Good day . People are handing their smart TVs to Claude Code and getting the ads back out, which makes it the most relatable AI story of the week. Also today: Anthropic is reportedly readying a model that guesses what you meant, OpenAI says its newest models can finally read COBOL, Nvidia signs a physical-AI pact with Germany, and CNBC asks who automation hit first.
Claude Code Is Evicting Ads From Your TV TechCrunch
What happened: TechCrunch reports that owners of Android TV and Google TV sets are pointing AI agents at their televisions to strip sponsored ads, preinstalled apps and tracking. Developer Gathin posted on October 17 that Claude Code found his parents’ TV on the Wi-Fi, removed 25 Xiaomi packages and wrote a new launcher; the prompt became the cleanyourtv project, and he says a few thousand people did the same to their own sets within two days. A second project, dumbtv, has been tested on Fire TV and on Android and Google TV models from Sony, TCL, Philips, Hisense, Xiaomi and Shield.
Why it matters: Smart TVs run a feature called automatic content recognition, which works out what is on screen from screenshots or audio clips, and TV makers earn money by selling that viewing data or using it to target ads. TechCrunch notes the cleanyourtv method needs no root access and does not block a return to factory defaults, and says the trend could dent the smart TV ad business if it spreads.
What everyone’s saying: Delight, mostly. Gathin’s original post has about 27,000 likes in TechCrunch’s embed, and the pitch on the dumbtv page is blunt: your TV should run your apps and your HDMI inputs “and nothing else.”
My read between the lines: A TV maker sells you the hardware, sells your viewing habits, and the only thing standing between you and the sponsored tile is now a chatbot with a Wi-Fi password. It is also the sweetest IT-support story of the year, and worth reading what the agent plans to switch off before you let it loose on Mom’s living room.
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Anthropic Readies a Model That Reads Intent The Information (paywalled)
What happened: The Information reported Monday that Anthropic is preparing a new model that reasons and uses intuition better than its current ones. According to a Sina Finance summary of the report, it is good at working out what users really want from very little information, and at thinking creatively instead of reaching for standard advice. No launch date or name was reported.
Why it matters: Yesterday we covered Anthropic’s 5% pledge to a public benefit fund; this is the product side of the same pre-IPO stretch. Per The Information, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have shipped more than a dozen models in the past month, and the pace is not expected to slow, so the model you picked last month is probably not the one on offer now.
What everyone’s saying: That the race is back on. Reuters reported in September that Anthropic was weighing a new release to counter OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra, which Ramp data put at about 13% of enterprise AI spending versus about 8% for Claude Fable.
My read between the lines: Dario Amodei wrote his slowdown essay on September 12. When Anthropic shipped Opus 5.5 ten days later, its own announcement called it “the first model we are releasing since we urged for a slowdown in cutting-edge AI,” and the next one is already queued. Slowdown essay, meet roadmap. And a model sold on guessing what you meant is one to watch for how often it stops to ask.
📖 Further reading: Fable 5 Costs 2x Opus — and Using It Wrong Costs You More Than That — my July piece on the rule I use whenever a new model lands: plan on the best one, execute on the best one you can afford.
The Brief is free and always will be. If you would rather know which new model is worth switching to before you switch, that is the kind of thing the paywalled deep-dives get into, with the full archive behind them. Become a member →
OpenAI Teaches Its Models COBOL OpenAI
What happened: OpenAI published results on Monday for “low-resource” programming languages like COBOL, Fortran and Visual Basic, which have far less public code to learn from than Python. On its COBOL migration test, GPT-6.1 Sol scored 86.6% at low reasoning effort against 5.4% for GPT-5.6 Sol, and 97.9% at higher effort. On MultiLangBench, which asks a model to build a SQLite-compatible database in each of 20 languages, GPT-6 Astra averages 87.4%, up from 26.8%.
Why it matters: OpenAI says COBOL supports more than 40% of online banking systems and 95% of ATM transactions, and Fortran runs weather forecasting and nuclear reactor safety analysis. Much of that code is poorly documented, its authors have left, and the business rules live only in the code. A model that can migrate it while preserving what it does is aimed squarely at that backlog.
What everyone’s saying: So far the loudest voice is OpenAI’s own. It frames the work as help for teams maintaining critical systems, guided by developers and enterprise customers who told it that coding models struggle here, and it is publishing the MultiLangBench setup and tests on GitHub so others can check.
My read between the lines: Going from 5.4% to 86.6% is the number to chew on, and OpenAI wrote both tests, so it is grading its own homework. Still, if a model can port a payroll system from 1959 without changing how it rounds, the real shortage in COBOL was never programmers. It was courage.
Nvidia Signs a Physical-AI Pact With Germany Associated Press via BNN Bloomberg
What happened: At the Invest in Germany Summit in Berlin on Monday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz and two federal ministries signed a Joint Declaration of Intent with Nvidia to work on AI models for physical AI, according to Nvidia’s account. Onstage with Merz, CEO Jensen Huang told German carmakers and machine builders to adopt AI quickly and “re-engineer” the country’s business model: “electrons will never replace atoms.”
Why it matters: Germany’s economy has barely grown since the pandemic, hit by high energy prices, Chinese competition in cars and slow permitting, the AP notes. The bet is that decades of factory data, which Huang called “your natural resource,” can become an edge, with robotics, manufacturing and vehicles as the targets.
What everyone’s saying: Merz is pitching the Mittelstand, Germany’s many mid-sized specialist manufacturers, as the secret advantage. The AP adds that European leaders see growth in AI but worry about depending on US tech companies, and that Europe lags the US in data center capacity.
My read between the lines: Huang’s answer to the dependence worry was to import the AI but “not export your culture, export your values, export your knowledge.” That is a chip salesman telling a country to import his technology and keep its independence, and “electrons will never replace atoms” is a confident line from the guy selling the electrons.
CNBC: AI Could Hit Women’s Jobs First CNBC
What happened: A CNBC analysis published Monday looks at earlier technology shifts, from automatic telephone switches to the washing machine and the personal computer, and concludes women are likely to be among the most affected by AI. It cites the International Labour Organization’s March finding that nearly one in 10 women in high-income countries works in an occupation at the highest risk from AI.
Why it matters: AI is strongest at routine, pattern-heavy work, which describes clerical and administrative jobs. “It’s still 90% of secretaries and clerical workers who are women,” Ariane Hegewisch of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research told CNBC. In the 1940s, nearly 95% of US telephone operators were women, and an estimated 75,000 of those jobs vanished after AT&T introduced the automatic switch.
What everyone’s saying: That history offers both a warning and some comfort. Economist David Autor told CNBC most people stay in the careers they chose early, so when a job goes away the next step is often down, but economists who studied the operators found the next generation of women found similar-quality work.
My read between the lines: The reassuring half of that history is about the kids, not the operators. Both findings are true, which means the happy ending arrives a generation late, and that is cold comfort if you are the generation.
📖 Further reading: The Tools That Just Replaced 40% of Block's Workforce Are Free in Your Browser — my March piece on why the same tools behind the layoffs are open to you too, and what to do about it.
That’s your AI Brief for Tuesday.
—Nicholas from Artificially Intimidating
