Strands is a brand new daily puzzle from the New York Times. A trickier take on the classic word search, you’ll need a keen eye to solve this puzzle.

Like Wordle, Connections, and the Mini Crossword, Strands can be a bit difficult to solve some days. There’s no shame in needing a little help from time to time. If you’re stuck and need to know the answers to today’s Strands puzzle, check out the solved puzzle below.

How to play Strands

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strand answers

Today’s spanagram

We’ll start by giving you the spangram, which might help you figure out the theme and solve the rest of the puzzle on your own:

Today’s Strands answers

• BARK
• MEOW
• GRUNT
• SQUAWK
• GROWL
• PURR
• CHIRP
• SQUEAK

Google Photos is undoubtedly one of the best photo management apps, thanks to new and enhanced features. That said, it can’t clearly tell if an image has AI edits. Earlier this month, some reports hinted that Google Photos would soon help identify AI-generated images. Now, the company announced that Google Photos will soon tell you if an image has been through AI edits.

Google Photos’ “AI Info” section will clearly label images with AI edits

Starting next week, Google Photos will clearly label images that went through edits using AI tools like Magic Editor, Magic Eraser, and Zoom Enhance. Google, in the announcement post, says that it is making this change to increase transparency and help users understand more about AI-edited images. With the growing popularity of Gen AI tools, this move was much needed.

While the metadata of an image file used to include the use of AI, it wasn’t easily accessible to users. However, that’ll change starting next week. Google Photos will include a new “AI Info” section alongside image details like file name, backup status, and location. This will allow users to easily know if AI has altered the images.

The new section will be available on Google Photos web and mobile app

It’s worth noting that Google Photos will label the edits involving generative AI. That’s not all, Google also says “We will also use IPTC metadata to indicate when an image is composed of elements from different photos using non-generative features.” Here, Google is referring to “Best Take” and “Add Me” features.

The “AI Info” section will be visible in the image details view of the Google Photos web and mobile app. While this is a welcome change, Google has yet to come up with something that will let users immediately identify AI-edited images.

The White House issued its first national security memorandum outlining the use of artificial intelligence for the military and intelligence agencies. The White House also shared a shortened copy of the memo with the public.

The new memo sets up guidelines for military and intelligence agencies for using AI in its day-to-day operations. The memo sets a series of deadlines for agencies to study the applications and regulations of AI tools, most of which will lapse following President Biden’s term. The memo also aims to limit “the most dystopian possibilities, including the development of autonomous weapons,” according to the .

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan announced the new directive today at as part of a talk on AI’s presence in government operations. Sullivan has been one of the President’s most vocal proponents for examining the benefits and risks of AI technology. He also raised concerns about China’s use of AI to control its population and spread misinformation and how the memo can spark conversations with other countries grappling with implementing its own AI strategies.

The memorandum establishes some hard edges for AI usage especially when it comes to weapons systems. The memo states that AI can never be used as a decision maker for launching nuclear weapons or assigning asylum status to immigrants coming to the US. It also prohibits AI from tracking anyone based on their race or religion or determining if a suspect is a known terrorist without human intervention.

The memo also lays out protections for private-sector AI advance as “national assets that need to be protected…from spying or theft by foreign adversaries,” according to the Times. The memorandum orders intelligence agencies to help private companies working on AI models secure their work and provide updated intelligence reports to project their AI assets.

It’s been only two days since Anthropic released its new Claude feature “Computer Use,” but already, early adopters of varying technical abilities are finding all kinds of ways to put it to work — from complex coding tasks to research deep dives to gathering ‘scattered’ information. 

Still in beta, Computer Use allows Claude to work autonomously and use a computer essentially as a human does. The groundbreaking capability has broad implications for the future of work, as it can work essentially on its own, perform repetitive tasks and quickly gather up data from numerous disparate sources. 

“Anthropic just released the most amazing AI technology I’ve ever used. I’m not kidding,” startup founder Alex Finn posted to X (formerly Twitter). “It’s legit changing day to day.”

