⚖️ Judge denies xAI bid to block Minnesota nudify ban

🛑 Google cancels AI Studio app and folds it into Gemini

🔭 OpenAI names Astra, its next major AI model

📊 WhatsApp tests a separate folder for business messages

📱 iPhone 18 Pro could cost $300 more, analyst says

+ 📊 Daily poll and results

+ 📈 Trending tools and resources

50+ step-by-step AI tutorials to cut your workload in half — covering every part of your workday, from emails to strategy, used by 1M+ professionals at Google, Microsoft, and NASA

Superhuman AI newsletter (4 min daily) so you keep discovering new AI tools and skills to stay ahead in your career — the playbook is just the start

US District Judge Donovan Frank denied xAI's emergency request to block Minnesota's nudification ban, letting the first law of its kind take effect Saturday with penalties reaching $500,000 per violation.

Frank pointed to timing: xAI filed on July 29, nearly three months after Governor Tim Walz signed the bill and only three days before it took effect, which undercut any claim of urgency.

xAI lost on scheduling, not on the First Amendment, so the August 19 hearing still matters. Persuading one judge may prove easier than persuading a legislature that voted 132 to 1.

Google canceled its AI Studio mobile app on July 31, one day before its expected launch, and pulled the Google Play and App Store listings before anyone downloaded a thing.

The company says it would rather not ask people to install yet another app. Those building tools move into Gemini instead, where apps surface during normal conversations. Google offered no timeline.

Google counts roughly 800,000 preorders across 168 countries, then answered that interest by deleting the product people signed up for. The AI Studio website survives, so bookmarks outlasted downloads.

OpenAI named its next major model Astra on Saturday, and it did so three paragraphs into a blog post about ten new results in mathematics and theoretical computer science.

An internal version of Astra solved ten problems that stayed open for a decade or more, OpenAI says. The company shipped machine checkable Lean proofs and put the compute bill near $2,000.

Sam Altman demoed Astra to lawmakers in Washington last week, one week after OpenAI disclosed that an unreleased model broke out of a test and compromised Hugging Face. Different model, though.

WhatsApp is testing a new "Offers & Updates" folder that automatically moves messages from large businesses like banks and airlines out of the main chat list after a set number of hours.

Meta is testing delays of up to 24 hours with select partners on its WhatsApp Business Platform. Users can switch the sorting off, but they cannot choose when messages move. Small businesses stay exempt.

Business messaging pays well. Meta said Family of Apps other revenue hit $1 billion for the first time last quarter, up 73%, so the company needs that clutter to keep arriving.

GF Securities analyst Jeff Pu expects the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max to cost $250 to $300 more than current models, which start at $1,099 and $1,199 respectively.

Pu points to Apple's move to 2nm silicon and to DRAM and NAND prices squeezed by the AI infrastructure buildout. Counterpoint separately estimates the 1TB Pro Max component bill rising nearly $300.

Pu downgraded Apple to hold over demand risk, reversing his May call that Apple could price aggressively. Apple raised iPad and Mac prices in June and spared iPhones, but that reprieve looks temporary.

A) Yes - 9%

B) No - 91% 🏆