ChatGPT’s agent can now do deep research for you
OpenAI has revealed another new agentic feature for ChatGPT called deep research, which it says can operate autonomously to “plan and execute a multi-step trajectory to find the data it needs, backtracking and reacting to real-time information where necessary.”
Instead of simply generating text, it shows a summary of its process in a sidebar, with citations and a summary showing the process used for reference.
Gemini AI can automatically turn your spreadsheets into charts
Illustration: The Verge
Gemini has some new abilities that could make it more helpful in Sheets, Google announced in a post on the Workspace blog. Now, Gemini can respond to questions about your data with details about trends or by creating static charts that you can insert into your spreadsheet as images. The new capability is rolling out now to most Workspace plans and to users on the $19.99-per-month Google One AI Premium plan.
Google says Gemini does all of this by creating and running Python code, then producing an analysis of the code’s results. For simpler requests, it may use normal spreadsheet formulas, but the bottom line is that it could save you the tedium and headache that normally comes with creating data visualizations. Before this, Gemini was limited to simpler tasks like telling you how to do things in Sheets or creating tables for you.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on DeepSeek R1: “an impressive model.”
The ChatGPT boss says of his company, “we will obviously deliver much better models and also it’s legit invigorating to have a new competitor,” then, naturally, turns the conversation to AGI.
Screenshot: @sama (X)
DeepSeek says its newest AI model, Janus-Pro can outperform Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 3.
Input image analysis is limited to 384×384 resolution, but the company says the largest version, Janus-Pro-7b, beat comparable models on two AI benchmark tests.
Correction: As TechCrunch notes, Janus-Pro image input is listed as limited to low resolution, not its output.
Image: DeepSeek
Meta AI will use its ‘memory’ to provide better recommendations
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Meta is widely launching the ability for its AI chatbot to “remember” certain details about you, such as your dietary preferences or your interests, the company said in a blog post on Monday. It will then use your past conversations, in addition to details from Facebook and Instagram accounts, to provide more relevant recommendations.
Meta first started rolling out a memory feature for its AI chatbot last year, but now it will be available across Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp on iOS and Android in the US and Canada. Though you can tell Meta AI to remember certain things, like that you love traveling, it will also “pick up important details based on context.”
DeepSeek’s top-ranked AI app is restricting sign-ups due to ‘malicious attacks’
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
After surging to the top of Apple’s App Store charts in the US, DeepSeek’s AI Assistant is now restricting new user sign-ups. According to an incident report page, registrations are being temporarily limited “due to large-scale malicious attacks on DeepSeek’s services,” though it’s unclear how these limitations are being applied.
“Existing users can log in as usual,” DeepSeek said in its update. “Thanks for your understanding and support.” An alert banner on the DeepSeek web sign-up page says that “registration may be busy,” rather than entirely restricted, however, and encourages users to wait and “try again” if their application is unsuccessful.
OpenAI has added its o1 model to Canvas.
OpenAI added that Canvas has rolled out to the ChatGPT desktop app for macOS.
Character.ai responds to a wrongful death lawsuit aimed at its chatbots.
Last fall, Megan Garcia sued Character.AI, its founders, and Google over the death by suicide of her 14-year-old son, who had chatted continuously with its bots, including just before his death. In December, the firm added safety measures aimed at teens and concerns over addiction.
Screenshot: C.ai Motion to Dismiss
Google’s Gemini is already winning the next-gen assistant wars
Illustration: The Verge
One of the most important changes in Samsung’s new phones is a simple one: when you long-press the side button on your phone, instead of activating Samsung’s own Bixby assistant by default, you’ll get Google Gemini.
This is probably a good thing. Bixby was never a very good virtual assistant — Samsung originally built it primarily as a way to more simply navigate device settings, not to get information from the internet. It has gotten better since and can now do standard assistant things like performing visual searches and setting timers, but it never managed to catch up to the likes of Alexa, Google Assistant, and now, even Siri. So, if you’re a Samsung user, this is good news! Your assistant is probably better now. (And if, for some unknown reason, you really do truly love Bixby, don’t worry: there’s still an app.)
