Perplexity Adds Pricey Email Butler

AND: ChatGPT hits the lottery jackpot

Welcome, Humans!

Ready for your daily dose of AI chaos? I’ve rounded up Today’s Top AI Headlines for those who like to stay ahead – and for the curious, I’ve got some eyebrow-raising stories Beyond the Headlines. Let’s dive in.

In a Nutshell:

  • Perplexity adds AI email tool to Max plan

  • Scale AI pits top models in SEAL Showdown

  • Alibaba’s Qwen3-Omni goes full multimodal

  • ChatGPT inspires Powerball-winning numbers

  • Oakland Ballers try AI coach… once

🚀Today’s Top AI Headlines:

  1. Perplexity Adds Pricey Email Butler: Perplexity has expanded its suite of AI tools with the launch of an Email Assistant, designed to streamline inbox management for its premium users. The feature allows subscribers to draft replies, organize emails, and even schedule meetings, all through AI. To use it, customers simply send emails to a dedicated Perplexity address, where the assistant processes and returns responses. Currently, the Email Assistant supports Gmail and Outlook, the two most widely used platforms. Importantly, Perplexity emphasizes that the assistant does not train on user email data, addressing privacy concerns that have plagued other AI email startups. However, it can mimic a user’s writing style, allowing for replies that sound natural and personalized. The tool is limited to Perplexity’s $200-per-month Max plan, underscoring the company’s push toward monetizing its AI ecosystem through exclusive features. While expensive, the offering targets professionals and enterprises where productivity gains could justify the cost. Industry watchers note that email remains one of the most time-consuming tasks in business workflows, and AI-driven support could significantly reduce cognitive load. Early reactions suggest excitement, but also skepticism about the steep price point. If successful, this feature could set the stage for broader enterprise adoption of Perplexity AI.
    Source: Perplexity

    🤖 Robi: “For $200 a month, it better answer my emails and clean my inbox with a toothbrush.”

  2. Scale AI Launches SEAL Model Leaderboard: Scale AI has unveiled the SEAL Showdown, a public leaderboard that ranks leading AI models across a variety of real-world tasks. Unlike academic benchmarks that often focus on narrow problem sets, SEAL Showdown emphasizes practical use cases such as brainstorming, writing, and conversational fluency. Early insights from the leaderboard show Claude excelling in writing tasks, outperforming rivals on coherence, tone, and clarity. Meanwhile, ChatGPT stands out in brainstorming, delivering more creative and versatile ideas than competitors. Interestingly, Google’s Gemini models appear to resonate most with users over the age of 50, suggesting demographic preferences may shape adoption trends. The leaderboard aims to inject transparency into the increasingly competitive AI space. Scale AI argues that existing benchmarks are outdated, overly technical, and don’t always capture user satisfaction. By creating a more open evaluation process, the company hopes to guide both enterprise buyers and developers toward the best models for specific tasks. The SEAL Showdown also positions Scale AI as a neutral arbiter in the crowded model ecosystem, where OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others are vying for dominance. Industry analysts believe this could become an important reference point for enterprises deciding which AI models to integrate.
    Source: BloomBerg

    🤖 Robi: “Finally, an AI contest where no one needs to bench press tokens.”

  3. Alibaba’s Qwen3-Omni Is Fully Multimodal and Open: Alibaba has announced the launch of Qwen3-Omni, a fully multimodal AI capable of handling text, images, audio, and video within a single unified framework. Unlike OpenAI’s GPT-4o or Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, Qwen3-Omni is open source under the Apache 2.0 license, granting developers and enterprises the freedom to use and modify it for commercial purposes. The model is already available on Hugging Face, where developers can experiment with its capabilities. For API usage, Alibaba has set an aggressive price point of $0.25 per million tokens, a fraction of what many competitors charge. This affordability could make Qwen3-Omni especially appealing to startups and researchers with limited budgets. On performance benchmarks, Alibaba claims Qwen3-Omni is state-of-the-art across multiple modalities. Early tests show strengths in video analysis, real-time audio comprehension, and cross-modal reasoning, areas where many AI systems still struggle. The release is also part of Alibaba’s broader strategy to assert global influence in the open-source AI race, countering Western dominance from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. By combining openness, affordability, and competitive performance, Qwen3-Omni could accelerate adoption in industries like media, e-commerce, and education, solidifying Alibaba’s position as a global AI powerhouse.

    Source: X

    🤖 Robi: “One model to rule them all, and unlike the others, this one comes without licensing drama.”

🔍Beyond the Headlines:

  1. ChatGPT Picks Powerball Numbers, Wins $150K: In a quirky twist, a woman has credited ChatGPT with helping her pick winning Powerball numbers worth $150,000. She claimed the AI generated a sequence of numbers that matched part of the draw, landing her the six-figure prize. Instead of pocketing the windfall, she plans to donate the entire amount to charity, citing gratitude and surprise at the unusual outcome. While clearly anecdotal, the story has gone viral, fueling debates over whether AI should be treated as a tool for “luck” or decision-making. Lottery officials, however, were quick to remind players that outcomes remain random.
    Source: NewYorkPost

    🤖 Robi: “If ChatGPT starts tipping blackjack odds, Vegas is done.”

  2. AI Coaches Baseball Game, Fans Revolt: The Oakland Ballers experimented with letting an AI system coach a full baseball game, sparking both fascination and outrage. The AI mirrored the coach’s usual style, making standard pitching and batting decisions, but fans and some team members felt it undermined the spirit of the sport. After widespread criticism, the team confirmed it was a one-time stunt meant to explore AI’s role in sports management. While some hailed it as a glimpse of the future, others dismissed it as a publicity gimmick. The event underscores growing tensions about where AI belongs, and doesn’t, in human-centered activities.

    Source: TechBuzz

    🤖Robi: “AI tried coaching baseball and got booed off the field faster than a bad ump call.”

🤖Prompt of the Day:

Corporate Expansion Roadmap

Prompt: You are a corporate strategist specializing in scaling enterprises. Your task is to create an expansion roadmap for a [business type or niche] planning to extend into [new region/market].
Your framework should include: (1) macroeconomic and political assessment, (2) competitive landscape benchmarking, (3) localization of product/service, (4) legal and compliance considerations, (5) partnership and distribution models, and (6) KPIs such as market entry speed, cost of expansion, and market share captured.

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Problem: Managing multiple AI tools and prompts across different platforms can be time-consuming and inefficient.

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Robi’s Hot Take on X