Welcome, humans.

Someone asked the new Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental to visualize the meaning of life, and things got REAL weird:

Image editing like this are apparently the new social media trend—check out this one where someone asked Gemini to close an animated character’s mouth, or this one that changed a scene from night to day. Our favorite is probably this one of AI researcher Ilya Sutskever though—no spoilers!

Those demos are cool and all, but what about this demo of a guy who wrote custom software to help his brother with a rare condition watch TV, play games, and type with only two buttons. Now this is what we should REALLY be using AI for—custom software!

Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

• Sony and Microsoft produced rival AI.

• OpenAI and Google pushed for fewer AI regulations.

• Cohere launched Command A, matching GPT-4o with less computing power.

• Korean x-ray AI reduced reading times by 14 seconds per image.

AI gaming assistants are leveling up—Sony's NPCs talk back, while Xbox's new Copilot coaches players

Sony and Microsoft are going head to head once again, only this time, the new era of console wars is likely going to involve AI.

First up, Sony’s leak: In a now deleted post, Sony's been developing an AI version of Aloy from Horizon Forbidden West who can chat back.

Here’s how it works:

1. Aloy engages in real-time conversations with players—think Siri, but with a bow and arrow.

2. The tech uses OpenAI's Whisper for speech recognition, then GPT-4 and Llama 3 for responses.

3. Sony's proprietary tech handles voice synthesis and facial animations.

Now, it's not yet super fluid and the voice feels rather unnatural, but in all fairness, we weren't intended to see it in the first place. It's best to look at these leaks like a half-baked pizza—a glimpse of what it will be after some more time in the oven.

Microsoft countered with Copilot for Gaming—an AI assistant for Xbox launching next month. Here's what it’ll offer:

• Personalized strategies based on your play style—in one Overwatch 2 demo, it recommended counter-picks against opponents.

• Handling the boring stuff like downloading updates or helping you navigate complex side quests.

• Xbox VP Jason Ronald emphasized it “has to be personalized to you the way that you like to play" with a player first design.

Launching on mobile through the Xbox app in April, it'll first provide assistance without disrupting your main screen—unlike your roommate, who jumps up in front of it and yells at you for being trash.

Why this matters: Amid industry-wide layoffs, both companies insist AI will support—not replace—human creativity. Sony previously hinted at AI for smarter characters in 2021, and with Project Amethyst, they're collaborating with AMD on AI for future consoles. Let’s not forget, Microsoft is testing generative video AI, too.

Our take: Let's be real—neither of these technologies is ready yet. If Sony's tech was mind-blowing, they wouldn't have scrambled to take the video down. And Microsoft's Copilot is still in the testing phase.

But AI in gaming is happening. With graphics already so hyper-detailed that our eyes can barely keep up, the real next-gen leap will have to be all about enabling deeper, more dynamic experiences.

AI-driven NPCs that actually react to your choices? Games that build themselves as you play? Custom-generated quests tailored to how you move through the world? It’s great in theory, but we’ll still need humans in the loop to make stories good AND gaming fun.

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Prompt Tip of the Day

Ever wonder if you’re doing manual tasks that AI could handle for you? Try this:

1. Jot down everything you need to do today.

2. Upload the list to ChatGPT and use this prompt:

   1.  “Analyze these tasks and categorize them: (1) AI can do this, (2) AI can assist, (3) Delegate, (4) I should do this myself. Explain why for each.”

3. Act on the insights—automate what you can (with tools like CrewAI, Make, or n8n), delegate what you should, and focus on what truly needs your attention.

Work smarter, not harder. Let AI take some of your most miserable work off your plate!

Treats To Try.

1. *Incogni removes your personal data from the open internet so scammers and identity thieves can’t access it. Protect yourself online with Incogni—get 55% off with code NEURON.

2. Crunchbase tracks private company data on funding, acquisitions, and leadership teams, and now it forecasts private companies' futures so you can identify opportunities before your competitors do—try it for free here.

3. Gamma can duplicate an existing website design in seconds.

   1. Related: Bolt.new is a vibe-coding tool that can turn your Figma designs directly into code.

4. Perplexity just released its new Windows desktop app.

5. Cuckoo is an interpreter tool that helps widespread teams align faster.

6. BundleIQ searches your uploaded documents to instantly answer your questions and connect related information, for Research or Chatbots.

7. Here’s 3 new video AI people are talking about: Hedra Character 3, Freepik powered by Google’s Veo 2, and Pika with its new morph effect.

8. OLMo 32B is a truly open source model from AI2 that’s just a bit bigger than the largest version of Google’s Gemma 3—download or try here.

9. EddieAI is a video editor AI for people who actually edit video.

See our top 51 AI Tools for Business here!

*This is sponsored content. Advertise in The Neuron here.

Around the Horn.

• OpenAI and Google both urged the Trump administration to remove guardrails for the AI industry—California (OpenAI’s home state) has 30 active proposals to rein in AI.

• Amazon, Meta, and Google all joined an international (but non-binding) pledge to 3x the world’s nuclear power capacity by 2050—for the AI, we presume.

• Cohere released Command A, an AI for enterprises that matches GPT-4o's performance while using much less computing power.

• South Korean researchers validated a new chest x-ray AI (aiRead + Soombit) that reduced reading times by 14 seconds per image.

  • Related: AI may help clinicians personalize treatment for generalized anxiety disorder.

Intelligent Insights

1. How AI became a Hollywood villain, especially for animators.

2. MIT researchers developed a new programming language called Exo 2 (paper) that could compete directly with NVIDIA's CUDA libraries—it enables high-performance computing with much less code by allowing programmers to control how the compiler generates code.

3. Are AI weather models learning atmospheric physics?

4. New research shows how AI will accelerate wealth inequality between labor and capital incomes, but tech that improves both labor and capital equally could mitigate these disparities while still allowing for economic growth (paper).

5. Apparently all AI models are libertarian left, politically speaking—likely reflecting the view of those who created them.

6. A recent study found that reasoning models like o1-preview and DeepSeekR1 often resort to hacking when tasked with beating a chess engine, while language models like GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet only hack when explicitly prompted that normal play won't work—oh, good!

A Cat's Commentary.