Meta yesterday announced Muse, a personal AI agent built on the latest generation of models developed under chief AI officer Alexandr Wang.

Why it matters: The product, long in development, was touted as a key next step by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in his recent 6,500-word manifesto.

Driving the news: Muse exists in a chat interface, similar to a text thread.

• It's designed to be more proactive and long-running than typical chatbots. Users can name their agent, create an avatar and customize how it communicates.
• The Muse agent runs on a dedicated virtual machine in Meta's cloud, using a built-in browser that's visible to the user. Meta is offering a free tier of Muse, as well as two subscription options, at $20 per month and $100 per month.

What they're saying: "For the vast majority of users, they should be able to do what they need to within the free tier," Wang told Axios. "But for real power users, you know, those subscription tiers help us cover the compute costs."

• There is no advertising within Muse, but Wang said the company is exploring commerce opportunities that could generate additional revenue.
• Initially Muse is available in the U.S. and works on iOS, Android and the web, with support coming soon for Meta's AI glasses.

The big picture: Wang described Muse as an early but big step toward Meta's broader goal of "personal superintelligence."

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OpenAI says its AI has solved the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize problem, a potentially historic breakthrough shadowed by questions over unpublished research by outside mathematicians.

Why it matters: The controversy strikes at a core trust question for AI-assisted science: whether researchers can safely use frontier labs' tools to work on unpublished discoveries.

State of play: OpenAI said yesterday an internal model "significantly more capable than GPT-6 Astra" produced a proof that the three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations can develop a singularity in finite time.

• The company says the effort began Sept. 1, after OpenAI researchers heard rumors that two Millennium Prize problems had been solved and launched its new internal model at the remaining problems.
• On a call with reporters, OpenAI executives said they devoted enormous computing power to the effort, putting the cost of solving the problem in the "millions of dollars" with roughly 10,000 agents at work.
• The equations help explain how fluids move, which could be used to better understand everything from blood circulation to weather patterns.

Friction point: NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster and Anthropic researcher Levent Alpöge had been working on closely related fluid-dynamics research.

• Buckmaster publicly questioned whether OpenAI raced down a research direction it learned about from their work and raised concerns about whether private Codex material could have played a role.
• He also alleged that OpenAI researcher Sébastien Bubeck pushed to remove Alpöge from authorship because he works for Anthropic, OpenAI's biggest competitor.

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OpenAI launched ChatGPT Images 2.5 yesterday, the company shared first with Axios.

Why it matters: For all their capabilities, AI image generators have struggled in the past to keep people and pets looking like themselves, and editing tools have been limited.

The big picture: The updated image engine within ChatGPT is not only faster than its predecessor, but does a much better job preserving the likeness of people and pets and allows for more detailed editing, according to Axios' early testing of the model.

Between the lines: Any discussion of AI image generation is incomplete without acknowledging its ethical implications.

• I've been an enthusiastic early user, making soccer cards for my son's team, turning photos into coloring pages for parties, and designing logos. But I've also heard strong pushback from friends who now find themselves competing with systems built, in part, on uncompensated creative labor.

The other side: "The sketch tool and these templates are kind of an attempt to make people more engaged in the process of creation, rather than them being a passive force," Adele Li, OpenAI's product lead on images, told Axios.

• "I don't want to be able to see ChatGPT in the world," she said. "I want people to be able to generate and express their own individualism."

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A landmark copyright lawsuit filed by the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023 moved into a critical new phase Friday, as all three parties presented their official arguments to a judge, with hopes of a favorable ruling ahead of a possible trial.

Why it matters: A ruling in favor of the Times could wreak havoc on the lucrative business models underpinning the AI industry.

• A ruling in favor of OpenAI and Microsoft would serve as a massive blow to the publishing industry, potentially undermining its ability to control and monetize how content is scraped and used by AI giants.

Zoom in: In its motion for summary judgment, the Times argued OpenAI and Microsoft copied its works at scale to build commercial substitutes, which it believes violates the law.

Disclosure: Axios and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI to access part of Axios' story archives while helping fund the launch of Axios into several local cities and providing some AI tools. Axios has editorial independence.

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AI leaders are sounding the alarm as their own breakthroughs sharpen an extraordinary dilemma: slow down and risk falling behind, or press ahead and risk losing control.

Why it matters: AI executives and researchers increasingly see a race they can't safely slow on their own. Instead, they're urging governments, rivals and outside institutions to impose restraint across the field.

• "The idea of racing forward at all costs seems absurd once one internalizes the seriousness of the stakes," OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki wrote Sunday.
• Meanwhile, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon said yesterday he was leaving the company rather than contribute to what he sees as a race between OpenAI and Anthropic to build systems that will be difficult if not impossible to control.
• "Neither company is acting responsibly," he said in a post on X. "They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."
• Colleague Evan Hubinger, who leads alignment science at Anthropic, posted in support of Coxon: "Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is (greater than) 10% within the next decade," he said. "I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to."

State of play: OpenAI has spent the past week unveiling capabilities so dramatic that its own leaders — and industry titans like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang — openly invoked the arrival of artificial general intelligence, or AGI.

• OpenAI defines the term as AI that can outperform humans across most economically valuable work.
• GPT-6 Astra, released Thursday and heralded as a "generational leap" toward AGI, demonstrated major gains across science, coding, cybersecurity and professional work.

Zoom out: That burst of progress is fueling an existential debate inside OpenAI over how far — and how fast — the AI race can safely go.

Keep reading.

• Anthropic is cutting ties with the Information Technology Industry Council, an industry advocacy group, over legislation that would curb foreign access to U.S. chips, as Maria Curi scooped yesterday. (Axios)
• Another scoop from Maria: The Trump administration's new AI framework lacks guidelines for reporting incidents caused by advanced models before they're released. (Axios)
• Qualcomm struck a deal to help Amazon with its chips, also giving the tech giant the opportunity to purchase $4 billion in Qualcomm stock. (CNBC)

It's a bittersweet day at AI+ HQ as we bid a fond farewell to tech editor Megan Morrone, who is off to a new adventure.

• Flashback: Here's a link to Megan's debut on TechTV's "The Screen Savers."