Recent reports state that OpenAI may have spent as much as 8 figures to purchase the unique "chat.com" URL domain from Hubspot CTO Dharmesh Shah, who originally paid a staggering $15.5 million for it. Though an exact number wasn't disclosed and instead hints at it being sold mostly for shares and not cash, Shah himself did confirm the deal in a social media post following a mid-week post from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that simply reads "chat.com," a URL that now reroutes to the company's ChatGPT page.
Developed by a team of experts guided by Aidan Miller, Ai-Da, an advanced humanoid robot artist, recently had one of its paintings, a portrait of Alan Turing, sell for $1.08 million at Sotheby's auction house later in the week. Standing at 2.2m (7.5 ft) tall and titled "A.I. God. Portrait of Alan Turing," the painting of the world-famous English mathematician well exceeded original price estimations, which sat between $120,000 and $180,000.
Google's latest AI agent, named Jarvis AI, recently found a prototype version of itself up for grabs in the company's Chrome Extension store listed as "a helpful companion that surfs the web with you" following a leak, but it was quickly removed. Users who did manage to snatch Jarvis AI for themselves, however, weren't able to make much use of it, as the extension required special access permissions. Still, this does imply Google's Jarvis AI is looming over the horizon and perhaps ready for a reported launch in December, according to The Information.
Mistral AI, a French AI startup, recently launched a new content moderation API powered by its Mistral 8B model to detect harmful content across 9 categories while supporting 11 languages, much more than competitors' usual solely for English. The launch comes amid rising industry pressure for AI safety, with Mistral's approach emphasizing privacy and compliance for European clients. Recent partnerships with Microsoft, SAP, and Qualcomm give Mistral a foothold in the enterprise AI industry, with a focus on multilingual support and on-device capabilities for secure AI deployment.
Microsoft is adding AI capabilities to its Notepad and Paint apps after just a few months, soon featuring "Rewrite," a feature for Notepad that allows users to rephrase, adjust tone, and change text length by highlighting and selecting AI suggestions. Paint, meanwhile, is getting features such as "Generative Fill" and "Generative Erase" to allow users to add or remove elements from images with simple prompts. Both features are currently rolling out to Windows Insiders as Microsoft expands AI functionality across its most basic yet widely used apps.
According to The Wall Street Journal, AI search engine startup Perplexity is close to securing $500 million in funding, led by Institutional Venture Partners, and reaching a $9 billion valuation, up from $3 billion in June. The startup, which competes with Google and OpenAI, has faced controversy, with media outlets accusing it of unlawful content scraping. Perplexity denies this, and has been making moves to curb this perception, such as introducing a revenue-sharing model with publishers. With 2 million app downloads and 230 million monthly queries, Perplexity's US queries have risen eightfold in the past year.