Author: Art Ryan

Introducing Perplexity Labs Perplexity Labs is a way to bring your projects to life faster than ever before. Available today for Pro subscribers. We built Perplexity Search for people who want answers. Later, we launched Deep Research, for users who want deeper, richer analysis. Today we are launching Perplexity Labs. Using Perplexity is like having a dedicated answer machine available to you 24/7. Using Labs is like having a team. A Perplexity Lab is for anyone who wants to bring an entire idea to life. Labs can craft everything from reports and spreadsheets to dashboards and simple web apps — all backed…

Google’s AI assistant, Gemini, is gaining a more prominent place in your inbox with the launch of email summary cards, which will appear at the top of your emails. The company announced Thursday that users no longer have to tap an option to summarize an email with AI. Instead, the AI will now automatically summarize the content when needed, without requiring user interaction. When Gemini launched in the side panel of Gmail last year, one of the features allowed users to summarize their long email threads, along with other tools like those to draft email messages or see suggested responses, among other…

Grammarly has secured a $1 billion commitment from General Catalyst. The 16-year-old writing assistant startup will use the new funds for its sales and marketing efforts, freeing up existing capital to make strategic acquisitions. Unlike a traditional venture round, General Catalyst will not receive an equity stake in the company in return for the investment. Instead, Grammarly will repay the capital along with a fixed, capped percentage of revenue it generates from the use of General Catalyst’s funds. The investment comes from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund (CVF), a capital pool that helps late-stage startups with predictable revenue streams deploy…

Closed captions have become a staple of the TV- and movie-watching experience. For some, it’s a way to decipher muddled dialogue. For others, like those who are deaf or hard of hearing, it’s a critical accessibility tool. But captions aren’t perfect, and tech companies and studios are increasingly looking to AI to change that. Captioning for TV shows and movies is largely still done by real people, who can help to ensure accuracy and preserve nuance. But there are challenges. Anyone who’s watched a live event with closed captions knows on-screen text often lags, and there can be errors in the rush…

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is reportedly continuing to add data centers after opening a cluster of them in Mexico earlier this year. The company is building new facilities in Chile, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan, AWS CEO Matt Garman said, per a Friday (May 30) Bloomberg News report. As it works to increase its capacity to power artificial intelligence, AWS also aims to expand its stock of Nvidia’s latest semiconductor, the GB200, according to the report. “Demand is strong,” Garman said. PYMNTS reported in April that Kevin Miller, vice president of global data centers at AWS, said in a LinkedIn post that the company continues to see “strong demand for both generative…

Amazon.com is looking at aggressive expansion of its data center capacity globally to power artificial intelligence tasks, Bloomberg News reported Friday. The world’s largest seller of rented computing power and data storage, Amazon Web Services, opened a cluster of data centers in Mexico earlier this year, CEO Matt Garman said Friday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. The cloud division is also building out new facilities in Chile, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan. In common with rivals Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon is racing to boost its capacity. Garman said it was working with Nvidia to expand its stock…

New Delhi, India – May 31, 2025 – The global aviation industry is gearing up for one of its most anticipated annual gatherings—the 80th International Air Transport Association (IATA) Annual General Meeting (AGM) and World Air Transport Summit (WATS)—set to take off in just two days in New Delhi. Hosted by IndiGo, India’s largest airline, the event will run from June 2 to June 4, 2025, bringing together more than 1,500 aviation leaders, including airline CEOs, government officials, and key stakeholders from across the world. The summit will address critical challenges and innovations shaping the future of air transport, including…

The details: The event was part of China’s World Robot Competition Series and broadcast live on CCTV-10, with streams on social media platforms. The robots, clad in gloves and headgear, executed an array of boxing and kickboxing moves—straight punches, hooks, and even aerial sidekicks. However, these G1 robots, weighing 35kg (77 lb.), were not autonomous and were being remotely controlled by human operators using joysticks. Scoring was based on clean hits: one point for a punch, three for a kick, and penalties for falling or failing to recover within eight seconds. Why it matters: The matches unfolded over three two-minute…

 Veho, the technology company that operates the fastest-growing alternative parcel delivery platform in the U.S., and RIVR, a physical AI and robotics leader, today announced an initiative to improve e-commerce delivery experience and efficiency through the use of parcel delivery robots. The deployment begins today in Austin, with plans to expand to additional markets later this year based upon learnings during the initial trial. The robots are not intended to replace human delivery drivers. Rather, they are intended to enable humans to deliver more parcels, faster, with less physical strain, all while maintaining the superior delivery experience for which Veho is known. The…

Chinese robotics firm UBTech plans to release a US$20,000 household humanoid robot later this year, positioning itself as a direct competitor to Tesla’s Optimus. The Shenzhen-based company, previously focused on high-end industrial robotics, is shifting toward consumer applications with its upcoming product aimed at supporting China’s rapidly aging population. “Home companion robots are a bright spot in China, partly due to the growing need for elderly care,” Michael Tam, Chief Brand Officer of UBTech, told Bloomberg during the BEYOND Expo in Macau on May 23. The firm expects to ship around 1,000 units in 2025 and scale production tenfold by 2026. While…

