What changed in AI tools — September 2026
A public keep/cut digest of recorded vendor launches and directory checks this month. OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra on 2026-09-03: official Path to Astra post designates it at Critical cybersecurity capability, with advanced cyber access gated to trusted testers / Daybreak Blue; Axios reports limited Daybreak Access first, then ChatGPT Plus / Pro / Business / Enterprise and API in the coming days — not a new SKU and not a confirmed Plus/Pro price change. Perplexity open-sourced Lily (2026-09-02 official blog) as a lightweight local inference engine for Apple silicon and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B, tied to Perplexity Computer hybrid compute — not a new paid SKU. Catch (catchagent.ai) was listed on 2026-09-02 after the official homepage and /security page advertised $99/month billed monthly (cancel anytime, 10-day free trial); /pricing 404s and the same homepage still shows Closed Beta — Limited Spots. World Labs Atlas remains an early-access watch with no public self-serve pricing.
New listings
- Catch — Official homepage and /security (checked 2026-09-02) advertise $99/month billed monthly, cancel anytime, 10-day free trial. Same homepage still shows Closed Beta — Limited Spots. /pricing 404. Mailbox/calendar/phone access is required for the advertised jobs. Named testimonials are vendor-supplied.
Vendor launches
- GPT-6 Astra (OpenAI) — Official Path to Astra post (2026-09-01, still the primary openai.com page on this 2026-09-03 check): first model designated at Critical cybersecurity capability under the Preparedness Framework. Advanced cyber workflows limited at launch to trusted testers / Daybreak Blue. Axios: initial access for limited Daybreak organizations, then ChatGPT Plus / Pro / Business / Enterprise and API developers in the coming days. OpenAI customer stories dated 2026-09-03 use the name GPT-6 Astra. Greg Brockman called it a generational leap. AGI remarks are not treated as fact. Plus/Pro plan prices were not confirmed as changed; not a new ChatGPT SKU.
- Lily (Perplexity) — Official blog (checked 2026-09-02): lightweight local inference engine built specifically for Apple silicon and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B so on-device compute does not bottleneck Hybrid Compute / Perplexity Computer tasks. Rust runtime; OpenAI-compatible chat-completions API; custom Metal kernels; neither PyTorch nor MLX in the execution path; standalone demo on GitHub. Official pplx-garden README names the demo at github.com/perplexityai/pplx-garden (lily/), Apache-2.0, greedy generation for the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B MLX affine 4-bit checkpoint, Apple GPU family 10+ (M5 and newer). Not a Perplexity paid plan SKU. Vendor-published throughput figures were not independently reproduced. Perplexity consumer plan dollar prices were not re-verified on this date.
- Atlas (World Labs) — Official blog (checked 2026-09-01): next-gen omni world model pretrained from scratch on text, images, video, and 3D. Multimodal autoregressive diffusion transformer with spatial context. Camera-controlled generation up to 1 minute at 1440p; spatial reconstruction from 1–dozens of images with explicit 3D (point clouds, 3D Gaussian splats); space-time simulation including video reframing and Real-to-Sim for robotics; also text-to-image and 360 panoramas. Will power future versions of Marble. Early access with select partners — request access on the blog. No public self-serve plan prices published.
Watch list
- ChatGPT — GPT-6 Astra is a limited roll-out onto existing ChatGPT paid tiers and the API, not a new SKU and not a confirmed price change. Do not add a ChatGPT seat because Astra shipped. Re-check openai.com/chatgpt/pricing before renewing; Plus/Pro dollar prices were not re-verified as changed on 2026-09-03. Advanced cyber access is gated separately.
- Perplexity — Lily is an open-source local engine for Computer hybrid compute, not a new Pro/Max SKU. Do not add a paid Perplexity seat because Lily shipped. Re-check official plan pages before renewing; consumer dollar prices were not re-verified on 2026-09-02.
Keep/cut rule: If a launch has no public pricing, do not treat it as a buy decision. A model rolling onto existing ChatGPT paid tiers is not a reason to add a seat or assume a price change. An open-source local engine is not a reason to add a paid seat. If a public price is mixed with closed-beta waitlist copy, treat availability as unresolved until you can actually start a trial. Watch official sources, then re-check before adding a seat. A small rank move with an unchanged rating is not a buying signal; test the same real task before changing seats.