It's Wednesday, July 8th. Claude Cowork reached web and mobile, so you can hand off a task, shut the laptop, and it keeps working, pinging you only when it needs a call. Meta shipped Muse Image, the first image model from its Superintelligence Labs, behind 30-plus new Instagram Story effects.
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In Today’s Top Tools, we spotlight some of the most innovative, creative AI apps that we recommend adding to your stack.
TOOL SPOTLIGHT
🖥️ Claude Cowork Keeps Your Tasks Running After You Close The Laptop
Image from Claude
Claude Cowork is Anthropic's delegation layer for people who don't code. Hand it a multi-step job across your docs and tools, then walk away. Now on web and mobile, the session follows you from desk to phone and runs in the background, interrupting you only when a decision needs you.
Kick off a multi-step task in Cowork, then close the laptop; the session keeps running in the background and picks up on your phone.
Schedule recurring work to run on its own, like a client-prep brief that lands ready at 6 AM before your first meeting.
Get a push notification the moment the agent hits a decision only you can make, so you approve the call instead of babysitting the run.
Cowork is rolling out in beta to Anthropic's Max subscribers first, with wider access over the coming weeks, and usage limits doubled through August 5. The desktop app gives the full experience with local file and browser access, while web and mobile are the lighter, check-in-anywhere companions. More than 90 percent of Cowork use is already something other than coding, and the two biggest categories, business operations and content creation, make up roughly half of all sessions.
Cowork has lived in the desktop app since January; what's new is that the session no longer needs your machine. You start a task at your desk, close the laptop, and the job keeps moving on Anthropic's infrastructure while you commute, with a ping when it needs a human answer. That reframes the assistant from a chat window you keep open into a coworker you hand things to and check on later. The catch: the richest capabilities, local file and browser access, still live only on the desktop app. The phone is the lighter window for checking in and approving, and the desktop stays home base for the deep work.
TOOL SPOTLIGHT
✍️ Instagram's New Story Effects Run On Meta's First Homegrown Image Model
Image from Instagram
Instagram added more than 30 AI effects that restyle a Story photo with one tap, from Night Flash to Puffer to Disposable. They run on Muse Image, Meta's first in-house image model. The tell is that Meta stopped leaning on outside models and shipped its own.
Tap a single effect like Night Flash or Disposable in Instagram Stories to restyle a photo before you post it.
Type a custom prompt to build an effect Instagram doesn't ship, then reuse it on any photo.
Pull the same Muse Image model into the Meta AI app and on meta.ai to generate or edit images outside Stories.
The Story effects are free and US-only for now, with five creator collaborators, including @zzdesign and @dontaecatlett, shipping looks alongside the launch. Instagram head Adam Mosseri, announcing the effects on Threads, said the custom prompts are "what I'm most curious to see people experiment with." Under the hood is Muse Image, the first image model from Meta Superintelligence Labs, which reads a photo's lighting and subject and can edit from sketches or annotations. Muse Image is also live in the Meta AI app, on meta.ai, and in WhatsApp in limited countries, with Facebook and Messenger next.
Meta's consumer image features have been running on other companies' models, most recently licensed technology from Midjourney and Black Forest Labs. Muse Image ends that arrangement. The Story effects are the friendly front door, a one-tap toy for hundreds of millions of users. The real move is that Meta now owns the model behind them and can tune it on the social context only Instagram has. For builders, the signal is where this goes next, since the same model is already in the Meta AI app and WhatsApp, with Muse Video already in development. The open question is whether Meta opens Muse Image beyond its own apps, because that is when a Story filter turns into infrastructure.
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In this section, we feature a few standout opportunities leading AI companies, non-profits, policy groups, and other organizations.
🔬 Work at a Lab/AI Safety
Roles at frontier labs, safety organizations, and research institutions
RESEARCH ENGINEER / SCIENTIST, ALIGNMENT - Anthropic | San Francisco, CA | $350,000-$500,000 + Equity
RESEARCH ENGINEER, APPLIED AI ENGINEERING - OpenAI | San Francisco, CA | $250,000-$555,000 + Equity
RESEARCH ENGINEER, HUMAN UNDERSTANDING - Google DeepMind | Los Angeles / Mountain View, CA | $174,000-$252,000 + Bonus + Equity
MEMBER OF TECHNICAL STAFF - Redwood Research | Berkeley, CA | $180,000-$207,000
🚀 Work in Industry
Roles at funded AI startups and private companies
APPLIED AI ENGINEER - Ramp | New York, NY / San Francisco, CA | $204,400-$352,000 + Equity
SOFTWARE ENGINEER, AGENT - Sierra | San Francisco, CA | $180,000-$390,000 + Equity
SOFTWARE ENGINEER, AI GATEWAY - Vercel | New York, NY / San Francisco, CA | $196,000-$294,000 + Equity
STAFF PRODUCT MANAGER, AI PLATFORM - Databricks | San Francisco, CA / Seattle, WA | $181,700-$249,800
SOFTWARE ENGINEER, NEW GRAD (AI) - Notion | San Francisco, CA | $126,000-$146,000
🏛️ Work in AI Policy / Governance
Roles in government, think tanks, NGOs, and policy organizations
FRONTIER AI RESEARCH LEAD - CSET, Georgetown | Washington, DC | $100,000-$190,000
RESEARCH LEAD, AI CYBER TESTING AND EVALUATION - RAND | Washington, DC / Santa Monica, CA / Remote | $146,200-$261,400
(SENIOR) PROGRAMS ASSOCIATE - Institute for AI Policy and Strategy | Remote | $70,000-$110,000
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🧑💻 About the Editors
About Noah Frank
Noah is a researcher, innovation strategist, and ex-founder thinking and writing about the future of AI and the workforce. His work and body of research explores the economics of emerging technology and organizational strategy. Outside of AIC, Noah heads research for Centaurian AI.
About Joy Dong
Joy is a news editor, writer, and entrepreneur at the intersection of AI and blockchain. Whether she is demystifying complex systems in her newsletter, TEA, or building streamlined solutions through her automation agency, Ownly, Joy’s mission is to make emerging tech accessible and actionable for everyone.
About Lindsay Gross
Lindsay is an AI engineer, researcher, and writer focused on how AI systems behave in practice and what it takes to make them safe. Her work sits at the intersection of AI safety, governance, and product design, and at AIC she writes about the questions that matter most as these systems scale.