🔥 Story Of The Week: Microsoft unveiled two proprietary AI models for speech and language, signaling a move to reduce its long-term dependency on OpenAI.
⭐️ Must Reads: AI investment boom continues as Anthropic secures $13 billion. In response to growing safety concerns and recent lawsuits, tech giants are implementing new parental controls for AI chatbots. A new government-backed player enters the open-source field as Switzerland launches Apertus, a transparent AI model. On the research front, a new AI tool shows promise in predicting risk for genetic diseases.
🧰 Technology: OpenAI released GPT-Realtime, an advanced voice AI model for enterprise use. Microsoft released VibeVoice, an open-source tool for long-form audio generation. However, a new study highlights a key vulnerability, showing that AI chatbots can be manipulated with basic psychological persuasion to break safety rules.
📊 Business: A federal judge spared Google from a breakup in its antitrust case, ruling that the rise of generative AI is already reshaping the search market. The impact of AI on business operations is accelerating. Salesforce will cut 4,000 customer support jobs as AI now handles half of its customer interactions. Elon Musk is similarly shifting focus, predicting Optimus robots will define Tesla's future value over EVs.
📝 Policy: Meta faces backlash for unauthorized celebrity AI chatbots engaging in inappropriate conversations. In a significant policy shift, Anthropic will now use customer data to train its models, offering an opt-out. On the world stage, China has unveiled an ambitious 10-year plan to create a fully AI-powered economy by 2035.
⚡ Startups: OpenAI signals its focus on enterprise applications by acquiring product testing startup Statsig for $1.1 billion. The demand for AI agents continues, with enterprise startup Sierra nearing a $350 million funding round. Meanwhile, the AI investment landscape continues to globalize as U.S. and Indian VCs form a $1 billion alliance to fund deep tech in India.
