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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
The New York Times is picking a fight with AI again — and this time, search startup Perplexity is in the crosshairs.
As the legal sparks fly, the future of news and information is at stake — will there ever be a resolution to the war between AI and publishers? Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
New York Times takes legal aim at Perplexity
Anthropic reveals major update to AI safety policy
Create video presentations with Google Vids
Meta researchers develop ‘thinking’ LLMs
6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
PERPLEXITY
Image source: Midjourney
The Rundown: The New York Times just issued a cease and desist notice to AI search startup Perplexity, demanding it stop using the publisher's content without authorization.
The details:
The NYT claims Perplexity's use of its articles for AI-generated summaries violates copyright law, accusing the startup of unauthorized use of its journalism.
Perplexity reportedly previously told the publisher it would stop crawling its content, but results have continued to show up on the platform.
The startup says it's open to working with publishers and will respond to the notice by the Oct. 30 deadline.
The NYT previously sued OpenAI and Microsoft over similar concerns, and other media outlets have also accused Perplexity of misusing their content.
Why it matters: As AI-powered search continues to grow, news outlets have even greater fears—the risk of losing traffic and revenue to platforms summarizing their work. With no legal precedents decided on, this doesn’t seem like a problem going away any time soon.
TOGETHER WITH TOUCHCAST
The Rundown: Touchcast offers cognitive caching technology that delivers enterprise AI performance at a fraction of the cost — while enhancing efficiency and security.
With CogCache, you can:
Reduce LLM token expenses by up to 60%
Boost AI response speeds by up to 100x
Keep total control with enterprise-grade security and alignment
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ANTHROPIC
Image source: Midjourney
The Rundown: Anthropic just published a significant update to its Responsible Scaling Policy, introducing new safeguards and governance measures for advanced AI systems and highlighting future benchmarks requiring additional safety protocols.
The details:
The policy introduces ‘Capability’ and ‘Required’ Thresholds to trigger enhanced safety measures when AI models reach certain risk levels.
The two new thresholds focus on AI capabilities related to bioweapons and autonomous AI research.
Anthropic emphasized the need for the risk approach to be ‘exportable,’ hoping that it will become an industry standard and help shape regulation.
Anthropic will regularly evaluate its AI models, while a ‘Responsible Scaling Officer’ role will oversee policy implementation and compliance.
The company also pledged increased transparency, including public disclosure of capability reports and external expert input.
Why it matters: Anthropic's update represents one of the most comprehensive frameworks yet for responsibly developing advanced AI and continues to cement the company’s standing as the ‘safety-focused’ lab. The move may also foreshadow some major acceleration imminent with new releases in the near future.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: Google Vids is a new AI-powered video creation tool that simplifies the process of recording, writing, editing, and producing videos all in one place.
Step-by-step:
Access Google Vids through your Google Drive by clicking "New" > "Google Vids" (note that it hasn’t been rolled out to every account yet).
Describe your video concept when prompted to start creating.
Customize the AI-generated outline and choose a design style for your video.
Edit and improve your video draft using built-in text, media, and audio tools.
Pro tip: Upload your own custom media by selecting "Media" in the left sidebar and then clicking "Upload." This personal touch will make your video stand out from those relying solely on stock content.
PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI
The Rundown: Innovating with AI’s new program, AI Consultancy Project, equips AI enthusiasts with all the resources to capitalize on the rapidly growing AI consulting market – which is set to 8x to $54.7B by 2032.
The program offers:
Tools and framework to find clients and deliver top-notch services
A 6-month roadmap to build a 6-figure AI consulting business
Student landing their first AI client in as little as 3 days
META
Image source: Meta FAIR
The Rundown: Meta researchers just introduced a new method called Thought Preference Optimization (TPO) to train large language models to ‘think’ before responding to general instructions — not just reasoning tasks.
The details:
TPO prompts models to generate internal thoughts before responding to user instructions, similar to how humans think before speaking.
The AI's thoughts are kept private, with only the final answer shown to users — with the AI using trial-and-error without direct supervision to optimize outputs.
TPO outperforms standard models on key benchmarks for non-reasoning tasks like marketing and creative writing but declines in math-related tasks.
The approach builds on the recent OpenAI ‘Strawberry’ research and o1 model release, which takes time to reason.
Why it matters: Meta’s own Yann LeCun may scoff at the notion, but this method shows the potential of AI to ‘think’ for broader tasks than just math and reasoning. By allowing models to learn useful thought processes independently, TPO could also enable more capable and flexible AI assistants across a wider range of domains.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
🔎 Perplexity for Mac - Search and discovery with AI, now available for Macs
⚙️ Gradio 5.0 - Build and share delightful machine-learning apps
📊 Strella - End-to-end customer research platform with AI-moderated interviews and real-time synthesis
👏 Claap 3.0 - AI sales coach that handles meeting notes, CRM enrichment, deal reviews, and more
👨💻 Code2ai - Turn your ideas into code and build with your own assistant
🛡️ Shield AI - Quality Manager
🧠 Synthesia - Strategy and Operations Associate
🤖 UiPath - Sales Engineer II
⚙️ Palantir Technologies - Site Reliability Operations Analyst
QUICK HITS
The US government is considering capping AI chip exports from companies like Nvidia and AMD to certain countries, particularly in the Middle East, due to national security concerns.
Adobe showcased ‘Project Super Sonic’ at its MAX conference, an experimental AI tool that generates custom sound effects for videos using text prompts, object recognition, and voice imitation.
Amazon unveiled a new AI-powered creative suite for advertisers, including tools to generate video, audio, and animated image ads.
Google released its AI-powered shopping experience, featuring personalized recommendations, AI-generated product briefs, and deal-finding tools.
Apple debuted its new 7th generation iPad mini, the cheapest device ($499 base) to eventually support Apple Intelligence, which will include other AI features for writing and photo editing.
The University of Tokyo researchers revealed TANGO, an AI system that generates realistic human speakers, movements, and gestures to match audio input.
THAT’S A WRAP
That's it for today!Before you go we’d love to know what you thought of today's newsletter to help us improve The Rundown experience for you. |
See you soon,
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