Hey {{first_name|Conscious Church Fam}} 👋
Morning! This week Amazon told Meta's viral AI agent to stay out of its shop, Claude got a new Opus that costs less, and Google is about to fire an AI chip into orbit.
Here's what we're covering:
Amazon blocks Meta's Muse agent from shopping
Claude Opus 5.5 arrives, and OpenAI answers 90 minutes later
Google sends its AI chips into space
Let's dive in 👇
✍️ Josh's Musings
I'm not a motion graphics person. Never have been. It's the one skill I've always wanted but never had the patience to learn After Effects for.
This week I asked Claude Opus 5.5 to have a go instead. The stack is crazy simple: open Claude Code, tell it to install Remotion, then just describe what you want. I gave it my website and my logo, and asked for a 15 second promo for Voco (the church translation tool I've been building), on the “high” reasoning setting. First shot, it wrote the whole thing itself: the animation, the timing, even the score.
I wasn't the only one testing this. Ajith ran almost the same experiment this week with nearly the same prompt I used, “make a dynamic showreel that proves you're an incredible motion designer, go all out.” Same result. Mr Buzzoni called Opus 5.5 “scary good at motion design.” Having seen mine, I agree.
If your church wants to have a go, here's where I'd start:
A logo opener or sting for a sermon series (say you're running one called “Faith Grows Here”)
An intro for your video podcast
Feed it your own B-roll and a few references you like, along with your website, colours, logo and font, and see what it comes back with
I'm on the basic plan, for what it's worth, and the whole thing took about 20 minutes and barely touched my credits. None of the “you need the expensive plan for a full day of rendering” stuff you sometimes hear, that's more for people making much longer videos.
I did a second test where it laid captions straight over some footage. That's basically a sermon clip workflow: take your Sunday video, ask it to find and trim the good bit, add your branding and captions, and it's ready to post.
Has anyone else tried this yet? Or are you using something else for your AI edits? Reply and let me know, I'd love to see what you're making.
If you want to see Voco in action, we're running a live translation tour through churches this autumn and taking sign ups now at voco.church/sunday.
Image: GeekWire | The Conscious Church
Meta's Muse agent only launched 12 days ago and Amazon has already shut it out. Muse users trying to shop on Amazon now get a pop-up saying an unauthorised AI agent is breaking Amazon's Conditions of Use.
The Details:
Amazon says Meta never told it Muse would be browsing the store, and that the agent doesn't identify itself while it does.
Amazon also claims Muse appears to capture and store customer logins. Meta denies it and says Muse can't see passwords or payment details.
An agent that picks products and checks out can skip Amazon's sponsored listings, the engine of an ad business estimated at $56B.
Amazon has spent a year walling off outside agents, including suing Perplexity over its Comet browser.
Conscious Take:
This is a fight over who gets to do your shopping for you, and it's only going to get louder. I'd love an agent that finds the best price, but I'm not handing over my logins until someone can show me where they end up.
Image: Anthropic | The Conscious Church
Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5, which performs about as well as its top-tier Fable 5.1 on most work while costing 40% less than Opus 5. OpenAI shipped GPT-6 Sol and Luna roughly 90 minutes later, both at half the price of the models they replace.
The Details:
Opus 5.5 takes the top spot on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with a score of 58, ahead of Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra on 53.
Input and output tokens cost $4 and $20 per million, and Anthropic is also raising five-hour usage limits on Pro, Max and Team plans.
Anthropic says it fixes the wordy "Claudish" writing, sticking closer to whatever style rules you give it.
GPT-6 Sol costs $2/$10 per million tokens and Luna $0.10/$0.50, both 50% cheaper than the versions they replace.
Conscious Take:
I use Claude every day, so a model that writes more like a person and costs less is an easy one to be happy about. Cheaper for everyone is the real story here.
Image: The Conscious Church
Google will launch its first AI chips into orbit next week under Project Suncatcher, a moonshot testing whether space could one day host data centres powered by near-constant sunlight.
The Details:
The chips are Trillium TPUs, flying on SpaceX's Transporter-18 mission with satellite firm Planet to see if they survive the radiation, vibration and heat.
A satellite in the right orbit can get around 8x more solar energy than on Earth, but cooling is harder because heat in a vacuum can only escape through radiators.
If it works, Google imagines laser-linked satellite clusters with dozens of TPUs each, starting with a two-satellite test in 2027.
Blue Origin, Starcloud and SpaceXAI are chasing orbital data centres too, though Sam Altman remains unconvinced it works at scale this decade.
Conscious Take:
Communities are pushing back on data centres over noise and energy bills, so moving them into orbit is at least a creative answer. Watch this space 😉
📬 One quick ask...
If this email has been helpful, would you forward it to one person this week who might be interested? Thanks :)
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters." : Colossians 3:23
Build with the tools. But build for the right reasons.
That's all for now
Stay conscious,
Josh
P.S. If you liked this then please forward it on to someone you think would enjoy it. And if someone forwarded you this and you liked it, you can sign up here.
