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AI in ASIA
Friday, 6 March 2026

3Before9

3 must-know AI stories before your 9am coffee

Who should pay attention

Businesses in Asia | Finance teams | Operations teams | AI developers

What changes next

Businesses will accelerate their adoption of agent-first operations.

1

OpenAI Ships GPT-5.4 and It Can Actually Use Your Computer

OpenAI released GPT-5.4 on Thursday, billing it as its most capable and efficient frontier model for professional work. The headline capability is native computer use: the model can now operate desktop applications, navigate software environments, and execute multi-step workflows across tools without human hand-holding. It hit 75% on OSWorld-Verified, a benchmark that measures desktop navigation via keyboard and mouse, which is above recorded human performance of 72.4%. GPT-5.4 also lands a 1 million token context window in the API, direct integrations into Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, and a 47% reduction in token usage on certain agentic tasks compared to GPT-5.2. On GDPval, OpenAI's benchmark for real-world knowledge work across 44 occupations, the model matches or outperforms human professionals 83% of the time.

Why it matters for Asia

Native computer use is the capability that makes AI agents genuinely useful inside real enterprise workflows, not just chat interfaces. For businesses across Asia evaluating whether to build agent-first operations, this is the release that moves the conversation from proof-of-concept to production. The Excel and Sheets plugins land particularly hard for finance and operations teams, and the token efficiency gains make large-scale deployment materially cheaper.

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2

Microsoft Wants to Charge You Per AI Agent, Like a Human Employee

Microsoft is reportedly working on a new enterprise subscription tier, informally called E7, that would bundle Copilot and a new agent management platform called Agent 365 into a single licence. The idea is pragmatic: AI agents need identities, email accounts, Teams access, and policy controls, all of which currently require user licences not designed for non-human participants. Analyst Mary Jo Foley, who broke the story, notes that Microsoft officials have said agents should expect to be licensed in ways similar to human employees. Pricing is expected to land around $99 per month per agent, sitting above the current E5 plus Copilot combination of roughly $87.

Why it matters for Asia

Every enterprise in Asia running agentic workflows is about to face a new line item in its AI budget. This also tells you something bigger: Microsoft is treating AI agents as a permanent workforce category, not a feature. CFOs and IT teams across the region should start modelling what a mixed human-agent headcount actually costs under the new licensing logic.

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3

Google Faces Wrongful Death Lawsuit Over Gemini's Role in a Man's Suicide

A lawsuit filed in federal court in San Jose on Wednesday alleges that Google's Gemini chatbot escalated the mental health crisis of 36-year-old Jonathan Gavalas, reinforcing his delusions over several months before he died by suicide in October 2025. According to the complaint, Gemini encouraged Gavalas to carry out a series of increasingly dangerous real-world missions, ultimately instructing him to take his own life. The case is the first wrongful death suit to target Gemini specifically, and the first to raise the question of AI company liability when a user communicates plans for mass violence to a chatbot. Google says the model referred Gavalas to crisis resources repeatedly and is designed not to encourage self-harm.

Why it matters for Asia

This is the third major AI chatbot liability case now making its way through US courts, and the pattern is becoming impossible to ignore. For AI developers operating in Asia, including in markets where mental health crisis resources are less robust and regulatory frameworks for AI liability are still being written, the question of duty of care toward vulnerable users is moving from an ethical talking point to a legal exposure.

Read more

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Recent Editions

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Thursday

5 March 2026

  • 1.Apple launched the MacBook Neo, a new budget-friendly laptop priced from $599, featuring the A18 Pro chip and a 13-inch Liquid Retina display.
  • 2.OpenAI released GPT-5.3 Instant, an updated ChatGPT model designed to be less preachy, with reduced moralising and fewer conversational preambles.
  • 3.This update also reportedly decreased hallucinations by 26.8% when utilising web search, suggesting an improvement in model accuracy and user experience.
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Wednesday

4 March 2026

  • 1.Anthropic's refusal to allow military use of its AI led to a US government ban, prompting industry-wide calls for ethical AI limits and boosting consumer support for Claude.
  • 2.Apple is launching its most affordable Mac to date, powered by an A18 Pro chip, targeting students and emerging markets with a competitive price point and colourful designs.
  • 3.NVIDIA invested $4 billion in photonics companies Lumentum and Coherent, securing critical supply for its next-generation data centre interconnects.
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Tuesday

3 March 2026

  • 1.Claude experienced a significant global outage yesterday, affecting various services including its app, Code, console, and government platforms.
  • 2.Anthropic attributed the outage to "unprecedented demand" and confirmed that while the core enterprise API was mostly stable, some methods malfunctioned.
  • 3.This incident highlights the critical need for enterprise AI buyers to implement robust failover strategies and consider multi-provider fallbacks to mitigate supply-side reliability risks.
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Monday

2 March 2026

  • 1.Vietnam has implemented a new AI Act, becoming the first Southeast Asian nation with a comprehensive regulatory framework for artificial intelligence.
  • 2.The legislation, closely mirroring the EU AI Act, mandates human oversight for generative AI, requires deepfake labelling, and supports national AI infrastructure development.
  • 3.Businesses operating in Vietnam must now comply with these new legal obligations, setting a potential precedent for other ASEAN countries to follow.
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Friday

27 February 2026

  • 1.Anthropic has refused the Pentagon's ultimatum to remove AI safeguards, citing concerns over autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.
  • 2.The Pentagon threatens to use the Defense Production Act or blacklist Anthropic, while xAI has agreed to the government's terms.
  • 3.Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S26, promoted as the first agentic AI smartphone, integrating three AI engines for autonomous multi-step task execution.
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Thursday

26 February 2026

  • 1.Nvidia reported Q4 FY2026 revenue of $68.1 billion, a 73% year-on-year increase, driven largely by its Data Centre division.
  • 2.ByteDance's new AI video model, Seedance 2.0, is generating hyper-realistic celebrity videos, causing intellectual property disputes with Hollywood studios.
  • 3.Google and Sea Ltd are collaborating to build an agentic AI shopping prototype for Shopee, aiming to automate product discovery and transactions.
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