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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

That means today's edition of WIRED's Model Behavior newsletter is my last, but it will go on without me. Here's the note I sent to subscribers today:

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

New: OpenAI is developing a "Persistent" mode for its AI agent, Codex. Persistent mode is a new level of reasoning effort that will make Codex "continue working until put to sleep." The agent will also proactively create follow up tasks for itself, per code reviewed by WIRED.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I chatted with CEO of The Browser Company, Josh Miller, about the state of AI products. We talked about how tech companies are shipping products to capture their technology's capabilities, rather than tailoring products to what everyday people want.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

it's the last day to present new evidence in the musk v altman trial openai brought its ass

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

NEW: Google quietly shut down Project Mariner yesterday, the web-browsing AI agent it highlighted onstage last year at Google IO. I reported for WIRED, nearly 2 months ago, that Google had moved staffers off the Project Mariner team as it responded to OpenClaw-style agents.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

New: The Musk v Altman trial is just getting started, but the public opinion war is well under way. On Monday morning, Musk used his social media platform, X, to promote The New Yorker's extensive investigation into Sam Altman's history of allegedly deceptive behavior.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

New: Anthropic is opposing the OpenAI-backed Illinois bill that would shield AI labs from liability for mass deaths or financial disasters caused by AI models. Governor Pritzker is signaling he doesn't like the bill, but it's exposing new battlelines in the AI policy debate.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

NEW: More than 30 OpenAI and Google employees—including Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean —filed an amicus brief in support of Anthropic in its lawsuit against the US government.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

New: Sources tell me the Pentagon first experimented with OpenAI's models as early as 2023, but through Microsoft. At the time, OpenAI explicitly banned military use of its AI. It wasn't clear then, but OpenAI now says that ban never applied to Microsoft.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Google's head of security responded internally to clarify the Cambridge incident, though they did not address the broader concerns.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Here's part of the message from a GDM employee, which was sent to the company's roughly 3,000 person AI unit on Monday. More than 20 people reacted with "plus" emojis. Google's leaders have yet to address it internally, or respond to the ICE incident in Minnesota generally.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

New: Google DeepMind staffers are asking company leaders for "plans and policies" to stop ICE from entering Google's campuses, according to internal messages viewed by WIRED One GDM staffer alleges that a federal agent tried to enter Google's Cambridge campus in the fall.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

New: OpenAI says it will start testing ads in the United States "in the coming weeks." The company says ads will NOT influence ChatGPT’s responses, and that it won’t sell user data to advertisers.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

NEW: More details on the drama at Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab. TML leaders believe its cofounder Barret Zoph engaged in an incident of serious misconduct last year, leading to trust issues between him and Murati. But now, more researchers are following him and joining OpenAI.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

NEW: Thinking Machines cofounders Barret Zoph and Luke Metz are back at OpenAI after leaving the ChatGPT-maker less than two years ago. Zoph told Mira Murati he was considering leaving her startup on Monday. She fired him today, alleging he shared confidential info with competitors, a source said.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

NEW: OpenAI is asking third-party contractors to upload *real work* they've done at current or past jobs to evaluate their AI models. OpenAI leaves it up to contractors to remove any confidential info. scoop w/ @willknight.bsky.social and @zoeschiffer.bsky.social

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

New: OpenAI quietly rolled back ChatGPT's model router for free users last week. The router—which was costly for the company to serve, but aimed to improve answer quality—was thought to be hurting engagement, one person familiar with the matter told WIRED.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

SCOOP: As OpenAI faces increased scrutiny over how ChatGPT responds to distressed users, a research leader spearheading that work announced her departure, WIRED has learned. Andrea Vallone, the head of model policy, will leave the company by the end of 2025.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Excited to announce I’m joining @wired.com as a senior writer covering the business of AI! I’ve long been a fan of WIRED, but its recent coverage has felt especially impactful. I'm thrilled to work with this talented team, and continue reporting on AI as it reshapes Silicon Valley and the world.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Ex-OpenAI safety researcher Steven Adler got his hands on one of ChatGPT's famous cases of delusional spiraling. Today he published his analysis of Allan Brooks' incident in May, first covered by @nytimes.com “I’m really concerned by how OpenAI handled support here,” Adler told me.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Scoop: OpenAI reorganized its Model Behavior team to be closer to core model development, TechCrunch has learned. Plus, the founding leader of Model Behavior, Joanne Jang, is starting a new unit called "OAI Labs," focused on "novel interactions" between humans and AI.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

SCOOP: A Scale executive Alexandr Wang brought over to help run MSL has departed Meta after just two months. Plus, researchers in TBD Labs have complained that Scale AI's data is low quality, and are using its competitors, Surge and Mercor, to train next-gen AI models.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

NEW: Meta is updating how it trains AI chatbots such that they can't have inappropriate romantic conversations with teenage users. This follows a bombshell report that found Meta was allowing its AI chatbots to have sensual chats with teens. Meta calls these "interim" changes.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

NEW: Cloudflare has a big idea to give publishers a lifeline in the AI era. It's called Pay per Crawl, and it forces AI companies to pay publishers every time they scrape a website. New websites set up with Cloudflare will also block all AI crawlers by default now.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

