Author: Art Ryan

If you’ve been on the New York City subway recently, you’ve probably seen stark white ads promoting a wearable AI device called Friend. CEO Avi Schiffman told Adweek that the company spent more than $1 million on a campaign with more than 11,000 cards on subway cars, 1,000 platform posters, and 130 urban panels. Some stations, like West 4th Street, are completely dominated by Friend ads. “This is the world’s first major AI campaign,” Schiffman said. (There have been other AI ads of questionable effectiveness, but perhaps not a print campaign of this scale.) He described it as “a huge gamble,” adding, “I don’t…

Generative artificial intelligence tools have reportedly lowered the cost and increased the frequency of bot network attacks targeting corporations on social media. While the deployments of bot networks on social media were previously made primarily by fraudsters and state-based actors, they have become more common over the past year or two due to the capabilities of gen AI, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Friday (Sept. 26). The report pointed to “culture wars” attacks on social media, such as those that followed Cracker Barrel’s change to its logo and Amazon’s and McDonald’s changes to their diversity, equity and inclusion policies. Bot networks magnified posts aimed at Amazon and McDonald’s and authored about half of the…

Tech consultancy Accenture has set out plans to lay off staff who aren’t able to reskill on artificial intelligence amid a broader restructuring strategy which will see the company prioritize AI efforts. Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said in a call Thursday that as advanced AI becomes “a part of everything we do” and the global professional services company continues to invest significantly in the area, it expects employees to “retrain and retool” at scale. “We are investing in upskilling our reinventors, which is our primary strategy,” Sweet said. She explained that the company is “exiting on a compression timeline” people for whom…

YouTube Music is testing AI music hosts that provide relevant stories, fan trivia, and commentary about what you’re listening to, the company announced on Friday. The move comes two years after Spotify launched an AI DJ that delivers a curated selection of music alongside AI-powered spoken commentary about the tracks and artists you like. YouTube Music’s new feature builds on its ongoing experiments with conversational AI. In July, the service rolled out an AI conversational radio feature that lets users create a custom radio station by describing what they want to hear. YouTube Music’s new AI hosts are currently being tested through YouTube Labs, the platform’s…

Meta denied a media report that it is considering using Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) models in its ad business. The Information reported Thursday (Sept. 25), citing unnamed sources, that Meta is considering this move and has had discussions with Google Cloud about doing so. Reached by PYMNTS, a Meta spokesperson said the company is only using Google’s models for benchmarking. “We’ve always built our own industry-leading, proprietary ad targeting and recommendation systems,” the Meta spokesperson said in an email. “Separate from that, we regularly evaluate third-party tools for the purpose of benchmarking, which is the case here.” The Information report said Meta was looking into using Google’s AI models to…

Light raised $30 million in a Series A funding round to accelerate the global expansion of its artificial-intelligence-native finance platform that is designed to replace legacy tools and meet the needs of hypergrowth companies. The Denmark-headquartered company will use the new capital to open a new office in New York, triple its engineering team, launch a process-optimization workbench and further build out its deployment department, it said in a Thursday (Sept. 25) press release. Light’s AI-native platform is designed to keep pace with hypergrowth companies, according to the release. It handles 280 million records in under a second; generates balance sheets instantly; manages multi-entity…

Apple is building a ChatGPT-like iPhone app to test a revamped version of Siri. Still, the tool is restricted to internal testing only and will not be released to consumers, Bloomberg reported Friday (Sept. 26). The app lets Apple engineers experiment with features such as searching through emails and music or completing in-app tasks like editing photos, giving the company a faster way to refine Siri’s capabilities. According to Bloomberg, the software code-named Veritas, Latin for “truth,” is meant for internal use, at least for now. Apple has no current plans to release it to consumers. The project further underscores Apple’s late…

Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity has launched an application programming interface (API) that it claims provides developers with access to the same infrastructure that powers the company’s public search engine. The new Perplexity Search API provides a single interface through which developers can tap information from the company’s index of hundreds of billions of webpages, Perplexity said in a Thursday (Sept. 25) blog post. “Perplexity Search API is designed for the unique demands of AI applications,” the post said. “Unlike other API offerings that expose a restricted universe of information, our API provides rich structured responses that are ready for use in AI and traditional applications…

OpenAI is reportedly seeking someone to help carry out its monetization plans. Fidji Simo, the artificial intelligence (AI) startup’s new CEO of applications, has been meeting with candidates for this role, per a report Wednesday (Sept. 24) by the tech industry-focused news site Sources. This new executive would oversee a team responsible for bringing ads to ChatGPT, and handle all monetization endeavors at OpenAI, including subscriptions, the report said. While talks are ongoing, Sources added, the successful applicant would report directly to Simo, who recently began at OpenAI after serving as Instacart’s chief executive. PYMNTS has contacted OpenAI for comment but has not yet received a reply.…

Autonomous vehicle technology provider Kodiak AI, formerly known as Kodiak Robotics, is set to begin trading on Nasdaq Thursday (Sept. 25) under ticker symbols KDK and KDKRW. Kodiak AI was created by the business combination of Kodiak Robotics and publicly traded special purpose acquisition company Ares Acquisition Corporation II (AACT), according to a Wednesday (Sept. 24) press release. The combination was approved by AACT’s shareholders Tuesday (Sept. 23) and the SPAC was renamed Kodiak AI, according to the release. Kodiak received more than $212.5 million from institutional investors in connection with the business combination, and the operating company de-SPAC transaction valued Kodiak at about…

