Perplexity teases “Comet,” Anthropic drops an AI sonnet, and Chegg takes a swing at Google!

In Today’s AI?Times

Welcome back.?Perplexity is planning to "reinvent the browser" with context-aware browsing and agentic search capabilities. Chegg is suing Google over AI Overview features. Anthropic introduces Claude 3.7 Sonnet. Musicians protest AI training with a silent album. And here are five new tools that will make you more productive.

One Big Headline

Perplexity teases a web browser called Comet

The Rundown: The release date and design of Perplexity's AI-powered web browser, Comet, are still unknown, but a waitlist is now open. Comet, a $9 billion business that processes over 100 million requests per week, says it will "reinvent the browser" by using AI-powered "agentic search" to enable proactive, context-aware browsing.

The Background:

• Perplexity says Comet will "reinvent the browser," with scant details available.
• The browser market is hyper-competitive, with its own AI-equipped competitors popping up, like The Browser Company's Dia.
• Perplexity is rapidly growing; it just this month released a deep research tool built to compete with OpenAI and Google.
• The $9 billion company sees more than 100 million queries in a week, pushing for means of monetization.

Legal Trouble: Perplexity is dealing with defendants in the provocations set forth by News Corp's Dow Jones and NY Post regarding content scraping.

Why It Matters: Perplexity is looking to disrupt not just search but the whole browsing experience. With deep integration with AI and its captive audience, Comet could take on serious competition. But given the heavy legal wrangle over content usage, this round may not be smooth sailing.

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Quick Hits

Anthropic introduced Claude 3.7 Sonnet, a hybrid reasoning AI that lets users set a "thinking budget" to manage reasoning time and expense and select "extended thinking mode" for in-depth analyses. It improves math, coding, and task performance and costs $3 or $15 for a million tokens. However, its extended features are only available with paid plans. (more)

Apple plans to invest $500 billion towards a U.S. expansion, part of which would involve building an AI server factory occupying 250,000 sq. ft. in Houston by 2026. The move will be aimed at boosting its Apple Intelligence and Private Cloud Compute platforms while shifting production overseas. The project seeks to create 20,000 jobs in the U.S. (with thousands targeted for Texas). (more)

DBS Group will cut 4,000 contract or temporary roles over three years through natural attrition as the AI adoption replaces the more laborious ones, which translates to 10% of the workforce with no impact on permanent staff. (more)

Musicians released a silent album to protest UK copyright law changes that may allow AI firms to train models with unlicensed works, with over 1,000 artists including Kate Bush and Annie Lennox opposing plans to exempt AI-driven data mining from copyright constraints. (more)

Earth AI is an AI-based company working on exploring critical clean-energy metals with a success rate of about 75%, outperforming the 0.5% industry average; it cuts down exploration costs by 80%. It recently discovered one of Australia's largest palladium deposits in a joint venture with Legacy Minerals. (more)

Chegg sued Google, claiming that AI Overview's search summaries keep users on Google's platform, diverting traffic away from Chegg's platform and causing a decline in revenues and subscribers. The suit also claims that Google's AI appropriates information from publishers, earlier in Chegg, to undermine rather than compete with publishers during the same time as Chegg's plunge in stock and layoff. Chegg has its strategic alternatives (that is, sales to other companies) while Google defends the tool as an efficient aid. (more)

Meta introduced its AI in MENA, With Arabic support, incorporating chatbots and tools (text/image creation, editing, and dubbing) into WhatsApp and Instagram for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Iraq. (more)

Productivity Tools

• Aidy: Provides round-the-clock research on the issues that matter most to your organization.
• Retape: Use AI to create personalized demo videos quickly.
• Fullmoon: The simplest way to run local LLMs like Llama on your iPhone. (These models are basic, but they might just give Siri a run for its money!)
• Trellis AI: Automate your PDF workflows easily and at scale.
• Seam: Helps sales teams find similar companies, contacts, and research prospects.