Microsoft opens testing for Windows AI search
Image: The Verge
Microsoft is testing AI-powered Windows search in a new dev channel build for Windows 11 Insider testers. Announced in October, it uses semantic indexing to let users search for local files using more casual language. Like other Microsoft AI features, you’ll need a Copilot Plus PC to use it.
The feature applies whether you’re using search boxes in Settings, File Explorer, or the taskbar. And you don’t need to be connected to the internet for it to work, thanks to the NPU chips on Copilot Plus computers. For now, AI search is limited to Windows settings and files with image and text formats that include JPEG, PNG, PDF, TXT, and XLS.
“Recording is hard, so let AI do it” is a bad take.
Having lost countless nights to it, and considering my days in recording studios were some of the best of my life, Shulman seems to be either flatly lying or has no idea what he’s talking about.
Microsoft drops its GitHub Copilot Workspace waitlist.
More developers can now access Microsoft’s AI coding assistance tool that’s been on a waitlist since its debut in April last year, company CEO Satya Nadella announced in a LinkedIn post on Sunday.
Microsoft is reverting its Bing AI image generator because of quality complaints
Illustration by Haein Jeong / The Verge
Microsoft is rolling back a model upgrade to its AI-powered Bing Image Creator, reports TechCrunch. The rollback came after weeks of complaints by users that the tool just didn’t work as well after Microsoft “upgraded” to a new version of the DALL-E 3 model on December 18th.
Microsoft declined to comment on its decision to roll things back or offer specifics on what may be causing the gap between user’s expectations and its output.
Las Vegas police release ChatGPT logs from the suspect in the Cybertruck explosion
Image: LMVPD
Nearly a week after a New Year’s Day explosion in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, local law enforcement released more information about their investigation, including what they know so far about the role of generative AI in the incident.
They confirmed that the suspect, an active duty soldier in the US Army named Matthew Livelsberger, had a “possible manifesto” saved on his phone, in addition to an email to a podcaster and other letters. They also showed video evidence of him preparing for the explosion by pouring fuel onto the truck while stopped before driving to the hotel. He’d also kept a log of supposed surveillance, although the officials said he did not have a criminal record and was not being surveilled or investigated.
Gemini can now tell when a PDF is on your phone screen
Illustration: The Verge
In the latest version of the Files by Google app, summoning Gemini while looking at a PDF gives you the option to ask about the file, writes Android Police. You’ll need to be a Gemini Advanced subscriber to use the feature though, according to Mishaal Rahman, who reported on Friday that it had started rolling out.
If you have the feature, when you summon Gemini while looking at a PDF in the Files app, you’ll see an “Ask about this PDF” button appear. Tapping that lets you ask questions about the file, the same way you might ask ChatGPT about a PDF. Google first announced this screen-aware feature during its I/O developer conference in May.
Nvidia’s $249 dev kit promises cheap, small AI power
Nvidia announced the latest in its Jetson Orin Nano AI computer line, the Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit. Sort of like a Raspberry Pi but for powerful AI processing, the tiny $249 computer packs more of an AI processing punch than the kit did before — for half the price. It’s available to buy now.
The Jetson Nano line has been a low-cost way for hobbyists and makers to power AI and robotics projects since its introduction in 2019. Nvidia says the Nano Super’s neural processing is 70 percent higher, at 67 TOPS, than the 40 TOPS Nano. It also has 50 percent more memory bandwidth, at 102GB/s, which should speed up those operations.
Dexcom adds AI reports to its OTC glucose monitor.
Dexcom’s Stelo continuous glucose monitor (CGM) for those with Type 2 diabetes is starting to use generative AI to write weekly reports with “more personalized tips, recommendations, and education related to diet, exercise, and sleep” than the template previously used.
CNBC:
Stelo’s AI reports don’t give users medical advice, though Dexcom has been using an AI framework from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to help guide the feature’s development, [Dexcom COO Jake] Leach said.
Google’s Whisk AI generator will ‘remix’ the pictures you plug in
Google has announced a new AI tool called Whisk that lets you generate images using other images as prompts instead of requiring a long text prompt.
With Whisk, you can offer images to suggest what you’d like as the subject, the scene, and the style of your AI-generated image, and you can prompt Whisk with multiple images for each of those three things. (If you want, you can fill in text prompts, too.) If you don’t have images on hand, you can click a dice icon to have Google fill in some images for the prompts (though those images also appear to be AI-generated). You can also enter some text into a text box at the end of the process if you want to add extra detail about the image you’re looking for, but it’s not required.
