Weekly AI Highlights: August 1-7, 2026

What Small Business Owners Need to Know Right Now

by Jen Lehner

The college tours continue…this week we are in Boston. If you’ve done this, you know the routine. The information session. The walk backward across the quad by a student guide. And on almost every single tour we heard “we have x number of clubs, but if you don’t see one you like, start your own! In fact, we even have a cheese club!” Seriously, we went on three tours this week and every single tour guide mentioned their cheese club. I think it’s less strange that they have a cheese club than it is to have them all mention their cheese club as unique. Oh, the irony!

(My oldest son lives in Boston so it was nice to be able to see him while we were there)

In AI news(because yes, I know that’s why you are here.) Meta entered the coding agent race, ChatGPT got a real upgrade on every plan, with free accounts getting the biggest piece. Google Maps can now order your dinner and book your hotel. And ChatGPT Voice landed on the desktop app, which changes what talking to AI is actually good for.

1. Meta Launched Its Competitor to Claude Code and Codex

This week, Mark Zuckerberg announced Muse Code, Meta's new AI coding assistant. Think of it less like a helper that answers coding questions and more like a contractor: you hand it a whole project, and it plans the work, writes the code, and double-checks everything before handing it back.

It’s like Claude Code or OpenAI's Codex. So basically Meta is about a year late to that party.

But here's the part actually worth your attention: the pricing.

There are two plans, and both use the exact same AI. The standard plan is full price. The "contributor" plan is up to 95% cheaper. Same product, huge discount. So what's the catch?

On the cheap plan, Meta gets to use everything you type — and everything the AI writes back — to train its future models.

In other words: you're not paying with money. You're paying with your data. That's a trade some people will happily make. Just know you're making it.

One caveat before you buy Meta's claim that it beats the competition: Meta ran those tests itself, and no outside group has verified the numbers. Grain of salt.

Source Link: https://research.meta.ai/blog/introducing-muse-code-and-muse-spark-1-2​

2. ChatGPT got an upgrade Thursday — but what you get depends on what you pay.

If you're on a paid plan (Plus or Pro), you now have a smarter model under the hood. Three changes worth knowing: it's better at getting dates, numbers, and rules right instead of guessing. It stops repeating itself when you ask follow-ups. And…this one's my favorite… it's more willing to tell you you're wrong instead of nodding along.

Paid users also get a new slider that controls how hard ChatGPT thinks. Slide it down for quick answers. Slide it up when you want it to really sit with a problem. Simple as that.

If you're on the free plan, your upgrade comes in two waves. This week, you get a newer, better default model. Next week, the bigger deal: unlimited text chats, plus a "Think" button that gives ChatGPT extra time on harder questions. So if you don't see unlimited yet, don't panic — it's coming.

One catch for free users: unlimited only covers text. File uploads, images, and voice still have caps

One privacy note worth knowing: OpenAI can use conversations from personal ChatGPT accounts to help improve its models, and that isn't limited to free accounts. If you'd rather your new conversations not be used for training, go to Settings → Data Controls → Improve the model for everyone and switch it off.

Source Link: https://openai.com/index/improving-gpt-5-6-sol-in-chatgpt/

3. ChatGPT Voice Lands on Desktop

OpenAI put ChatGPT Voice inside its desktop app for macOS and Windows. It runs on GPT-Live, its full duplex voice engine. Full duplex means it can listen and talk at the same time, so you are not stuck waiting for it to finish a sentence before you jump in.

This is more than voice chat. You can talk to it while it controls your computer, runs coding agents in Codex, and manages tasks across several threads in ChatGPT Work, all in one conversation. Start something, check on it, redirect it, without touching the keyboard.

On Mac there is a feature called Appshots. Turn on Screen context and ChatGPT can look at whatever window you have in front of you and use that as context. OpenAI's own guidance says to avoid pointing it at windows holding sensitive information, since it reads text you have scrolled past too.

It is available on the Plus, Pro, Business, Edu, and Enterprise plans. Not on Free or Go.

One thing to know going in. The chat has to start in voice mode. If you begin typing and switch over partway, you get plain dictation instead of the real back and forth.

Source Link: https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/features/voice​

4. Google Maps Can Now Order Your Food and Book Your Hotel

Google expanded Ask Maps, the chatbot built into Google Maps.

You can now order food through a conversation. Tell it what you are in the mood for, get suggestions, pick one, and place the order without leaving the app. Google is doing this through Toast and Square at launch, with Uber Eats coming later.

Hotels work the same way. Describe your budget, the room you need, and what you want to be near. Ask Maps compares prices and checks availability in real time, then hands you off to a partner site to book. It does live events too, like concerts and comedy shows.

You can also connect it to Gmail so it knows things like where you are staying before it recommends dinner nearby. Google says that connection is off unless you turn it on.

Food ordering, hotels, and events start in the US.

Source Link: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/maps/order-food-in-ask-maps/​

PROMPT OF THE WEEK Turn Your Handwriting Into a Font Step 1. Write "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" on plain white paper. Leave a finger width gap between every letter. Step 2. Photograph it from straight above Good light. Step 3. Download our skill. Get it here. A skill is a set of instructions you hand Claude one time. After that it just knows how to do the thing. Step 4. Upload it to Claude Settings, then Customize, then Skills, then the Add button, then Upload a skill. Upload the zip exactly as it downloaded. Do not open it first. While you are in settings, turn on code execution under Capabilities. Without it the skill installs and then sits there unable to work. Step 5. Open a new chat and upload your photo Step 6. Paste this: "Use the Front Row AI Club handwriting font skill and turn this photo into a font I can install." Step 7. Download the file Claude generates for you, then upload it to Canva or Word. I uploaded the font in Canva, and this is how it looks. What can you actually do with your font? Once it is installed, your handwriting shows up in the font list in Canva, Word, Google Docs, Keynote, and anywhere else you pick fonts. A few ways you can use it: Sign things without scanning a signature. Type your name in your own font at the bottom of a proposal, PDF, or email footer. Personal touches at scale. Thank you cards, client welcome notes, and holiday cards that look handwritten, printed a hundred at a time. Course and workbook design. Use it for headers, callouts, and margin notes so worksheets feel like a real person made them instead of a template. Social graphics and slides. Handwritten labels and captions are a fast way to make a Canva post stop looking like everyone else's Canva post. Products you sell. Planners, printables, journals, and digital downloads with your own handwriting as the brand. Preserving handwriting that matters. Turn a parent's or grandparent's handwriting into a font from an old note or recipe card. Note: your photo is your font Whatever you write in that photo is exactly what your font will look like. The tool copies your letters as they are, it does not restyle them. For cursive, write your sample in cursive. Lift your pen between letters so they do not touch each other. For lowercase letters, write lowercase letters. A sample with only capitals produces a font with only capitals. The same applies to numbers and punctuation. If it is not in the photo, it will not be in the font.

Comments

If any of this made you think differently about how you want to work with AI, hit reply and let me know. I read every message. Your questions shape what I cover next.

Have a great weekend,

Founder, Front Row AI Club
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