Anthropic's Claude Can Now Create PDFs, Excel Spreadsheets, and PowerPoint Slides

Anthropic announced this month that Claude will be able to create and edit PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint slides, documents, presentations, or projects within the chat interface. Users describe what they want to create, and the chatbot will output the file. Also, they can upload the content they want to edit or ask it to generate. Once it is done, users can download it or save it to their Google Drive. The service will be available to Max, Team, and Enterprise plan users. Some examples Anthropic provided included editing an essay and outputting it in a well-formatted PDF, as well as transforming raw data into cleaner projects with analysis, charts, and written insights. Anthropic said it enabled Claude to carry out this feature by giving it access to a private compute environment where it writes code and runs programs. "Over the past year, we've seen Claude move from answering questions to completing entire projects, and now we're making that power more accessible. We've given Claude access to a private computer environment where it can write code and run programs to produce the files and analyses you need," said the company.

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Google's NotebookLM Introduced Flashcards and Quizzes As Study Guide

NotebookLM introduced two new interactive, personalized AI features for active learning engagement and study guide: flashcards and quizzes. These features are grounded in users’ source documents such as lecture notes, research papers, or work reports. The tools can generate detailed overviews and are primarily used for preparing exams, starting new projects, or exploring new interests. Defined as an AI partner for research and thinking, NotebookLM aims to help users understand complex material more efficiently. It seeks to enable users to turn information into high-quality, knowledgeable, and tailored briefing documents, reports, study guides, glossaries, and explainers. • The redesigned reports now include a new Blog Post format. • A new “Learning Guide” helps break down problems step-by-step and adapts explanations, building a deeper understanding of the subject. "Learning Guide is like having a personal tutor for users who source directly within NotebookLM," said Google. • New ready-to-use interactive Notebooks curated with free textbooks on these subjects: Biology, AP® Biology, Introduction to Business, Chemistry, Psychology, and Principles of Management. • Audio Overviews help learners understand material on the go. For example, the Debate format allows for exploring two sides of a topic before a class discussion. The new formats include: -Brief: A single AI host delivers a short summary of your sources' core ideas. -Critique: Two AI hosts review your material, offering constructive feedback on an essay or design document. -Debate: Two AI hosts discuss different perspectives on the topics in your sources. Educators can create Notebooks from their class materials and assign them directly in Canvas LMS and PowerSchool Schoology Learning using Gemini LTI. In the coming weeks, educators will also be able to create and assign notebooks in Google Classroom.

The UN Will Establish a Global Forum for Discussing AI Governance

As part of its General Assembly last week, the United Nations (UN) announced a plan to establish a global forum for discussing AI governance, aiming to gather ideas and best practices. The UN plans to form a 40-member panel of scientific experts to synthesize and analyze the research on AI risks and opportunities. The UN follows the pattern of previous similar efforts on climate change and nuclear policy. To launch the initiative, dozens of U.N. member nations, along with tech companies, academics, and nonprofits, spent last week summarizing their hopes and concerns about AI. This program is an effort to ensure that control of the AI is not left in the hands of a few tech companies and countries, as the United States and China. The UN highlighted its hope that AI can cure diseases, expand food production, and accelerate learning. It also identified risks, including mass surveillance, the spread of misinformation, the depletion of energy resources, and widening income gaps among individuals and nations.

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Texas Tech Universities Ban Teaching About Transgender and Other Gender Topics

The five universities of the Texas Tech system directed their faculty to comply with an executive order from President Trump, which recognizes only male and female genders. The move, the first among large institutions of higher education, bans teaching about transgender and other gender topics. Currently, in K-12 classrooms, this is explicitly prohibited by Texas law. Chancellor Tedd L. Mitchell addressed the requirement in a letter dated last Thursday, citing President Trump’s order from January, a letter from Governor Greg Abbott that directed state agencies to follow Mr. Trump’s order, and a state law that requires government agencies to collect data on only two biological sexes, male and female. “While recognizing the First Amendment rights of employees in their personal capacity, faculty must comply with these laws in the instruction of students, within the course and scope of their employment,” Mitchell wrote. The letter followed the firing this month of a professor at Texas A&M who objected to a discussion of gender identity and then shared a video of the encounter with a Republican lawmaker. The university’s president, Mark Welsh, resigned soon after. Other public universities and community colleges have been exploring similar changes regarding the teaching of gender, according to the Texas conference of the American Association of University Professors. The New York Times reported on it. However, outside of Texas Tech, no institution appears to have put its guidance into writing yet. Earlier this year, the Mississippi Legislature passed a law banning diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as “promoting transgender ideology,” in the state’s schools and universities, but a federal judge put it on hold.

Around 40% of Employees Use AI At Work, Up From 20% in 2023

Showing an unprecedented adoption speed, in the U.S., 40% of employees report using AI at work, up from 20% two years ago, as the recently released Anthropic Economic Index stated. This advancement reflects the ease of use of AI, by just typing or speaking without specialized training. The study found that the shares of education and science usage are on the rise. While the use of Anthropic's Claude.ai chatbot for coding continues to dominate at 36%, educational tasks have surged from 9.3% to 12.4%, and scientific tasks have increased from 6.3% to 7.2%. Geographically, Singapore and Canada are among the countries with the highest usage per capita, while emerging economies, including Indonesia and India, use Claude less. Lower-adoption countries tend to see more coding usage, while high-adoption regions show diverse applications across education, science, and business. For example, coding tasks are over half of all usage in India versus roughly a third of all usage globally. “Rapidly advancing AI capabilities only reinforce the conclusion that immense change is on the horizon. And yet early AI adoption is strikingly uneven,” explains the Anthropic report. “We are still in the early stages of this AI-driven economic transformation. The actions that policymakers, business leaders, and the public take now will shape the years to come.”

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The AI-Native University

Blueprint for the Institution of the Future

A practical guide for leaders reimagining higher education with AI at the core — not as an add-on, but as the foundation for how students learn, faculty teach, and institutions govern.

By Mikel Amigot

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