Accountants — Is Codex worth a second look for spreadsheet work?
This was a quiet AI week — the labs were busy with research papers and one bizarre OpenAI training mishap involving goblins, but almost nothing shipped that changes what you can do in your business today.
Jeff Brook
AI Researcher — Founder, AI Daily News
This was a quiet AI week — the labs were busy with research papers and one bizarre OpenAI training mishap involving goblins, but almost nothing shipped that changes what you can do in your business today. Use that quiet to get more out of the AI subscriptions already on your bank statement.
Accountants — Is Codex worth a second look for spreadsheet work?
OpenAI repositioned Codex this week as a general workhorse — not just for coders, but for organising research, cleaning up spreadsheets, drafting decks, and writing summaries. If you already pay for ChatGPT Plus or Business, Codex is included in your plan. Hand it a messy client CSV this week and ask for a one-page summary before your next review meeting. If it saves you twenty minutes once, the experiment paid for itself.
Trades — Quiet AI week
Nothing AI-relevant moved for trades this week — focus on what's already on your plate.
Retail & Hospitality — Quiet AI week
Nothing AI-relevant moved for retail and hospitality this week — focus on what's already on your plate.
Agencies & Marketing — Can ChatGPT draft your next client deck?
OpenAI is pushing Codex hard as a deck-and-summary tool now, not just a coding assistant. For any agency already paying for ChatGPT Plus, that means trying it on your next pitch deck or weekly client report on the same subscription you have. One experiment this week — feed it your client brief and ask for a draft outline — will tell you whether to drop it back in the toolbox or start using it weekly.
Professional Services — Use the AI you already pay for
The honest read of the news this week, per AI Daily News itself: nothing new to buy. If your firm already pays for ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini and only uses it for the occasional email, this is the week to push it harder — research summaries, first-draft client letters, meeting note tidy-ups. OpenAI's Codex update is specifically aimed at organising research and producing summaries; for legal, consultancy and surveying work, that is directly the part of your week that eats your evenings.
Manufacturing & Wholesale — Quiet AI week
Nothing AI-relevant moved for manufacturing and wholesale this week — focus on what's already on your plate.
Money on the table this week
The big SMB-relevant funding move this week is the Adult Skills Fund 2026-27 grant determination letters, now published by the Department for Education. These letters tell devolved areas — combined authorities and the GLA — how much they have to spend on free or heavily subsidised adult training over the next financial year. The fund covers everything from bookkeeping and customer-service certificates through to digital and AI literacy courses, and you can put your staff forward through a local FE college or training provider. If you have a team member who'd benefit from formal training, ring your nearest college this week and ask what's running under the new allocation — the courses are typically free to the employer, with no wage clawback.
Separately, the UK government announced a co-investment alongside the British Business Bank into Ineffable Intelligence under its Sovereign AI programme. That's not money you can claim, but it's a clear signal that more UK-backed AI funding windows are coming through Innovate UK and the British Business Bank in the months ahead. Worth keeping an eye on Innovate UK's grant page if you're planning to invest in AI tooling next quarter.
Bottom line for the week ahead: a slow AI news week is a gift — push the tools you already pay for harder, and put one staff training enquiry in to your local college while the new fund letters are fresh.
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