OpenAI’s “Missionaries” vs. Meta’s “Mercenaries”

Welcome to another edition of AI PlanetX.

Altman slams Meta’s AI play; Apple eyes Anthropic for Siri; Cloudflare lets sites charge AI bots.

• Hottest AI News

• Top AI & SaaS Tools

• Top AI & Tech News

• AI Art Spotlight

• Prompt of the Day: Perplexity as Deep Research Assistant

• AI Video Tutorial

• F-R-E-E AI Course of the Day: Essentials of Prompt Engineering

Hottest AI News

OpenAI

Missionaries Versus Mercenaries: Altman Critiques Meta’s AI Tactics

In a leaked memo shared with WIRED, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hit back at Meta’s recruitment of his AI researchers, framing the clash as mission-driven innovation versus money-driven poaching. “Missionaries will beat mercenaries,” he declared.

Details:

• Meta hired several OpenAI researchers for its superintelligence team, but Altman downplayed the move, saying they didn’t get top talent and resorted to “somewhat distasteful” tactics. He also warned this could lead to cultural problems at Meta

• In response, OpenAI is reviewing its research team’s pay. Altman backed OpenAI’s stock, saying it has more potential than Meta’s, and promised fair compensation beyond those targeted by Meta

• Altman emphasized OpenAI’s focus on building AGI responsibly, contrasting it with Meta’s short-term mindset. “We care about doing it right,” he said, adding, “We’ll still be here after Meta chases its next trend”

The talent war began after Meta launched a superintelligence team, hiring several OpenAI researchers. OpenAI’s Mark Chen called it like “someone breaking into our home.” Altman stayed confident, citing "insane hypergrowth" and a uniquely strong team—sentiments echoed by employees who called OpenAI a “magical cradle of innovation.”

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Apple

Apple Weighs Replacing In-House AI with Anthropic or OpenAI for Siri

Apple is reportedly considering partnerships with Anthropic or OpenAI to power a revamped Siri—marking a possible shift away from its traditional reliance on in-house AI. The move suggests Apple may be recognizing that its own models are falling behind in AI race.

Details:

• Apple asked Anthropic and OpenAI to test their models on its cloud. After comparing Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, execs found Claude most promising for Siri, leading to early talks

• Siri chief Mike Rockwell and software head Craig Federighi led the evaluation after taking over from John Giannandrea. Rockwell tasked his team with comparing Apple’s AI to third-party models

• Despite planning to invest billions into its own models by 2026, Apple faces internal uncertainty. While "LLM Siri" continues, execs are more open to using outside AI, like Samsung does with Gemini

If adopted, the shift could launch next year, bringing Siri closer to Android AI assistants and shedding Apple’s AI-laggard image. It reflects Apple’s struggles with past Siri upgrades and ongoing engineering delays.

Top AI & SaaS Tools

• Pismo (Life-time Deal): AI assistant for rewriting, proofreading, and translating your text anywhere; a Grammarly alternative for Windows and Mac [80+ five-star reviews]

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• Jotform: Presentation Agents turns your slides into interactive AI presentations, with AI Agents presenting and answering live question [F-R-E-E]

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Top AI & Tech News

• Cloudflare launched “Pay per Crawl,” a marketplace that lets website owners charge AI bots for scraping their content, giving publishers more control and a potential revenue stream

• Grammarly is acquiring the email app Superhuman to expand its presence in email, currently a top use case for its AI writing assistant

• Songscription is an AI-powered service that automates music transcription, converting audio files into sheet music within minutes

• Microsoft announced to cut nearly 4% of its global workforce, around 9,000 jobs, as part of cost-cutting measures amid heavy investments in AI

AI Art Spotlight

Model: Midjourney V7

Prompt:

POV: 1985 morning in Lincoln Park, girl resting with eyes closed against the boy’s chest, his arm behind her protectively, both wearing elegant coats, film grain and early fall light --ar 9:16 --v 7

Prompt of the Day

Turn Perplexity into Deep Research Assistant

This prompt turns Perplexity into a deep research team that quickly gathers, analyzes, and summarizes expert insights and data into clear, actionable briefings.

Top AI Video Tutorial

30 Tips To Create Mindblowing Videos With Google VEO 3

Complimentary AI Course of the Day

Essentials of Prompt Engineering

This course covers the basics of creating effective prompts, refining and optimizing them for various uses. You'll learn techniques such as zero-shot, few-shot, and chain-of-thought prompting, and how to spot risks in prompt engineering. The course features interactive activities, videos, text lessons, and graphics.