NEW: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei claims that AI models today hallucinate less than humans do. I asked Amodei whether hallucinations were a limitation to AGI at Anthropic's Code with Claude event. He argued it's not, and claimed to see no "hard blocks" on what AI can achieve.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

NEW: At I/O 2025, Google laid out a future where AI agent bring users the web in whatever medium they like. This pitch of AI-enabled Search is much more convincing than last year's AI Overviews launch, however, it likely has larger implications for the web.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

As people fill in their seats at Google I/O 2025, employees are vibecoding productivity apps onstage. Help

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

NEW: Mark Zuckerberg spoke in SF on Tuesday and laid out his plan to test thousands of AI generated ads across Meta's apps. This black box ad tool has obvious implications for marketers, but also users on Meta's platforms, which are quickly filling up with AI slop

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Mark Zuckerberg is talking at Stripe’s conference, and was just asked about Apple: “Tim’s had a bad week, I’m not gonna pile on… but I like Sundar”

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

NEW: A study led by Cohere researchers claims LM Arena helped a select group of top AI labs — including Meta, Google, Amazon, and OpenAI — game its popular Chatbot Arena. LM Arena co-founder Ion Stoica tells me the study is full of "inaccuracies" and "questionable analysis."

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Meta's first AI developer event, LlamaCon, is official wrapped. It felt more about OpenAI than developers. The company released a Meta AI chatbot app and a Llama API service, both of which seem poised to undercut OpenAI's core businesses.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

NEW: OpenAI has been on a quest to acquire a vibecoding startup. Why? Just look at the rapidly rising revenues of Cursor and Windsurf, which we unveil in here. But buying one is easier said than done.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

NEW: OpenAI says it's not releasing the standard safety report — AKA a system card — for GPT-4.1, that it has released for most of its previous AI models. The company's excuse? OpenAI says GPT-4.1 is not a frontier AI model.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Meta saying it just happened to release a version of Llama 4 that performs well on LMArena seems harmless, until you actually look at the responses this thing gives and realizes no one would ever want an AI chatbot that talks like this.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

NEW: There's no shortage of tech CEOs giving the bull case for how LLMs will reach AGI in a few years. But some AI leaders are more skeptical. Today's AI models still struggle with creativity, which some experts point to as a key limitation to achieving true superintelligence

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Pivot back to free expression going well so far

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

SCOOP: We got details from inside the Humane acquisition. Tuesday was a chaotic day for Humane employees, full of impromptu meetings to explain what the acquisition means, big job offers to work at HP for some, and layoffs for others. Read it @techcrunch.com

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Not sure why Dario Amodei and Demis Hassabis are sitting on a very small couch in this interview – while the Economist's EIC is on a very large couch by herself – but I like it

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Wanna know when a company is not happy about how much its assets were valued for? Typically, putting the number at the bottom of the press release is a good hint!

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Elon's bid to takeover OpenAI is as ridiculous as it is brilliant. Most nonprofits would never have to consider a $97B hostile takeover bid from Elon Musk. And yet, OpenAI may end up defending why it didn't accept. I broke it down with @kylelwiggers.bsky.social for @techcrunch.com

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

NEW: OpenAI's Operator agent requires too much user intervention to be considered truly "autonomous" today, but it does show where the puck is going. Plus, execs from Instacart and eBay tell me they're thinking about OpenAI's Operator as a new platform.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

New: The initial panic around DeepSeek is dying down, but the startup may have a lasting impact on the ways Silicon Valley trains AI models, and how America regulates them.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

NEW: I talked to the CPO of Sam Altman's World project, which now wants to link AI agents to your digital identity. As OpenAI releases its first AI agents, Altman's other venture is building tools permitting them to take actions on a human's behalf.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

NEW: Meta executives and researchers obsessed over beating OpenAI's GPT-4 internally, and dismissed Mistral as a real competitor, according to messages unsealed by a court today. “Our goal needs to be GPT-4,” said an exec. “Mistral is peanuts for us."

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

New: OpenAI released "Tasks" today, a new way to schedule reminders and recurring requests in ChatGPT. It's a small, but practical step towards agentic AI systems. It's rolling out to paying ChatGPT users this week in beta.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

NEW: This week, Nvidia unveiled a prototype of its AI avatars for PCs, which have the same screen viewing abilities as Microsoft Recall. I got a chance to try them out, and they're as cool as they are weird.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

New for @TechCrunch: The AI wearables war is back baby. Omi, a competitor to Friend that originally had the same name, is launching an $89 consumer device today. It runs GPT-4o and supposedly has a "brain interface." Oh and @kodjima33.bsky.social spent 20% of his funding on a marketing video.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

NEW: Google unveiled its boldest entrance into AI news summaries at CES on Monday. In a demo with TechCrunch, Google executives showed how an early version of their "News Brief" feature works, scraping news articles from across the web and YouTube video headlines.

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Max Zeff @mzeff.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

NEW: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman likes to say he's never had equity in his company. Turns out, Altman had some equity in OpenAI through Sequoia at one point, which first invested in 2021. The CEO disclosed it on a podcast, and OpenAI confirmed in a statement to @techcrunch.com

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