product-leak updates about unreleased models and features, while Tibor Blaho (39,400 followers) shares discoveries through reverse engineering.
- There's been so much heat that X even created a custom AI timeline for people to keep up.
Reality check: As Swifties know all too well, the rumor mill is noisy and sometimes wrong.
The bottom line: The hype cycle keeps us enchanted. Don't expect it to calm down.
