Pentagon vs. Anthropic + Maryland AI grocery ban + GPT-5.5 on AWS

CNN's deeper read on Thursday's seven-vendor Pentagon AI procurement deal explains why Anthropic was the only frontier lab kept out: the company refused contract language allowing Claude use for "all lawful purposes," arguing it could enable domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a "supply chain risk" in March — a tag previously reserved for foreign-adversary-linked vendors — and Anthropic has filed suit to challenge the designation. The Pentagon is reportedly still piloting Claude Mythos Preview for unreleased cybersecurity work, and the White House has reopened talks after CEO Dario Amodei met Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

Gov. Wes Moore signed HB 895 — the Protection from Predatory Pricing Act — on April 28, making Maryland the first US state to outlaw "surveillance-based" personalized pricing for groceries. Food retailers above 15,000 square feet (and third-party delivery platforms) cannot set individualized prices based on a shopper's data, history, ethnicity, or income, and posted prices must hold for at least one full business day. The rules take effect October 1, 2026, with $10,000 first-offense and $25,000 repeat-offense civil penalties, enforced solely by the state Attorney General. Loyalty programs and promotional offers stay exempt — a carve-out consumer-rights groups call a meaningful loophole.

AWS and OpenAI announced on April 28 that GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, the Codex coding agent, and a new Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents capability are now in limited preview for enterprise customers via Bedrock — OpenAI's first major distribution outside the seven-year Microsoft Azure exclusivity. Customers can evaluate and deploy OpenAI models alongside Anthropic, Meta, Mistral, Cohere, and Amazon's own models in a single Bedrock console with unified security, governance, and cost controls. The launch follows last week's amended Microsoft-OpenAI agreement that ended exclusive cloud rights through 2032 and signals a multi-cloud distribution era for frontier models.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences approved new eligibility rules on Friday that disqualify AI-generated performances and AI-written screenplays from the 99th Academy Awards in March 2027. Acting nominations now require performances "demonstrably performed by humans with their consent," and the Academy reserved the right to demand details on AI usage in any submitted film. Industry tension after the Val Kilmer deepfake in As Deep as the Grave and the AI "actress" Tilly Norwood pushed the rule shift; the changes also widen international-feature eligibility via major festival wins.