News/New Launches
xAI’s Grok 4 launches with $300 monthly plan – most expensive AI chatbot
Elon Musk's xAI has launched Grok 4, featuring a premium "Super Heavy" subscription tier priced at $300 per month—the most expensive AI chatbot plan on the market. The launch comes amid controversy over previous Grok versions' racist and antisemitic responses, as well as the recent departure of xAI CEO Linda Yaccarino, positioning this release as a critical opportunity for the company to demonstrate its competitive edge in the AI space. What you should know: The $300 monthly plan significantly exceeds competitors' premium offerings, which typically cost $200 per month from providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The pricing raises concerns...
read Jul 13, 2025Open-source Kimi K2 outperforms GPT-4 on coding and math benchmarks
Moonshot AI has released Kimi K2, an open-source language model that outperforms GPT-4 on key benchmarks including coding and mathematical reasoning while being available for free. The Chinese startup's trillion-parameter model achieved 65.8% accuracy on SWE-bench Verified and 97.4% on MATH-500, surpassing OpenAI's GPT-4.1 at 92.4%, signaling a potential shift in AI market dynamics where open-source models finally match proprietary alternatives. What you should know: Kimi K2 features 1 trillion total parameters with 32 billion activated parameters in a mixture-of-experts architecture, optimized specifically for autonomous agent capabilities. The model comes in two versions: a foundation model for researchers and developers,...
read Jul 11, 2025Snowflake unveils 6 AI enhancements at summit drawing 20K professionals
Snowflake, the cloud-based data platform that helps organizations store and analyze massive amounts of information, unveiled a series of AI-focused enhancements at its annual Summit conference in San Francisco. The event drew more than 20,000 data and AI professionals—making it the largest gathering in the company's history—and featured keynotes from Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman exploring how artificial intelligence is shifting from experimental projects to operational business tools. While these updates represent incremental rather than revolutionary progress, they signal Snowflake's strategic push to position itself as a comprehensive platform for AI-powered business applications. The announcements span...
read Jul 10, 2025AWS upgrades SageMaker with observability tools to boost AI development
AWS has unveiled significant upgrades to SageMaker, its machine learning and AI model training platform, adding new observability capabilities, connected coding environments, and GPU cluster performance management. These enhancements aim to solidify AWS's position as the infrastructure backbone for enterprise AI development, even as competition intensifies from Google and Microsoft in the AI acceleration space. What you should know: The SageMaker updates directly address customer pain points in AI model development and deployment. SageMaker HyperPod observability enables engineers to examine various layers of the stack, including compute and networking layers, with real-time alerts and dashboard metrics when performance issues arise....
read Jul 10, 2025Musk launches $300 Grok 4 subscription amid antisemitic controversy
Elon Musk unveiled Grok 4 and launched a $300-per-month SuperGrok Heavy subscription plan just days after the AI chatbot sparked controversy with antisemitic posts, including praise for Adolf Hitler. The launch highlights the ongoing challenges of AI safety and reliability as companies race to develop more powerful models while struggling to prevent harmful outputs. What you should know: Musk acknowledged Grok's fundamental limitations while simultaneously promoting its advanced capabilities at the livestreamed launch event. "Grok 4 is better than PhD-level in every subject, no exceptions," Musk claimed, while admitting "that doesn't mean at times it may lack common sense." The...
read Jul 10, 2025Hallucination as inspiration: Music platform creates new feature after AI chatbot falsely advertises capability
Soundslice has developed a new ASCII tablature import feature after discovering that ChatGPT was falsely telling users the sheet music platform already supported this text-based guitar notation format. The incident represents what may be the first documented case of a company building functionality specifically in response to an AI model's hallucination, raising questions about how businesses should handle AI-generated misinformation about their products. What happened: Adrian Holovaty, co-founder of Soundslice, noticed unusual activity in the company's error logs where users were submitting screenshots of ChatGPT conversations containing ASCII tablature instead of typical sheet music uploads. When Holovaty tested ChatGPT himself,...
read Jul 9, 2025Google’s AI notification organizer will sort Android alerts into 4 categories
Google is developing an AI-powered "notification organizer" feature for Android that will automatically sort phone notifications into categories like promotions, news, social, and suggested content. The feature, expected to debut in Android 16's first quarterly release, aims to reduce notification clutter by silencing and bundling alerts based on AI analysis, though it may initially be exclusive to Pixel devices. What you should know: The notification organizer will function similarly to Gmail's automatic inbox sorting, using AI to analyze incoming alerts and categorize them into four distinct groups. Promotions: Sales, new features, and marketing content. News: Top stories, editorials, and breaking...
read Jul 9, 2025Perplexity’s new Comet browser passes through cyberspace with built-in AI assistant
Perplexity AI has launched Comet, its first web browser designed to challenge Google Chrome's 68% market dominance by integrating conversational AI directly into browsing sessions. The Chromium-based browser transforms passive web searches into real-time conversations through its built-in Comet Assistant, allowing users to ask questions about any webpage without opening new tabs or switching between sites. What makes Comet different: The browser integrates Perplexity's conversational AI directly into every browsing session through the Comet Assistant sidebar. Users can ask questions about any page they're viewing, whether shopping for products, booking hotels, or summarizing news stories. The assistant eliminates the need...
