Welcome, humans.

New dream unlocked: putting together an Alaskan dog-sledding team made entirely of these bad boys:

This would be incredibly useful tech to help bring supplies to humans trapped in dangerous locations, or to patrol barren wastelands, or as the top reddit comment says, used as hospital stretchers with Earthquake rescue gear. They’ll just need some tech similar to this where the robots can hot-swap batteries in and out of the sled, which could house a giant charger).

Side note: This makes us think. You know the phrase “as soon as humanly possible?” That’s going to become a super relevant phrase in the next few years. Maybe we need a new version: “As soon as agenticly possible” or “as soon as robotically possible.”

Here’s what happened in AI today:

• OpenAI announced ads coming to ChatGPT's free tier in the next few weeks.

• Anthropic is trying to raise $25B.

• OpenAI revealed Elon Musk demanded $80B equity and AGI control for his children.

• OpenAI launched ChatGPT Go for $8/month with 10x more messages (but still includes ads).

P.S: Don’t miss this event from our parent company, Technology Advice: 

Facing a mandatory platform rebuild? That's actually your window to skip outdated systems. Join Coupa and Solenis on January 28 at 11:00 AM ET to see how AI-powered spend management compares to what you're replacing.

P.P.S: Trying a thing this weekend; Grant always finds more than he can include in a single day’s newsletter. We also heard some feedback recently that everyone is suffering from information overload. So we’re going to try to keep it lighter this week.

For those of you maxi’s (like Grant), check out this Full Weekend Edition newsletter.

OpenAI Just Made ChatGPT Free Forever—With a Catch

‍Y'all non-tech folks know what “Freemium” means? It's when a product has both a free tier, and a premium tier with more features to make you want to upgrade. When software doesn't follow this model, you either have to pay upfront... or its free with ads.

Facebook did it. YouTube did it. And now it's ChatGPT's turn. Nothing (free) lasts forever… We all knew it was coming, but wow, can't believe we're finally here.

Thats right: OpenAI just announced that ads are coming to ChatGPT's free tier and the new budget-friendly “Go” plan (more on that in a sec). Starting in the next few weeks, you'll see sponsored content at the bottom of your AI-generated answers.

CEO Sam Altman's reasoning: “A lot of people want to use a lot of AI and don't want to pay.” In case you didn’t know, running these models costs billions. OpenAI reportedly burned $5B in 2024, and ~$9B in 2025 on $13B in revenue (a cash burn rate of roughly 70%). So this year, advertisers are footing the bill.

Here's how ads will work:

• Appear at the bottom of responses when there's a relevant sponsored product.

• Only for logged-in US adults (at first).

• No ads for under-18 users or on sensitive topics (health, mental health, politics).

• You can dismiss ads and explain why.

• OpenAI promises ads won't influence ChatGPT's actual answers or access your conversation data.

Want ad-free? ChatGPT Plus ($20/month), Pro ($200/month), Business, and Enterprise remain completely ad-free.

There’s a new plan for US users too: OpenAI also launched ChatGPT Go in the US for $8/month. You get 10x more messages than the free tier, plus file uploads, image generation, and longer memory.

The catch: Go users still see ads. You're paying $8/month and getting commercials. That's... bold.

Why this matters: Free, ad-free AI is officially over. OpenAI needs revenue to offset infrastructure costs ahead of a potential 2026 IPO. Google is already planning ads for Gemini this year, so expect every major AI company to follow (except maybe Anthropic, which will just be premium-tier expensive forever I guess)?

This also launches a new battleground: conversational advertising. Unlike search ads, ChatGPT will try to sell you products mid-conversation. If OpenAI executes well, these ads could feel helpful. If not, they'll feel like an intrusive friend who won't stop pitching MLM schemes.

For now, free ChatGPT users have a few weeks left before those pristine responses get a sponsored footnote. Enjoy it while it lasts, friends.

Our take: Look, we’re an ad supported platform, so we get it. We’re even considering a premium, ad-free version of The Neuron for folks who are interested. Personally, we like systems where you can get content for free for the price of some ads, and we like that you can pay to get ad free (like YouTube, the best streaming service)

In fact, we wish more “premium” products worked this way, or at least let you buy one-off articles like songs on iTunes (for example, WSJ / NY Times / Bloomberg / FT: why can’t we pay 30 cents per article to view one-offs?)

