Good day . Elon Musk says Grok Bot costs more to serve than it earns, Anthropic is asking job candidates how they would feel if its stock went to zero, and Amazon’s CEO has an opinion about Meta’s shopping agent. Plus free Adobe clones built with Claude, and photographers vibe coding their old DSLRs.
Musk Says Grok Bot Costs More Than It Earns Startup Fortune
What happened: A user asked Elon Musk on Sunday whether xAI could reset Grok Bot’s weekly usage pool after paying users burned through it early. Musk replied that “the cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue,” Startup Fortune reports. He gave no dollar figure and no timeline for a fix.
Why it matters: Grok Bot keeps working on its own virtual computer after you close the tab, so one run can burn far more compute than a chat reply. Startup Fortune says it has no standalone price, rides along with SuperGrok plans from $30 a month, and that xAI has never published the weekly allowance. Yesterday we covered OpenAI folding ChatGPT and Codex into one usage bucket. Today’s version of the same squeeze comes with a quote.
What everyone’s saying: Startup Fortune calls it an unusual confession, since labs usually say demand is outrunning supply, not that the thing people use most is the thing costing them most. It cites Teslanorth for roughly 800,000 paid weekly users within about two months of launch.
My read between the lines: The meter is the business model, and Musk just read it out loud. Earlier this year he floated ads inside Grok to pay for “those expensive GPUs,” and an agent that can’t cover its own compute makes that idea look less like a joke. Growth you can’t afford is a fast way to find your limit.
📖 Further reading: What is Grok Bot? The answer is in the fine print — Written two days after launch, it flagged the product’s always-on cloud computer and a meter nobody capped.
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Anthropic Asks Hires About Stock at Zero Fortune
What happened: Fortune reports that Anthropic is asking job candidates in culture interviews how they would feel if the company dropped its AI ambitions for safety reasons and the stock fell to zero, according to Axios. The piece lands as Anthropic targets a November IPO at a $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion valuation.
Why it matters: More than 2,500 employees could get rich from the listing, and Fortune says Dario Amodei has reportedly worried that the money could pull staff away from the mission. Anthropic’s S-1, filed Oct. 26, calls competition for talent “exceptionally intense,” and Fortune lists staff software engineer base salaries of $350,000 to $850,000. Last week we covered Anthropic opening its books. This is the human side of the same filing.
What everyone’s saying: One candidate wrote on the anonymous workplace site Blind: “I was honest and said no, I would not be happy if the stock went to 0.” Fortune also notes that Amodei and his six co-founders pledged to give away 80% of their wealth, and that about 400 current and former SpaceX employees saw stakes pass $100 million after that IPO.
My read between the lines: It is a loyalty test with a price tag attached, and the honest answer is the one the candidate gave. A culture screen works until the shares vest. Asking early is smart, but an interview question is not a lockup.
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Amazon’s CEO Shrugs at Meta’s Muse Fortune
What happened: On Amazon’s earnings call Thursday, CEO Andy Jassy told investors not to worry about outside shopping agents. Without naming Muse, he said few customers buy that way because the experience is “still not great, nor more convenient than coming to a retailer directly,” Fortune reports. He added that outside agents did not cause the weaker-than-expected ad results.
Why it matters: An agent that shops for you skips the pages where ads live, and ads are a key profit driver for Amazon. Amazon blocked Muse from its store in September, saying its access would violate the conditions of use customers agreed to. Last week we covered Muse shopping so hard Stripe raised its limits.
What everyone’s saying: Meta says more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada have set up Muse since early September, and Zuckerberg says shopping is its most common use, with purchases averaging over $200. Shopify, Walmart and Best Buy have signed on. Nate B Jones titled a video this week “The Future Of The Internet Isn’t Open For Your Agent”, with Muse in the headline.
My read between the lines: Jassy’s argument is that outside agents are not good yet, which is not the same as not mattering. He also promoted Amazon’s own Alexa for shopping, which he says 400 million customers used in the last year. Blocking the competitor while pushing your own agent is a strategy, not a verdict on the product.
📖 Further reading: AI Agents Can’t Find Your Business. I Tested Mine. — It opens with Amazon blocking Muse and shows how to test whether agents can even find, price and book your business.
Free Adobe Clones Built With Claude Engadget
What happened: Engadget’s Steve Dent writes that a developer who hated Adobe’s cancellation fee used Claude to reverse-engineer Photoshop, Lightroom and other Creative Cloud apps, then released free, open-source clones called ArtCraft. Dent says Photocraft, the Photoshop stand-in, handles resizing, masking and color adjustments with menus that closely match the original.
Why it matters: Dent reports users have hit bugs, including images deleted and layers merged at random, and that Photocraft can’t open native PSD files. Adobe’s terms ban reverse engineering, and the team may have run into trademark and patent trouble even though it says it used none of Adobe’s code. Last month we covered seven AI-built Adobe clones. This is the next chapter.
What everyone’s saying: The reaction splits. A Reddit commenter who has built Photoshop file readers calls it “exceptionally well-executed,” while another user who tried it called it “utter AI-driven slop.” Engadget points to REA, a tool that automates the same take-it-apart-and-rebuild trick and had 346,000 GitHub stars as of Oct. 20.
My read between the lines: The legal question is real, but so is the signal. One person with AI can now do what used to take a team, and software people resent just got a credible threat. Adobe’s best defense might be a cancel button that is easy to find.
📖 Further reading: Your SaaS bill is a sitting duck — A free, open-source challenger to paid software with agents built in, and why picking a winner is the wrong game.
Photographers Are Vibe Coding Old DSLRs Digital Camera World
What happened: Digital Camera World reports that photographers are vibe coding 20-year-old DSLRs to look and shoot more like film. One example is Latent Studios’ firmware for the Canon EOS 5D and 5D Mark II, which develops photos with film looks inside the camera, no computer needed once installed, for a pay-what-you-want price.
Why it matters: A YouTube explainer from Breno Loves Cameras says people with no programming background are using AI assistants like Claude to rewrite camera firmware and add features to older, cheaper cameras. The firmware page itself warns that custom firmware is installed at your own risk, and the video covers the worst case: a bricked camera and a voided warranty.
What everyone’s saying: Viewers in the comments mostly cheer it as a win for owners of hardware held back by software, and compare it to Magic Lantern, the older camera-hacking project. The skeptics point out that old hardware has limits and that a bricked camera is on you.
My read between the lines: It is the Adobe-clone move aimed at hardware. If the chip can already do it, the only thing between you and the feature is a product-tier decision. Camera makers now get to choose between shipping the request button and watching owners ship it themselves.
📖 Further reading: OpenAI shipped a physical camera, but that’s not the story. — My take on what happens when vibe coding leaves the screen and lands in a camera you can hold.
That’s your AI Brief for Monday.
—Nicholas from Artificially Intimidating
