Good morning. It’s Thursday, October 2. Today we are covering:
OpenAI’s new social app is filled with terrifying Sam Altman deepfakes
Apple Shelves Vision Headset Revamp to Prioritize Meta-Like AI Glasses
How a Silicon Valley ‘warlord’ got the Pentagon’s attention
Mira Murati’s Stealth AI Lab Launches Its First Product
T-Mobile’s satellite service now supports Google Maps, WhatsApp, X, and more
Let’s dive in
OpenAI’s new social app is filled with terrifying Sam Altman deepfakes
By Amanda Silberling via TechCrunch
OpenAI has launched Sora, a TikTok-style social app powered by its Sora 2 video generator, where feeds are already dominated by bizarre and highly realistic deepfakes of Sam Altman interacting with copyrighted characters like Pikachu and Mario.
The app’s defining feature is its cameo system, which prompts users to upload biometric data so others can generate videos using their likeness; while marketed as a safety-controlled option, this raises major privacy, consent, and misuse risks.
Though OpenAI claims to enforce guardrails, users are already producing copyright-infringing and political deepfakes, exposing how quickly the platform could become a vector for misinformation, disinformation, and ethical concerns as it scales.
𝕏: Man, imagine being Mark Zuckerberg, spending billions to build a slop machine, only for another slop machine to out-slop you just days later. - Pietro Schirano (@skirano)
Apple Shelves Vision Headset Revamp to Prioritize Meta-Like AI Glasses
By Mark Gurman via Bloomberg
Apple has halted its planned overhaul of the Vision Pro headset, redirecting resources toward developing AI-powered smart glasses that could rival Meta’s devices.
The scrapped headset, internally code-named N100, was being designed as a lighter and cheaper model slated for a 2027 release, but the project has now been deprioritized.
Teams previously dedicated to the headset are being reassigned to accelerate the smart glasses program, reflecting Apple’s shift in focus toward what it sees as a more urgent and competitive product category.
𝕏: NEW: Apple is shelving development of the cheaper and lighter Vision Pro revamp — the “Vision Air” — planned for 2027 to prioritize a more urgent effort: developing AI smart glasses to rival Meta. - Mark Gurman (@markgurman)
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How a Silicon Valley ‘warlord’ got the Pentagon’s attention
By David Jeans via Reuters
Steven Simoni, ex-restaurant app founder turned defense tech entrepreneur, co-founded Allen Control Systems, maker of the AI-powered Bullfrog machine-gun turret designed to shoot down drones.
Backed by $40M in venture funding and early Pentagon contracts, Simoni has leveraged hype, media appearances, and political connections—including ties to David Sacks and Trump-era officials—to build influence in Washington.
The company is testing its autonomous weapons—including prototypes nicknamed Eminem and Bob—and exploring new products like laser dazzlers and aerial versions, while aiming for a SPAC listing next year.
𝕏: New: Steve Simoni sold a company to DoorDash for $125M in 2022. Now he’s building Allen Control Systems, which makes an AI-powered autonomous machine gun turret called the “Bullfrog” to shoot drones out of the sky. “The future is Skynet, basically.” - David Jeans (@DavidJeans2)
Mira Murati’s Stealth AI Lab Launches Its First Product
By Will Knight via WIRED
Thinking Machines Lab, cofounded by former OpenAI leaders including Mira Murati and John Schulman, launched its first product, Tinker, a tool that automates fine-tuning of frontier AI models.
Tinker supports supervised and reinforcement learning for models like Meta’s Llama and Alibaba’s Qwen, enabling businesses, researchers, and hobbyists to build custom AI with less infrastructure complexity.
Backed by $2 billion in funding at a $12 billion valuation, the startup aims to make frontier AI capabilities more accessible while balancing openness with safeguards against misuse.
𝕏: Today we launched Tinker. Tinker brings frontier tools to researchers, offering clean abstractions for writing experiments and training pipelines while handling distributed training complexity. It enables novel research, custom models, and solid baselines. Excited to see what people build. - Mira Murati (@miramurati)
T-Mobile’s satellite service now supports Google Maps, WhatsApp, X, and more
By Jess Weatherbed via The Verge
T-Mobile has expanded its Starlink-powered T-Satellite service to support apps like WhatsApp, Google Maps, X, AccuWeather, and T-Life, alongside outdoor apps such as AllTrails and onX.
The service is included in most T-Mobile plans or available for $10/month, automatically connecting eligible iPhone, Pixel, and Samsung devices when no cellular or Wi-Fi is available.
Supported apps offer essential features—WhatsApp enables group calls and media sharing, while X allows posting and feed browsing with controls to limit data-heavy content.
𝕏: Adding support for certain key apps to @TMobile ‘s satellite service is an absolute game changer and shows how the carrier continues to innovate in meaningful ways: T-Mobile expands satellite-based network to support WhatsApp, X in mobile dead zones - Bob O’Donnell (@bobodtech)
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