Federal agencies can now access xAI’s Grok artificial intelligence models for 42 cents per agency for 18 months, through March 2027. This offer is enabled by a OneGov agreement between xAI and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), the GSA said in a Thursday (Sept. 25) press release. The agreement gives participating agencies access to xAI’s most advanced reasoning models — Grok 4 and Grok 4 Fast — and dedicated xAI engineers who will help the agencies integrate these tools into their workflows, according to the release. It also provides agencies with an upgrade path to Federal Risk and Authorization Management…

OpenAI is launching a new feature inside of ChatGPT called Pulse, which generates personalized reports for users while they sleep. Pulse offers users five to 10 briefs that can get them up to speed on their day and is aimed at encouraging users to check ChatGPT first thing in the morning — much like they would check social media or a news app. Pulse is part of a broader shift in OpenAI’s consumer products, which are lately being designed to work for users asynchronously instead of responding to questions. Features like ChatGPT Agent or Codex aim to make ChatGPT feel more like…

For years, recruiters used machine learning to find potential hires by searching for keywords in résumés and LinkedIn profiles. Although this method helps to narrow the candidate pool, recruiters still have to manually review each profile to determine the best fit for the job. David Paffenholz (pictured left) and Ishan Gupta, then just 22 and 19, respectively, realized that LLMs could find talent faster and more efficiently. They built Juicebox, an AI-powered search engine that uses natural language to analyze professional profiles, personal websites, and other publicly available information to identify the most qualified candidates. After attending startup accelerator Y Combinator…

Artificial intelligence (AI) hyperscaler CoreWeave has expanded its multi-billion dollar agreement with OpenAI. Earlier this year, CoreWeave inked a partnership with OpenAI to power the training of its most advanced models. On Thursday (Sept. 25), the companies agreed to a new deal worth up to $6.5 billion, bringing the total contract value to $22.4 billion. “We are proud to expand our relationship with OpenAI, a company consistently at the forefront of advancing artificial intelligence,” Michael Intrator, Coreweave’s co-founder, chairman and CEO, said in a news release. “This milestone affirms the trust that world-leading innovators have in CoreWeave’s ability to power the most demanding inference and training…

A year ago, most chief product officers were still testing Gen AI with cautious curiosity. Today, nearly all say the technology will reshape how they work. But beneath the near-unanimous optimism lies a split that may determine who reaps the rewards: some industries are surging ahead, while others hesitate, and no single AI provider has yet claimed dominance. The latest PYMNTS Intelligence report, From Experiment to Imperative: U.S. Product Leaders Bet on Gen AI, captures this pivot. Based on a June 2025 survey of 60 chief product officers and heads of product at companies with at least $1 billion in revenue,…

Starting Jan. 1, California will require developers of generative artificial intelligence (AI) models to publicly disclose what data they use to train their systems. The measure, Assembly Bill 2013, known as the Generative Artificial Intelligence Training Data Transparency Act, was signed into law earlier in 2024 and is scheduled to take effect at the start of next year. The law requires developers to publish detailed information on their websites about the datasets that power their models. Disclosures must include the sources of data, whether the datasets are publicly available or proprietary, their size and type, whether copyrighted material or personal data are…

Risk/reputation intelligence platform Signal AI is in expansion mode after raising $165 million. The new funding round, led by tech investor Battery Ventures and announced Wednesday (Sept. 23), will help U.K.-based Signal make acquisitions that help it deepen data collection, sector expertise and artificial intelligence research. In addition, the company aims to accelerate its risk intelligence product development, while expanding its footprint in the U.S. and Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “Our AI platform started in a garage, and evolved to power the world’s most complex enterprises,” said Signal AI founder and CEO David Benigson. “Partnering with Battery Ventures – a firm with a 40-year track…

Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Cohere is now a $7 billion company. The firm announced Wednesday (Sept. 24) that it had achieved that valuation after raising $100 million in new funding. “We will use this funding to further accelerate the development and global adoption of our security-first enterprise AI technology across the public and private sectors,” Cohere said in its announcement. “This comes as we are rapidly scaling our operations across North America, APAC and EMEA to meet the increasing demand for secure and sovereign AI solutions. As organizations prioritize data control and compliance, our solutions are uniquely positioned to address this critical gap in the…

Tipalti has secured $200 million in growth financing from Hercules Capital to continue investing in artificial intelligence, product innovation and global growth of its AI-powered finance automation platform. The company has seen year-over-year growth of 30% in its customer base and 30% in its annualized payment volume, and it recently surpassed $200 million in annually recurring revenue, it said in a Wednesday (Sept. 24) press release. Tipalti CEO and Co-founder Chen Amit said in the release that the growth in ARR reflects “the growing urgency for finance operations efficiency globally.” “Our market opportunity is immense,” Amit said. “As an innovation leader, we are building for long-term…

Are they a breakthrough in wearable tech? Just another pair of smart glasses? Or a product destined to struggle for relevance? Meta’s Ray-Ban Display promises everyday utility with AI integration, but winning over consumers will be the real test. The company recently unveiled its $799 Ray-Ban Display smart glasses at Meta Connect 2025, presenting them as a practical tool for everyday tasks rather than a futuristic headset, as PYMNTS reported. What Meta Is Offering The Ray-Ban Display includes a small display in one lens and a Neural Band wrist controller that converts subtle finger movements into commands. The glasses are designed for quick interactions…