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AI Updates — what's changed for Australians, last 6 months

Last updated: 20 September 2026 · By Adam

This is our running log of material changes across the AI tools we track — price moves, new models, feature launches, and shifts in what's actually available to Australians. Newest first. Every entry is anchored to a vendor primary source and dated to the day the change happened, not the day we wrote it up. 🇦🇺 marks the changes that hit Australian users specifically.

How to read this: dates reflect when the vendor shipped the change. We log it here once we've verified it against the vendor's own pricing page, blog, or changelog — the same standard every review on this site is held to.

On the horizon

A few dated changes worth getting ahead of:

  • 30 June 2026 🇦🇺 — Microsoft 365 Copilot Business promo scheduled to end (superseded — see the 1 September entry: the rise didn't land). AU$26.91/user/month reverts to AU$31.40/user/month (annual). Microsoft prices this plan in AUD directly. Source: Microsoft 365 Copilot AU pricing.
  • 1 July 2026 — Microsoft 365 base plans rise globally for Enterprise/Business/Frontline/Government. Copilot Business standalone holds at USD$21/user/month. Source: Microsoft 365 blog.
  • 1 July 2026 — Devin's legacy Cascade engine sunsets. Devin Desktop (ex-Windsurf) users move fully to Devin Local. Source: Devin docs.
  • 11 August 2026 — Notion Workers (Beta) begins metering against the same credit pool as Custom Agents. Free until then. (Did not begin as scheduled — Notion pushed the start to 15 October 2026; see that entry. Verified 2 September 2026.) Source: Notion help centre.
  • 1 September 2026 🇦🇺 — Microsoft re-runs the Copilot Business discount. AU$26.91/user/month (annual, ex GST) returns under a new 1 July–31 December 2026 window; the standard AU$31.40 applies after it lapses. Source: Microsoft 365 Copilot AU pricing page.
  • 15 October 2026 — Notion Workers (Beta) begins metering against the same credit pool as Custom Agents, at roughly USD$0.0023 per run — pushed back from the original 11 August date. Free in beta (Business and Enterprise plans) until then. Source: Notion help centre (checked 2 September 2026).

September 2026

1 September — Anthropic releases Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1. Fable 5.1 extends Fable 5 at the same USD$10/$50 per million tokens, with cache reads cut to a quarter of the previous cost, a 1M-token context window and stronger long-horizon agentic work. Anthropic's "What's new in Fable 5.1" page states its Claude API availability as "all customers", and lists it as "Active (latest)" across the Claude API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud, Microsoft Foundry and Claude Platform on AWS. Mythos 5.1 has the same capabilities but is invitation-only and US-only — Anthropic: "Currently, we're only able to make it available to a set of US organizations, though we're working to expand access." What it means for Australians: Mythos 5.1 is not available here, because Anthropic limits it to a set of US organisations. Fable 5.1 is available to all customers. Both models carry mandatory 30-day data retention, and neither runs under zero data retention unless Anthropic expressly authorises it. That retention term is the question to settle before you put client data through either model. — platform.claude.com — Fable 5.1 · anthropic.com/claude/mythos

Early September 🇦🇺 — Gemini's free tier moves to 3.6 Flash. Google's Australian subscriptions page now names the free-tier model as 3.6 Flash, with varying access to 3.1 Pro. All Australian prices unchanged — AI Plus A$7.99, AI Pro A$32.99, AI Ultra from A$149.99. What it means: a capability bump at no cost, and a third consecutive check with no AUD price movement. — gemini.google/au/subscriptions

August 2026

9 August — OpenAI switches off ChatGPT Atlas. OpenAI announced on 9 July 2026 that it was deprecating Atlas, its macOS-only agentic browser, and the browser stopped working on 9 August 2026 — about ten months after its October 2025 launch. Bookmarks, history and open tabs did not transfer automatically, and the browser receives no further security updates. Agentic browsing moved into the ChatGPT desktop app and a ChatGPT extension for Chrome. What it means for Australians: nothing to migrate for most, because Atlas never shipped a Windows, iOS or Android build. If you ran it on a Mac, move to Comet, Gemini in Chrome or Edge Copilot Mode. Our review is now a post-mortem. — help.openai.com — Evolving Atlas into ChatGPT · Wayback (read 20 September 2026)

Gap notice (20 September 2026): August is otherwise unbackfilled — this entry was added when the Atlas shutdown was verified at primary source.

