Automattic, the company behind WordPress, announced its acquisition of WPAI, a startup specialising in AI tools for WordPress. WPAI’s offerings include CodeWP, a tool for creating plugins using AI, and AgentWP, an AI assistant for site builders. While these tools will be discontinued in their current form, Automattic plans to integrate their capabilities into its own suite of products.
The founding team of WPAI will join Automattic to spearhead AI initiatives within the WordPress ecosystem. According to Automattic, their efforts will focus on creating new AI-driven solutions to simplify development, enhance website management, and improve user experience all while staying true to WordPress’s open-source values.
This acquisition comes on the heels of Automattic’s recent purchase of Harper, a Grammarly competitor for developers. Together, these moves highlight Automattic’s growing investment in AI technologies to streamline content creation and site functionality for its millions of users worldwide. Financial details of the WPAI deal were not disclosed.
WPAI has expressed a commitment to advancing AI standards for WordPress and collaborating closely with the community to ensure thoughtful and innovative implementation. These developments could redefine how developers and users interact with WordPress, making the platform even more accessible and efficient.
Google’s DeepMind has introduced GenCast, a cutting-edge AI weather prediction model that outperforms the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ (ECMWF) ENS, widely regarded as the global leader in operational forecasting. A study in Nature highlighted GenCast’s superior accuracy, predicting weather more effectively 97.2% of the time during a comparative analysis of 2019 data.
Unlike earlier deterministic models, GenCast creates a complex probability distribution of potential weather scenarios by generating 50 or more forecasts per instance. This ensemble approach provides a nuanced understanding of weather trajectories, elevating predictive reliability.
Google is integrating GenCast into its platforms like Search and Maps, while also planning to make real-time and historical AI powered forecasts accessible for public and research use. With this advancement, the tech giant aims to revolutionise weather forecasting and its applications worldwide.
Elon Musk’s social media platform X has introduced Aurora, an advanced image generation tool integrated into its Grok AI assistant. Aurora allows users to create photorealistic visuals and explore imaginative concepts. However, some users noted the tool briefly disappeared after its launch.
Aurora, accessible through X’s mobile and web apps, appears to have minimal content restrictions. It can generate images of public and copyrighted figures, though explicit and graphic content is reportedly limited. The tool is still in beta, with Musk promising rapid improvements. While Aurora excels in landscapes and still-life depictions, it struggles with more complex details, like human hands, a common challenge for AI-generated visuals.
The release follows X’s decision to make Grok free for all users, enabling broader access to AI-driven features. Meanwhile, Musk’s xAI team, which developed Aurora, recently secured $6B in funding and is working on further innovations, including Grok 3 and a standalone app.
UCLA is breaking new ground with an AI-developed comparative literature course set to launch in winter 2025. The class, covering literature from the Middle Ages to the 17th century, will feature a textbook, assignments, and teaching assistant (TA) resources generated by Kudu, an AI-powered platform founded by UCLA physics professor Alexander Kusenko. This initiative marks the first use of AI-generated materials in UCLA’s humanities division.
Professor Zrinka Stahuljak, who designed the course, collaborated with Kudu by providing lecture notes, PowerPoint slides, and videos from previous classes. The AI system produced the materials within three to four months, requiring just 20 hours of professor involvement. Kudu’s platform allows students to interact with course content through questions answered strictly within the provided material, ensuring focused and accurate responses.
By streamlining material creation, the approach frees up professors and TAs to engage more closely with students while maintaining consistency in course delivery. UCLA hopes this innovative method will enhance the learning experience and redefine education in the humanities.
A to-do list app, Twos, is rethinking productivity with AI-driven features that go beyond simple task tracking. Instead of just helping users organise tasks, Twos offers actionable suggestions to help complete them. For instance, writing ‘Buy paper napkins’ prompts the app to suggest links to online stores like Amazon or Walmart. Planning a birthday? Twos might remind you to add a calendar event, send a message, or purchase a gift card.
Launched in 2021 by former Google engineer Parker Klein and Joe Steilberg, Twos integrates with 27 apps, including Spotify, Uber Eats, Google Maps, and Ticketmaster. While the app currently leans on US-centric services, plans for better localisation aim to broaden its appeal. Available across Android, iOS, and the web, Twos is free, with optional premium features like custom sorting and templates priced at $2 each.
Beyond task suggestions, Twos introduced an AI assistant for list creation last year, positioning itself in the growing market of AI-powered productivity tools. The app now boasts over 25,000 active users and emphasises intuitive, energy-efficient design. While other apps like Hypelist compete in this space, Twos’ holistic approach could redefine how we manage daily tasks.
