Learn · a trick with a name
Announced Not Shipped
claimed, never released.
An announcement costs nothing. Shipping costs everything. Only one of them can be used.
How to spot it
- 'Coming soon', waitlists, demos only
- No date, no price, no public access
- Last year's announcement still not available
The one question to ask“Can I use it right now?”
At work
Plan only around tools you can sign up for now. Treat roadmaps as marketing until they ship.
Caught in the wild
Every time we've caught it so far. Try calling each one before you open it.
- TRUE, BUTHeadlines say Australia will make AI companies prove their safety systems work. The source is a speech, and the law is planned for 2027.
- TRUE, BUTMistral calls Large 4 open-weight. The weights are not out until October 27, and an index ranks it below a cheaper rival.
- TRUE, BUTReflection calls Beam a 501B open-weight model. Its own post says the weights come later this month.
- TRUE, BUTPewDiePie unveiled Ajax, an "uncensored" model for home PCs. On October 3, the day its countdown ended, the page said it will ship "when it's ready".
- TRUE, BUTSynopsys and OpenAI say GPT-Synopsys will "revolutionize the design of semiconductors". The release carries no speedup figure, and the model is still to be developed.
- TRUE, BUTGoogle says your AI's memory will live in its cloud, locked so tightly that even Google cannot read it. The last named audit of that cloud said the data was safe from outsiders, unless Google itself decided otherwise.
- TRUE, BUTOpenAI announced the AGI era. Congress announced a bill to ban it. Neither one exists yet.
- TRUE, BUTThe government finished a secret rulebook for AI on time. It just won't say what's in it, or who's seen it.
- TRUE, BUTAnthropic's largest acquisition ever was announced by everyone except Anthropic.
- TRUE, BUTGrok 4.6 posts a 1753 and a number one. One is a real benchmark. The other is a tweet.
- TRUE, BUTAlibaba kept its open-weights promise, then swapped the fine print.
