October 2026 started at a frantic pace. On 6 October, OpenAI posted 722 maths papers written by an unreleased AI model, and mathematicians are still arguing over what it means; one called the flood a "slopocalypse". In the same fortnight, OpenAI made GPT-6 free for everyone who uses ChatGPT, Anthropic cut the price of its smallest Claude model by 90 percent in under a year, and Google launched an AI that carries out office tasks by itself. This guide explains the eight biggest releases in plain language, and how to use them.