The deeper AI goes, the weirder things get.

One week it’s breakthroughs that feel world-changing, the next it’s glitches that make you question reality itself. 

Hype, hope, and hallucinations all rolled into one industry sprinting at full speed.

If that doesn’t make you both excited and uneasy at the same time, I don’t know what will.

With that said, here’s what’s new in the AI world this week:

📈 How are companies using AI?​

➜ Meet the AI Superagent. Xero launched an “AI Superagent” designed to streamline accounting tasks—from reconciling expenses to handling compliance—so finance teams can focus on strategy instead of spreadsheets. The company says it’s the first step toward a fully automated financial back office.
Finextra

➜ Smarter Shopping Anytime, Anywhere. The home retailer is bringing AI into customer service and product discovery. Think instant answers to queries and tailored recommendations to guide you toward your next kitchen upgrade—while cutting down call center load.
Retail Dive

➜ AI Against Pancreatic Cancer. Mayo Clinic is deploying AI tools to detect pancreatic cancer earlier—potentially catching one of the deadliest cancers before it becomes untreatable. Doctors believe it could extend survival rates by identifying subtle warning signs years in advance.
PYMNTS

➜ Voice AI at the Drive-Thru. Taco Bell is rethinking its experiments with drive-thru voice AI, weighing how automation can balance speed, accuracy, and the very human culture of fast food. Early trials show faster service but mixed customer reactions.
Wall Street Journal

💡 What are the nerds up to?

➜ The National LLM. Researchers at Apertus unveiled a new large language model trained in Switzerland—emphasizing transparency, open weights, and academic-first development. The move positions Europe as a stronger player in the open-source AI race.
The Verge

➜ Agent Wars Heat Up. DeepSeek announced plans to release its own AI agent platform by the end of the year, directly competing with OpenAI’s push into autonomy. Insiders say it’s a bid to claim market share before AI agents become the new “apps.”
Bloomberg

➜ Hiring, Reinvented. OpenAI just launched an AI-powered recruiting platform meant to rival LinkedIn—screening resumes, matching candidates, and even prepping interview questions. It could upend traditional hiring pipelines by cutting out recruiters.
TechCrunch

➜ Developer Copilot for Teams. Warp rolled out diff-tracking and collaboration tools, making it easier for dev teams to catch code changes and ship faster. It’s like GitHub Copilot, but focused on coordination instead of just code completion.
Yahoo Finance

➜ Your Camera, Now a Storefront. Amazon introduced Lens Live, a feature that turns your phone camera into a shopping tool—point at an item, and it’ll find it (or similar) in Amazon’s catalog. It’s a direct shot at Google Lens but fully tied into Amazon’s ecosystem.
Bitdegree

➜ A Quiet AI Flex. Apple researchers dropped FastVLM and MobileCLIP2 on Hugging Face—models up to 85x faster and 3.4x smaller than before, enabling real-time vision-language tasks like live video captioning directly in your browser. It’s a reminder that while Apple avoids chatbot hype, it’s quietly dominating on-device AI.
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