The AI race steams on in February.
We’re tracking the changing world of AI for you. Here’s the summary for Feb 2025 in case you missed it.
Firstly the adoption in sales is compelling. That makes sense. Sales people have to customise their messages as generic no longer works, but sales people still need to do volume, to stay competitive. It is no surprise that they are turning to AI to search the internet for targets, and tailor their messages, at volume.
We’ve all caught up with Deepseek, and it’s meteoric rise to the top of the apps stores, but with concerns about data security. February’s story was whether this was hyped by the Chinese Government, adding to the data security concerns.
Microsoft’s AI Copilot turned up in old humble app, Paint. Paint had been getting AI tools but now it is highlighted in a Copilot menu.
OpenAI brought out ‘Deep Research’ . You can find it ChatGPT Pro. OpenAI states it can finish research tasks in 5 to 30 minutes, compared to the hours or days humans might require. Unlike chatbots that generate text and images, Deep Research functions as an AI agent capable of web searches, document analysis, and report compilation. But, at $US200/month, its got a price tag that has already been challenged by competitors like Perplexity, which is free but with limited daily usage limits.
OpenAI stayed in the headlines, turning down almost $100Bn from Elon Musk. Musk actually co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman but left the non-profit org in 2018.
OpenAI also announced ChatGPT-5 which simplified their application into a single system. Free users will get ‘standard access’, and pro subscribers will get GPT-5.
Lastly, while we are thinking about OpenAI, we noticed Thinking Machines Lab. The CEO is Mira Murati, who is the former CTO of OpenAI. The aim is to develop multimodal AI that works alongside people to make AI systems more adaptable and accessible, moving beyond the control of just a few major research labs. They’ve talked about the importance of preventing model misuse and sharing best practices for safe AI development.
Amazon announced AI is coming to Alexa. The update will allow Alexa to handle multiple prompts in one session and act independently for users.
Elon Musk might not have been able to buy OpenAI, but he’s pushing hard at AI anyway. Hi AI company, xAI, launched Grok-3. This is a new chatbot, built to compete with OpenAI, Google, and DeepSeek. Grok-3 is available now to Premium_ subscribers on ‘X’.
Finally, fans of Claude will be excited. Claude is an incredibly popular gen-AI tool for content and now it’s creator, Anthropic, has launched Claude 3.7 Sonnet. This promises better problem-solving in maths, coding, and reasoning, all in the core of the tool.