Anthropic Introduces "Skills" for Claude 👀

Welcome to another edition of Horizon AI,

Anthropic launched a new Skills feature aimed at making Claude more customizable for individual users and businesses.

Let’s check it out!

Read Time: 4.5 min

Here's what's new today in the Horizon AI

• Anthropic Adds “Skills” for Claude to Make its Agents More Useful

• Kayak Launches AI Mode for Smarter Travel Planning, Search, and Booking

• AI Tutorial: How to use Comet to save time while browsing

• AI Tools to check out

• AI Findings/Resources

• The Latest in AI and Tech 💡

AI News

ANTHROPIC

Anthropic Adds “Skills” for Claude to Make its Agents More Useful

Skills are folders that include instructions, scripts, and resources that Claude can load when needed to make it smarter at specific work tasks.

Details:

• Anthropic says Skills are stackable, portable, and efficient, and people can also build their own Skills for Claude tailored to their specific jobs.

• The feature is designed to improve Claude’s AI agent capabilities for users’ work, so they don’t need to craft perfect prompts or reference previous context every time they want to complete a task.

• Skills work across Claude.ai, Claude Code, Anthropic’s API, and the Claude Agent SDK.

• It’s available to Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise users.

Since Claude decides which Skills to use and loads them automatically, how effective this system will be depends on how reliably it can pick and combine the right Skills for each task. Early users like Box, Rakuten, Canva, and Notion have reported positive results.

Source

TOGETHER WITH DEEL

You found global talent. Now What?

Deel’s simplified a whole planet’s worth of information on global hiring. It’s time you got your hands on our international compliance handbook where you’ll learn about:

• Attracting global talent

• Labor laws to consider when hiring

• Processing international payroll on time

• Staying compliant with employment & tax laws abroad

With 150+ countries right at your fingertips, growing your team with Deel is easier than ever.

Get the guide

KAYAK

Kayak Launches AI Mode for Smarter Travel Planning, Search, and Booking

The new feature lets users ask natural-language travel questions to get help brainstorming trips, comparing options, and booking flights, hotels, and rental cars.

Details:

• AI Mode uses Kayak’s integration with ChatGPT to provide contextual results.

• The chatbot can handle open-ended prompts like asking where to go for New Year’s Eve or when the best time to fly somewhere would be.

• It is currently available in English on Kayak.com via desktop and mobile browsers in the U.S., and the company plans to expand it to more platforms, languages, and countries, as well as add voice-based requests “soon.”

Online booking can be a frustrating and tedious experience for consumers, which has prompted many travel companies and AI providers to collaborate on exploring possible solutions that leverage the technology, such as OpenAI’s recent deals with travel companies including Expedia and Booking. com.

Source

AI Tutorial

How to use Comet to save time while browsing

1. Download Comet for Mac or Windows (it’s available for free globally).

2. Go to any webpage and click the Assistant icon in the top right.

3. Type what you want Comet to do. For example, if you don’t have time to watch a long podcast or read a long thread, you can ask Comet to:

   • “What were the top 5 ideas discussed in this video?”

   • “Summarize this thread”

4. Ask follow-up questions if you want more detail or clarification.

Other things you can do:

• Translate content

• Create playlists

• Search through your browsing history

• Handle complex tasks like online shopping, and more.

AI Tools to check out

✅ Paraflow: An AI product design agent that turns ideas into well-defined specs.

📈 Dexter: An autonomous financial research agent that thinks, plans, and learns as it works.

📹 X-Pilot: AI agent platform that turns your knowledge into studio-quality videos in minutes.

⭐ Percify: Create photorealistic AI avatars from just a single image.

🌐 URL to Any: All-in-one URL conversion tool.

AI Findings/Resources

😱 All top open-weight models are now Chinese

🔮 How AI is going to shape influencer marketing next year

👉 50 creative ways non-technical people are using Claude Code in their work and life

💡 Researchers find adding this one simple sentence to prompts makes AI models way more creative

🤔 Chatbots are a waste of AI's real potential - Opinion

TOGETHER WITH RIPPLING

Stop paying the execution tax now

Disconnected tools don’t speed you up – they slow you down. That’s SaaD (Software as a Disservice).

Rippling unifies HR, IT, and Finance so you can save time, cut costs, and grow faster.

Find out if you and your team are at risk of SaaD today.

How SaaD is your org?

The latest in AI and Tech

Uber turns its drivers into AI data trainers

Uber has launched a pilot program in the US that allows drivers and couriers to earn extra income by completing microtasks that help train AI models.

The company says the move supports its goal of becoming the “best platform for flexible work.” Tasks include uploading images, recording audio, and submitting documents in various languages.

OpenAI is rolling out new features for ChatGPT and Sora

ChatGPT can now automatically manage its memory, removing the need for users to manually delete stored information.

Meanwhile, Sora Pro users can now create storyboards on the web, and video generation limits have been expanded, all users can make videos up to 15 seconds long, while Pro users can generate up to 25-second videos.

Microsoft launches new AI upgrades to Windows 11

Users can now activate Copilot hands-free with the wake phrase “Hey Copilot,” and the AI can perform voice commands through a new opt-in feature. Copilot Vision, which analyzes on-screen content and answers related questions, is expanding to all markets where Copilot is offered.

Microsoft is also testing ‘Copilot Actions,’ allowing the assistant to handle real-world tasks like booking restaurants or ordering groceries directly from the desktop.

New York becomes first state to ban AI-enabled rent price fixing

Governor Kathy Hochul signed the bill outlawing price-fixing algorithms like those offered by RealPage, which use private data to “optimize rents” and boost profits. The law defines landlords who use such tools as engaging in collusion, even if done unknowingly.

The legislation follows city-level bans in places like San Francisco and Philadelphia and comes amid lawsuits and federal scrutiny over claims that AI-driven pricing has inflated rents nationwide. The law takes effect in 60 days.

Pinterest adds controls to reduce AI content in feeds

Pinterest is rolling out new options that give users more control over the AI-generated Pins they see in their feed, following complaints from users about the overwhelming influx of AI content that they say has negatively affected their in-app experience.

That’s a wrap!

Thanks for sticking with us to the end! Let’s stay connected on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Not subscribed yet? Sign up here and send it to a colleague or friend!

See you in our next edition!

Gina 👩🏻‍💻