# AI news, Saturday, 26 September 2026

Compiled by Richard Brooks's AI news desk. Canonical: https://richard-brooks.com/ai-news/2026-09-26/

## Anthropic bills some Claude refusals blocked before any output

Business. Pre-output refusals in biology, frontier LLM and reasoning-extraction categories are now charged at normal rates to deter mass safeguard evasion.

Source: Anthropic, https://docs.anthropic.com/en/release-notes/api

## Google ships Gemini 3.8 Live Avatar for enterprise agents

Language. Adds lip-synced video presence with speech across 97 languages and background tool use. Useful for customer service and walkthroughs that need multilingual face-to-face style dialogue.

Source: Google, https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-3-8-live-with-live-avatar/

## Google starts Pixel preview of Gemini Call for Me

Communication. Paid US Pixel 11 users can let Gemini place business calls, handle menus and hold, and keep a live transcript. Moves voice agents from chat into real phone work.

Source: TechCrunch, https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/24/google-tests-letting-gemini-make-phone-calls-initially-for-us-pixel-owners/

## Microsoft launches Copilot Home, Code and Autopilot agents

Agents. The new Copilot app adds natural-language app building and a persistent Autopilot agent for enterprise work, with usage-based billing for agentic features.

Source: Microsoft, https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2026/09/25/introducing-the-new-copilot-with-home-code-and-autopilot/

## White House asks labs to delay UK access to new models

Policy. Politico reports a US review gate before OpenAI and Anthropic share frontier models with Britain's AI Security Institute. Anthropic has already kept Mythos 5.1 US-only, which matters for UK pre-release testing.

Source: Mint, https://www.livemint.com/news/us-news/white-house-wants-us-government-review-of-openai-anthropic-s-new-ai-models-before-uk-access-report-11790271763243.html