read Jul 9, 2025Hugging Face launches $299 desktop robot to democratize AI development
Hugging Face has launched Reachy Mini, a $299 desktop robot designed to democratize AI-powered robotics development for its 10 million platform users. The 11-inch humanoid companion represents the company's boldest hardware expansion since acquiring French robotics startup Pollen Robotics in April, directly challenging the industry's traditional high-cost, closed-source model with radical transparency and affordability. What you should know: Reachy Mini packs sophisticated AI capabilities into an affordable desktop form factor that integrates natively with Hugging Face's development ecosystem. The robot features six degrees of freedom in its moving head, full body rotation, animated antennas, wide-angle camera, multiple microphones, and a...
read Jul 9, 2025PayPal launches AI system to block scams before transactions complete
PayPal has launched a new AI-powered scam alert system that can intercept transactions before they're completed, warning users about potential fraud in real-time. The system uses continually learning AI models to detect emerging scam patterns and provides dynamic warnings that vary based on risk levels, from simple alerts to complete payment blocks. How it works: The AI system analyzes billions of data points to identify risk signals and adapts to new scam types without being specifically trained on them. PayPal's models use "continually learning" technology that can detect similarities between known scams and new ones, allowing them to catch previously...
read Jul 9, 2025IBM unveils Power11 chips for faster AI inference with 30-second downtime
IBM has launched its new Power11 chips and servers, marking the company's first major update to its Power processor line since 2020. The systems are designed to simplify AI deployment for businesses while offering enhanced power efficiency, security, and reliability compared to competitors like Intel and AMD. What you should know: The Power11 systems target specialized sectors including financial services, manufacturing, and healthcare with integrated hardware and software packages. Available starting July 25, the systems promise virtually no planned downtime for software updates and average just over 30 seconds of unplanned downtime annually. The servers can detect and respond to...
read Jul 8, 2025Google launches AI Mode in India as first international expansion
Google has launched AI Mode in India as its first international expansion of the AI-powered search experience, making it available to all users in English after a successful two-week testing period. This marks a significant milestone in Google's global AI strategy, bringing advanced conversational search capabilities to one of the world's largest internet markets following the feature's US debut at I/O 2025. What you should know: AI Mode offers a more sophisticated search experience than traditional Google Search or AI Overviews, powered by a custom version of Gemini 2.5. The feature uses a "query fan-out technique" that breaks questions into...
read Jul 7, 2025The artificial think in getting inked: AI-powered tattoo robots debut in New York, Austin
Body art shops in New York and Austin have begun offering tattoos created by an AI-powered robot developed by startup Blackdot. The robotic system uses a needle attached to a robot arm and computer vision to measure the recipient's skin, reportedly causing less pain than traditional tattooing because the needle doesn't pierce as deeply. How it works: The AI-powered robot combines mechanical precision with computer vision technology to create tattoos on human skin. The device features a needle attached to a robotic arm that uses computer vision to measure and analyze the recipient's skin before tattooing. The system causes less...
read Jul 7, 2025Rabbit launches browser-based AI agent that automates complex web tasks
Rabbit, the AI device maker behind the $200 r1 gadget, has launched "intern," a powerful AI agent that works through web browsers to automate complex tasks like building websites, booking restaurants, and making purchases. The company is positioning itself as a serious competitor to upcoming AI hardware from Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, and Jony Ive, Apple's former design chief, having shipped over 100,000 r1 devices with continuous software improvements since its rocky 2024 launch. The big picture: Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu believes the future lies in AI agents that understand context rather than traditional app-based interfaces, giving the company...
read Jul 7, 2025Perplexity AI launches $200 monthly Max plan for unlimited research
Perplexity AI, the search engine that combines traditional web search with artificial intelligence to provide conversational answers, has launched its most expensive subscription tier yet. The new Perplexity Max plan costs $200 per month—or $2,000 annually—positioning the company alongside other premium AI services in an increasingly competitive market. This pricing strategy reflects a broader trend among AI companies targeting power users willing to pay premium rates for enhanced capabilities. The move comes as businesses and professionals increasingly rely on AI tools for research, content creation, and strategic analysis, creating demand for more sophisticated features and unlimited access. What Perplexity Max...
read Jul 7, 2025IBM’s Match Chat brings AI-powered fan love to Wimbledon
IBM and the All England Lawn Tennis Club have launched Match Chat, an interactive AI chatbot powered by IBM's watsonx platform, to answer fans' real-time questions during Wimbledon singles matches. The innovation represents part of a year-round digital transformation strategy aimed at increasing fan engagement and growing tennis's global audience through "snackable content" and interactive experiences. What you should know: The new AI tools are designed to make tennis more accessible and engaging for fans during live matches. Match Chat uses IBM's Granite large language models to respond to both pre-set questions and natural language inputs from fans during singles...