July 2026

24 July — Anthropic releases Claude Opus 5. Opus 5 becomes the current Opus, priced at USD$5/$25 per million tokens — the same rate as Opus 4.7 and 4.8 before it — with a 1M-token context window, 128K max output and adaptive thinking. Anthropic describes it as "a step change improvement for the Opus tier powering long-running agents." What it means: the flagship moved again at no price rise, and Opus 4.5 through 4.8 all remain active rather than being retired, so nothing you've built breaks. — anthropic.com/news · platform.claude.com — models overview

Gap notice (10 September 2026): this log's month-by-month entries below run to June 2026. July and August are backfilled here only for the Anthropic model releases verified in the 10 September monitor run — other changes in that window are not yet logged.

June 2026

11 June 🇦🇺 — Google overhauls Gemini's Australian pricing. AI Plus drops from A$12.49 to A$7.99/month (−36%, standard price, no promo qualifier). AI Ultra is split out of its single A$409.99 tier into A$149.99 (5× AI Pro limits) and A$329.99 (20×). AI Pro is unchanged at A$32.99. The free tier now runs on Gemini 3.5 Flash. What it means: Gemini is now the cheapest paid entry point of any major assistant in Australia. Any earlier review or roundup quoting A$12.49 or A$409.99 is stale and being corrected. — gemini.google/au/subscriptions

9 June — Anthropic releases Claude Fable 5. A new Mythos-class model — Anthropic's most powerful public release — at USD$10/$50 per million tokens, free on Pro/Max/Team/Enterprise from 9–22 June then usage credits. What it means: the frontier moved again; expect downstream tools (Perplexity, Copilot, coding assistants) to fold it in over the coming weeks. — anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5

2 June — Windsurf relaunches as Devin Desktop (Cognition). One subscription now spans the desktop IDE and the cloud agent. Existing plans, pricing and extensions carry over; legacy Cascade is usable through 1 July. What it means: if you used Windsurf, nothing breaks today — but the product is now part of Devin's "one agent, every surface" line. — devin.ai/blog/windsurf-is-now-devin-desktop

1 June — GitHub Copilot moves to usage-based billing. Premium request units are replaced by token-based GitHub AI Credits. Base seat prices are unchanged and code completions stay credit-free; the automatic fallback to a cheaper model is gone. What it means: heavy agent users will see variable monthly costs for the first time. — github.blog

May 2026

21 May — Linear launches the Asks Agent — natural-language Q&A across your Linear workspace and connected sources. — linear.app/asks

20 May — GitHub Copilot drops Gemini models from web chat. OpenAI and Anthropic models remain. — github.blog changelog

18 May — Cursor ships Composer 2.5, Anysphere's in-house agentic coding model, claiming frontier-level coding benchmarks at roughly a tenth of the token cost. — dossier

14 May — Linear adds Code Intelligence, powered by Claude Code (vendor-named). Business+ tiers. — linear.app/changelog/2026-05-14-code-intelligence

13 May — Notion 3.5 ships its Developer Platform — Workers (Beta), an External Agents API, Database Sync, and workspace-scoped OAuth. Any member can now build connections, not just owners. — notion.com/releases/2026-05-13

12 May — ClickUp launches Brain², an agentic refresh routing across multiple frontier models plus its own Brain m1, adding slide-deck and code generation. — clickup.com/brain

12 May 🇦🇺 — ChatGPT retires DALL·E 3 as its default image generator, fully replaced by Images 2.0 (gpt-image-2) across all tiers. — openai.com

6 May — Atlassian pushes Rovo to the centre at Team '26 — Rovo Studio GA, Agents in Jira GA with audit logging, and a Teamwork Graph CLI + MCP server in open beta. — atlassian.com/blog

4 May — Notion's Custom Agents begin credit metering at USD$10 per 1,000 credits for Business and Enterprise, ending the free trial that ran from the 24 February launch. — notion.com/help/custom-agent-pricing

