Microsoft just started testing an experimental Copilot Mode in Edge. It lets the assistant search across all your open tabs to compare hotels or purchases, adds Copilot directly to the new tab page, and will soon handle bookings. It's optional and free for a limited time, though Microsoft hints it may eventually require a subscription.
Similarweb just launched its GenAI Intelligence Toolkit, allowing brands to measure their visibility across AI platforms like ChatGPT and track referral traffic. With AI referrals hitting 1.1 billion visits in June 2025 (up 357% year-over-year), marketers can now analyze real prompt triggers and benchmark against competitors.
Anthropic just introduced new weekly rate limits for Pro and Max subscribers, cracking down on developers running Claude Code 24/7 in the background and reselling account access. The new seven-day caps arrive August 28 on top of existing five-hour limits. Anthropic claims the change will impact less than 5% of users, and Max subscribers can purchase extra usage at standard API rates.
Microsoft just started previewing Copilot Appearance in Copilot Labs, bringing a virtual avatar that smiles, nods, and reacts with real-time expressions. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman envisions an assistant with a permanent identity, its own virtual room, and a "digital patina" that ages over time. It's rolling out to select users in the US, UK, and Canada.
Microsoft is experimenting with a new Copilot 3D feature that generates 3D objects from uploaded images. Testers can now duplicate and manage their assets inside a new My Creations hub. The fidelity is still visibly rough, but it signals Microsoft's push to bring quick 3D prototyping directly into its AI assistant.
OpenAI just rolled out its new ChatGPT Agent to all Plus, Pro, and Team subscribers, including users in Europe. The agent blends the VM-based web browsing of Operator with Deep Research capabilities, letting you watch it search, click, and run terminal commands live on screen. Plus users get 40 agent messages a month, while Pro users get 400.
OpenTable just launched Concierge, a free AI assistant built directly into its app and website to answer diner questions. Powered by OpenAI and Perplexity APIs alongside data from over 60,000 restaurants, it handles menu tips and dietary concerns, answering roughly 80% of common queries before eventually handling table bookings too.
Google just launched Web Guide in Search Labs, an experimental interface powered by a custom Gemini model that groups search results by specific topic angles. It uses concurrent queries behind the scenes to dig up deeper web pages for complex, open-ended questions. Currently rolling out to opt-in users inside the Web tab.
OpenAI is preparing to roll out GPT-5 as early as next month, packing o3 reasoning capabilities directly into the main model to eliminate the friction of switching tools in ChatGPT. It reportedly plans to launch combined, mini, and nano versions, while also racing to release a new open-weight reasoning model before July wraps up.
OpenAI is rolling out new personality presets for ChatGPT, letting users switch tone between a direct "Robot," a sarcastic "Cynic," and a supportive "Listener." A guided "Study Together" homework mode is also rolling out, while backend clues point to Sora 2 and GPT-5 testing ahead of DevDay.
Privacy champion Proton just launched Lumo, an AI assistant built strictly around confidentiality. It features zero-access encryption, stores no server logs, never trains on user inputs, and runs open-source models in European data centers. Best of all, anyone can start chatting for free without creating an account.
Anthropic just partnered with the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute to investigate how AI is actually reshaping labor markets and productivity. The company will provide economists with Claude for Enterprise access and Economic Index data to analyze shifts in tasks and skill demands. Why it matters: Instead of guessing automation's impact, the partnership aims to give policymakers real empirical grounding.
Guitar Center just rolled out Rig Advisor, an in-store mobile AI assistant for musicians browsing physical shops. Shoppers scan a QR code inside the store and ask about specific tones, songs, or gear, and the tool suggests custom rigs matched against that location's real-time inventory.
Meta just hired three key Google DeepMind researchers—Tianhe Yu, Cosmo Du, and Weiyue Wang—who contributed to Google's Gemini models. The move is part of Mark Zuckerberg's aggressive talent push, offering massive compensation packages to lure top researchers from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Meta is going all-in to build out its AGI muscle.
Google just released the stable, generally available version of Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite, its fastest and lowest-cost model in the 2.5 family. Priced at $0.10 per million input tokens with a 1M context window, it cuts audio pricing and brings native controllable reasoning. It is essentially built for developers who need rock-bottom latency and costs without giving up output quality.
OpenAI just released its first economic analysis of ChatGPT, revealing over 500 million active users sending 2.5 billion daily prompts. In the US, 28% of employed users now use ChatGPT at work, up from 8% in 2023. OpenAI is also partnering with Harvard and AEI economists on a 12-month labor study.
OpenAI just confirmed that ChatGPT now handles over 2.5 billion user requests daily, with 330 million originating from the US alone. That scales to roughly 912.5 billion requests a year, fueled by weekly users soaring past 500 million in March. While Google still dominates with 5 trillion annual searches, the gap is closing fast.
Alibaba's Qwen team just scrapped hybrid thinking mode to train Instruct and Thinking models separately for peak quality. Along with the pivot, it rolled out Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507 and an FP8 version, promising stronger general capabilities and better performance on agent tasks.
Instacart's Fidji Simo just announced she is joining OpenAI on August 18 as CEO of Applications to get its technology into the hands of everyday users. In an essay, she argued AI can democratize healthcare, learning, and entrepreneurship—warning that without intentional rollout, it risks concentrating wealth among the few.
Google just introduced conversational image segmentation for Gemini 2.5. Instead of relying on single nouns, the model parses relational instructions like "the car farthest away" or abstract ideas like weather damage to return pixel-level masks via a single API call.