Google says the next version of its Sora competitor is better at real-world physics.
In a post announcing waitlist sign-ups for its Veo 2 video model, Google says the next version “brings an improved understanding of real-world physics and the nuances of human movement and expression.”
OpenAI’s Sora notably struggles with physics, so it will be interesting to compare the results of Veo 2 when we eventually get access.
Instagram’s head says social media needs more context because of AI
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
In a series of Threads posts this afternoon, Instagram head Adam Mosseri says users shouldn’t trust images they see online because AI is “clearly producing” content that’s easily mistaken for reality. Because of that, he says users should consider the source, and social platforms should help with that.
“Our role as internet platforms is to label content generated as AI as best we can,” Mosseri writes, but he admits “some content” will be missed by those labels. Because of that, platforms “must also provide context about who is sharing” so users can decide how much to trust their content.
Listen y’all, it’s a sabotage.
Folks in the online AI research community are upset after the world’s biggest AI conference, NeurIPS, gave its prestigious Best Paper Award to, among others, a controversial former ByteDance intern named Keyu Tian, writes Wired.
ByteDance allegedly dismissed Tian for sabotaging colleagues’ AI research and hoarded resources for his own work — accusations detailed in an anonymous GitHub blog calling for the award to be revoked.
Searching for the first great AI app
Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge
ChatGPT launched roughly two years and two weeks ago. Now, as we near the end of 2024, the AI race is… well, where is it, exactly? It’s more competitive than ever, there’s more money being poured into new models and products than ever, and it’s not at all clear when or even whether we’re going to get products that make it all worthwhile.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk about a lot of different AI news, all along a single trend line: the tech industry trying desperately to build a killer app for AI. (Ideally, for them, also one that makes money.) The Verge’s Richard Lawler joins us as we discuss Google Gemini 2.0, Project Astra and Project Mariner, and everything else Google is doing to put AI in the products you already use every day. We also talk through the new Android XR announcement, and Google’s renewed commitment to making headsets and smart glasses that work. It’s all an AI story, no matter how you look at it.
Gemini AI can now summarize what’s in your Google Drive folders
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Gemini’s integration into Google Drive is getting a little more useful. In addition to summarizing documents or answering questions about a project, the AI assistant can now generate summaries of everything inside a folder.
With the feature, you can open a folder and select the new “Summarize this folder” button at the top of the page. Gemini will then give you a breakdown of the folder’s contents. As noted by Google, you can use Gemini to find specific files inside a folder, or ask questions about it, like “What is the theme of this folder?”
Google’s AI enters its ‘agentic era’
I stepped into a room lined with bookshelves, stacked with ordinary programming and architecture texts. One shelf stood slightly askew, and behind it was a hidden room that had three TVs displaying famous artworks: Edvard Munch’s The Scream, Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon, and Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. “There’s some interesting pieces of art here,” said Bibo Xu, Google DeepMind’s lead product manager for Project Astra. “Is there one in particular that you would want to talk about?”
Project Astra, Google’s prototype AI “universal agent,” responded smoothly. “The Sunday Afternoon artwork was discussed previously,” it replied. “Was there a particular detail about it you wish to discuss, or were you interested in discussing The Scream?”
Google launched Gemini 2.0, its new AI model for practically everything
Illustration: The Verge
Google’s latest AI model has a lot of work to do. Like every other company in the AI race, Google is frantically building AI into practically every product it owns, trying to build products other developers want to use, and racing to set up all the infrastructure to make those things possible without being so expensive it runs the company out of business. Meanwhile, Amazon, Microsoft, Anthropic, and OpenAI are pouring their own billions into pretty much the exact same set of problems.
That may explain why Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind and the head of all the company’s AI efforts, is so excited about how all-encompassing the new Gemini 2.0 model is. Google is releasing Gemini 2.0 on Wednesday, about 10 months after the company first launched 1.5. It’s still in what Google calls an “experimental preview,” and only one version of the model — the smaller, lower-end 2.0 Flash — is being released. But Hassabis says it’s still a big day.
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Verge Staff