read Jul 2, 2025Heart-of-hearing: Smart glasses display real-time subtitles for deaf users to reduce social isolation
TranscribeGlass has launched smart eyeglasses that display real-time subtitles of conversations directly onto the lens, designed primarily for deaf and hard-of-hearing users. The lightweight glasses cost $377 with a $20 monthly subscription and represent a focused approach to smart eyewear that prioritizes accessibility over flashy features. How it works: The 36-gram glasses use a companion iOS app to process audio and project subtitles onto a small display in the user's field of vision. A waveguide projector beams 640 x 480p text onto the glass, with no cameras, microphones, or speakers built into the frames themselves. Users can adjust subtitle positioning...
read Jul 2, 2025Grammarly launches authorship verification to fight false AI accusations
Academic integrity and professional credibility increasingly depend on proving that human minds, not artificial intelligence, crafted important documents. Whether you're a student submitting coursework, a professional presenting proposals, or a researcher publishing findings, demonstrating authentic authorship has become essential in our AI-saturated landscape. Grammarly, the widely-used writing assistant platform, recently introduced a solution called "Track Your Work" that automatically documents your writing process as you type. This free feature works within Google Docs and Microsoft Word online, creating a digital paper trail that proves you personally authored your content rather than relying on AI generation. The timing couldn't be more...
read Jul 2, 2025X launches AI bots to write Community Notes for misinformation detection
X has introduced an AI Note Writer API that allows developers to create bots capable of submitting Community Notes to flag misleading content on the platform. The move represents a significant shift in how the Elon Musk-owned company approaches content moderation, combining artificial intelligence with human oversight in its fight against misinformation. How it works: The AI Note Writer API operates under strict human oversight to ensure quality control. AI-generated notes will only appear on posts where users have specifically requested a Community Note, and they must be rated as helpful by human contributors before becoming visible. AI Note Writers...
read Jul 1, 2025United Launch Alliance, er, launches RocketGPT AI assistant for aerospace operations
United Launch Alliance has quietly launched "RocketGPT," an ITAR-compliant AI assistant built on Microsoft Azure's secure government cloud, alongside its recent Atlas V mission carrying Amazon's Kuiper satellites. The pilot program serves roughly 150 ULA staff across engineering, legal, finance, and proposal teams, positioning the aerospace company to leverage AI for operational efficiency as it transitions from Atlas V to its next-generation Vulcan rocket. What you should know: RocketGPT represents ULA's strategic embrace of AI-enhanced processes while maintaining human oversight and accountability. CEO Tory Bruno described it as a "tool to help with drudgery and tedious, time‑consuming things," from drafting...
read Jul 1, 2025Meta launches superintelligence labs with $14.3B Scale AI investment
Meta has announced a major restructuring of its AI division, creating Meta Superintelligence Labs dedicated to developing AI systems that surpass human capabilities. CEO Mark Zuckerberg described this initiative as "the beginning of a new era for humanity," positioning Meta to intensify competition with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic in the race toward artificial general intelligence. Leadership changes: Meta has appointed high-profile executives to lead the new superintelligence division. Alexandr Wang, former CEO of data-labeling startup Scale AI, becomes Meta's Chief AI Officer following Meta's $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI earlier this month. Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO, will co-lead...
read Jul 1, 2025Decades out, Napster relaunches as AI companion service with photorealistic avatars for $19/month
Napster has relaunched as an AI company offering "Napster Companions"—AI-generated agents with distinct personalities that users can chat with via video interfaces. The rebranded platform, owned by a Florida company that purchased the Napster name for $207 million in March, represents yet another reinvention of the once-famous file-sharing brand, this time targeting the growing market for personalized AI assistants. What you should know: The AI companions are designed to provide expertise across various domains, from cooking and finance to health and software development. Users pay $19 monthly or $219 annually for access, with the annual plan including a "Napster View"—a...
read Jul 1, 2025Microsoft’s AI diagnostic system outperforms doctors 4x on complex cases
Microsoft's AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO) achieved an 85% diagnostic accuracy rate on complex medical cases from the New England Journal of Medicine, more than four times higher than the 20% mean accuracy of human physicians tested. The system demonstrates how AI could enhance healthcare by improving diagnostic precision while reducing costs, though Microsoft emphasizes it's designed to assist rather than replace doctors. How it works: MAI-DxO transforms large language models into a collaborative diagnostic system that mimics real clinical reasoning processes. The system works with multiple advanced AI models including GPT, Llama, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and DeepSeek, creating what Microsoft...
read Jul 1, 2025Former Google and Meta engineers launch $3M AI travel assistant
Airial Travel has launched a public beta of its AI-powered platform that automates the entire trip-planning process, from initial brainstorming to final booking. Founded by former engineers from Google, Meta, and Waymo, the company has raised $3 million in seed funding and aims to eliminate the tedious hours typically spent researching and planning vacations. How it works: Airial uses natural language processing to understand travel goals and preferences, then generates customized itineraries based on user input. Users can describe their travel ambitions in conversational language, such as "I'm taking two weeks off of work in October, and want to travel...
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