Cleerly, an AI-driven cardiovascular imaging startup, has raised $106 million in a Series C extension round led by Insight Partners. The company, founded by cardiologist James Min, uses advanced software to analyze CT scans and detect early-stage coronary artery disease before symptoms appear. This innovative approach aims to improve preventive care for heart conditions, which remain the leading cause of death in the US.
The technology has already received FDA clearance for diagnosing symptomatic patients and recently gained Medicare approval for its plaque analysis test. Cleerly’s software provides a less invasive and more accurate alternative to traditional diagnostics like stress tests or angiograms. With a compounded annual growth rate exceeding 100% over the past four years, the company is poised to expand further as health insurers increasingly cover its tests.
The latest funding will support Cleerly’s ongoing multi-site clinical trials and future growth. Insight Partners’ involvement highlights the growing confidence in AI-driven solutions for healthcare. While facing competition from companies like HeartFlow and Elucid, Cleerly’s goal of screening the global population for heart disease positions it as a potential leader in this emerging market.
Photographer Eugenio Marongiu has harnessed the power of OpenAI’s unreleased text-to-video model, Sora, to create Surreal Elderhood, a project blending absurdity and vivid realism. As an alpha tester for the model, Marongiu explored its potential to transform his artistic workflow, which traditionally involved animating images manually after creating them.
The Sora model enabled Marongiu to accelerate this process, although the bulk of his time remained devoted to conceptualising, testing, and editing. The project took about two days to complete, showcasing Sora’s potential to streamline complex creative tasks. Despite its promise, the technology remains challenging to use and has drawn controversy for its broader implications.
While critics highlight the limitations and ethical concerns of such AI tools, artists like Marongiu continue to push creative boundaries, exploring the intersections of technology and imagination. The ongoing experimentation with AI like Sora hints at its transformative possibilities in art and beyond.
At its re:Invent 2024 conference, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced groundbreaking tools aimed at addressing common issues in generative AI, including hallucinations. The new Automated Reasoning Checks service verifies the accuracy of AI-generated content by cross-referencing customer-provided information. This tool is integrated into AWS’s Bedrock platform and allows users to refine models with “ground truths” for better reliability, though it shares similarities with earlier offerings from Microsoft and Google.
AWS also introduced Model Distillation, a feature for Bedrock that enables users to transfer capabilities from larger AI models to smaller, more cost-efficient ones. While this helps lower costs, it comes with limitations, such as requiring models from the same family and a slight dip in accuracy. Additionally, Bedrock now offers a multi-agent collaboration feature, which lets customers assign AI agents specific subtasks, improving efficiency in larger projects.
These innovations reflect AWS’s commitment to staying ahead in the competitive AI space. The new features aim to address industry-wide concerns about AI’s reliability and cost while expanding Bedrock’s capabilities for customers like PwC, whose VP of AI and data, Swami Sivasubramanian, highlighted significant growth in the platform’s user base over the past year.
Cate Blanchett has voiced her concerns about the societal implications of AI, describing the threat as ‘very real.’ In an interview with the BBC, the Australian actress shared her scepticism about advancements like driverless cars and AI‘s potential to replicate human voices, noting the broader risks for humanity. Blanchett emphasised that AI could replace anyone, not just actors, and criticised some technological advancements as ‘experimentation for its own sake.’
While promoting Rumours, her new apocalyptic comedy film, Blanchett described the plot as reflective of modern anxieties. The film, directed by Guy Maddin, portrays world leaders navigating absurd situations, offering both satire and a critique of detachment from reality. Blanchett highlighted how the story reveals the vulnerability and artificiality of political figures once removed from their structures of power.
Maddin shared that his characters emerged from initial disdain but evolved into figures of empathy as the narrative unfolds. Blanchett added that both actors and politicians face infantilisation within their respective systems, highlighting parallels in their perceived disconnection from the real world.
Heathrow Airport, one of the world’s busiest, is trialling an advanced AI system named ‘Amy’ to assist air traffic controllers in managing its crowded airspace. Handling nearly half a million flights annually, Heathrow aims to improve safety and efficiency through real-time data and advanced tracking capabilities provided by the AI system.
Amy integrates radar and 4K video data to give controllers a detailed visualisation of aircraft positions, even when out of sight. Designed by NATS, the UK’s air traffic management agency, the system offers vital information such as flight numbers and aircraft types, helping controllers make faster, more informed decisions. After testing on over 40,000 flights, NATS plans to fully operationalise a ‘digital contingency tower’ by 2027 to ensure backup in emergencies.
Despite its promise, experts caution against over-reliance on AI. They highlight potential limitations, such as insufficient contextual judgment and challenges in handling unexpected scenarios. Colin Rigby from Keele University emphasised that AI should complement human operators rather than replace them.
The adoption of similar AI-driven solutions is being explored by major airports worldwide, including those in Singapore, New York, and Hong Kong, signaling a shift toward digital transformation in air traffic management.
