News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Sam Altman tears into Anthropic's latest AI safety ad: 'Thought this was satire' | Mint
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman criticized Anthropic's new ad as 'satire' amidst ongoing tensions with Elon Musk. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has attacked Anthropic over a new ad from the Claude maker which he said looked like 'satire'. The new attack by Altman comes amid the OpenAI's chief's ongoing feud with Elon Musk and the recent lawsuit filed by Apple over theft of confidential trade secrets. There's hope in hard questions." Anthropic wrote in a post X that contained a video containing what seemed like random pictures and posed questions over AI safety. Some of th questions in the video included, "Can AI be trusted?" and "If it ends up taking like almost all the jobs, then what does it mean to work?" Altman responded to the video writing, "i thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something" "hard questions are great but only if we deem you worthy enough to not silently downgrade you, or even get access at all" he added In a separate post on X that seemed to be aimed at OpenAI's rivals, Altman wrote, "come for the best model, stay because we don't treat you with contempt" Notably, this is not the first time that tensions have flared up between OpenAI and Anthropic. In fact, Anthropic is set up by former OpenAI employees Dario Amodei and his sister Daniela Amodei. The sourness in the relationship between the two companies was on full display during the AI Impact Summit held in India earlier this year as well when Amodei and Altman refused to hold hands during the "unity hand-raise," initiated by PM Modi. Meanwhile, Anthropic had also targetted OpenAI with a series of Super Bowl ads earlier this year which targetted OpenAI's plans to brings ads to cheaper Go tier and free users. Anthropic, in response, vowed to keep Claude completely ad-free. "Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude." read one commercial by Anthropic Altman went on to call the ads funny but 'deceptive'. "I guess it's on brand for Anthropic doublespeak to use a deceptive ad to critique theoretical deceptive ads that aren't real, but a Super Bowl ad is not where I would expect it." the OpenAI chief wrote then Recently, OpenAI released its latest GPT-5.6 series of models which it claimed even surpasses the performance of Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 model which was widely considered to be the most powerful AI model at the time. Sam Altman and Elon Musk battle: After the GPT-5.6 launch, Altman also found himself in a renewed public spat with Musk, who once again referred to the OpenAI chief as "Scam Altman." Meanwhile, Altman described it as a sign of ChatGPT being in the right direction that Musk was 'obsessed' with him once again. He also accused Musk of deceiving public market investors on claims of starting AI datacenters in space. Musk responded by bringing in the new lawsuit filed by Apple and claimed that OpenAI stole Apple's phone technology. "After stealing an open source AI charity, you then stole all of Apple's phone technology! Wow. What do you plan for an encore? That's tough to beat." Musk wrote
AI trade war heats up: China warns of 'security backdoor' in Anthropic's Claude Code | Mint
China's National Vulnerability Database said the suspected vulnerability could allow the transfer of data, such as user location details and identity-related information. A Chinese cybersecurity regulator has warned users about an alleged "security backdoor" in certain versions of Anthropic's artificial intelligence coding assistant, Claude Code, claiming the tool could transmit sensitive user information to the company's servers without consent. China's National Vulnerability Database (NVDB), a government-backed cybersecurity platform, said the suspected vulnerability could allow the transfer of data such as user location details and identity-related information. The regulator urged organisations and individuals using the software to immediately review their systems and take precautionary measures. Claude Code is an AI-powered coding agent developed by US-based AI company Anthropic. The tool can create software code, identify and fix programming errors, and analyse existing code based on user instructions. Anthropic has restricted access to its products for users and organisations in China and several other countries it considers high-risk jurisdictions. However, Chinese users can still access the company's AI services through virtual private networks (VPNs) or third-party proxy platforms. Anthropic has not publicly responded to requests for comment regarding the allegations, which were initially reported by specialised technology outlets last week. The NVDB, which is affiliated with China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said on its website it had recently "detected that the AI coding tool Claude Code contains security backdoor risks, posing a severe threat". The NVDB advised companies and users to conduct a detailed security review and either remove affected versions of Claude Code or upgrade to newer versions where the alleged backdoor code has been eliminated. It also recommended stronger monitoring of network traffic to prevent possible unauthorised transfer of sensitive information. The warning comes amid rising scrutiny of AI tools and data security risks as governments and companies worldwide compete to develop and deploy advanced artificial intelligence technologies. Chinese technology giant Alibaba Group has reportedly instructed employees to stop using Claude Code from 10 July due to security concerns, according to AFP . The move follows earlier tensions between Anthropic and Chinese technology firms. Anthropic has previously accused Alibaba of attempting to reverse-engineer its AI models through a process known as "distillation," in which one AI system is trained to replicate the capabilities of another. Meanwhile, Claude Code engineer Thariq Shihipar responded on X last week to claims that the tool was collecting or tracking certain data from Chinese users. "This is an experiment we launched in March that was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation," Shihipar wrote. "The team has landed stronger mitigations since then and we've actually been meaning to take this down for a while... this should be fully rolled back in tomorrow's release." The controversy highlights growing geopolitical tensions surrounding artificial intelligence, with cybersecurity, data privacy and control over advanced AI technologies becoming major issues in the competition between the United States and China.
