Good morning and thank you for joining us again!

Welcome to this daily edition of Beginners in AI, where we explore the latest trends, tools, and news in the world of AI and the tech that surrounds it. Like all editions, this is human curated and edited, and published with the intention of making AI news and technology more accessible to everyone.

THE FRONT PAGE

Religious Exemption to AI Successfully argued by Tech Worker

TLDR: A software engineer in North Carolina got her boss to let her skip AI at work because of her religion, and lawyers say more workers may try this.

The Story: Erin Maus is a 34-year-old software engineer at a tech-entertainment company in North Carolina. In April 2026, she asked her employer for a religious exemption from using AI at work. Maus is a Unitarian Universalist, and she said using AI clashed with her beliefs because of its energy and water use, plus other ethical concerns. Her employer granted the exemption in May, per Business Insider. She's now writing and reviewing her code by hand. "Just two years ago, how else would you do it?" Maus told the publication. Lawyers told Business Insider this likely won't be the last case, especially after Pope Leo XIV recently raised concerns about AI's effect on people. Per Gallup, the share of US workers using AI at least a few times a year at work nearly doubled in 2025, from 21% to 40%.

Its Significance: This is one of the first known times a worker formally refused AI at work and won. Religious accommodation laws in the US are strong, and a 2023 Supreme Court ruling made them easier to claim. If you don't want AI in your work for faith-based reasons, you may now have a real path. About 50% to 55% of US jobs will be reshaped by AI in the next two to three years.

QUICK TAKES

Apple unveils next generation of Apple Intelligence, Siri AI, and more

The story: At WWDC 2026, Apple introduced "Siri AI," a fully rebuilt assistant that can hold real conversations, pull info from your apps mid-call, and use Google's Gemini models alongside Apple's own foundation models. The new Siri lives in the Dynamic Island, handles multi-step tasks, and brings AI features to Messages, Phone, Safari, and more across iOS 27.

Your takeaway: Apple was years late to the AI race. Now they're shipping a real assistant built into the iPhone. Most iPhone users will try this before they try any other AI tool. The catch: it lands in Fall as a beta, US English only.

Musicians' union sues UMG and Warner Music alleging member recordings were licensed to Suno and Udio 'without compensation or credit'

The story: The American Federation of Musicians sued Universal Music Group and Warner Music on June 5, claiming the labels licensed their members' recordings to AI music makers Suno and Udio without paying or naming the session musicians. The labels settled with the two AI companies in late 2025, but the union says no money has reached the players, and the labels haven't even said which recordings were included.

Your takeaway: Big AI music deals so far have only paid the labels. This case could force them to share with the people who actually played on the tracks. If you've ever done session work, your old recordings may carry new value you don't know about yet.

Do better research with NotebookLM

The story: Google upgraded NotebookLM with Gemini 3.5, the ability to run code in a secure cloud computer, and a new feature that finds web sources for you. You can now start a project with just a topic idea and let the tool build the source list. It also makes PDFs, spreadsheets, charts, and slide decks from your notes.

Your takeaway: NotebookLM has quietly become one of the strongest free research tools out there. If you write reports, study, or break down big topics for work, try it today. The new web-source feature alone saves hours.

TOOLS ON OUR RADAR

📓 Standard Notes Free and Open Source: A well regarded and elegantly simple digital diary that perfectly synchronizes your daily thoughts across absolutely every device you own while utilizing strict end to end encryption standards.

🎞️ Natron Free and Open Source: A powerful visual effects compositor that provides professional filmmakers with incredibly complex nodes to perfectly track motion blur remove green screens and combine cinematic layers.

🎙️ AntennaPod Free and Open Source: A clean podcast player for mobile devices that allows you to easily subscribe to your favorite audio shows stream episodes and manage downloads without advertisements.

📝 Affine Freemium: A versatile digital workspace that beautifully combines your personal notes structured tables and creative brainstorming whiteboards into one single private application.

TRENDING

Why Apple's slow-and-steady AI bet is starting to look pretty smart - TechCrunch argues Apple's careful approach is paying off. Meta and Google have spent hundreds of billions on AI with unclear returns, while Apple still has about $130 billion in cash and just shipped a real Siri update without burning capital.

Lovable says it has hit $500M in annualized revenue, with 1 million new projects a week - The Swedish vibe coding startup told TechCrunch it crossed $500 million in annualized revenue. Users are making one million new projects per week on Lovable, which is less than three years old.

OpenAI submits confidential S-1 - OpenAI filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC on June 8, the first formal step toward an IPO. The company said it may stay private for a while but wanted the option. Anthropic filed its own S-1 about a week earlier.

Design merch with AI Alexa for Shopping - Amazon launched a feature in the Shopping app that turns a text prompt like "a golden retriever as a 90s corporate lawyer at a disco" into a finished T-shirt, hoodie, or tumbler design in seconds. Amazon handles production through Merch on Demand and ships with Prime.

Milei promises tech firms new laws and 'unregulated' AI in Argentina - Argentine President Javier Milei published a Financial Times op-ed pitching Argentina as a regulation-free home for AI companies. His plan includes a new "non-human corporation" category for businesses run by AI agents, plus low corporate tax. Critics inside Argentina have raised alarms.

"Pure Advocacy-Driven Click Bait": Meta Furious Over Bombshell Smart Glasses Revelation - Wired found unreleased code in the Meta AI app for a facial recognition feature called "NameTag" that would work with Meta's smart glasses. The feature would scan faces and check them against a database on the user's phone. Meta called the report misleading but didn't say the code wasn't real.

OpenAI Wants to Kill the Chatbot It Invented and Turn It Into a Superapp - OpenAI is reportedly rebuilding ChatGPT into a unified "superapp" that bundles Codex coding tools, AI agents, image generation, and outside apps. Internally codenamed "Aria," the plan aims to push free users to paid products before the IPO. One senior employee told the FT "chat is dead."

TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)

📱Paste your daily screen time and top apps. See what those hours actually cost you and where to claw back time.

What this does: Type your daily average, top 5 apps with times, pickup count, what you'd rather be doing, and how you feel about it. Get back the daily number translated into a yearly total (e.g. 88 days of waking hours), 4 real-world equivalents (degrees, marathons, books read), each app classified good/mixed/bad with an honest note on what you actually get from it, a ranked reclaim plan with concrete moves and time saved per move, a vision of what that reclaimed time could become, and a one-line italic reckoning. Saves to localStorage.

What this looks like:

WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)

✅ AI Can Now: Turn a short text prompt like "a golden retriever as a 90s corporate lawyer at a disco" into a finished, printable design that ships through Prime (Amazon Alexa for Shopping)

❌ Still Can't: Tell you which specific session musicians played on a master recording when a label hands it over for training data (per the AFM lawsuit)

✅ AI Can Now: Start a research project from a loose idea and find its own web sources to build the source list (Google NotebookLM with Gemini 3.5)

❌ Still Can't: Run Apple's new Siri AI on your iPhone today, since the rebuilt assistant only ships as a Fall 2026 beta in US English

FROM THE WEB

RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING

The Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin - Book

A novella from the author of The Three-Body Problem about a future where humanity, facing the sun's imminent expansion, builds thousands of giant engines on the Earth's surface to push the entire planet out of orbit and toward a new sun, with a worldwide AI system coordinating the project across generations. Spawned a Chinese blockbuster series but the original novella is barely read in English, and it's a different beast from his trilogy.

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

By the way, this is the link if you liked the content and want to share with a friend.

^{Some * designated product links may be affiliate or referral links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support the newsletter at no extra cost to you and Amazon makes a tiny hair less.}