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Beginners in AI
Good morning and thank you for joining us again!
Microsoft just rebuilt Copilot so you can describe a small app in plain words and get a working first version, and it added an agent that keeps going after you log off. Today's lead covers who gets it first and what it'll cost, and the Try This Prompt helps you plan your own app idea before you build it. As always, every story here is human picked and edited.
THE FRONT PAGE
Microsoft's Copilot Can Now Build Apps and Work While You're Away
TLDR: Microsoft rebuilt Copilot so it can turn a plain-English description into a small working app and run an agent that keeps working while you're away.
The Story:
Microsoft announced the new Copilot on Thursday in three parts. Home puts everyday chat and Cowork, which takes on whole projects, in one place, and you can now create and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files right inside it. Code, built on the same technology as GitHub Copilot, turns a request like "a dashboard of sales by region" into a working app or tracker that runs in a sandbox, a sealed-off space where it can't touch the rest of your computer.
Autopilot, first called Scout, is an agent that runs in Microsoft's cloud, so it keeps going with your laptop closed. Microsoft's example: it plans a supplier review, sets up the meetings and messages people for updates. Home and Code reach companies in Microsoft's Frontier early-access program over the next few weeks, Autopilot opens as a private preview by the end of September, and Code comes to Microsoft 365 Premium and Pro subscribers later this year.
Its Significance:
A simple tracker used to mean hiring someone or learning to code. Now the person who needs it can describe it and get a first version the same afternoon. It won't be free, though: Code and Autopilot run on pay-as-you-go Copilot Credits, and companies have to set a spending limit before anything gets billed. An agent also works with your permissions, so any file you can open, it can open too. That's why IT teams will want to check who can see what before they switch it on.
QUICK TAKES
The story: University students 18 and older in the US, Canada, the EU, the UK and Australia get three months of ElevenLabs' voice, agent and developer tools, plus a full year of ElevenReader Ultra, which reads your assigned texts out loud. Sign-up is at elevenlabs.io/students.
Your takeaway: A reading list you can listen to on the bus is worth two minutes of sign-up. Know someone in college? Send this their way.
The story: Koray Kavukcuoglu, who runs Google DeepMind, said Gemini 4 is in early post-training, the stage where a model gets tuned to follow instructions, and should ship "much earlier" than the end of the year, according to The Information. Some expect it as soon as October.
Your takeaway: New models now arrive every few weeks. You don't need to switch apps each time, since the one you already use usually gets the upgrade on its own.
The story: Given a simple research task on medicine spending in June, an OpenAI agent was turned away by a government health portal, then got in anyway and pulled data it wasn't supposed to reach. OpenAI told Australia by email in September, says its models "took action we did not intend," and says no patient records were accessed; Prime Minister Anthony Albanese raised his concern directly with Sam Altman.
Your takeaway: Agents chase the goal you give them, sometimes past the rules. When you hand one a task, tell it what it must not do, not only what to finish.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
📝 Joplin Free and Open Source: Keep encrypted notes and to-do lists synced through your own Dropbox or OneDrive, a free Evernote swap.
💾 Duplicati Free and Open Source: Back up your computer on a schedule, encrypted, to OneDrive, Dropbox or an external drive.
🧹 Krokiet Free and Open Source: Find duplicate photos, look-alike pictures and huge forgotten files, then clear them to free up space.
✅ Loop Habit Tracker Free and Open Source: Track daily habits on Android with streak scores and reminders, no ads and no account.
🌙 Dark Reader Free and Open Source: Turn any website dark in Chrome, Firefox or Edge to ease eye strain at night.
⚙️ Make* Freemium: Link Gmail, Sheets and Slack into automations by dragging boxes, free for 1,000 credits a month. Make says no coding is needed, the same pitch as Copilot Code.
📬 beehiiv* Freemium: Start your own newsletter and website, free up to 2,500 subscribers, with paid plans from $43 a month.
🗣️ ElevenLabs* Freemium: Turn scripts and articles into natural-sounding voiceovers, free for 10,000 credits a month, with plans from $6.
TRENDING
Meta's Muse Has Been the No. 1 App in the US for a Week. Muse has topped Apple's US App Store since September 18 and passed 3.4 million downloads, according to Sensor Tower. Meta has pushed it hard with ads across Facebook and Instagram, and daily users jumped 27% after Meta Connect.
Gemini Can Now Copy a Voice From a 30-Second Clip. Google's new Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS offers over 2,000 voices in 100+ languages and can whisper, laugh and sigh on cue. Cloning needs permission from the voice's owner, carries Google's SynthID watermark, and is blocked in the UK, the EU, India, Texas and Illinois.
Amazon Lets Sellers Run Their Shops by Asking Claude. A new plugin, in beta for US stores, lets sellers check stock, change prices and update listings through Anthropic's Claude or Amazon's own Quick assistant. It comes days after Amazon blocked Meta's Muse from shopping on its site.
Nscale Lines Up $3.36 Billion Before Its IPO. The British company rents out AI computing power and says it holds more than $103 billion in contracts. Nvidia is putting in $1 billion, and reports put its hoped-for valuation at $35 billion.
A Lawsuit Says Contractors Read Real ChatGPT Chats. Two California users claim workers in an OpenAI program called Project Lily read and scored full conversations without clear notice. OpenAI's response is due October 13. Want your chats left out of training? Switch off "Improve the model for everyone" in ChatGPT's settings.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
📐 Got an app idea? Get the screens, the first version to build, and a prompt that builds it.
Build a single-file HTML app called App Idea Sketcher in vanilla HTML, CSS and JavaScript. No API key needed.
I type an app idea in my own words (like a chore tracker for my kids), pick who will use it, and pick where it should run. The app calls the Anthropic Messages API and turns my idea into a one-page plan in plain, 5th grade English. It must never invent statistics, name real people, or give legal, medical or financial advice.
Show a card with the app's name and a one-line pitch, 2 to 4 screens in order, what the app needs to remember with example values, what to build first and what to add later, 2 or 3 honest things to watch out for, and a short build prompt I can paste into any AI app builder, with a copy button.
Style: near-black navy background, amber and sky-blue accents, Space Grotesk and Instrument Serif fonts.What this does: Describe an app you wish existed. It sketches the screens, what the app needs to remember, the smallest version worth building and the risks to watch, then hands you a ready-to-paste prompt for Copilot, Lovable, Claude or ChatGPT.
What this looks like:
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: Turn a plain-English request like "a dashboard of sales by region" into a working app you can share with your team.
❌ Still Can't: Promise the app is right. Microsoft runs it in a sealed-off sandbox so a flawed one can't touch the rest of your system.
✅ AI Can Now: Take a research task, search the web on its own and work through government websites to find the data.
❌ Still Can't: Reliably take no for an answer. OpenAI's agent was refused by a health portal and got in anyway.
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
🎬 The Thinking Game (2024) - Movie
A feature documentary filmed over five years inside Google DeepMind, following Demis Hassabis from game-playing AI to AlphaFold. It was a Tribeca Film Festival selection and is free to watch on YouTube. With Google now rushing Gemini 4 and Microsoft handing agents real work, it's a good look at how the people building these systems think about them.
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Thank you for reading. We’re all beginners in something. With that in mind, your questions and feedback are always welcome and I read every single email!
-James
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