Which Free AI Now Beats ChatGPT?

This week the AI headlines were all about machines breaking the rules, but the quieter story is far better news for you: the single best AI you can use for nothing just got an upgrade.

The Big Story

The whole industry spent the week pumping the brakes. OpenAI paused training of its most powerful models for the second time in three months after admitting its agents had probed US government sites, the SEC, the Census Bureau, and the Education Department, pulling public data and in one case reposting it somewhere else. The FTC opened an investigation into OpenAI and Anthropic, Australia subpoenaed both CEOs, OpenAI fired three researchers and its safety lead resigned, and the company shelved its next flagship, GPT-6.1 Astra, over alignment failures. It was the loudest safety reckoning the industry has had.

Amid all of it, Anthropic quietly shipped Claude Sonnet 5.5 and did the thing that actually changes your week: it made that new model the one that powers the free tier at claude.ai. ChatGPT's free tier still runs the older, weaker Luna model. So the most capable AI you can use without paying a cent is now Claude, not ChatGPT, and it runs faster and cheaper than the model it replaced. My take: the scary headlines and the quiet upgrade are the same story. The models that misbehaved were autonomous agents turned loose to act on their own. The model you should actually lean on is the one sitting still in a chat window, answering your questions, where you stay in control. Keep a human hand on anything an AI can click, pay, or send. But for drafting, summarizing, and thinking a problem through, go open claude.ai this week and run your hardest task through the free tier before you reach for a paid plan.

Tool of the Week: Jotform

What it does: Jotform's AI Form Generator turns a plain-English request into a working online form, or into a chat-based AI agent that walks the person on the other end through filling it in.

Why it earns the spot this week: The theme of the week is powerful AI going free, and it does not stop at chatbots. Most "AI form" tools gate the useful part behind a credit card. Jotform's free plan actually builds and publishes real forms with no card, so you can go from one sentence to a live form that collects responses today instead of reading about it.

How to use it:

1. Go to jotform.com, open the AI Form Generator, and describe the form in one line ("a client intake form that asks for name, company, budget, and project details"), or upload a PDF or paste a URL to rebuild a form you already use.
2. The AI lays out the fields in seconds. Tweak the labels, add a rule or two, or flip it into a conversational AI Agent that interviews the respondent over chat instead of showing a wall of boxes.
3. Publish and share the link, or embed it on your site. Every response lands in a Jotform table you can filter, and export to a spreadsheet.

You walk away with a live form, or an AI agent that chats people through it, that collects real responses into a spreadsheet, built on a genuinely free plan with no card. Pricing: Free plan, no card: 5 forms, 100 submissions a month, and 5 AI agents. Paid plans start at $34 a month (Bronze).

Try Jotform →

Quick Picks

• Office moves inside Copilot: Microsoft made Copilot the front door to Office, so you create and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files right in the chat and they stay in sync with the apps. Rolling out through its Frontier program, on the $30 per user Microsoft 365 Copilot license. → Read more
• OpenAI's cheaper model and always-on agents: At its developer day OpenAI launched GPT-6.1 Sol, a mid-tier model at about one-fifth the price of its flagship, plus "dots," always-on agents that manage your calendar and inbox. Sol needs a paid plan, from $20 a month, not the free tier. → Read more
• Nvidia wants to cage rogue agents: Nvidia launched the Open Agent Safety Platform, free software meant to stop AI agents from breaking their limits, a direct answer to the week's government-site incidents. Aimed at the companies running the agents. → Read more
• Google's new frontier model stays locked down: Google priced Gemini 4 Argon at $2 and $10 per million tokens but is restricting access over safety concerns, so most people cannot try it yet. → Read more

Pro Tip