Episode Details

Good day %%first_name%%. OpenAI’s DevDay gave us some extremely adorable Dots, an agent that keeps working after you log off, and by the end of the day dot.com was pointing at Grok. Also on the menu: Meta pitching Muse to small businesses days after it handed out a stranger’s address, AI getting 13 times cheaper a year on paper, what MIT found about every company using the same hiring algorithm, and Cloudflare’s EmDash, a WordPress rival named after the punctuation mark AI can’t stop using. Let’s get into it.

OpenAI Launches Dots. Dot.com Goes to Grok. TechCrunch

* What happened: At DevDay on Tuesday, OpenAI launched dots: personal agents, powered by GPT-6 Astra, that work in the background toward goals you set and reach you through ChatGPT, Codex, Slack and Teams. Pro and Business Premium subscribers get one free dot. Fortune reports that dots ask before sensitive moves like changing a password or deleting data.

* Why it matters: Yesterday we covered the rumor of an always-on assistant called “o”. It has a name now, and it’s a cartoon dot. For anyone new to this, an agent that works while you’re offline is the difference between asking a question and delegating a job.

* What everyone’s saying: The frame is OpenAI versus Meta’s Muse, bubbly avatar against bubbly avatar. Then the internet noticed that dot.com sent visitors to xAI’s Grok Bot the same day, which OfficeChai reports OpenAI hasn’t commented on. It isn’t clear who controls the domain or whether xAI did it on purpose.

* My read between the lines: Look at the pricing, not the avatar. Fortune says OpenAI added a $500-a-month tier and cut benefits on the $200 plan, which reads like a push to get power users upstairs. The free dot is the sample. The heavy usage is the business.

📖 Further reading: OpenAI Made Its New Agent Adorable. That's the Part That Worries Me. — our full take on why the cute part is the point, and why it gets harder to leave.

OpenAI’s dots now answer to you through Slack and Teams, and Meta wants Muse running your small business. Viktor already lives in Slack. It’s an AI agent that connects to 3,000+ of your tools and hands back finished work like reports, dashboards, code and campaigns. Not a chatbot you check on. A coworker you brief. New readers get $50 off their first month. Hire Viktor →

Meta Sends Muse to Work at Your Shop TechCrunch

* What happened: On Tuesday Meta launched Muse for Small Business. It connects to tools owners already use, including Shopify, QuickBooks, Stripe, Slack, Canva and Zoom, plus Instagram analytics, Facebook Pages and Meta ad accounts. There’s a free version with usage limits and paid plans for more.

* Why it matters: Small businesses run on a handful of tools and not enough hours. An agent that can see your books, your payments and your ads is the first AI most shop owners might actually l