Claude can ‘see’ and work autonomously

Claude has the ability to “see” a screen via screenshots, adapt to different tasks and move across workflows and software programs. It can also navigate between multiple screens, apps and tabs, open applications, move cursors, tap buttons and type text. 

“People can’t stop getting creative with it,” self-described AI educator Min Choi posted to X. 

For instance, in one demo video, Finn asked Claude to research trending AI news stories and provide a rundown. Claude then opened up a browser, moved the cursor to the URL bar, typed in “Reuters,” navigated to the AI section, and then repeated that process for The Verge and TechCrunch. The model then offered up six trending news stories. 

“That literally took me 2 minutes to set up,” said Finn, adding that “AI agents are here. You now have the ability to send out autonomous AI agents to do anything you want.”

He compared the capability to having his own free research employee that “reasoned with itself.”

“It basically gives you superpowers,” he said.

Taking over drudge work

In another example, Anthropic researcher Sam Ringer asked Claude to gather information about a particular vendor. 

“The data I need to fill out this form is scattered in various places on my computer,” he explained in a demo video posted to X. 

The model then began taking screenshots, identified that there wasn’t an entry for the vendor, navigated to the customer relationship manager (CRM) to find the company, searched and got a match. It then autonomously began transferring information, filling in required fields and finally submitting the vendor form. 

“This example is of a lot of drudge work that people have to do,” said Ringer. 

Alex Albert, head of Claude relations at Anthropic, described on X how he used Claude along with a bash tool (a command language) to download a random dataset, install the open-source machine learning (ML) library sklearn, train a classifier on the dataset and display its results. This took just 5 minutes. 

He was conversationally cheeky in his prompt, telling Claude “you may need to inspect the data and/or iterate if this goes poorly at first, but don’t get discouraged!)”

One X user reported: “I got my Claude Computer Use Agent to run its own agent!” 

Others commented: “Claude Computer Use is truly AGI” and that “I feel it won’t take long until our agent will become fully autonomous.”

Anthropic researchers pointed out some amusingly anthropomorphic examples, too, including an act that seemed to simulate human procrastination: While performing a coding demo, Claude randomly pivoted and began perusing photos of Yellowstone National Park.

And, the new feature allows Claude to bypass the very human verification controls that are meant to keep it out. 

X user “Pliny the Liberator” posted: 

“PSA: MY CLAUDE AGENTS CAN NOW SOLVE CAPTCHAS ???

BAHAHAHAHAAA IT’S SO OVER”

We’re excited to announce that Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of the popular blogging platform WordPress, will be taking the Disrupt Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024.

When Mullenweg first started working on WordPress, he was a 19-year-old jazz enthusiast and photographer in Texas who noticed the blogging software that he used had been stagnating — so he decided to build his own open source platform, forked from an existing project.

The first version of WordPress was launched in May 2003. From those modest beginnings, it has expanded to become a nearly ubiquitous content management system powering many of the web’s best-known publishers, including TechCrunch. By some counts, it’s used by more than 40% of websites.

Mullenweg also serves as CEO of Automattic, which offers hosting and other commercial services on top of WordPress and was valued at $7.5 billion in 2021. Among other things, Automattic operates the spam filtering Akismet, the e-commerce plugin WooCommerce, and the blogging platform Tumblr (acquired from Verizon). And if that wasn’t enough, Mullenweg also invests in startups through Audrey Capital.

As WordPress and Automattic have grown, and as Mullenweg has become one of the leading voices in open source software, they’ve also faced their share of controversies. For example, they’ve struggled to turn Tumblr into a sustainable business, and in recent months they’ve been locked in a legal battle with another WordPress-hosting company, WP Engine.

So there will be plenty to discuss with Mullenweg on the Disrupt Stage at Disrupt 2024 — about his founder journey, his challenges, and what’s next for WordPress and the web — when he joins us next week. It’s a conversation you won’t want to miss!

Secure your ticket now to take advantage of low ticket rates. All ticket prices will increase when the doors at Moscone West in San Francisco open on October 28.