AI

Project Prometheus is a new AI company co-led by Jeff Bezos and physicist Vik Bajaj. According to the New York Times, the company raised about $6.2 billion before launch. It focuses on physical AI, which refers to models and systems that understand, simulate, and optimize real-world processes in engineering and manufacturing. Prometheus treats physical systems as core surfaces for AI-driven design, automation, and optimization. This is Jeff Bezos's first operational role since stepping down as Amazon’s CEO back in 2021. Continue Reading →

My AI critic systems cut proposal revision cycles by more than 40 percent over 18 months, shortened blog and social production time by over 50 percent, and objectively improved the efficacy of our business writing. If you create more than ten similar deliverables per quarter, you will benefit from a structured set of critics that evaluates your work the same way every time. Here is how to build them. Continue Reading →

Google released a new shopping feature that confirms what we talked about in last week's Agentic Browser Wars essay: Google is moving from search to action. The update lets users skip the cart step and go directly to checkout from Google Shopping. Google calls this “agentic checkout.” Continue Reading →

OpenAI just launched GPT-5.1, which fixes the things that broke your workflows. There are two new modes: Instant is faster and better at simple tasks, while Thinking uses adaptive compute allocation to improve reasoning and reduce the wobble that emerged in GPT-5’s first months. This release is a stability upgrade for teams that use GPT-5 in production. Continue Reading →

ElevenLabs has launched the Iconic Voice Marketplace, a licensing platform that lets brands legally use AI-generated replicas of famous voices in content and ads. It’s a consent-based system designed to bring order to synthetic speech. The company calls it a “performer-first” model where every licensed voice is cleared, compensated, and auditable. Continue Reading →

Wikipedia just told the AI industry to stop scraping and start subscribing. In a blog post Monday, the Wikimedia Foundation urged AI developers to access its content through Wikimedia Enterprise, a paid API that supports the site’s nonprofit mission. The message was polite but clear: attribution matters, and free-riding doesn’t. Continue Reading →

Sam Altman announced Thursday that OpenAI expects to top $20 billion in annualized revenue this year, with plans to reach hundreds of billions by 2030. The company has committed to $1.4 trillion in infrastructure spending over the next eight years. That's a staggering sum, and it immediately raised the obvious question: how exactly are they planning to pay for all this? Continue Reading →

Apple has finally admitted what the rest of us have known for years: Siri is terrible. According to reports from MacRumors and Bloomberg, Apple has struck a deal with Google to integrate the Gemini AI model directly into Siri and future iOS releases. After more than a decade of living in last place among voice assistants, Siri is about to borrow someone else’s brain. Continue Reading →

Amazon has formally asked Perplexity to remove its “Comet” shopping agent from Amazon’s platform. The company released a statement on November 4, citing repeated requests that Perplexity stop allowing users to make purchases through Amazon. A cease-and-desist letter sent on October 31 argues that Comet’s behavior violates Amazon’s terms of service and creates a “significantly degraded shopping and customer service experience.” Continue Reading →

Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix, and other Japanese rights holders have asked OpenAI to stop using their content to train Sora 2. The request came via CODA, Japan’s Content Overseas Distribution Association, which issued a public letter on October 27 arguing that replication during machine learning may constitute copyright infringement under Japanese law. Continue Reading →