Perplexity announced on Tuesday the launch of its enterprise-level API service "Sonar", allowing businesses and developers to integrate its generative AI search capabilities into their own applications. The service is available in two versions: the basic Sonar and the advanced Sonar Pro, and it supports customers in customizing the information sources of the AI search engine. Unlike traditional AI models that rely solely on training data, Perplexity emphasizes that Sonar can connect to the internet in real-time and obtain information from reliable sources, thereby providing more factual and authoritative results.

Traditional video understanding models face numerous challenges when processing long videos, including the complexities of understanding the extended context. Although considerable research has been conducted to enhance video understanding capabilities, effectively overcoming the issues of low training and inference efficiency remains difficult. To address these challenges, the research team utilized HiCo technology to compress redundant parts of video information, significantly reducing computational demands while retaining key information. Specifically, HiCo achieves hierarchical compression of the video by segmenting long videos into shorter clips, thereby reducing processing time.

Recently, Mita AI Search officially launched its brand new 'Reading Mode' feature, addressing the inconvenience users face when reading PDF documents on mobile devices. This feature has been meticulously developed over the past six months and is now available to users. Since the launch of 'Library Search', Mita AI Search has helped users conveniently find a wealth of valuable PDF documents. However, these documents often suffer from messy formatting and readability issues when viewed on mobile. To improve this situation, the Mita AI Search team began development six months ago.

In multimodal tasks, visual language models (VLMs) play a crucial role, such as in image retrieval, image captioning, and medical diagnosis. These models aim to align visual data with language data for more efficient information processing. However, current VLMs still face significant challenges in understanding negation. Negation is critical in many applications, such as distinguishing between "a room without windows" and "a room with windows." Despite significant progress made by VLMs, existing models fall short when it comes to handling negated statements.

Recently, researchers at Concordia University launched a new research project called 'Abundant Intelligences,' aimed at reexamining the development direction of artificial intelligence (AI). The project points out that the current development model of AI has inherent biases against non-Western conceptions of intelligence, particularly in relation to indigenous cultures. The goal of the project is to integrate indigenous knowledge systems to construct an inclusive and comprehensive concept of intelligence and intelligent behavior, thereby promoting the development of future technologies.

360 Group recently announced the official launch of HarmonyOS native versions for its Nano AI Search and 360 AI Office applications, marking an important step in the company’s AI application strategy. As a multimodal content creation engine known in the industry as 'Search Engine 3.0', Nano AI Search has shown impressive performance since its launch in November 2024. Data shows that the application surpassed 1 million visits on its first day, and by December 2024, the visit count reached 359 million, ranking fourth in the 'AI Product Rankings · Global Overall List', becoming the only one in the TOP 10.

Recently, a research team from New York University published a study revealing the vulnerabilities of large language models (LLM) in data training. They found that even a tiny amount of false information, constituting just 0.001% of the training data, can lead to significant errors in the entire model. This finding is particularly concerning in the medical field, where inaccurate information can directly impact patient safety. Image credit: Image generated by AI, image licensed by Midjourney. The researchers published their paper in the journal Nature Medicine.

The AI search engine Perplexity recently announced a partnership with the travel website Tripadvisor, aiming to provide users with more comprehensive hotel information. This collaboration allows Perplexity to display more detailed and reliable content when searching for hotels. For example, when searching for "business travel hotels in Madrid," Perplexity will recommend hotels such as Hotel Regina and explain the reasons for the recommendations, such as "This hotel has a prime location and excellent service."

The latest report reveals the deep concerns Americans have about their personal finances. 45% of Americans express worry about their financial situation, particularly regarding insufficient retirement savings (68%), rising living costs (56%), and debt management issues (45%). Meanwhile, 62% of American workers report that financial hardship has led to moderate to severe anxiety. Currently, inflation and rising living costs (62%) are the primary financial issues, followed by credit card debt (34%), housing costs (31%), and medical expenses (25%).

The World Economic Forum recently released the "Future of Jobs Report 2025," revealing an intriguing contradiction: while artificial intelligence (AI) is seen as a technology that will replace certain jobs, global companies are more inclined to retrain existing employees rather than resort to layoffs. The report surveyed 1,000 companies worldwide, and the results showed that about 41% of companies plan to cut positions that AI can handle, while 77% focus more on training current employees in AI skills. This trend highlights that many companies wish to adapt to AI through retraining.

Recently, Baidu introduced a new search engine entry 'AI Search' (Chat.baidu.com) on its web homepage, marking an upgrade in the company's search services. This new platform is based on Baidu's Wenxin large model and integrates multiple content ecosystems such as Baidu Search, Baidu Health, Baidu Law, Baidu Wenku, and Baidu Education, aiming to provide ad-free, reliable, and authoritative search results.

On December 30th, Alipay launched its next-generation AI visual search product 'Explore', based on self-developed multimodal large model technology, enabling users to 'explore everything with the eye of AI' and providing faster, more useful, and fun generative search services. Users can let AI recognize plants, pets, and trendy products through the camera when encountering interesting items, get on-the-go travel explanations, check product and medication details, and even enjoy fun interpretations of pet and baby photos, eliminating worries about captions when sharing pictures. The product is now available on Alipay; simply swipe left after clicking 'Scan' on the homepage to find it.

In recent years, the significant breakthroughs in protein discovery that have led to a Nobel Prize have gradually highlighted the potential of Fundamental Models (FMs) in exploring large combinatorial spaces, signaling a possible revolution in multiple scientific fields. Despite this, the field of Artificial Life (ALife) has yet to fully utilize these fundamental models, presenting a tremendous opportunity for development. To this end, the research team has introduced a method called 'Automatic Search for Artificial Life' (ASAL), which utilizes visual language foundational models to effectively alleviate the long-standing reliance in the field of artificial life.

A recent study suggests that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to surpass human intelligence in the future. The research delves into the complexities of AI and the human brain and proposes a new theoretical framework, indicating that by applying AI technology at the cellular level of neuroscience, AI could infinitely approach the functionality of the human brain, potentially even surpassing human intelligence levels. The human brain is widely regarded as one of the most complex systems in the universe, while artificial intelligence is seen as one of the most important technologies in human history. A core question looms: Will artificial intelligence ultimately surpass human intelligence?

Recently, an investigation by the UK Guardian revealed potential security vulnerabilities in OpenAI's ChatGPT search tool. The inquiry found that ChatGPT could be manipulated when processing web summaries containing hidden content, potentially returning malicious code. This hidden content may include third-party instructions designed to disrupt ChatGPT's responses or large amounts of concealed text promoting a specific product or service. Image source note: The image is AI-generated, tested by the image licensing service provider Midjourney.