THE AI BRIEFING #1 · JULY 16, 2026
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Hi,
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Edition number 1 of the AI briefing.
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You’re getting this because we’ve been in touch via marcelalexander.ai, or maybe because I gave you a workshop.
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In this biweekly edition (I’m going to try very hard to keep this up) I give you one overview story that matters, plus a quick list of things happening in AI land. So that every two weeks, in four minutes, you’re up to speed.
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America briefly treated an AI model as an economic weapon … rightly so?!
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Two weeks ago Anthropic, the company behind Claude, released a new model: Fable 5. Right now the best AI model in the world. How seriously you should take that, the American government showed itself: it first kept the model inside its own borders, the way it does with weapons technology. Since July 1, the rest of the world is allowed back in. Us included.
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I work with it every day. Recently I used it to rebuild the complete tech stack of an American company. In one afternoon. And somewhere that afternoon I thought: if I can do this, anyone can. Including the other way around. A marketing agency in Austin clones your work as easily as you clone theirs. And what if Trump (or one of his successors) suddenly thinks: convenient? If that agency in Austin does have access to those models and that agency in Amsterdam doesn’t, the Amsterdam agency can easily be outcompeted.
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That’s what Europe 2031 is about, the scenario by a group of AI researchers that fortunately went viral this month. The premise: Europe sinks away in five years, because it kept holding meetings while the rest kept building. Dutch current-affairs show Nieuwsuur made a good episode about it. One number to remember: Europe has 5 percent of the world’s AI compute. America has 80.
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Freely after Cruijff: you won’t see it until you get it. And it starts with people experiencing what’s possible, companies building it into their work, and politicians waking up. Whether you’re employed, run a company or freelance: this is not a far-from-your-bed story. The tools are switched on right now, for you too. The only question is who learns first and fastest — and whether the tools stay accessible and affordable.
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THE LIST · TEN THINGS HAPPENING IN AI LAND
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1. Apple is taking OpenAI to court. The complaint reads like a spy novel: job applicants asked to bring prototypes to the interview. What you need to know: OpenAI is building its own AI hardware and brought in Jony Ive for it — for years thé designer at Apple. AP News
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2. An AI actress is starring in a real feature film. Tilly Norwood is making her debut, and Hollywood doesn’t know whether to be angry or afraid. ABC News
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3. ChatGPT Work is out. OpenAI’s answer to Claude Cowork: you delegate tasks instead of chatting. And look at the building blocks: skills, projects, plugins. Exactly what I teach people in the workshops. Everything is growing toward each other — good news if you prefer working with ChatGPT anyway. OpenAI
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4. An AI trained another AI. OpenAI’s top model Sol partly retrained the smaller model Luna itself. Why that matters: AI is now accelerating AI research itself. OpenAI says its researchers experiment twice as fast as they did in January. The question isn’t whether things speed up, but how fast. Source
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5. Anthropic extends broad access to Fable 5, through July 19. The model from the story above — so this week you can simply play with it. People asked me why Anthropic is being so generous. Simple: GPT-5.6 is almost as good and a lot cheaper, so they have to. Competition works, here too. Claude
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6. Jeff Bezos invests in a Dutch AI company. General Intuition, founded by Dutchman Pim de Witte, raised 320 million dollars. The company teaches AI spatial awareness using millions of hours of game footage, and is deliberately registered in the Netherlands. So it cán be done. IO+
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7. Your old prompts are now working against you. The new generation of models wants different instructions than you’re used to; what you perfected last year now slows them down. The newsletter AI Report listed what dóes work.
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8. America is hatching a plan to let citizens share in AI profits. OpenAI proposes that the big AI companies put five percent of their shares into a sovereign fund, modeled on Alaska’s oil fund. Currently comes down to about 320 dollars per American household. CNBC
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9. AI cuts film and TV production costs by up to 30 percent, Morgan Stanley estimates. If you work in the creative industry, this isn’t a trend report — it’s your budget two years from now. Autodesk
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10. Two skills that teach your AI to direct. For everyone who works with visuals: Nate Herk showed two Claude skills. banana-pro-director builds characters, outfits and scenes with real camera and skin language; cinema-world-builder does video in five ‘cinema modes’, each with its own lens and color grade. For film and advertising, this is the difference between a loose AI image and a consistent world. The maker shares both skills for free: download them here.
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AGENDA
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Questions, or a tip for the next edition? Just reply to this email — I read everything.
This is the quick scan. My longer stories about music & culture live on Substack.
You’re receiving this because we’ve been in touch via marcelalexander.ai. Unsubscribing is always one email away.
Marcel Alexander Wiebenga · geen woorden maar daden
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