📈 How are companies using AI?

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➜ Bets Are Made on AI for Smarter Banking. BNY Mellon is partnering with OpenAI to develop an AI-driven platform designed to enhance financial services. Expect AI-powered risk analysis, fraud detection, and smarter investment strategies.

Finextra

➜ AI Chatbot Revolutionizes Banking Support. Zeta has launched "Selene," a GenAI customer support agent built specifically for banks and fintech companies. This chatbot aims to handle inquiries, reduce wait times, and cut costs.

 Financial IT

➜ Alexa Turns to GenAI. Alexa just got a major upgrade—Amazon is integrating generative AI to make its voice assistant more conversational and capable of handling complex requests. Think less "robotic responses," more "human-like" interactions.

Retail Dive

➜ AI Shopping Assistant That Finds the Best Deals. eBay is testing "Agentic AI," an AI-driven shopping assistant that helps users find deals, suggest products, and automate the buying process.

PYMNTS

➜ AI Builds a Sustainable Timber Supply Chain. An Australian startup is using AI to create a fully recyclable supply chain for timber. Will this optimize material usage and cut waste while making the industry more sustainable?

Wood Central

💡 What are the nerds up to?

➜ Stealth Startup Inception Unveils a New AI Model. A mysterious AI company, Inception, just emerged from stealth mode with a fresh approach to AI modeling. What does it do? The details are still scarce, but tech insiders are watching closely.

TechCrunch

➜ AI Coding Assistants Go Custom. A new project, Continue, aims to help developers create and share personalized AI coding assistants. This could mean AI tools tailored to individual workflows instead of one-size-fits-all solutions.

Startup News

➜ AI for Mental Health Counseling Gap. With school counselors in short supply, a new chatbot is stepping in to provide mental health support to students. Ethical concerns remain, but the potential to fill the gap is huge.

District Administration

➜ Perplexity AI Teases a Big Update. The AI-powered search startup is hinting at a major feature drop, promising even faster, more accurate search results. Could this be the Google competitor we’ve been waiting for?

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➜ AI-Generated Videos Are Getting More Realistic. The ByteDance's sa2va-8b-video model is pushing the boundaries of AI-generated video, claiming to offer near-photorealistic results. Hollywood, take notes.

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➜ GPT-4.5 is Here—And It Feels Different. OpenAI’s Sam Altman announced GPT-4.5, calling it the first model that feels like "talking to a thoughtful person." The downside? It’s massive and expensive, with limited availability at launch.

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