4 May — Perplexity opens Enterprise Max controls to single seats — SCIM, audit logs, configurable retention and analytics, previously a 50-seat minimum. GPT-5.5 becomes the default orchestration model in Computer for Pro and Max. — perplexity.ai changelog

April 2026

27 April — GitHub Copilot announces the move to usage-based billing (effective 1 June). — github.blog

24 April 🇦🇺 — GitHub Copilot starts training on Free/Pro/Pro+ interaction data unless you opt out. Business and Enterprise are excluded under their DPA. What it means: individual Australian subscribers must actively opt out to keep their prompts out of model training. — github.blog

21 April — ChatGPT Images 2.0 (gpt-image-2) launches — better text rendering, multilingual support, ~4× faster generation, default on every tier. — openai.com

17 April — Claude Opus 4.7 becomes the current Opus (4.6 moves to legacy), cross-confirmed by Lovable adding it the same day. — claude.com/pricing

17 April — Perplexity brings Personal Computer to Mac natively. — perplexity.ai changelog

14 April — Notion 3.4 Part 2 makes Custom Agents 35–50% cheaper (new cheaper model options), ships Salesforce + Box connectors, and adds Notion Agent Skills for Calendar/Mail/Slack. — notion.com/releases/2026-04-14

14 April — Claude Code adds Routines and a redesigned desktop app — scheduled, API- or event-triggered tasks, and more tasks running at once. — claude.com/blog

11 April — Google renames Looker Studio back to Data Studio, separating the free reporting tool from the enterprise Looker BI platform. Reports, data sources and permissions migrate automatically. — cloud.google.com/blog

6 April 🇦🇺 — Linear publishes a post-mortem on a 24 March permission-filter incident that briefly exposed metadata across private teams. What it means: a real reliability data point for any Australian buyer weighing Linear for regulated data. — linear.app/now

2 April 🇦🇺 — ChatGPT Business gets a price cut — USD$25/seat monthly, USD$20/seat annual (down $5/month), plus a new Codex-only seat type. — help.openai.com

2 April — A busy day for coding tools: Cursor 3 ships its parallel Agents Window; Google releases the Gemma 4 open-weight models; Microsoft open-sources its Agent Governance Toolkit (runtime security for AI agents). — cursor.com/changelog · blog.google

April — Google Vids opens a free tier — its AI video suite, 10 videos/month free, available to all Google accounts. — blog.google

March 2026

31 March — Criteo opens GO to self-service — SMB cross-channel AI ad campaigns "in five clicks", US + UK only, with Australian expansion flagged "across 2026". We've set a watch trigger for the AU launch. — criteo.com

27 March — Perplexity Comet for iOS opens to all users. — perplexity.ai changelog

26 March 🇦🇺 — ChatGPT launches ads ("Sponsored Tips") in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US, on Free and Go tiers only. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu stay ad-free. What it means: Australia is now part of OpenAI's commercial launch sequence — and a paid tier is, for the first time, the way to stay ad-free. — openai.com

23 March 🇦🇺 — Notion adds Tokyo and Seoul data residency (live May), joining Frankfurt and Oregon. What it means: still no Sydney and no Australia on the public roadmap — a live consideration for AU buyers with residency requirements. — notion.com/blog

17 March 🇦🇺 — Microsoft extends the M365 Copilot Business promo from 31 March to 30 June 2026, with bundle pricing changes flagged for 1 July. — techcommunity.microsoft.com

16 March — Mistral releases Small 4 (Apache 2.0, 256k context, toggleable reasoning) — the strongest onshore self-hosting option of the quarter for Australian teams with data-sovereignty needs. — mistral.ai/news

11 March 🇦🇺 — Google's free 12-month Gemini Pro student offer in Australia ends. — blog.google

10 March 🇦🇺 — Anthropic opens a Sydney office — its fourth in APAC — appoints a GM for ANZ, and signs an AI-safety MOU with the Australian Government. Australia ranks 4th globally in Claude.ai usage per capita. What it means: the first frontier lab with boots on the ground locally; data-residency "exploration via third-party partners" noted but not yet delivered. — anthropic.com/news