Well-known smartphone manufacturer Honor has announced its official entry into the burgeoning humanoid robot market, according to a report on Bloomberg. This strategic move is a significant part of the company’s ambitious $10 billion, five-year “Honor Alpha Plan” aimed at fostering a comprehensive AI-focused ecosystem. The announcement signals Honor’s intent to diversify beyond its core smartphone business and leverage its growing expertise in artificial intelligence. The company has confirmed it will be developing its own humanoid robots and will also collaborate with existing robotics firms to accelerate its progress in this competitive field. Early indications of Honor’s capabilities in this domain were highlighted…

Black Forest Labs, the AI startup whose models once powered the image generation features of X’s Grok chatbot, on Thursday released a new suite of image-generating models — some of which can both create and edit pics. The most capable of the models in the new family, called Flux.1 Kontext, can be prompted with text and, optionally, a reference image to create new images, writes Black Forest Labs in a blog post. “The Flux.1 Kontext models deliver state-of-the-art image generation results with strong prompt following, photorealistic rendering, and competitive typography — all at inference speeds up to 8x faster than current leading models,” the…

Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine gunning for Google, on Thursday released Perplexity Labs, a tool for subscribers to Perplexity’s $20-per-month Pro plan that can craft reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and more. Perplexity Labs is available on the web, iOS, and Android, and coming soon to Perplexity’s apps for Mac and Windows. “Perplexity Labs can help you complete a variety of work and personal projects,” Perplexity explains in a blog post. “Labs is designed to invest more time — 10 minutes or longer — and leverage additional tools [to accomplish tasks], such as advanced file generation and mini-app creation.” Labs, which arrives the same day as…

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s newest AI model, an updated version of the company’s R1 reasoning model, achieves impressive scores on benchmarks for coding, math, and general knowledge, nearly surpassing OpenAI’s flagship o3. But the upgraded R1, also known as “R1-0528,” might also be less willing to answer contentious questions, in particular questions about topics the Chinese government considers to be controversial. That’s according to testing conducted by the pseudonymous developer behind SpeechMap, a platform to compare how different models treat sensitive and controversial subjects. The developer, who goes by the username “xlr8harder” on X, claims that R1-0528 is “substantially” less permissive of contentious free…

Nearly two years after suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, The New York Times has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon to train the tech giant’s AI platforms. The agreement will “bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,” the outlet said in a statement. That includes content like news articles, material from NYT Cooking, a site dedicated to food and recipes, and The Athletic, its sports-focused site. The company also noted that Amazon’s use of The Times’s editorial content could extend to Alexa software on its smart speakers. “Whenever it makes sense within the consumer experience on…

In the construction industry, managers can easily become disconnected from what’s happening on-site. Among the many tasks to juggle are staying apprised of costs, communicating with all stakeholders, and assessing risk related to aspects like contractor billing and performance. Buildots wants to change all of that through AI and computer vision. Founded in 2018 by Roy Danon, Aviv Leibovici and Yakir Sudry, the Chicago startup offers a platform that tracks construction progress by processing images captured from 360-degree cameras mounted on managers’ hard hats. The system doesn’t just observe; it also forecasts. Teams can use a chatbot to ask questions about…

London-based AI lab Odyssey has launched a research preview of a model transforming video into interactive worlds. Initially focusing on world models for film and game production, the Odyssey team has stumbled onto potentially a completely new entertainment medium. The interactive video generated by Odyssey’s AI model responds to inputs in real-time. You can interact with it using your keyboard, phone, controller, or eventually even voice commands. The folks at Odyssey are billing it as an “early version of the Holodeck.” The underlying AI can generate realistic-looking video frames every 40 milliseconds. That means when you press a button or…

When the Arizona Supreme Court handed down its ruling in a pair of arson and DUI cases this month, the announcement wasn’t delivered by a judge or spokesperson, but instead by two AI avatars that are virtually indistinguishable from real people. Daniel and Victoria are the newest computer-generated faces of the Arizona Supreme Court as part of an effort to innovate how justice is communicated to the public. “I think it’s just an efficient way for us to get news out,” Communications Director Alberto Rodriguez said. “It’s really an opportunity for us to meet the public where they’re consuming their media.” Rodriguez is the…

Founder to Founder: The Guide to Building a Breakout Startup in the AI AgeMoving fast used to be an edge. Now it’s necessary to show up. In today’s market, where AI has torn up the old playbook, speed alone isn’t enough. It’s about making sharper, smarter moves earlier. The startups that break out will lay the foundation for lasting advantage from the very beginning. Join Christina Cacioppo (CEO and Co-founder of Vanta) and Mario Gabriele (CEO and Founder of The Generalist) for a tactical conversation on what it really takes to build a breakout startup, with sharp insights and strategies for…

Dario Amodei — CEO of Anthropic, one of the world’s most powerful creators of artificial intelligence — has a blunt, scary warning for the U.S. government and all of us: Why it matters: Amodei, 42, who’s building the very technology he predicts could reorder society overnight, said he’s speaking out in hopes of jarring government and fellow AI companies into preparing — and protecting — the nation. Few are paying attention. Lawmakers don’t get it or don’t believe it. CEOs are afraid to talk about it. Many workers won’t realize the risks posed by the possible job apocalypse — until after it hits. The…