Perplexity just rolled out Perplexity Assistant for Android users, turning its search engine into an action-taking agent. It can hail rides, reserve tables, and read your screen or camera feed across apps in 15 languages. While completely free to use right now, CEO Aravind Srinivas admitted some complex multi-app actions might still be hit-or-miss.
Freepik just integrated Google's Imagen 3 into its AI Suite, touting its lighting and fine detail. Users can claim two free image generations within the first 24 hours of launch.
KREA AI just launched custom model training, allowing users to build personalized visual styles from as few as three reference images. Powered by io.net's decentralized GPU network, training takes only a few minutes, and the resulting style plugs directly into KREA's real-time generation canvas. The training feature is available on paid plans starting at $10 a month.
OpenAI just unveiled Operator, a research preview of an AI agent that controls a web browser to complete real-world tasks like filling out forms and ordering groceries. Powered by a new Computer-Using Agent (CUA) model, it navigates interfaces like a human while asking users to take over during logins and payments. It is currently rolling out to Pro users in the U.S.
OpenAI just launched a research preview of Operator, a general-purpose AI agent that takes control of a browser to handle travel booking, reservations, and online shopping. Powered by a Computer-Using Agent model, it clicks and fills out forms just like a human, though sensitive actions like payments still require manual user approval.
Google is rolling out head and facial expression tracking to more Chromebooks, letting users navigate hands-free without a mouse. Built for users with motor impairments and based on its Project Gameface tool, it recommends at least 8GB of RAM. The company also unveiled new real-time classroom screen-sharing controls and teased over 20 upcoming laptops for 2025.
Adobe just rolled out major beta updates across its video suite ahead of the Sundance Film Festival. Premiere Pro gains on-device, AI-powered natural language footage search and 17-language caption translation, while After Effects overhauls its caching system to let older hardware preview complex comps smoothly. Finding needle-in-a-haystack B-roll just got a lot faster.
ByteDance just launched Trae, a new AI code editor targeting overseas developers. Built on Microsoft software, it lets programmers generate project-level code using OpenAI's GPT-4o or Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet—and all AI features are currently free. The app is live on macOS, with a Windows version on the way.
Perplexity just rolled out its Sonar API, letting developers bake real-time web search with citations straight into their apps. The service comes in two tiers—standard Sonar and 200k-token Sonar Pro—with base pricing starting at $5 per 1,000 searches. Why it matters: Perplexity is productizing its core consumer moat into an API, taking direct aim at Google and OpenAI.
A Canadian maker named Hudzah just built a tabletop nuclear fusor capable of detecting neutrons for around $3,000, guided largely by Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's o1 pro. Claude Projects digested forum archives to debug the build, while o1 pro handled intricate electrical wiring. Why it matters: Frontier reasoning models are actively lowering the barrier for complex, high-risk physical engineering at home.
OpenAI just updated the custom instructions UI inside ChatGPT, making it much easier to tweak how the bot talks to you. The refreshed interface lets you directly set the personality traits you want it to have, its tone of voice, and any guardrails it should follow.
Cognition just released Devin 1.2, giving its AI software engineer better in-context reasoning to understand repository structures and reuse existing code. Users can now assign tasks simply by sending voice notes directly in Slack. The platform still starts at $500 a month, now with usage-based overage options.
Apple just temporarily disabled notification summaries for news and entertainment apps in the latest iOS 18.3 developer beta. The Apple Intelligence feature sparked backlash after hallucinating crucial facts, including wrongly claiming a shooting suspect shot himself in a BBC alert. Apple plans to bring it back later with italic styling, individual app toggles, and clear warnings that AI summaries "may contain errors."
Krea AI just rolled out a tool that converts flat 2D images into 3D objects within its real-time generator. Users can rotate, reposition, and scale the converted models while the background updates live. Why it matters: it makes complex scene composition and character posing much easier without manual redrawing.