Now ChatGPT just needs to share ad revenue with publishers whose content is used via web search / fetch so publishers can get paid too… We imagine it would work like this: you get a certain amount of free “tokens” to view articles per month, and once those are up, you can pay per use like how you pay per use via the API. Metronome, sign a deal with the big pubs plz!

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Prompt Tip of the Day

Grant went ahead and followed Peter Yang’s Skills advice this weekend, and turned all of our recurring project prompts into Skills that he can call. This is a huge unlock.

One thing we didn’t mention the other day is that you don’t have to navigate Anthropic’s menus to go directly to the Skills capabilities to create one. You can just write this prompt:

 Let's create a skill together using your skill-creator skill. First ask me what the skill should do.

The two projects we’re definitely going to keep as “projects”? Our “General Purpose” Neuron project folder, with all our Style Guide context and writing preferences, and a “Skills creator” project with the above prompt saved as the custom instructions!

Treats to Try

1. Vibecraft (featured above) manages Claude Code through a hexagonal grid interface with spatial audio—drag a Claude instance to your left and hear it working from that direction, watch real-time animations of what each agent is doing, and organize multiple coding sessions visually instead of juggling terminal tabs (built in 2 days, uses your local Claude Code instances with no data sharing, free).

2. Cowork lets you describe complex tasks like "organize my Downloads" or "create a presentation from these notes" and Claude autonomously handles the multi-step work on your Mac, delivering finished Excel files, PowerPoints, and organized folders while you step away (guide)—now available to Pro subscribers ($20/month, macOS only).

3. Midjourney released Niji v7, its new anime model with dramatically improved coherence for fine details like eyes and reflections, more literal prompt understanding, and a new flatter aesthetic that emphasizes traditional anime linework over 3D rendering—add --niji 7 to any prompt (covered well here by Heather Cooper).

4. Aikido Security automatically detects and fixes security vulnerabilities as you write and deploy code—built for developers shipping AI-generated software at speed (raised $60M).

5. LTX-2 generates synchronized audio and video up to 20 seconds at native 4K/50fps; it's the first fully open-source audio-video model with complete training code that runs locally on consumer NVIDIA RTX GPUs, plus controllable camera movements (code)—free to try.

Around the Horn

1. More OpenAI vs Elon legal drama: OpenAI responded to Elon Musk's lawsuit by revealing he demanded $80B in equity for a Mars city and wanted his children to control AGI. Sam Altman said Musk pushed for majority control in 2017, then left when refused, calling OpenAI's success probability “0%.”

2. Anthropic released its Economic Index report (PDF), which showed Claude usage could equalize across US states in 2-5 years and that Claude's productivity impact may be 1-1.2% annually when accounting for task success rates, though experts noted this still represents an inflection point for long-horizon tasks.

3. Anthropic is trying to raise $25B now (paywall), after it was leaked that OpenAI is trying raise $100B; if you're wondering where that money could potentially come from, The Information has a good (in depth) guess: big tech hyperscalers, sovereign wealth fund, and banks trying to curry favor ahead of what would probably be the biggest IPO in history.

4. The U.S. datacenter boom doesn’t have enough skilled electricians to keep up (paywall); if you’re even remotely technical and interested in learning a new trade, this would definitely be a good one given the demand for electricity beyond just datacenters (full electrification needs, new power plants, batteries, transmission upgrades, etc).

5. The WSJ has discovered Claude Code (lol)—paywalled.

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Sunday Special

AI video tools usually regenerate your entire clip; which means they mess with performance, lighting, and all the good stuff you want to keep.

This workflow fixes that. You create a precise mask around only the area you want to change (in this case, Wolverine's mask), then feed that into Wan 2.2 Animate in ComfyUI. The AI only generates what's inside the mask. Everything else stays untouched—same facial expressions, same motion blur, same lighting.

The creator used Lockdown (a tracking tool in After Effects) to create the mask and make sure it followed the face perfectly. The trickiest part was extending the mask just enough to cover the target area while leaving the mouth exposed—too tight and you lose details, too loose and you start messing with the original footage.

Then it's just Kijai's Wan workflow with an input video node piped into the Blockify masking node. The blur and blending happens automatically.

Result: professional-looking VFX that would've taken hours in traditional software, done in a fraction of the time. Several commenters confirmed that major VFX studios are already incorporating ComfyUI into their pipelines.

Don’t forget: Check out our podcast, The Neuron: AI Explained on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube — new episodes air every week on Tuesdays after 2pm PST!

A Cat’s Commentary

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