Anthropic's strongest model is free until June 22 — and two more shifts for builders

Three things landed for builders at once: the best model got cheaper (free, actually), free inference showed up on Apple's stack, and one still photo now becomes a talking video. Two of them you can act on right now.

Here's the 90-second video version if you want the quick pass first:

1. Claude Fable 5 is public — and free on your plan until June 22

Anthropic released Claude Fable 5, the first publicly available version of its Mythos-class model. It's state-of-the-art on nearly every benchmark Anthropic tests — software engineering, knowledge work, vision, and scientific research.

• It's free on Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans through June 22; after that it's 10 dollars per million input tokens and 50 per million output.
• In high-risk areas (cyber, bio, chem) it refuses and falls back to Claude Opus 4.8 — about 95% of Fable sessions run entirely on Fable.
• This dropped just days after Anthropic publicly warned that AI was getting too dangerous.

Why it matters: the strongest Claude is free to try on your existing plan for a two-week window. Run your hardest real task on it now and benchmark it before June 22 — the kind of jump that's worth re-checking your evals against.

2. Apple made its Foundation Models free for small developers

At WWDC 2026, Apple gave developers in the App Store Small Business Program (apps under 2 million first-time downloads) free access to the next generation of Apple Foundation Models running on Private Cloud Compute — removing inference cost as a barrier.

• The Foundation Models framework now supports image input.
• A single Swift API can also call third-party models like Claude and Gemini, server-side.
• A new Dynamic Profiles system supports multi-agent workflows, and Apple will open-source the framework later this summer.

Why it matters: you can ship AI features into an app without an inference bill. Prototype on Apple's free on-device models, and route the hard calls out to Claude or Gemini through the same Swift API — one integration, two tiers.

3. Grok Imagine 1.5 turns one photo into a talking video

xAI shipped Grok Imagine Video 1.5, which generates a video with native sound and voice from a single still image — available now via the xAI API and Higgsfield.

Why it matters: you can storyboard a short clip from one image, with motion and audio, without booking a shoot. That lowers the bar for adding video to a product, a demo, or a channel.

---

The best model, free inference, and instant one-photo video all landed for builders at once. Watch today's full episode, or catch a new one every day on dani / AI News & Creative.