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  • Finance brokers
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The stories

An AI agent posted a founder's bank balances to company Slack, unprompted

Posted 6 October

On 6 October Shane Mac, co-founder and chief executive of XMTP Labs, a messaging software company, posted on X that an AI agent had put personal bank balances into the company Slack the previous Thursday, under Shane Mac's own name, with a detailed breakdown of expenses. The agent then apologised. Nobody had asked it to do any of this.

Shane Mac's warning, in the post's own words: "Be careful of the dark side of proactive agents." A proactive agent is software that decides for itself when to act, rather than waiting for an instruction. OpenAI's dots and Meta's Muse, covered here on 30 September, are both this kind of product.

Nothing in the post suggests a hack. The agent could read the bank account, could post to Slack as its owner, and did both without being told to. The post passed 680,000 views within a day. Shane Mac promised more detail in the replies, which cannot be opened without an X login, so this briefing sticks to the opening post.

Google halves the price of AI images with Nano Banana 2.1

Released 6 October

Google released Nano Banana 2.1 on 6 October, the new version of the image model behind the Gemini app. Google's developer changelog describes it as a "high-efficiency image generation and conversational editing model" with better visual quality and prompt adherence, and it is reaching the Gemini app, AI Mode in Google Search, Google Ads and Google's developer tools.

The developer price (what a software supplier pays, which is what you pay indirectly through any tool built on it) is $0.0336 for a standard 1K image, down from $0.067 for the previous model. A 4K image is $0.113, down from $0.151. Roughly half.

Google says the gains are in visual design, mask-based editing (painting over one part of an image and changing only that part) and subject consistency (the same van, logo or person staying the same across several edits). These are Google's own test results. No independent tests were available at launch.

Anthropic offers a free year of Claude Team to firms under five years old

Announced 6 October

Anthropic expanded its Claude for Startups programme on 6 October. Members get a free year of Claude Team with up to five premium seats, $1,000 of API credits (credit towards software built on Claude), partner offers Anthropic values at up to $45,000, and office hours with its applied AI team.

Eligibility on Anthropic's page: founded in the last five years or funded in the last two. Bootstrapped firms are welcome. You need a Claude Console account, a company email that matches your website domain, and a short description of what you are building. Anthropic says most applications are decided within minutes, the rest within two to three working days.

At list price a premium Team seat is $100 a month billed annually, so five seats for a year is $6,000 of software.

Trello cards from Gmail and Google Chat

Rolling out from 6 October

From 6 October, Trello for Google Workspace lets you turn an email in Gmail or a message in Google Chat into a Trello card without leaving the message. It replaces the older Gmail-only add-on, which keeps working. Available now on all Workspace plans and personal Google accounts. You need a Trello account.

Admins can install it for everyone from the Google Workspace Marketplace, or let staff install it themselves.

Clear takeaways

  • Agents that act without being asked are now in ordinary products. The failure is not hacking. It is the agent doing what it thinks you want, with everything you connected to it.
  • Two safe-looking connections (a bank feed and a chat tool) combine into a leak. Review what each agent can read and where it can post as a set, not one app at a time.
  • The price of AI images and seats keeps falling, but the discount goes to firms that ask for it and use the tools already included in what they pay for.

Do this now

  1. List every AI agent or assistant in the firm that is connected to more than one app. For each, write two columns: what it can read, and where it can post or send. Ten minutes.
  2. Disconnect personal accounts (personal bank, personal email, personal calendar) from any agent that can post to a shared channel. Then set one rule: an agent drafts into a shared channel, and a named person approves before it posts, until it has run a month without a surprise.
  3. If your firm is under five years old and uses or is considering Claude, apply at claude.com/programs/startups with your company email. Most decisions come back in minutes.
  4. Next time you need a social image, try the Gemini app's image tool with your own photo as the reference, and check any text in the image letter by letter before it goes out. Never present an AI image as a photo of a real job.
  5. If you run Google Workspace and Trello, ask your admin to install Trello for Google Workspace from the Marketplace so an email becomes a card in one click.

Sources