Business AI

Chinese EV manufacturer XPeng just unveiled its new humanoid robot, Iron. In the demo, its stride looked so human the internet lost its mind. Here's what XPeng did next: The reveal took place at XPeng Tech Day 2025 in Guangzhou, China. Clips flooded the internet within hours. Engineers and fans argued in the comments. "This has to be a human in a suit." "No robot can move like that." XPeng's CEO He Xiaopeng took the stage and ordered to cut open the robot's synthetic suit - one of the legs - live, in front of everyone. Metal lattice. Circuits. Actuators. All clearly mechanical. He was proving it was real, but the internet wasn't convinced. "It's an amputee in a suit." I'll be honest. I was certain it was a human in a suit as well. No robot can walk the catwalk like a model. The crossover gait - with one foot in front of the other - isn't possible with current hardware limitations. I've deployed thousands of humanoid robots, from NAO to Pepper. Robots lacked the spine dexterity for it. Until XPeng solved it... The secret is an actuated spine. A human-like spine that mimics our vertebrae. 82 motors. 82 degrees of freedom. Each one working together to create fluid, natural movement. This single innovation changed everything about humanoid robotics. But hardware alone isn't enough. Iron uses an AI system that learns from watching videos. It studies how humans shift weight during heel-to-toe transitions. Then mimics that exact weight distribution in real time. This is what a technological leap looks like. Until yesterday, humanoid robots either needed extremely wide feet for stability or had to stay in constant motion, shifting their weight continuously just to demonstrate basic movement. Today, Iron walks a runway with the grace of a fashion model. As Elon Musk once quoted Arthur C. Clarke : "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Marvelous engineering. That's the only way to describe it. Yes, Iron is early. The hands need work. It can't do complex tasks yet. But the spine? The gait? The AI learning? That's breakthrough technology. And they're honest... XPeng isn't claiming Iron is ready for your business. Even the manufacturer doesn't claim autonomy or usefulness. But here's what matters: They've solved a fundamental problem in humanoid robotics. Natural human-like movement that we've never seen before in any robot. Only high hopes to see it becoming useful in our lives. At RobotLAB.com, we own the last mile of robotics. We handle qualification, deployment, training, servicing, and repairs nationwide. Same-day or next-day onsite capability. Book a call: RobotLAB.com Follow me for insights on the future of robots in the real world.

The New York Times is suing Perplexity for copyright infringement, accusing the AI startup of repackaging its paywalled reporting without permission. TechCrunch reports: The Times joins several media outlets suing Perplexity, including the Chicago Tribune, which also filed suit this week. The Times'...

Perplexity Upgrade: Pro and Max users can now create and edit presentations, spreadsheets, and documents right in the app

Amazon has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity AI demanding that the AI search startup stop allowing its AI browser agent, Comet, to make purchases online for users. From a report: The e-commerce giant is accusing Perplexity of committing computer fraud by failing to disclose when its AI ag...

Perplexity Patents, the world’s first AI patent research agent that makes IP intelligence accessible to everyone.

Perplexity's Comet AI browser can easily be tricked into following malicious instructions hidden in screenshots.

Perplexity Comet browser is redefining how users search the web, but Perplexity AI is not as safe as one might think. There are many red flags: From its extensive access to your data, to security vulnerabilities that allow the AI to follow malicious instructions. Let’s dive into it!

An anonymous reader shares a report: Social media platform Reddit sued AI startup Perplexity in New York federal court on Wednesday, accusing it and three other companies of unlawfully scraping its data to train Perplexity's AI-based search engine. Reddit said in the complaint that the data-scraping...

Absolutely Don't Do This

Today we are releasing the Comet browser to the world, for free.

Perplexity is a free AI-powered answer engine that provides accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to any question.

Dr. Michelle Kassorla shared this tidbit (LinkedIn) this morning: 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄 𝐎𝐅𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐒𝐓𝐔𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐒(and faculty can get them too–they just require an .edu account–although, I think this is …

Note: Read Other Blog Entries in this series: BoodleBox Bots | Local AI | ChatGPT GPTs | Google Gems Creating some of my favorite task-helpers via Custom GPTs in OpenAI’s ChatGPT has been a l…

Note: Read Other Blog Entries in this series: BoodleBox Bots | Local AI | ChatGPT GPTs | Google Gems Creating some of my favorite task-helpers via Custom GPTs in OpenAI’s ChatGPT has been a l…

We give you our “2 Line SMS” AI system and show you step-by-step how to easily find & close whale clients into our "win-win" revenue model... allowing us to generate $100k in sales and keep $30-50k for ourselves. This is all done through our “2 line SMS AI Agent” we built for our 7-figure lead generation agency, which automates a process that normally takes 5+ hours… into 30-60 minutes… by turning old leads into NEW appointments and sales with AI & SMS doing all the work for us.

Discover the essentials of advertising technology. Learn about emerging adtech trends shaping the future of digital advertising in this comprehensive guide.

The DOT is the first Cabinet agency to move 50k users to Google Workspace and Gemini, now FedRAMP High authorized for secure government innovation.

Commentary on ‎The Clickbait Audit by Stephen Downes. Online learning, e-learning, new media, connectivism, MOOCs, personal learning environments, new literacy, and more

Google launches Gemini Flash, a frontier model built for speed and efficiency: Google expanded its Gemini family of frontier models with Gemini 3 Flash — a cost-effective take on its popular Gemini 3 Pro model that’s rolling out now. Flash outperforms 2.5 Pro on several major benchmarks while being 3x faster at a fraction of the cost. Watch Gemini Flash generate an app or power AI Mode in Search. In separate news, Google upgraded Gemini’s Deep Research mode with custom charts, diagrams, and animations to help you master topics quickly.

Google has officially acknowledged the upcoming merger of Android and Chromebooks, and it may be coming in 2026.

CC is our new experimental AI productivity agent from Google Labs, built with Gemini to help you stay organized and get things done. When you sign up, it connects your Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive and the wider web to gain an understanding of your day, delivering a “Your Day Ahead” briefing to your inbox every morning.This briefing synthesizes your schedule, key tasks and updates into one clear summary, so you know what needs to be done next, whether it's paying a bill or preparing for an appointment. CC also prepares email drafts and calendar links when needed to help you take action quickly. Plus, you can steer CC by replying or emailing directly with custom requests, teaching it things about yourself or asking it to remember ideas and todos.CC is an early Labs experiment, launching in early access today to Google consumer account users 18+ in the U.S. and Canada, starting with Google AI Ultra and paid subscribers. Join the waitlist by signing up on our website.

Microsoft is building Copilot into every product it owns, while Google is integrating its Gemini LLM tool into all of its properties. To determine which tool is better, I came up with seven …

I’m the first to admit I’m a Luddite. It’s an odd thing for a tech journalist to say, but it’s the truth.I rely heavily on pen and paper for my notes and research, and I only recently discovered the …

Advanced Excel secrets unlocked with NotebookLM