Anthropic goes custom for companies

Welcome back to The Shift. Let’s get straight to what matters in AI today…

Today we have:

⚖️ Anthropic Under Pressure, Expanding Fast

🎥 How to Turn Any Customer Review into 20 Scroll-Stopping Video Ads (Without Filming)

🤖 Pika’s AI Selves: Your Digital Twin Goes Live

🔨Tools and Shifts you cannot miss

⚖️ Anthropic Scales Business While Facing Defense Ultimatum

Anthropic is locked in a high-stakes dispute with the Pentagon over how its AI, Claude, can be used. Claude was the first model cleared for classified military systems, but now competitors are lining up as the Defense Department looks for leverage. On the other hand, the company is doubling down on building structured AI agents for business teams. 

The Shift:

Enterprise AI Expansion

Anthropic upgraded Cowork to let companies build private plugin stores, deploy department-specific agents across HR, engineering, finance, and more, and control access with stronger admin tools and connectors.

Claude can now move between Excel and PowerPoint, analyzing data in one and generating full presentations in the other, alongside new connectors like Google Workspace, DocuSign, FactSet, and Harvey.

Pentagon Ultimatum

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly gave Anthropic until Friday to either allow unrestricted military use, lose its $200M contract and be labeled a supply chain risk, or face action under the Defense Production Act. 

CEO Dario Amodei has drawn firm boundaries, refusing to let Claude be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans, even as the Pentagon insists no company should dictate operational limits.

While Claude currently anchors classified AI operations, xAI’s Grok has already secured similar access after accepting broader military terms, and OpenAI and Google are being accelerated into classified discussions, giving the Pentagon fallback options if Anthropic refuses to comply.

^{TOGETHER WITH WISPR}

Speak fuller prompts. Get better answers.

Stop losing nuance when you type prompts. Wispr Flow captures your spoken reasoning, removes filler, and formats it into a clear prompt that keeps examples, constraints, and tone intact. Drop that prompt into your AI tool and get fewer follow-up prompts and cleaner results. Works across your apps on Mac, Windows, and iPhone. Try Wispr Flow for AI to upgrade your inputs and save time.

Try Wispr Flow

🎥 How to Turn Any Customer Review into 20 Scroll-Stopping Video Ads (Without Filming)

You already have the raw material. Your reviews. Your DMs. Your unhinged customer screenshots.

Here’s the fastest way to convert that into a full creative library using Reve:

1️⃣ Pick one “money” review

Choose a review with a clear before and after, a bold claim, or a specific outcome. One strong review can power weeks of creatives.

2️⃣ Generate 3 on-brand hero images

Create a simple scene that visualizes the review, like the product on a countertop, in-hand lifestyle, or a clean studio shot. Keep the same colors, lighting, and vibe across all images for consistency.

3️⃣ Animate each image into video

Turn each hero image into a 6 to 8-second clip with subtle motion, like camera push-in, product rotation, background movement, or text reveal pacing.

4️⃣ Add native sound for performance

Prompt for a short voiceover that reads the review like a friend telling a secret. Add soft ambient audio or music so it feels native, not like an ad.

5️⃣ Export in 9:16 and ship variations

Make 5 to 10 variations by swapping the hook line, the pacing, and the first frame. Then test them as separate ads. You can try it here 

🤖 Pika’s AI Selves: Your Digital Twin Goes Live

Pika Labs has launched AI Selves, a product designed to create a living digital version of you. This AI Self talks, posts, remembers, and evolves over time. The company is positioning it as something bigger than a chatbot. You can waitlist here.  

The Shift:

1) Create Your AI Self - Users upload a selfie, record their voice, and answer a few questions to “birth” their AI Self, which can mirror them exactly or become an entirely new persona.

2) It Learns and Grows - AI Selves have persistent memory, allowing them to adapt to your tone, behavior, and preferences over time, becoming more aligned with who you are or who you want to be.

3) Lives Across Platforms - Unlike traditional bots, AI Selves are designed to operate everywhere, from professional Slack updates to social media posts, adapting to each platform while staying consistent in personality.

Pika is pushing the idea that your online presence no longer needs to be limited by time or energy. With AI Selves that remember, adapt, and roam across platforms, the line between you and your digital twin just became very thin.

^{TOGETHER WITH CHEERS}

Good Credit Could Save You $200,000 Over Time

Better credit means better rates on mortgages, cars, and more. Cheers Credit Builder is an affordable, AI-powered way to start — no score or hard check required. We report to all three bureaus fast. Many users see 20+ point increases in months. Cancel anytime with no penalties or hidden fees.

Start Building Credit Today

🔨AI Tools for the Shift

🏗️ ArchyBase – An all-in-one AI platform for interior design, exterior visualization, and landscape generation that turns photos or sketches into professional renders in seconds.

⚡ Inception Chat v2 – A commercial-grade diffusion LLM built for high-speed performance, delivering fast, scalable AI interactions for real-world use.

🧩 OsirisBrain – Access 12 AI specialists on your desktop, from programmer to designer to accountant, or build your own custom AI experts as needed.

🎯 nayld.ai – Analyze job descriptions, score your resume fit, generate tailored interview questions, and practice mock interviews so you show up confident and prepared.

🛠️ Fabricate – Build complete web applications with AI, turning ideas into functional products without heavy manual development.

🚀Quick Shifts

⚖️ OpenAI won a dismissal in xAI’s trade secrets lawsuit, with a judge ruling that current claims fail to show misconduct by OpenAI itself, though xAI can refile with amended allegations.

👥 OpenAI has appointed Arvind KC, former Roblox chief people and systems officer, as its new chief people officer, filling a role left vacant since Julia Villagra’s departure in August 2025.

💍 Oura is expanding its AI Advisor with a women’s health model covering menstrual cycles to menopause, but sharing sensitive reproductive data with chatbots raises serious privacy and data protection concerns.

💾 Meta has struck a multiyear deal to buy up to $100B in AMD GPUs and CPUs, deepening its AI infrastructure buildout and pushing toward its vision of “personal superintelligence” across massive data centers.

⚡ Inception Labs launched Mercury 2, a diffusion-based reasoning model that surpasses 1,000 tokens per second, making it roughly three times faster than competitors in its pricing tier. 

🧩Prompt of the Day

How to Map Buying Barriers and Remove Friction Using One Prompt 

Turn hidden hesitation into clear obstacles you can fix to convert first-time buyers faster.

Paste the prompt: Drop this into ChatGPT, then fill in your product and target customer type.

Prompt to paste

Identify the main barriers preventing first-time buyers from purchasing [Insert product]. For each barrier, explain why it exists and provide a specific solution to reduce or eliminate it. Prioritize by impact on conversion and keep the output concise and action-focused.

🤳AI Nugget of the Day

That’s all for today’s edition see you tomorrow as we track down and get you all that matters in the daily AI Shift!

If you loved this edition let us know how much:

Forward it to your pal to give them a daily dose of the shift so they can 👇