# #252 - GPT 5.6, Grok 4.5, Nemotron-Labs-Diffusion, AI 2040

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/last-week-in-ai/252-gpt-5-6-grok-4-5-nemotron-labs-diffusion-ai-2040
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/last-week-in-ai/252-gpt-5-6-grok-4-5-nemotron-labs-diffusion-ai-2040.md
Podcast: [Last Week in AI](https://stenobird.com/podcast/last-week-in-ai)
Published: 2026-07-15T01:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://mgln.ai/e/211/rss.art19.com/episodes/c2f716f0-25c5-44fa-92b9-abf5d0e58297.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0
Audio file: https://mgln.ai/e/211/rss.art19.com/episodes/c2f716f0-25c5-44fa-92b9-abf5d0e58297.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0
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Duration seconds: 5117

## Resource

Our 252th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! Recorded on 07/11/2026 Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or  hello@gladstone.ai Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/ In this episode: OpenAI publicly rolled out GPT-5.6 (including Sol and Luna) and rebranded its desktop agentic coding product as ChatGPT Work, amid disputed claims about whether the US government effectively green-lit and delayed the release and concerns about inconsistent, ad hoc frontier-model oversight and jailbreakability. New model releases intensified pricing and capability competition: SpaceX AI’s Grok 4.5 launched as a very low-cost, Opus-class coding model with minimal safety documentation, while Meta released Muse Spark 1.1 with aggressive pricing, large coding/cyber benchmark gains, and a lengthy safety evaluation. Meta also previewed Muse Video and rolled out Muse Image before quickly backtracking after backlash over easy generation of images of public Instagram accounts; separately, Chinese open-source models grew to over 30% of weekly OpenRouter tokens as cost pressure increased, alongside discussion of risks like potential insider threats. Infrastructure, policy, and safety developments included Meta exploring selling AI compute as a cloud business, US energy regulators pressing grid operators on large-load data-center connections, Anthropic publishing a “global workspace” interpretability method for verbalizable internal representations, reports that China may restrict overseas access to top models, and AI 2040 proposing US–China coordination to slow progress until alignment improves. Timestamps (note - these don't take in…

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