Hello WKND AI Warriors!

OpenAI issues a “Code Red” and launches GPT-5.2 after pressure from Google’s Gemini 3.

Also, Disney signs a $1B deal to bring Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars into OpenAI’s Sora video generator.

Plus, McDonald’s Netherlands pulls an AI-generated Christmas ad after public backlash over ‘AI Slop’.

Oh yeah, and Trump approves NVIDIA H200 AI chip exports to China with a 25% fee.

Today’s newsletter includes:

• 🎓 AI COURSE OF THE WEEK

• 📰 AI NEWS RECAP

• 🤿 AI DEEP DIVE

• 📝 AI PROMPT OF THE WEEK

• 🎨 AI IMAGE OF THE WEEK

🎓 AI COURSE OF THE WEEK

This course is for 9-to-5ers who feel behind on AI and want to catch up without pressure or technical rabbit holes.

Register for the course here.

📰 AI NEWS RECAP

'Code Red' Launch Of ChatGPT 5.2🚨

OpenAI just released GPT-5.2.

It did not feel like a launch.

It felt like a response.

Reports say Google triggered a “code red” internally before GPT-5.2 shipped.

That alone tells you this was not incremental.

GPT-5.2 is faster, more capable, and better at reasoning across longer tasks. But the interesting part is not the benchmark jump.

It is the timing.

This release feels defensive.

As if the companies building these models now believe that standing still is more dangerous than shipping early.

Here is what stands out.

The pace is compressing.

New versions are arriving faster than most teams can evaluate the last one.

That changes how risk, testing, and adoption work.

Capability gaps are closing quickly.

The differences between “good enough” and “best in class” are shrinking.

What mattered six months ago may not matter next quarter.

Competition is now existential.

When leaders use phrases like code red, it means the stakes are no longer about features.

They are about relevance.

For the rest of us, this creates a quiet shift.

You cannot wait for stability.

You cannot wait for the perfect version.

You have to build the muscle of adapting while the ground is moving.

That does not mean chasing every release.

It means learning how to evaluate tools quickly.

How to integrate selectively.

How to stay calm while the pace accelerates.

The most valuable skill right now is not knowing which model is best.

It is knowing how to keep working when none of them stand still.

The US will allow exports of Nvidia’s H200 AI chips to China with a 25% fee, opening shipments of the company’s second-most advanced processors to approved Chinese customers after President Trump’s decision. Officials frame the move as a compromise that maintains some export controls while avoiding a full ban that could push Chinese firms toward domestic alternatives, even as Beijing voices security concerns about potential backdoors.

An OpenAI survey of 9,000 workers across 100 companies found its AI tools save employees about 40–60 minutes per workday on average, with the biggest time gains in fields like data science, engineering, communications, and accounting. Roughly three-quarters of respondents said AI improved either the speed or quality of their work, though other academic studies have questioned whether many firms see clear productivity returns yet.

Disney signed a three-year deal with OpenAI that lets Sora generate AI videos using more than 200 licensed characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars, while Disney invests $1 billion in OpenAI equity. The entertainment giant will also become a major OpenAI customer, using its APIs to build new tools and experiences, even as it continues aggressive copyright enforcement against other AI platforms.

Anthropic is bringing Claude Code directly into Slack so developers can tag @Claude on messages and let the assistant turn bug reports or feature requests into full coding sessions. The beta integration can pull context from Slack threads and connected repos, post progress updates, and share links to diffs and pull requests, pushing AI coding help deeper into existing team workflows.

Accenture and Anthropic launched a multi-year partnership creating the Accenture Anthropic Business Group, training about 30,000 Accenture professionals on Claude and Claude Code. The group will help clients move from AI pilots to full-scale deployment, co-developing solutions for regulated industries and scaling AI-powered software development and customer experience on top of Anthropic’s models.

McDonald’s Netherlands pulled an AI-generated Christmas commercial after online backlash to its bleak “most terrible time of the year” theme. Critics said the chaotic, generative-AI holiday scenes “ruined” their Christmas spirit, prompting the company to admit the ad misread the season’s tone and to remove it following widespread complaints.

🤿 AI DEEP DIVE

By now you’ve probably heard of AI Agents.

With so many out there, which is the best?

n8n or OpenAI’s Agent Builder?

Watch this to find out!

📝 AI PROMPT OF THE WEEK

Copy and paste this into your favorite chatbot.

USE CASE: SQL query from schema.

PERSONA: Senior data engineer.

CONTEXT: I will paste a schema and a business question.

TASK: Write optimized SQL and note key joins, filters, and indexes.

FORMAT: SQL code block, Short explanation, Optional test query variant.

TONE: Technical, brief.

🎨 AI IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Give AI image creation a try for yourself.

Copy the text below into Google’s AI image creator!

high resolution photography, side shot, female gender figure, upper body, obscured by a thick, swirling vibrant blue and pink color smoke around head, mimicking a cloud-like formation, mysterious and surreal vibe, plain black avant-garde wear, moment of obscured identity and introspective mood, enigmatic scene is set against a minimalist, two tone black background to emphasize the smoke's texture and movement, low-key lighting to enhance the mystical atmosphere, realism, rich detailing

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