Claude's enzyme claim, ChatGPT signs Sachin, Grok opens the books

On September 23, Anthropic announced that AI agents running Claude had found an enzyme system in viruses that infect bacteria, which it calls ARTs (array-associated reverse transcriptases). Its post says the core enzyme had been identified in earlier studies and that Claude appears to be the first to notice the system's defining features.

Over the weekend, University of Copenhagen computational biologist Mario Rodríguez Mestre told The New York Times's Carl Zimmer, in a story syndicated by Business Standard, that his group has studied the same enzymes for four years, nicknamed them jumbotrons and has yet to publish. He says his team has used Anthropic's models for about three years to write code and draft manuscripts, and along the way shared key findings about the enzymes with Anthropic's AI, including a draft manuscript describing them. He also says he cannot be sure Anthropic's agents were guided by his work. "I mean, coincidences happen," he said, adding that his team knew about the repeats more than a year ago.

In a statement on Sunday, Anthropic said it knows of no previously published work describing the ART system, that Claude was not trained on user transcripts, and that its molecular biology team has no access to them. Mestre says he is moving his projects to other models. The enzyme is now a footnote to a much older question from paying customers: what happens to the things I type?

On Monday, cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar announced a multi-year partnership with OpenAI, afaqs reported. The first video has him asking ChatGPT to work out who he is in 10 questions, a guessing game that was never going to need all ten. Later videos pair him with entrepreneur and creator Varun Mayya to show what he actually uses ChatGPT for.

The uses are pleasantly ordinary: preparing speeches, organizing ideas, and reading up on cars, golf and cooking. His daughter Sara introduced him to ChatGPT while they planned a family vacation. OpenAI says twice as many people in India use ChatGPT as a year ago, with writing, learning and looking things up as the top uses. That figure is OpenAI's own, and no method came with it. Tendulkar's pitch: "Much of my learning starts with a question."

Marketing insight: OpenAI did not show a benchmark; it showed a famous man asking about golf. Put your product's most ordinary, most common use at the top of your homepage and ads, because that is the one a new customer can picture doing tomorrow.

On September 26, SpaceXAI's Grok Bot announced on X a Finance integration: link bank, card and investment accounts, then ask it to help manage spending and investments. Teslarati reports that Grok has read accounts connected through Plaid since early September, and notes that SpaceXAI's consumer terms generally cap the company's liability at the greater of fees paid or $100. In late August, when a user asked about handing over bank access, Elon Musk replied, "If Grok Bot messes up, we will make you whole." The terms say $100. The CEO says whole. We would screenshot both.

X also opened Grok Bot Template Rewards, an invite-only pilot that pays US creators through X Money when other people use their Grok Bot templates and keep using them. X decides rewards every two weeks. Your own use does not count, likes and impressions do not count, and promotional posts need the paid partnership label. X's help page lists marketing and sales workflows among the use cases getting the most use right now, and says a short demo video beats a bare link. Social Media Today reads the pilot as a push to show off what the agents are actually good for.

People now read AI claims the way an accountant reads an expense report. Where did this come from, who else worked on it, and what happens to what I typed? The businesses that answer those in one clear page, before anyone asks, will look calm while everyone else looks surprised.

One date for the calendar: OpenAI's DevDay is Tuesday, September 29, with Sam Altman's keynote at 10 a.m. PT on a free livestream. It is worth an hour if your team builds anything on ChatGPT.

If you want help writing that one clear page, or turning your best workflow into something customers can reuse, that is the conversation our founders like having. Talk to them below. See you in the next edition.