AI news & updates

OpenAI's o3 model, initially praised for its capabilities, is now reported to be more expensive to operate than first thought, following revised assessments from the Arc Prize Foundation's benchmarking.

OpenAI is forming a group of experts to guide its nonprofit goals as it shifts to a for-profit model. This initiative aims to address critical issues faced by nonprofits in health, science, education, and public services.

Epic Games has acquired Loci, an AI platform that automates the tagging of 3D assets. This integration aims to streamline the tagging process for creators and assist in identifying potential intellectual property violations.

DeepMind's recent 145-page paper on AGI safety outlines its strategies but faces skepticism from experts who question the feasibility of achieving AGI, often viewed as a controversial and ambitious goal.

Anthropic has launched Claude for Education, a new AI chatbot tier designed for higher education institutions, providing students and faculty with enhanced access to its AI capabilities, including a feature called 'Learning Mode.'

Actively AI has raised $22.5 million to develop what it calls 'sales superintelligence,' claiming that existing AI sales representatives have largely failed to meet expectations.

Parasail is launching a platform that offers on-demand access to a fleet of GPUs, claiming it surpasses Oracle's entire cloud infrastructure. This move challenges the dominance of major cloud providers in AI infrastructure.

The rise of AI in software development emphasizes the critical role of developers' judgment and experience. While AI tools can assist, they also risk increasing code quality issues, highlighting the need for careful oversight.

Thunderbird is launching a 'pro' email service to compete with Gmail, featuring paid email addresses, an appointment scheduler, file sharing tools, and AI-driven features like 'Thunderbird Assist'.

Hugging Face's Yourbench allows enterprises to create custom benchmarks for AI models using their own data, enhancing evaluation accuracy despite the high compute costs involved.

Researchers from Soochow University introduced CoTools, a framework that enhances LLMs' tool integration by using hidden states and in-context learning, allowing efficient use of over 1,000 tools, including unseen ones.

Amazon has launched Nova Act, an experimental SDK for developers to create AI agents that autonomously navigate the web. It emphasizes reliability and task execution, outperforming competitors in benchmark tests.

American Express has implemented generative AI in its IT support chatbot, reducing IT escalations by 40% and enhancing travel counselor efficiency by 85%, showcasing significant advancements in operational productivity.

Anthropic's Claude for Education introduces 'Learning Mode,' which emphasizes critical thinking by using Socratic questioning instead of direct answers. This innovative approach aims to enhance student learning and transform AI's role in education through partnerships with leading universities.

Uplimit has launched AI-powered learning agents that enhance corporate training by achieving over 90% completion rates and reducing administrative time by 75%, addressing the urgent skills gap in the workforce.

Zencoder's new AI coding agents, featuring 'Coffee Mode', allow developers to automate unit testing within their existing environments, outperforming competitors on benchmarks and enhancing productivity.

Augment Code has launched the Augment Agent, an AI coding assistant that excels in managing large codebases, achieving a 70% win rate over GitHub Copilot and the highest SWE-bench score.

Gladia has launched Solaria, an advanced speech recognition model that supports over 100 languages, enhancing real-time communication for call centers. It features high accuracy, low latency, and real-time translation, addressing the growing demand for multilingual support in customer service.

Anthropic's Claude for Education introduces a Learning mode that encourages students to find solutions independently using the Socratic method. This initiative aims to shape AI's role in education, with partnerships at several universities.

Wikimedia reports a 50% increase in bandwidth usage due to AI crawlers scraping its content for training generative models. This surge disrupts access for human readers and poses financial challenges for the foundation.