Rebuilding Alexa: How Amazon is mixing models, agents and browser use for smarter AI

Rebuilding Alexa: How Amazon is mixing models, agents and browser-use for smarter AI

In rearchitecting the upgraded Alexa voice assistant, Amazon turned to model mixing to bring agentic capabilities to devices.

VentureBeat - 9h

The rise of browser-use agents: Why Convergence’s Proxy is beating OpenAI’s Operator

A new wave of AI-powered browser-use agents is emerging, promising to transform how enterprises interact with the web. These agents, including OpenAI's Operator and Convergence's Proxy, can ...

VentureBeat - 4d

Amazon Debuts New Alexa Voice Assistant With AI Overhaul

It’s called Alexa+, and the idea behind it is that generative AI can take the voice assistant to the next level.

Inc. - 16h

With Its AI-Powered Alexa Plus, Amazon Just Put Apple on Notice

Amazon just showed off the AI future everyone is promising–including Apple.

Inc. - 8h

Here’s how the new Alexa+ could change the price of Amazon Prime

Amazon revealed its $19.99 Alexa+ service, which will tap generative AI to perform more advanced tasks. Prime members won’t have to pay extra for it — for now.

MarketWatch - 10h

Amazon unveils revamped Alexa with AI features for $19.99 per month, free for Prime members

Amazon has been working for years to overhaul Alexa with generative AI features as it faced rising competition from OpenAI's ChatGPT and other chatbots.

CNBC - 15h

How big U.S. bank BNY manages armies of AI agents

As investment bank BNY plans to upgrade its AI tool Eliza, it's looking forward to creating smart recommendation AI agents.

VentureBeat - 1d

Amazon's Souped-Up Alexa+ Arrives Next Month

Alexa+ will cost $20 a month but will be free for Amazon Prime members. It'll eventually arrive on nearly every Alexa device the company has shipped.

Wired - 15h

Amazon Unveils Alexa+, Powered by Generative A.I.

Amazon is aiming to catch up in generative artificial intelligence and to reboot its virtual assistant, which has been leapfrogged by powerful chatbots.

The New York Times - 12h

Alibaba makes AI video generation model free to use globally

Open-source AI tech has been thrown into the spotlight since Chinese firm DeepSeek rattled global markets in January.

CNBC - 1d

As Israel uses US-made AI models in war, concerns arise about tech’s role in who lives and who dies

U.S. tech giants have quietly empowered Israel to track and kill many more alleged militants more quickly in Gaza and Lebanon through a sharp spike in artificial intelligence and computing services

ABC News - Feb. 18

AI still has a hallucination problem: How MongoDB aims to solve it with advanced rerankers and embedding models

How MongoDB's Voyage AI is helping enterprises move more mission critical operations into production with gen AI.

VentureBeat - 2d

Qualcomm and Nokia Bell Labs show how multiple-vendor AI models can work together in wireless networks

Qualcomm and Nokia Bell Labs showed how multiple-vendor AI models can work together in an interoperable way in wireless networks.

VentureBeat - 19h

Medical training’s AI leap: How agentic RAG, open-weight LLMs and real-time case insights are shaping a new generation of doctors at NYU Langone

NYU Langone has built an LLM research companion and medical advisor, and is pioneering what it calls AI-driven “precision medical education."

VentureBeat - 6d

How DeepSeek used distillation to train its artificial intelligence model, and what it means for companies such as OpenAI

DeepSeek's sudden emergence has put the AI industry's focus on a technique called distillation.

CNBC - 5d

How Google’s New AI Co-Scientist Tool Gives Us a Taste of Tomorrow’s Workplace

Scientists often use sophisticated technology, so an AI tool designed to help them begin new investigations may see broad take-up among the community. It’s also a hint of how many other workplaces ...

Inc. - 5d

A Stytch in time: Connected Apps untangles authorization tie-ups for AI agents

Stytch Connected Apps enables AI agents and third-party apps to authenticate, access data and take action on behalf of users.

VentureBeat - Feb. 19

Technology Giants: Stop Bullying Companies Into Buying Agentic AI

Instead, develop an innovative product that relieves customer pain.

Inc. - Feb. 20

Invisible, autonomous and hackable: The AI agent dilemma no one saw coming

How can enterprises protect against the unique vulnerabilities of AI agents? Consider treating them as their own identities.

