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🔓 Friday’s AI Report:

1. 🏠 Figure reveals breakthrough house robot

2. 💹 In partnership with Assembled

3. 🗣️ AI voices taking over Spotify?

4. 🫰 HP snaps up Humane’s AI talent

5. 🔏 In partnership with Incogni

6. ⚙️ Trending AI Tools

7. 🏗️ Practical AI Applications

8. 📑 Recommended Resources

Read Time: 5 minutes

‼️ The latest AI Report podcast episode with LinkedIn video powerhouse—Lindsay Rosenthal—has just been released, which discusses the importance of authenticity, B2B growth on LinkedIn, and the increased interest in founder-led brands. 

➡️ Watch it here ⬅️

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📈 AI STOCK TRACKER

Most of the tech sector experienced modest declines, while Apple, Microsoft, and NVIDIA posted minor gains, with gains from Microsoft down to increased investor confidence after announcing the world’s first quantum processing chip—Majorana 1.

LATEST IN AI

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🏠 Figure reveals breakthrough house robot

🚨 Our Report — Robotics start-up, Figure, has revealed a breakthrough “general-purpose” Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model (called Helix) which can control humanoid robots, in real-time, enabling them to complete home-based tasks based on voice commands (which is similar to Google’s RT-2 robot, but more advanced…more on that, below), which is a step forward for home robotics, as previously home robots have been programmed to complete specific tasks—like mowing the lawn or vacuuming—whereas Helix-powered robots can handle multiple different chores, through simple voice commands.

🔓 Key Points:

• From a voice command, Helix robots can assess their environment, recognize, and then pick up a multitude of household objects of varying sizes, shapes, colors, and materials, a big step further than Google’s RT-2.

• For example, a user can ask the robot to “hand the bag of cookies to the robot on your right,” and the robot will visually assess where the cookies are and where the robot is, and complete the task.

• This is a major breakthrough for household robots, as it’s notoriously difficult for these robots to navigate around the home as the different layouts, lighting, and objects, make it hard for them to adapt.

🔐 Relevance — This breakthrough comes just 2 weeks after Figure cut its collaboration with OpenAI—instead, choosing to develop its models, in-house—and marks a dramatic change in the start-up’s focus: Previously, it was building workplace robots for industrial clients (like BMW, for example), because developing industrial-purpose robots, designed for specific tasks, allows them to improve reliability and reduce costs, due to larger-scale production, and they’re also far easier to program: Household robots require a substantial amount of (expensive) human time/resources to train—either through manual programming or multiple demonstrations to ‘’teach’’ it how to perform different tasks—and with this latest VLA model, Figure is clearly making progress towards developing a more efficient system that enables robots to seamlessly adapt to the complexities of varying household environments/objects/tasks.

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TOGETHER WITH ASSEMBLED

How AI support tools are really priced — and the key questions to ask before you buy

AI support tools all pledge efficiency. But their pricing? A mess of unexpected fees and vague "per interaction" costs.

Vendors bank on confusion, making it hard to compare real ROI.

‼️ Don’t get trapped in a bad deal.

We break down how these tools are priced, what sneaky tactics to watch for, and the exact questions to ask before signing on the dotted line.

If you want AI that actually works for your team (and your budget), start here: Unpack the true costs of AI support tools and ask the right questions before you commit.

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🗣️ AI voices taking over Spotify?

🚨 Our Report — Audio streaming service, Spotify, has partnered with AI voice generator start-up, ElevenLabs, to bring more AI-generated audiobooks to the platform, as it “recognizes the potential of digital voice-narration to grow and expand the audiobook market” (read: It wants to compete with the likes of Amazon and Audible in the audiobook market).

🔓 Key Points:

• Spotify already accepts AI-narrated audiobooks, after it partnered with Google Play Books over a year ago, so this new partnership will give authors an alternative way to get their work published in audio format.

• With ElevenLabs, authors can choose from a range of AI voices in over 29 languages, with the no-cost plan allowing them to record just 10 minutes, whereas a Pro subscription lets them record 8 hours, but it costs $99p/m.

• To provide full transparency, Spotify has established that all AI-narrated books will be clearly labeled and identified as “narrated by a digital voice” and it will also be marked in each book’s metadata.

🔐 Relevance — While Spotify “firmly believes in the power of human narration,” it also believes that the partnership with ElevenLabs will help smaller authors ”looking for a cost-effective way to create high-quality audiobooks,” and make it possible to publish audiobooks of important, but older and perhaps less popular, titles that would otherwise have been forgotten about or ignored.

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🫰 HP snaps up Humane’s AI talent

• After HP bought the struggling AI Pin maker, Humane, for a measly $116M (a far cry from the $1B Humane was expecting) earlier this week, details have emerged about what HP plans to do with the 200 ex-Humane staff.

• Hours after the acquisition was announced, HP gave several Humane employees (many of whom worked on the company’s core software), new jobs—some with up to a 70% pay increase.

• Many who worked with the AI Pin (ie. in QA, automation, and operations) were let go, indicating HP’s interest in acquiring developers who can build around existing AI systems, rather than build from the ground, up.

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TOGETHER WITH INCOGNI

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Unlike others, Incogni deletes your info from all broker types, including people search sites where anyone can get your details for a few bucks.

Plus: AI Report readers get an exclusive 55% off all annual plans with the code AITOOL

TRENDING AI TOOLS

1. Artisan has Ava, an AI BDR that automates outbound with a built-in database, lead enrichment, multi-source personalization, and deliverability optimization ⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5 (G2)

2. InstaClip turns text into viral TikToks, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram reels

3. Redraw transforms architectural projects with AI-powered rendering

PRACTICAL AI

PRO COMMUNITY

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RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

STARTUPS

Name: Spot AI
Value: $237.61M
Funding raised: $62M (Series B)

Spot AI is a platform that uses ML algorithms to analyze consumer behavior, delivering personalized recommendations and insights to improve customer engagement and sales through advanced AI analytics and insights.

PODCASTS

How AI Is Making Content Creation 100X Easier

In this episode of The AI Report Live, Liam interviews LinkedIn video powerhouse, Lindsay Rosenthal, to explore how AI is disrupting content creation, video, and personal branding in 2025.

QUICK HITS

• Google Ads get more AI

• 400M users use ChatGPT every week

• AI startup founded by 21-year-olds gets $2B valuation

FRIDAY’S Q&A

THIS WEEKS QUESTION:

“How will junior software engineers be affected by the increasing AI trend?”

THIS WEEKS ANSWER:

AI is reshaping the job landscape for everyone, especially those in junior software engineering roles. This is because AI-powered coding tools (like GitHub Copilot, for example) are making simpler, lower-skilled development tasks easier, more efficient, and quicker.

On one hand, this is making it much easier for junior devs to learn ‘on the job’, but on the other hand, it’s slowly starting to replace the need to hire a junior to complete the routine, low-skill tasks.

With roles possibly diminishing because of AI, competition is rapidly increasing. So, those in entry-level positions will need to become experts at using AI-assisted coding tools, problem-solving, and general system design, and get some hands-on experience with real-world projects. Plus, soft skills like communication and teamwork will also set them apart.

Skilled software developers are still, very much in demand to build, customize, and maintain AI applications, and those who are prepared to adapt, upskill, and embrace AI tools will continue to thrive in the evolving industry.

Like anyone, in any industry.

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