Anthropic bans abusive language towards its AI models as Pope Leo issues intelligence warning

AI-related companies are poised to dominate third quarter earnings gains, though analysts warn that growth is starting to slow.

On average, analysts expect S&P 500 companies earnings' to rise 31% year over year for the third quarter, with two thirds of that growth coming from AI giants Amazon, Meta and Google parent company Alphabet, according to LSEG's head of earnings and equity research Tajinder Dhillon.

"It wouldn't surprise me if 70-80% of the growth can be attributed to tech and AI," Wells Fargo Investment Institute's head of global equities and real assets Sameer Samana said.

However, despite continued growth, analysts fear the AI sector is running out of room to grow and may soon peak.

"We're still going 100 miles an hour in the AI infrastructure buildout, but three months ago we were going 150 miles an hour," Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial, said.

One analyst warned that the growth is contingent on capital expenditure — capex.

"A lot of this AI trade is built on continued capex spending, and every quarter we go, and they continue to spend, the hurdle rates get higher and the scrutiny gets larger," Nick Raich, CEO of independent analysis firm Earnings Scout, said.

Reuters contributed to this post.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers, headlines by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., expressed concerns to Google and Spirit Airlines about Google's plan to purchase Spirit data for $10 million to train AI-models.

In a letter to Google CEO Sundair Pichai and Spirit CEO Dave Davis, the lawmakers told the companies that they were entering "uncharted territory," and expressed concern for privacy violations.

"We write to express serious concern regarding the proposed $10 million sale of Spirit Airlines’ internal data to Google for the purpose of training artificial intelligence systems and the implications of that transaction for the privacy and confidentiality of thousands of current and former Spirit employees," the letter read.

It also implored the companies to develop "meaningful, enforceable safeguards" including a plan to exclude employee information from the transaction.

Anthropic has added a prohibition on sustained, unnecessary cruelty toward its artificial intelligence models, formalizing a policy that allows its Claude chatbot to end conversations with persistently abusive users.

The company said the restriction applies only to extreme cases in which users repeatedly mistreat its models without a discernible purpose, excluding ordinary frustration, criticism, creative content and AI safety testing.

Anthropic previously introduced the ability for certain Claude models to terminate conversations in August 2025, citing exploratory research into the possibility of AI welfare.

The company acknowledged at the time that it remained highly uncertain whether AI systems possess moral status, but said it was exploring safeguards in case such welfare becomes possible.

Under the existing system, Claude can end a conversation as a last resort after repeated attempts to redirect an abusive interaction. Users can still start new chats.

Anthropic said ending conversations will remain the primary mechanism for enforcing the new restriction.