VentureBeat - 6d

Need to attend a meeting, order groceries or book a flight? There's an 'AI agent' for that

As big tech developers race to roll out the next generation of artificial intelligence, some people are already enlisting an army of AI helpers to check off their daily to-do lists.

NBC News - 3d

Segwise launches Creative Analytics AI Agent on its user acquisition platform

Segwise announced the launch of its new AI agent, which helps track the performance of ads for mobile games and apps.

VentureBeat - 2d

Salesforce makes a pitch for AI ‘agents,’ but its tempered forecast spooks investors

Shares of Salesforce fell after hours on Wednesday after the customer-service and workplace-analytics platform’s full-year outlook came in below expectations.

MarketWatch - 8h

Amazon bets savings from automation can help fuel AI spending boom

US tech giant expected to spend as much as $25bn on warehouse automation in broader efficiency drive

Financial Times - 1d

Eli Lilly's stock recovery chugs along, and Amazon's AI strategy adds a new pillar

Every weekday, the Investing Club releases the Homestretch; an actionable afternoon update just in time for the last hour of trading.

CNBC - 13h

Breaking down Grok 3: The AI model that could redefine the industry

Grok-3 still hasn't fully shipped yet. But it will surely set the tone for how other AI labs release future models.

VentureBeat - Feb. 20

Anthropic Launches the World’s First ‘Hybrid Reasoning’ AI Model

Claude 3.7, the latest model from Anthropic, can be instructed to engage in a specific amount of reasoning to solve hard problems.

Wired - 2d

DeepSeek Rushes to Launch new AI Model as China Goes All in

The new model from DeepSeek will be called R2, and could worry the U.S. government. Here’s why.

Inc. - 1d

OpenAI expands Deep Research access to Plus users, heating up AI agent wars with DeepSeek and Claude

OpenAI expands Deep Research AI agent to ChatGPT users, intensifying competition with DeepSeek and Anthropic.

VentureBeat - 1d

How to Write the Perfect AI Prompt, According to OpenAI President Greg Brockman

The best way to learn to use AI is to play with AI. An expert explains how to write great AI prompts to get you started.

Inc. - 1d

Half of U.S. Workers Worry About How AI Will Affect Their Jobs

AI-using respondents called it more useful for speeding up work than for improving the quality of their output, but 60 percent of respondents to a Pew survey said they don’t use AI at all.

Inc. - 15h

Arizona moves to ban AI use in reviewing medical claims

Arizona state lawmakers passed new legislation Thursday aiming to restrict the use of artificial intelligence in reviewing medical claims.

NBC News - 5d

Artists release silent album in protest against AI using their work

Music stars including Kate Bush and Damon Albarn say law changes would damage people's livelihoods.

BBC News - 2d

Call Of Duty Uses Generative AI For Some Content, Activision Admits

An update to the Call of Duty HQ page on Steam confirms that Activision's development teams do in fact use "generative AI tools" as a means to "help develop some in-game assets.". About a year ago, ...

GameSpot - 1d

Surge in UK university students using AI to complete work

Rapid spread of technology raises questions about how to assess undergraduate work

Financial Times - 1d

Xbox Pushes Ahead With Muse, a New Generative AI Model. Devs Say ‘Nobody Will Want This’

One developer responds to the release of Muse: “We are implicitly empowering a class of people who own these tools and don’t give a fuck about how they reshape our lives.”

Wired - Feb. 19

Together AI’s $305M bet: Reasoning models like DeepSeek-R1 are increasing, not decreasing, GPU demand

The demands of DeepSeek's advanced reasoning capabilities are pushing enterprises toward Together AI's optimized infrastructure platform.

VentureBeat - 6d

Anthropic says it's released its 'most intelligent' AI model yet as competition ramps up

Anthropic unveiled its latest frontier model, Claude Sonnet 3.7, on Monday and claims it's the company's "most intelligent" version yet.

CNBC - 2d

Hume launches new text-to-speech model Octave that generates custom AI voices with adjustable emotions

Hume emphasized its Octave TTS pricing is around half the cost of the competing offering from AI voice creation startup ElevenLabs.

VentureBeat - 20h

Microsoft’s new Phi-4 AI models pack big performance in small packages

Microsoft's new Phi-4 AI models deliver breakthrough performance in a compact size, processing text, images, and speech simultaneously while requiring less computing power than competitors.

VentureBeat - 5h

Guardiola undaunted by task of rebuilding City

Pep Guardiola has said building a new team at Manchester City isn't the "biggest challenge" of his career.

ESPN - 1d

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