AI This Week

Virgin Australia is the first Australian airline to launch a major collaboration with OpenAI. The partnership aims to create entirely new ways for customers to plan and shop for travel. The airline is already building on OpenAI’s platform, developing a future flight search function that will operate directly within ChatGPT. This system will allow customers to describe their ideal trip in plain language and receive relevant flight options. The initiative is a key part of the airline’s digital strategy and will also equip employees with enterprise-grade AI tools. Virgin Australia CEO Dave Emerson highlighted the focus on improving the customer journey from the very start.

A new executive order by the Trump administration has launched the “Genesis Mission,” a government-wide initiative designed to speed up American AI innovation. The plan directs the Department of Energy and National Laboratories to build an integrated platform. This system will use massive federal scientific datasets to train advanced AI models. The goal is to automate research workflows and quicken breakthroughs in fields like biotechnology and quantum science, potentially shortening discovery timelines from years to mere hours. The Genesis Mission is a central part of a national strategy to compete with China in artificial intelligence. The new directive also rescinds a prior AI safety executive order.

Anthropic turned its AI on itself to measure its own economic impact. In a new study, the company used its Claude model to analyze one hundred thousand real, anonymized user conversations to estimate how much faster AI makes work. The findings are striking. Claude’s analysis suggests it reduces task completion time by approximately 80%, radically shortening jobs that would normally take 90 minutes. When extrapolated across the economy, these gains imply current AI models could increase US labor productivity growth by 1.8% annually for the next decade—a figure that would nearly double the nation’s recent growth rate.

Warner Music has signed a licensing deal with the artificial intelligence song generator Suno, a surprising reversal after suing the company for copyright infringement just a year ago. The partnership allows Warner artists, including Coldplay and Ed Sheeran, to opt-in, letting users create AI-generated music with their voices and likenesses. Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl called the agreement “pro-artist.” As part of the deal, Suno will introduce new platform limitations to curb the flood of AI tracks on streaming services, including download caps for paid users. This agreement marks a key moment in the music industry’s relationship with AI, even as other major labels continue their legal battles against Suno.

AI startup Anthropic, fresh off a massive $350 billion valuation fueled by investments from Microsoft and Nvidia, has announced Claude Opus 4.5. This is its new flagship model. Aimed at professional software developers and financial analysts, the model excels at complex coding and enterprise tasks. Anthropic reports that Opus 4.5 outperforms rival models from Google and OpenAI on key software development benchmarks. In a striking test of its capabilities, the model scored higher on a difficult internal engineering exam than any human candidate. This launch marks Anthropic’s third major model release in just two months, highlighting its aggressive push in the AI race.