AI in a Nutshell - Week 39 - Perplexity Drops Search AI, Rizzbot Takes Streets, and “Vibes” Everywhere
This week, Perplexity drops a Search API, Meta launches an AI video feed (“Vibes”), ChatGPT gets proactive with Pulse, Alibaba boosts AI spend, and markets keep favouring the AI gold rush.
Fellow human, it’s week 39. AI hasn’t taken over the world yet. And here’s your lazy-man version of what went down in the AI world in the past week.
Speed-read: Perplexity drops a Search API, Meta launches an AI video feed (“Vibes”), ChatGPT gets proactive with Pulse, Alibaba boosts AI spend, and markets keep favouring the AI gold rush.
What You Must Know
Rizzbot takes the streets → There’s this modded Unitree G1 humanoid robot that is roaming streets, dancing, and dishing Gen-Z compliments and disses. Fun? Yes. Slightly dystopian? Also yes. I’m still trying to get my hands on one of those.
Perplexity launches a Search API → Developers can now tap into “hundreds of billions” of indexed webpages through Perplexity’s engine. If you’re building RAG or agents, this is one more way to escape a single-provider search choke point. I also think this will increase the wave of “we built it in a weekend” demos.
Anthropic to triple its international workforce → Claude’s makers plan to 3× headcount outside the U.S. It clearly signals that enterprise demand isn’t just U.S-centric and that “global” means hiring real people globally.
Meta launches “Vibes,” an AI video feed → A short-form feed for AI-generated videos inside the Meta AI app (and meta.ai). I’ve personally not tried it, but word on the street is that it’s worth giving a shot.
ChatGPT gets proactive with Pulse → Pulse sends personalised daily updates based on your chats/calendar. You can do less of “open app and ask” and more of AI nudging you with digestible cards. But it’s currently only available to PRO users, yeah, the $200 monthly plan.
Alibaba hikes AI budget beyond $50B → Alibaba says industry AI capital expenditure could hit $4T in five years and is upping its own budget beyond a prior $50B+ guide. Markets rewarded the ambition as strong prices went up like they always do anytime anyone mentions “AI”.
What’s Good to Know
“New market math”: spend big on AI, get bigger valuation → According to Bloomberg, investors reward public companies that announce huge AI budgets with near-instant bumps in their stock price.
Allianz GI CIO: 15–20% of listed firms may vanish → A top asset manager mentioned that AI will accelerate “digital Darwinism”. In plain English: if companies don’t adapt fast with AI, 1 in 5 could disappear within five years. I guess we’ll see.
UAE president meets OpenAI’s Sam Altman → The UAE is doubling down on being an AI power hub. Meeting OpenAI’s CEO to discuss research and infrastructure partnerships. We expect more money, more compute, and more big-name tie-ups in the Middle East.
Why AI isn’t replacing radiologists (yet) → I read this interesting piece which explains why humans are still very much in the loop, you might like it.
AI Tools Worth Knowing
Fellow.ai → Auto-joins your meetings and returns transcripts, summaries, and action items.
Suno → Make songs with AI.
Zennbox → Capture and organize your learnings with AI.
Neutron → Proactive desktop AI that helps before you ask.
Capalyze → Agents for data collection/analysis/reporting.
Kaizen Corner - Why Does AI Use Em Dashes (—) A Lot?
AI didn’t invent its obsession with em dashes(—); it copied it. Models are trained on polished text from outlets like the New York Times and Forbes, where editors love dashes more than commas or colons.
So the AI picks up the habit and sprinkles them everywhere, sometimes even when you say “don’t use it”.
I wrote a piece on this last week. You should check it out → Why Does AI Use Em Dashes (—) A Lot?.
Meme of the Week
That’s your week in AI.
If you learned something, tell a friend. And if you didn’t, blame yourself.
Until next Sunday,
Kay - your fellow human
P.S. If this email lands in spam, that’s your inbox trying to stop you from staying plugged in. Fix it.