Author: Xzect Labs

In a surprising turn of events, the U.S.-based AI search engine startup, Perplexity AI, has proposed a merger with TikTok’s U.S. operations. This bold move comes as TikTok faces the possibility of being banned in the United States due to national security concerns tied to its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. Details of the Bid Merger Proposal Perplexity AI’s plan involves creating a new entity by merging its operations with TikTok U.S. and bringing in new capital partners. This approach allows ByteDance’s current investors to keep their equity stakes, offering a compromise that could be more acceptable to ByteDance compared to…

Amazon has stopped its drone delivery service in the United States for now. This decision comes after some crashes during testing at a facility in Pendleton, Oregon. Details of the Incidents In December, two drones, called the MK30 models, crashed in rainy weather. The light rain caused a software issue, which led to the accidents. One of the drones even caught fire after crashing. This is not the first challenge for Amazon’s Prime Air drone program, which has been in development for more than ten years. Operational Pause Because of these incidents, Amazon has paused its drone deliveries in Texas…

In a major move to grow its presence in professional networking, AI-driven search engine Perplexity has announced it is buying Read.cv. The announcement was made on January 17, 2025, and shows Perplexity’s commitment to improving user connections and making knowledge more accessible. End of an Era for Read.cv Read.cv was known as a simple and creative platform for professionals to share their work, projects, and achievements. Starting today, the platform will begin shutting down. Users have until May 16, 2025, to save their data, including profiles and messages, using a built-in data export tool. The team at Read.cv described the…

Google has made a big update to its Google Workspace tools. The company is now adding its advanced AI tool, Gemini, to all Business and Enterprise plans. Along with this, the prices for these plans are going up. This change shows Google’s focus on making AI a key part of its productivity tools, like Gmail, Docs, and Meet. Price Adjustments The new prices are already in effect for new customers. Existing customers will see the price changes starting March 17, 2025. Here’s the updated pricing: Google says the higher prices reflect the cost of adding AI features directly into the…

Apple has temporarily stopped using its AI-powered feature that creates summaries for news and entertainment notifications. This decision comes after the technology made errors, leading to the spread of incorrect information. What Happened? The issue began when Apple’s AI misrepresented a news story. For example, a BBC article about a high-profile murder case was incorrectly summarized. The AI summary falsely claimed that Luigi Mangione, a person involved in the case, had taken his own life. However, this was not true according to the actual news. Changes in the Latest Update Apple has made several changes with the release of iOS…

In a big step for the AI world, French startup Mistral has signed a multi-year deal with Agence France-Presse (AFP), one of the top news agencies globally. This agreement will allow Mistral’s AI chatbot, Le Chat, to use AFP’s huge news archive to give users more accurate and up-to-date answers. A Key First Partnership for Mistral The deal, announced soon after Google’s partnership with The Associated Press, is Mistral’s first with a major news organization. AFP will share its daily output of around 2,300 news stories in six languages: Arabic, English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. In addition, Le Chat…

Microsoft has introduced a new addition to its Microsoft 365 suite called Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, launched on January 15, 2025. This tool is aimed at businesses and comes with a flexible pay-as-you-go model for AI agents, making it a practical option for everyday business operations. New Features and Pricing Model Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat uses OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-4o, to provide a secure and simple AI chat experience. Basic use of the chat feature is free for all Microsoft 365 commercial customers. The standout feature is the consumption-based pricing model for AI agents, which allows businesses to automate repetitive…

NVIDIA Corporation has introduced three new tools to help businesses use AI more safely and securely. These tools, called NVIDIA Inference Microservices (NIM), are designed to ensure AI systems follow rules and stay ethical. They are part of NVIDIA’s plan to encourage more companies to adopt AI technology. What Are the New Tools? The new tools are part of NVIDIA’s NeMo Guardrails framework, which helps developers build trustworthy AI systems. The three tools focus on: Why Are These Tools Important? More businesses are using AI systems, but concerns about safety and trust slow down adoption. NVIDIA’s new tools address these…

Chinese AI company MiniMax has introduced three advanced AI models, claiming they are competitive with leading technologies from U.S. firms like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. Supported by Alibaba and Tencent, MiniMax is making strides in the global AI race. MiniMax-Text-01: A Leader in Text Processing, Claims Industry-Leading Performance MiniMax-Text-01 is a text-only model with 456 billion parameters, making it one of the largest in its field. It excels at solving math problems and answering fact-based questions, claiming to outperform Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash in benchmarks like MMLU and SimpleQA. This model can process up to 4 million tokens of text…

François Chollet, the creator of the popular Keras deep-learning library, has started a new AI lab called Ndea. This lab aims to create Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a type of AI that can perform many cognitive tasks at or beyond human ability. Ndea’s Mission and Founders Chollet co-founded Ndea with Mike Knoop, a former co-founder of Zapier. The lab’s goal is to combine program synthesis with deep learning to build AI that can think, adapt, and innovate like humans. Their work seeks to move beyond today’s AI systems, which are mainly good at specific tasks or recognizing patterns. Why Chollet…