Alibaba Group has revamped its Quark search engine as an AI “super assistant” powered by its flagship Qwen reasoning model. Quark had previously relied on a model called QuarkLLM. The new iteration features a chatbot, deep thinking and agentic capability, Alibaba says. The company also debuted R1-Omni, a model it says has emotional intelligence. Included in the flurry of Alibaba news: a strategic partnership with Chinese startup Butterfly Effect, the company behind the new AI agent Manus. The moves are part of a surge of Chinese AI tech coming to market as the country asserts itself in the space. Continue reading Alibaba Updates Quark, Debuts R1-Omni, Secures Manus Pact

OpenAI is releasing a research preview of what it calls its “largest and best” chat model to date, GPT‑4.5, which scales unsupervised learning in pre-training and post-training. As a result, the new chat model has the ability to recognize patterns, draw connections, and generate creative insights without having to draw on time and energy consuming “reasoning.” GPT‑4.5 is currently available to ChatGPT Pro subscribers ($200 per month) and developers subscribing to OpenAI’s API tier. ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Team customers are expected to gain access this week. Continue reading OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 Model Sees Patterns and Thinks Creatively

Artificial intelligence is not particularly well understood, especially by consumers, suggested USA Today technology columnist Ed Baig, who moderated a CES panel on “Myth and Reality in Today’s AI.” One of the biggest myths addressed was that AI results in people losing their jobs. Foundation Capital partner Joanne Chen stated that, “nobody has lost their job due to AI.” Unity Technologies vice president of AI/machine learning Dr. Danny Lange agreed. “People will not lose their jobs but do other things,” he said. Continue reading CES Panel Addresses the Myths and Realities of Today’s AI

Unlike Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant and Microsoft’s own Cortana, the latter’s social chatbot Xiaoice (pronounced “Shao-ice”) isn’t constructed simply to answer questions or resolve problems but can also tell jokes, write poetry, and exhibit “empathic computing” abilities. In China, Xiaoice resided on Huawei smartphones and was a weather reader on Dragon TV, a Shanghai TV station. Debuted in China in May 2014, Xiaoice has had more than 30 billion mainly text conversations with 660 million people around the world. Continue reading Microsoft Chatbot Xiaoice Excels at AI-to-Human Engagement