Anthropic will switch Claude Code's Pro, Max and Team accounts to auto mode by default starting August 14, letting the agent proceed without step-by-step approval unless an action looks irreversible or destructive.
GitHub's Copilot impact dashboard now includes a "potential return on investment" section that weighs what teams spend on Copilot against the pull requests they get back.
Cursor launched plugins that let its coding agents pull context from and write to Gmail, Google Drive and Calendar directly, folding everyday office tools into the same agent that edits code.
Cognition's Devin Local (formerly Windsurf) now tracks which files a developer has open as part of its context, and "Always Allow" permission grants now persist across sessions instead of resetting each time.
ByteDance opened public developer access to Seedance 2.5 on August 7, a video model that generates up to 30 seconds of synchronized audio and video in a single shot with up to 50 reference inputs.
A CapCut desktop update released the week of August 3 fixed a batch of known issues and refined how trim handles behave on the timeline, a small but steady patch as the app folds in more AI tools.
Paramount is offering three-year contracts to AMC and Regal promising 30 theatrical releases a year, with 45-day exclusive theatrical windows, as it tries to blunt states' antitrust case against its Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition.
Roadside Attractions and Vertical jointly acquired U.S. rights to "The Gallerist," the Jenna Ortega-Natalie Portman comedy that triggered a Sundance bidding war, setting up a December 4 theatrical release.
Two-decade Bengali cinema veteran Parno Mittra is making her producing debut with "The Music Teacher," a British-Indian short shooting in Kolkata, and launching a new production banner, Unscripted Co, alongside it.
Netflix's "Grown Ups 3" started shooting this month, with Adam Sandler sharing a set photo as Bailee Madison and Deon Cole joined a returning cast that includes David Spade, Chris Rock, Kevin James and Salma Hayek.
Twenty-five years after the original film, an animated "Joe Dirt" sequel series is in development at Fox with David Spade voicing and executive producing, picking up with Joe married to Brandy and raising three teenage daughters.
Lionsgate's motion picture chief said the Michael Jackson biopic sequel is targeting a production start in late 2026 or early 2027, aided by musical sequences shot for the first film but never used.
Annapolis sailor Matt Rutherford, 45, is attempting the first-ever solo circumnavigation of the Arctic Ocean, a 10,000-nautical-mile route through the Russian Arctic and Canada's Northwest Passage where hitting ice can be fatal.
Artist Amanda Williams unveiled "Other Washingtons" at Chicago's George Washington monument, wrapping it in banners celebrating Black Chicagoans who share the first president's surname.
Japanese artist Yuka Nomura is installing "The Cherry Pit Spat Out by the Sky," a permanent wood, straw and clay sculpture unveiling August 21 in Trenčín's Cherry Orchard as part of the city's year as European Capital of Culture.
Singapore's National Day Parade staged the country's first indoor drone show on August 9, synchronizing 300 drones with aerialists 30 meters above the stadium floor before outdoor fireworks closed the night.
Guinness World Records confirmed on August 7 that Washington, D.C.'s July Fourth display fired 840,537 fireworks, making it the largest fireworks show ever recorded.
Washington Post / Guinness World Records · Aug 7, 2026 · read
Austrian adventurers Gerhard Czerner and Xaver Frieser mountain-biked into Montenegro's Durmitor National Park, then strapped their bikes to packrafts and paddled 78 kilometers through the Tara River's canyon, including 21 rapids in its final 18 kilometers.