Frontier models, for free?

Welcome back! The gaming world is having its own AI identity crisis. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says the gaming platform Steam shouldn't warn players when AI is used in development. His reasoning? AI is about to be everywhere, games included. Indie devs fired back: AI helping code is fine, AI replacing artists and writers is not.

Where do you draw the line on AI and gaming

AI use is fair game

It's complicated

AI shouldn't replace creatives or coders, period

Two Big Releases Shake Up the AI Leaderboard

A year ago, we were talking about who could stroke the biggest checks to fund GPU buildout. Now, though, it's about who can build the best tech fastest. Case in point? DeepSeek's new open-weight models are posting frontier-level scores, and OpenAGI's new agent is beating OpenAI and Anthropic on the hardest real-world computer-control benchmark.

Suddenly the "startup vs. tech giant" gap looks a lot smaller. Let's get into it…

DeepSeek's new models: DeepSeek dropped two open-weight models—V3.2 and V3.2-Speciale—both released under the MIT license.

They claim GPT-5 or Gemini-3-Pro-level performance on reasoning, math, and coding tasks.
The Speciale variant hit gold-medal scores on elite competitions (IMO, IOI, ICPC), posted 96% on AIME, and delivered long-context performance at a fraction of the compute cost thanks to a new sparse-attention architecture.

OpenAGI's agent: OpenAGI came out of stealth with Lux, a computer-use agent trained on screenshots and action sequences rather than text.

On Online-Mind2Web—the toughest live "control a real computer" benchmark—Lux scores 83.6%, well above OpenAI Operator (61.3%) and Claude Computer Use (56.3%).
Unlike most agents, Lux works across desktop apps like Slack and Excel, not just browsers. The team says it runs at roughly one-tenth the cost of comparable frontier agents.

The new game: Out-innovate, don't just out-spend. Both DeepSeek and OpenAGI are leaning into architectural tricks (sparse attention, action-first training) to beat larger models on specific, high-value tasks.

If this trend holds, the frontier may stop looking like a single "best model" and more like a swarm of specialized systems—some optimized for long-context reasoning, others for tool use and computer control, others for on-device speed.

AI Is the Big Black Friday Winner This Year

Amazon's AI shopping assistant, Rufus, quietly became one of the biggest winners of Black Friday.

The data spike: Sensor Tower says US shopping sessions that used Rufus and led to a purchase jumped 100% compared to the previous 30 days—while sessions without Rufus only rose 20%. And day-over-day on Black Friday, Rufus-linked purchases climbed 75%, outpacing the 35% increase from non-Rufus sessions.

It's part of a larger trend: Adobe Analytics reported an 805% year-over-year surge in AI-driven traffic to US retail sites on Black Friday. Shoppers leaned on AI for everything from electronics to toys to personal care—basically all the top deal categories.

Conversions were higher, too: Shoppers arriving from an AI tool were 38% more likely to buy than those who came through normal channels.
But the broader picture is complicated: Record Black Friday spending hit $11.8 billion, but average prices were up 7% and actual order volumes were down 1%. Consumers showed up, but they weren't necessarily spending freely.

Why it matters: This is a sign that AI-assisted shopping is becoming a fundamental part of how people make buying decisions. And if the conversion lift holds, this could change holiday retail economics significantly…just in time for Christmas.

Discover How to Save 10+ Hours Per Week Using AI as Your Personal Assistant

Are you drowning in tasks while dreaming of a way to clone yourself? Your AI productivity breakthrough has arrived.

Get the exact templates used by top performers to delegate 80% of their routine work to AI
Access our "AI Assistant Command Center," a ready-to-use system for managing all your AI tools
Master AI delegation in under 60 minutes with our step-by-step implementation guide
Track your time savings with our built-in ROI calculator
Leverage advanced prompts that turn ChatGPT into your 24/7 productivity partner

Imagine completing a full day's work by lunch, knowing your AI assistant handles the rest. Over 10,000 professionals have already transformed their productivity using these templates.

Download Your Free AI Assistant Kit Now

Your AI Strategy Book

Via Rewnue

Rewnue is an AI-powered offer-creation platform that analyzes market data, competitors, pricing, and customer behavior to generate high-converting promotional offers in under a minute.

How you can use it:

Create three data-backed offer variations in about 60 seconds
Customize and publish offers or download full creative assets
Track performance and ROI without a full marketing team

Pricing: free and paid plans available

Click here to try

Unlock your inbox with AI

Touchpoint is an AI tool that lets you chat your way into branded, responsive HTML email templates in seconds.

How you can use it:

Generate on-brand email designs instantly using chat prompts
Auto-pull your logo, brand colors, and styling for consistent templates
Export clean code or send directly through Textmagic

Pricing: paid

Check it out

Jobs, announcements, and big ideas

Apple introduces STARFlow-V, a new end-to-end normalizing flow system for high-fidelity video generation.
OpenAI debuts its Garlic model in a bid to counter Google's latest breakthroughs.
Amazon reveals the Trainium3 chip and outlines a roadmap designed to align closely with Nvidia's ecosystem.
OpenAI declares a "code red" as Google accelerates development of its next major ChatGPT competitor.
Anthropic shares new insights on how AI is reshaping internal workflows and boosting productivity across its teams.
Mistral AI launches Mistral 3, a new open-source multimodal frontier model family.
Google expands access to Gemini 3 Pro and Nano Banana Pro across additional countries in Search.