🗞 OpenAI's E-commerce Move, Tesla's Grok Robot, and Claude's Writing Styles

🔎 The Latest on the AI Frontier:

• OpenAI Acquires AI Recommendation Startup Team for E-commerce Expertise

• Tesla's Optimus V3 Robot Gets Grok AI Integration for Smart Home Assistance

• Claude AI Launches Personal Writing Style Mimicry Feature

• YouTube Rolls Out AI Search Carousels for Premium Subscribers

• AI Infrastructure Drives Datacenter Networking Costs to Record Highs

• DeepMind Unveils AlphaGenome to Decode Non-Coding DNA Sequences

• Other news you might find interesting

🤝 OpenAI acqui-hires the team behind AI recommendation startup Crossing Minds, adding e-commerce personalization expertise to its capabilities.

• Crossing Minds raised over $13.5 million from investors including Index Ventures and Shopify, specializing in AI recommendation systems for e-commerce.

• The startup served clients including Intuit, Anthropic, Udacity, and Chanel before closing to new customers following the acquisition.

• Co-founder Alexandre Robicquet now lists his role as "Research, Post-training and Agents at OpenAI," indicating expansion beyond conversational AI.

🤖 Tesla announces Optimus V3 humanoid robot now powered by Grok AI, combining physical capabilities with conversational intelligence and attitude.

• Elon Musk confirmed the robot runs Grok voice assistant, known for its edgy, unfiltered personality that could offer financial advice while critiquing your lifestyle choices.

• The integration marks a significant leap in home robotics interactivity, potentially creating a "passive-aggressive roommate" that handles chores while providing brutally honest commentary.

• Musk describes the robot as "profoundly special" despite being "not perfect," though no release date or pricing has been announced for the AI-powered humanoid assistant.

🎯 Claude AI introduces custom writing style feature that can perfectly mimic users' personal writing tone and voice.

• The feature works by analyzing uploaded writing samples or style descriptions, then replicating punctuation patterns, formality levels, and humor to match your natural writing voice.

• Available on all Claude plans including free accounts, users can create custom styles through the settings menu alongside preset options like formal, concise, and explanatory tones.

• Testing shows Claude successfully copies individual writing quirks and tone, though it works best when given writing samples similar to the desired output style.

📺 YouTube launches AI-powered search carousels for Premium members, potentially reducing video views by surfacing information without requiring full video watching.

• The feature creates AI-generated carousels highlighting relevant video clips for searches about shopping, places, and activities, currently available only to US Premium subscribers.

• Similar to Google's AI overviews, the feature may decrease creator revenue by providing answers without users clicking through to watch complete videos.

• YouTube is also expanding its conversational AI chatbot to non-Premium users, allowing viewers to ask questions about video content and get recommendations.

🔗 AI systems are driving networking costs to potentially 30% of total datacenter budgets, far exceeding the traditional 10% threshold, according to new analysis.

• InfiniBand switch revenues grew 8X between 2020-2024 primarily due to AI scale-out networking, while overall datacenter systems increased 1.84X and Ethernet switches grew 1.71X over the same period.

• Hidden networking costs include NVLink fabrics within GPU nodes, die-to-die interconnects within GPU sockets, and data processing units (DPUs) that handle packet reassembly and security functions.

• Competition from AMD's Infinity Fabric, UALink alternatives, and upcoming Ultra Ethernet standards may help reduce networking costs below 20% by 2026.

🧬 DeepMind launches AlphaGenome, an AI model designed to decode the 98% of human DNA that doesn't code for proteins but controls gene regulation.

• The hybrid neural network processes up to one million DNA base pairs and outperformed existing models on 24 of 26 genomic tasks, including predicting how mutations affect gene expression and splicing.

• AlphaGenome addresses the "dark matter" of the genome where most disease-linked genetic variants are found, offering researchers a unified tool for understanding non-coding DNA regions.

• Available through a preview API for non-commercial research, the model can score genetic variants in under one second on an H100 GPU, potentially accelerating disease variant discovery.

More news you might find interesting:

• Johns Hopkins researchers develop new method teaching AI models to say "I don't know" rather than give potentially wrong answers in high-stakes situations.

• Meta executives claim they're winning the talent war against OpenAI, calling Sam Altman "dishonest" about $100 million signing bonuses during internal company meeting.

• AWS opens applications for its third annual Generative AI Accelerator, offering up to $1 million in credits to 40 selected startups through July 10.

• Johnson & Johnson partners with Nvidia and Amazon Web Services to launch the Polyphonic AI Fund for Surgery, offering up to $100,000 grants for AI surgical solutions.

• Amazon Web Services loses key generative AI vice president Vasi Philomin as tech talent competition intensifies across the industry.

• Teachers using AI weekly save equivalent of six weeks per year, with 60% of K-12 educators now incorporating AI tools into their work, according to a new Gallup study.

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