DeepSeek just launched its official mobile app on the iOS App Store and major Android marketplaces, giving users free access to its 671-billion-parameter DeepSeek-V3 model. The app supports web search, deep thinking mode, and file and image scanning. It basically turns one of open source's hottest models into a free, pocket-sized ChatGPT rival.
LinkedIn just rolled out two free AI tools for job hunters and small businesses, including a Jobs Match feature to evaluate if postings are worth applying to and a synthetic hiring agent to triage candidates. Notably, both rely on LinkedIn's in-house AI rather than OpenAI models.
Microsoft just launched Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, bringing metered AI agents into its free GPT-4o chat experience for commercial users. Employees can now run web searches, analyze files, and trigger custom agents without a full subscription. Why it matters: It gives companies an easy, low-friction on-ramp to deploy workplace agents at scale.
Hinge just rolled out an AI-powered feature called Prompt Feedback to save singles from cliché profile answers. Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o mini, it evaluates your prompt responses across three levels—from "Go a Little Deeper" to "Great Answer"—and suggests specific details to add instead of ghostwriting for you. Why it matters: Daters are fatigued by shallow swipe culture, and gentle AI nudges might bring back authentic conversations.
Freepik just launched an AI-powered tool to remove and replace image backgrounds. Beyond simple solid color swaps, you can generate entirely new AI scenes using Relight technology to match the lighting seamlessly. It is live now on Freepik.
OpenAI just rolled out a beta tasks feature to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro subscribers. Users can now ask ChatGPT to fire off push reminders or handle recurring requests like daily news roundups. While it can't run background searches or buy tickets yet, it's OpenAI's first real step toward independent AI agents.
Wyze just launched Cam Unlimited Pro, a new subscription tier that turns vague security notifications into detailed AI summaries. Instead of generic alerts like "pet detected," users now get specific play-by-plays like a small dog playing with a tennis ball, alongside natural-language video search.
Samsung just dropped a teaser video hinting at major AI upgrades for the upcoming Galaxy S25. In the demo, the AI handles a multi-step spoken request—finding a specific restaurant, messaging a contact, and updating the calendar all at once. The "true AI companion" will officially debut at Galaxy Unpacked on January 22.
Adobe just rolled out Firefly Bulk Create in beta, letting users resize or swap backgrounds across up to 10,000 images at once. The web tool packages Firefly developer APIs into simple "Remove Background" and "Resize" features aimed at marketers. It relies on consumption-based credits, with PSD export coming later.
xAI just released a standalone iOS beta app for Grok in the US. The app delivers the same real-time info, answers, and image generation without needing to open X. After going free last month, Elon Musk's chatbot is ready to take on ChatGPT and Claude directly.
VideoLAN just showed off built-in, real-time AI subtitling and translation for VLC at CES 2025. The feature runs entirely locally and offline without cloud services, with plans to support more than 100 languages. There is no official release date yet, but it marks a massive privacy-friendly upgrade for local media playback.
Google just rolled out Daily Listen in Search Labs, an experimental feature that turns your search habits and Discover feed into a customized five-minute AI podcast. It uses the same Audio Overview magic found in NotebookLM, complete with scrubbers and full transcripts. For now, it's strictly an opt-in test for iOS and Android users in the US.
Startup Satellai just unveiled the Satellai Dog Tracker, combining AI and satellite connectivity to track pets in remote areas without cellular coverage. Powered by Qualcomm's 9205S modem and Skylo's NTN network, it lets owners map virtual boundaries even deep off-grid.
NVIDIA just expanded its NIM microservices and AI Blueprints to RTX AI PCs, pairing prepackaged model APIs with RTX 50 Series FP4 compute. By cutting VRAM requirements by more than half, developers can run complex agentic workflows locally without painful optimization. Hardware support arrives next month.
McAfee just unveiled McAfee Scam Detector at CES 2025, an AI-powered tool built to identify scams across text messages, emails, and online video streams in real time. The proactive system flags deceptive and deepfake threats before victims can be duped. It will roll out at no extra cost to McAfee customers starting this spring.
