Daily AI Briefing – April 17, 2026

Anthropic / Claude

• Claude Opus 4.7 launched: Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.7 with stronger software engineering, better vision, sharper instruction following, and more reliable agent work. Pricing stays the same ($5/$25 per million tokens) and it’s available on Bedrock, Vertex AI, and Microsoft Foundry.
• Performance controversy: Power users are reporting a noticeable quality decline after Anthropic quietly reduced Claude’s default effort level to “medium” to cut token costs. Backlash has been loud — Anthropic execs acknowledged the change.
• Major service outage: Claude.ai, the API, and Claude Code all experienced elevated errors on April 15th, causing widespread disruption.
• Claude Code desktop redesign: A new sidebar for managing multiple sessions and drag-and-drop workspace layouts shipped in a redesigned Claude Code desktop experience.
• Federal access to Claude Mythos: The White House is granting US federal agencies access to Anthropic’s Claude Mythos model as part of a new cybersecurity initiative called Project Glasswing.
• Identity verification: Anthropic introduced a new system that may require users to submit a government-issued photo ID and real-time selfie to combat misuse.