🎉 Smarter Siri, Meta Joins the Military, Big $$ For Robots, ChatGPT Swerves Into Search, Digitizing Scents
Apple Beefing Up Siri, Meta Contracts with the US Military, Bezos Adds to a Robot Future, OpenAI Leans into Search, Digitizing Scents
Welcome to this week’s edition of AImpulse, a five point summary of the most significant advancements in the world of Artificial Intelligence.
Here’s the pulse on this week’s top stories:
What’s Happening: Apple just started rolling out new developer tools for upcoming Siri screen awareness features with Apple Intelligence, signaling a major enhancement to the digital assistant's contextual understanding capabilities.
The details:
New ‘App Intent APIs’ allow developers to make their apps' onscreen content accessible to Siri and Apple Intelligence.
The system will enable direct interactions with visible content across browsers, documents, photos, and more — all without screenshot workarounds.
Early ChatGPT integration testing is already available in the iOS 18.2 beta, though full-screen awareness features are expected in a future update.
The feature will look to compete with recent releases from competitors like Claude’s computer use feature and Copilot Vision.
Why it matters: Apple Intelligence has underwhelmed so far, but evolving Siri beyond voice commands into a context-aware assistant will be a welcomed improvement. Given the lackluster rollouts, these upgrades may require a ‘see it to believe it’ mindset before adding Apple to the AI leaderboards.
What’s Happening: Meta just announced it will make its Llama AI models available to U.S. government agencies and defense contractors for national security applications, marking a shift in the company's policy around the military use of its open-source AI.
The details:
Meta is partnering with tech and defense firms, including Amazon, Microsoft, Palantir, Lockheed Martin, and Oracle, to bring Llama to government agencies.
Early use cases include Oracle using Llama to analyze aircraft docs for faster repairs and Scale AI fine-tuning it for mission planning and threat analysis.
The move represents an exception to Meta's policy, which prohibits using Llama for military, warfare, or espionage.
The policy shift comes shortly after reports of Chinese military researchers using an older version of Llama 2 to develop defense applications.
Meta frames the decision as crucial for establishing open standards in AI, arguing that U.S. models should set the foundation for global AI development.
Why it matters: AI’s infusion into the government and military was inevitable, but the timing is interesting given the recent Chinese military reports. This move (alongside OpenAI’s increasing ties to government-related efforts) will also raise polarizing questions about the influence of industry and tech on national security.
What’s Happening: AI startup Physical Intelligence just secured $400M in funding led by Jeff Bezos and OpenAI, valuing the company at $2.4B as it unveils its π0 (pi-zero) model for general-purpose robot control.
The details:
The round brings together tech giants and venture firms, with Thrive Capital, Lux Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Sequoia Capital joining Bezos and OpenAI.
The π0 system aims to create a universal model to understand natural language commands across any robotic platform.
Initial demos showcase robots performing complex multi-stage tasks like folding laundry, packing eggs, bussing tables, and more.
Ï€0 trained on 10k+ hours of dexterous manipulation data and open-source datasets, claiming it is the largest pre-training mixture ever used in the sector.
Why it matters: Another competitor emerges in the robotics sector — and universal, general-purpose robots may unlock automation across industries where other humanoid robots have been too inflexible and specialized. Plus, physical intelligence will certainly attract the industry's attention with backing from OpenAI and Bezos.
What’s Happening: OpenAI just announced the integration of new web search capabilities directly into ChatGPT, transforming the chatbot into a real-time information hub that puts the platform in direct competition with Google and traditional search engines.
The details:
The new search feature provides instant answers about topics such as news, sports, stocks, and weather, with direct source attribution and links.
ChatGPT will automatically trigger searches when needed, though users can manually activate web searches using a globe icon.
The system runs on a specialized version of GPT-4o, fine-tuned for web info — with outputs including sourcing and clickable links to original content.
Major publishers, including AP, Reuters, Axel Springer, and others, have signed licensing deals with OpenAI to provide content directly to the platform.
Access starts with Plus and Team users today, expanding to Enterprise/Edu users within weeks and free users in the coming months.
Why it matters: After months of rumors and speculation, OpenAI’s search transformation is finally here. The move could signal a major shift in how we access info online, blending AI's conversational abilities with traditional search functionality, which could reshape both the search engine landscape and user habits.
What’s Happening: Osmo just announced the successful achievement of ‘scent teleportation,’ showcasing a demo in which an AI analyzes, digitizes, and reproduces the smell of a plum.
The details:
The company demonstrated full scent digitization using a plum as a test subject, creating an exact replica of its smell without human intervention.
The process combines gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, and AI-driven analysis to create a digital ‘scent fingerprint.’
Osmo's proprietary AI system uses the world's largest scent database to map and recreate molecular compositions.
The company is planning public demos of the tech and is considering releasing a limited-edition fragrance of their first teleported scent.
Why it matters: While photos, videos, and audio have been digital for decades, smell has never joined in on the fun — until now. Osmo's breakthrough could transform everything from entertainment and communication to remote experiences and illustrates that seemingly anything can be digitized with the right combination of AI and engineering.