Panasonic just unveiled Umi at CES 2025, a family-focused wellness digital assistant powered by Anthropic’s Claude. The mobile app lets households set health goals, manage routines, and monitor aging parents via voice and group chat. It is scheduled to launch in the U.S. later this year.
Philips Hue just announced an upcoming generative AI lighting assistant arriving in the first quarter of 2025. Users can simply type or speak prompts like "Give me a scene for a garden party" to generate custom color palettes or adjust existing fixtures. The feature will be compatible with all Philips Hue smart lights.
Nvidia just unveiled Project Digits at CES 2025, a $3,000 personal AI supercomputer powered by its new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip. The compact workstation packs 128GB of memory, letting researchers and developers run models with up to 200 billion parameters right on their desks—or link two together for 405-billion-parameter beasts. It begins shipping in May.
Nvidia just released a new AI Blueprint for video search and summarization, designed to let visual agents ingest surveillance and industrial footage at 30x real-time speed. Powered by Cosmos Nemotron models, the agents pack reasoning and tool-calling skills to flag factory defects or analyze athletic form. Why it matters: it unlocks actionable data from billions of unwatched cameras.
Nvidia just teamed up with orchestration leaders like LangChain and CrewAI to release new enterprise-ready Agentic AI Blueprints. The catalog includes pre-built templates for turning PDFs into conversational podcasts, automating code docs, and orchestrating multi-agent systems, letting developers spin up reasoning workflows in a single click via NVIDIA Launchables.
Google just previewed Gemini AI features for Google TV at CES 2025, turning the living room screen into a conversational hub. The update lets you search via natural conversation, control smart home devices, and generate a daily "News Brief" sourced from the web and YouTube. It is slated to roll out to select devices later in 2025.
Brisk It just unveiled the Zelos 450, a compact $399 smart pellet grill powered by its upgraded Vera 2.0 generative AI platform. Users can snap photos of raw ingredients to generate custom recipes that the grill executes automatically, with the AI even adjusting temperatures to salvage common grilling blunders. It is set to hit shelves in Q1 2025.
Timekettle just rolled out Babel OS, its first operating system built specifically for AI-driven simultaneous interpretation in earbuds. It uses semantic segmentation to predict speech completions with near-zero latency, adds voice cloning to preserve tone, and supports custom lexicons across 40+ languages. The software is rolling out via free OTA updates to products like the W4 Pro and X1 Hub, with offline edge AI on the way.
Current Backyard just unveiled the Model P, a $599 indoor-outdoor electric pizza oven that reaches 850°F to cook a pie in two minutes flat. It uses proprietary algorithms to distribute heat evenly without requiring manual rotation, and its app calculates optimal cooking times based on your dough and toppings.
VanceAI just launched Video AI, an all-in-one video enhancement tool capable of upscaling footage to 8K. It also packs frame interpolation up to 120 FPS, SDR-to-HDR conversion, denoising, deinterlacing, and stabilization into a single suite for restoring and polishing clips.
OpenAI just opened ChatGPT Search to all free users and rolled real-time web browsing into Advanced Voice Mode. The update speeds up response times, improves local business cards on mobile, and lets users set ChatGPT as their browser's default search engine. It is OpenAI's biggest move yet to take on traditional search engines head-on.
Meta just rolled out firmware v11 for Ray-Ban Meta glasses to early access users in the US and Canada, adding real-time AI video and continuous voice chat. Wearers can now ask questions about whatever is in front of them without repeating wake words, alongside live translation for Spanish, French, and Italian. Why it matters: It beats Google to getting multimodal live vision onto consumers' faces.
Hugging Face just launched the Synthetic Data Generator, a no-code tool that turns natural language descriptions into custom datasets. Powered by distilabel and free inference APIs, it crafts text classification and chat datasets in minutes. The output pushes directly to Argilla and the Hub, making dataset curation and fine-tuning painless for non-coders.
