This week in AI updates: Anthropic makes Skills an open standard, GPT-5.2-Codex released, and more (December 19, 2025)

Anthropic makes Skills an open standard

Skills—a capability that allows users to teach Claude repeatable workflows—was first introduced in October, and now the company is making it an open standard. “Like MCP, we believe skills should be portable across tools and platforms—the same skill should work whether you’re using Claude or other AI platforms,” the company wrote in a blog post.

Additionally, the company announced a directory of pre-built skills from companies like Notion, Canva, Figma, and Atlassian.

Other new features, which vary by plan, include the ability to provision skills from admin settings and easier methods for creating and editing skills.

OpenAI GPT-5.2-Codex released

This is a version of GPT-5.2 that is optimized for the company’s coding agent Codex. It includes “improvements on long-horizon work through context compaction, stronger performance on large code changes like refactors and migrations, improved performance in Windows environments, and significantly stronger cybersecurity capabilities,” OpenAI wrote in a post.

GPT-5.2-Codex is available across all Codex surfaces for paid ChatGPT users and is planned to be added to the API in the coming weeks after more safety improvements are made. The company also announced that it is piloting a new invite-only program where it gives access to new capabilities and more permissive models for vetted professionals and organizations in the cybersecurity space.

“By rolling GPT‑5.2-Codex out gradually, pairing deployment with safeguards, and working closely with the security community, we’re aiming to maximize defensive impact while reducing the risk of misuse. What we learn from this release will directly inform how we expand access over time as the software and cyber frontiers continue to advance,” OpenAI wrote.

Google releases Gemini 3 Flash, enabling faster, more cost effective reasoning

Google has announced the release of Gemini 3 Flash, its latest frontier model designed for speed at a lower token cost.

According to Google, this model is ideal for iterative development, as it is able to quickly reason and solve tasks in high-frequency workflows. It also outperforms all Gemini 2.5 models as well as Gemini 3 Pro in coding capabilities on SWE-bench Verified.

Additionally, due to its strong performance in reasoning, tool use, and multimodal capabilities, it is ideal for tasks like complex video analysis, data extraction, and visual Q&A, enabling more intelligent applications that demand advanced reasoning and quick answers, like in-game assistants or A/B test experiments.

Zencoder introduces AI Orchestration layer to cut down on issues in AI-generated code

Zencoder is introducing its Zenflow desktop app in an attempt to help development teams transition from vibe coding to AI-First Engineering.

According to the company, AI coding has hit a ceiling due to LLMs producing code that looks correct but fails in production or gets worse as it is iterated on.

Zenflow introduces an AI Orchestration layer to turn “chaotic model interactions into repeatable, verifiable engineering workflows.”

This orchestration layer is based on four pillars:

1. Structured AI workflows that follow a Plan > Implement > Test > Review cycle
2. Spec-driven development, where agents are anchored to technical specifications
3. Multi-agent verification, leveraging model diversity to reduce blind spots, such as having Claude review code written by OpenAI models
4. Parallel execution of multiple models running at the same time in isolated sandboxes

Google launches A2UI project to enable agents to build contextually relevant UIs

Google has announced a new project that aims to leverage generative AI to build contextually relevant UIs.

A2UI is an open source tool that generates UIs based on the current conversation’s needs. For example, an agent designed to help users book restaurant reservations would be more useful if it featured an interface to input the party size, date and time, and dietary requirements, rather than the user and agent going back and forth discussing that information in a regular conversation. In this scenario, A2UI can help generate a UI with input fields for the necessary information to complete a reservation.

“With A2UI, LLMs can compose bespoke UIs from a catalog of widgets to provide a graphical, beautiful, easy to use interface for the exact task at hand,” Google wrote in a blog post.

Patronus AI announces Generative Simulators

Generative Simulators are simulation environments that can create new tasks and scenarios, update the rules of the world over time, and evaluate an agent’s actions as it learns.

The company additionally announced a new training method called Open Recursive Self-Improvement (ORSI) that allows agents to improve through interaction and feedback without requiring a full retraining cycle between attempts.

“Traditional benchmarks measure isolated capabilities, but they miss the interruptions, context switches, and multi-layered decision-making that define actual work,” said Anand Kannappan, CEO and co-founder of Patronus AI. “For agents to perform tasks at human-comparable levels, they need to learn the way humans do – through dynamic, feedback-driven experience that captures real-world nuance.”

---

Read last week’s updates here: This week in AI updates: GPT-5.2, improved Gemini audio models, and more (December 12, 2025)

The post This week in AI updates: Anthropic makes Skills an open standard, GPT-5.2-Codex released, and more (December 19, 2025) appeared first on SD Times.

from SD Times https://ift.tt/fWr1KxE