The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), an agency of the Department of Commerce, announced new guidelines before the holiday weekend meant to clarify when inventions that are developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence can be legally patented. The agency defines generative AI systems to be “analogous to laboratory equipment, computer software, research databases, or any other tool that assists in the inventive process,” explained USPTO Director John Squires. According to the updated guidelines, AI systems “may provide services and generate ideas, but they remain tools used by the human inventor who conceived the claimed invention.” Read more

Amazon Web Services is marking its entry into the lucrative business of providing the U.S. government with artificial intelligence and high-performance computing services via purpose-built infrastructure for which it has committed up to $50 billion in construction and equipment. The investment “will add nearly 1.3 GW of compute capacity across AWS Top Secret, AWS Secret, and AWS GovCloud (U.S.) across all classification levels,” Amazon says, adding that the commitment “expands access to AWS’s trusted infrastructure” and advances America’s AI leadership and enables U.S. agencies “to accelerate discovery and decision-making.” Read more

Amazon is playing catch-up to Elon Musk’s Starlink with its satellite-based Internet service Leo, the rebrand of Project Kuiper. Leo is previewing a gigabit-speed “Ultra” antenna for business customers. Amazon claims that Leo Ultra is “the fastest customer terminal in production,” with download speeds of up to 1 Gbps and upload speeds that max at 400 Mbps. Amazon Leo has “more than 150 satellites in orbit” with “initial network testing underway” and plans to have a total of 3,000 satellites. Because it’s satellite rather than terrestrially based, Leo is accessible in areas without reliable connectivity, anywhere on the globe. Read more

Perplexity AI has launched its Comet browser for mobile, taking on Google in the Android ecosystem. Perplexity says it will soon release an iOS app as well. The AI-powered Comet browser debuted in July on a limited basis for Mac and Windows desktops, followed by a wider release in October. The Comet browser uses Perplexity’s AI-powered search engine to answer questions, either typed or posed conversationally, and lets users mention specific tabs or can focus on open tabs. It can also agentically complete tasks. Perplexity hasn’t disclosed Comet usage figures, but says manufacturers are already requesting to include Comet on-device. Read more

OpenAI is live with a retail companion it calls “shopping research” that helps consumers find viable purchase options based on detailed requirement parameters. Trained on a version of GPT‑5 mini, it can query on a virtually unlimited list of discovery constraints, sourcing only from “reliable retailers.” “Results are organic and based on publicly available retail sites,” OpenAI says, indicating there are no advertiser-boosted entries — not yet, anyway. Available on iOS, Android and the Web for logged-in ChatGPT users on the Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans, OpenAI is making nearly unlimited usage available to all plans through the holidays. Read more