9 March 🇦🇺 — Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 3 makes Copilot a true collaborator in Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook, adds Copilot Cowork, and — notably — lets you choose Claude alongside OpenAI models inside Copilot. The first major productivity-AI tool giving Australian users a multi-vendor model choice. — microsoft.com

5 March — OpenAI ships GPT-5.4 (standard / Thinking / Pro) with native computer use and a 1M-token API context; Luma launches its end-to-end creative Agents the same day. — openai.com

February 2026

25 February — Perplexity launches Computer — an agentic "digital worker" that runs workflows for hours, Max tier at launch. — perplexity.ai

24 February — Notion 3.3 ships Custom Agents (GA) — multi-step autonomous workflows, free to try through 3 May then credit-metered. — notion.com/releases/2026-02-24

19 February — Google releases Gemini 3.1 Pro — roughly double the ARC-AGI-2 reasoning score of Gemini 3 Pro, across the app, API and NotebookLM. — blog.google

17 February — Claude Sonnet 4.6 launches — a full upgrade across coding, computer use and long-context reasoning, default on Free, Pro and Cowork, same price as 4.5. — anthropic.com/news

5 February — A double from Anthropic and Perplexity: Claude Opus 4.6 arrives with a 1M-token context beta and agent teams; Perplexity launches Model Council, running one query through three frontier models in parallel. — anthropic.com/news · perplexity.ai

February — Google's image and audio push: Nano Banana 2 brings Pro-quality image generation at Flash speed to the Gemini app and Search across 141 new countries; Lyria 3 adds 30-second custom music tracks. — blog.google

January 2026

Late January 🇦🇺 — Google AI Plus reaches Australia at A$12.99/month inc GST — a budget tier with Gemini 3 Pro, Nano Banana Pro and 200GB storage. (This is the tier later cut to A$7.99 in June.) — blog.google

20 January 🇦🇺 — Pomelli Animate launches with Australia in the first wave of regions — Veo 3.1 turns static brand assets into short on-brand animations, free. — pomelli.me/blog

16 January 🇦🇺 — ChatGPT Go launches globally, including Australia, at USD$8/month — the first sub-AU$15 paid ChatGPT tier available to Australians. — openai.com

15 January — Two launches worth noting: Replit ships Mobile Apps (natural language to a published iOS app); Anthropic opens Claude Cowork in research preview, pointing Claude Code's agentic engine at general knowledge work. — blog.replit.com/mobile-apps · anthropic.com/product/claude-cowork

7 January 🇦🇺 — ChatGPT Health launches with early access including Australia (medical-record integrations US-only at first). — openai.com

We log changes here as we verify them against vendor primary sources. Spotted something we've missed, or a price that's moved? Tell us and we'll check it. — Adam

Our written coverage

The log above records what vendors shipped. These are our own dated write-ups of those changes — what each one means for Australians, and whether it moves a recommendation. Newest first.

October 2026

September 2026

June 2026

May 2026

April 2026

March 2026

February 2026

January 2026

Update history
  • 25 Sep 2026 — Sora entry retitled once the 24 September API shutdown had passed: "switches off on 24 September" became "is gone".
  • 20 Sep 2026 — August 2026 section added with the ChatGPT Atlas shutdown (deprecation announced 9 July, browser stopped 9 August 2026) and a gap notice that August is otherwise unbackfilled. The 1 September Claude entry was corrected. Written-coverage list gained the Claude 5 family (19 Sep), eSafety app-store age checks (10 Sep), Sora API sunset (11 Sep) and ChatGPT Atlas (25 Jun) posts.
  • 10 Sep 2026 — September 2026 section opened: Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 (1 September; Fable 5.1 holds Fable 5's USD$10/$50 per million tokens with cache reads cut to a quarter), and Gemini's Australian free tier moving to 3.6 Flash.
  • 2 Sep 2026 — Horizon list updated. Notion Workers metering pushed from 11 August to 15 October 2026 (~USD$0.0023 per run); the 30 June Copilot Business promo-end item marked superseded because the rise did not land and Microsoft re-ran the AU$26.91 discount to 31 December 2026, with the standard AU$31.40 after it.
  • 30 Jun 2026 — First published, covering January to June 2026.