Claude is getting access to the part of your life usually spread across bank tabs and credit card statements. The convenience is easy to see; deciding whether to connect those accounts deserves a slower minute.
Claude gets a spending view
Anthropic’s new Personal Finance tool connects bank and credit card accounts through Plaid so Claude can answer questions using your balances and transactions. It starts rolling out in beta this week to U.S. users on Pro, Max and Ultra plans.
Anthropic says Claude can total spending across accounts, sort it into categories and flag possible duplicate charges, unexpected fees or bills that keep creeping upward. It can also calculate how much interest you paid over the past year and explain financial terms in everyday language.
For those of us who already use Claude at work, this is a separate, personal decision about account access. A monthly spending review involving several statements and a calculator is the kind of task it covers. Anthropic says access is read-only: Claude cannot move, manage or invest your money.
The privacy details deserve attention before connecting anything. Anthropic says Claude can see account names and types, the last four account-number digits, balances, credit limits and up to two years of transactions. Conversations inside the Personal Finance hub aren’t used to train its models, according to the company.
Fifteen seconds, cheaper edits
Google is rolling out Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash, extending generated video from 10 to 15 seconds and cutting the 720p price by 30%, to $0.07 per second.
For anyone making short marketing clips, the editing change may be the bigger draw. Google says you can keep refining the same clip through conversation, changing a background, product, lighting or aspect ratio without generating the whole thing again. It also claims better consistency for packaging text, brand colors and characters.
A practical trial: use existing product photography to generate a short clip, then request a different background on that same clip. Google says the model supports that workflow, though it is still improving complex physics and fast sports action.
Access varies by product. Google says 15-second generation is available at no additional cost in Google Vids with a Google account or Workspace subscription; Gemini app access is rolling out to Google AI Ultra subscribers.
Perplexity adds always-on workers
Perplexity Teammates are new work agents that run around the clock and require the $200-a-month Max plan. Perplexity says they draw on existing projects, skills and memory from its tools, with different jobs running simultaneously.
This is most relevant if your ongoing work already lives in Perplexity. The company says Teammates build on Perplexity Computer to collaborate on ongoing, large-scale work. A subscription that expensive needs a recurring job attached to it.
Each Teammate has an individual progress thread in the Perplexity app, and users can also interact with them in Slack.
Also
- Checked mathematics. Axiom Math says it formally verified the roughly 7,654-page Stacks Project using about 16 million lines of computer-checked code.
- Inkling’s pending weights. Thinking Machines’ Soumith Chintala says Inkling 2 Small’s open weights are due next week after external safety testing.
- Data center disclosure. OpenAI says it will stop using broad NDAs with public officials, retaining narrow protections for security and commercially sensitive information.
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