Adobe is challenging Salesforce and other customer management platforms with a suite of AI agents launching within its flagship Adobe Experience platform. Adobe’s customizable Experience Platform Agents can perform tasks like optimizing websites, generating content, identifying targeted audience sectors and more. New tools include the Adobe Experience Agent Orchestrator and Brand Concierge, which serves customers a personalized website experience based on prior interactions. Introduced at Adobe Summit 2025, the new products are engineered to drive Customer Experience Orchestration (CXO) in the era of artificial intelligence. Continue reading Adobe Unveils Host of AI-Powered Customer Experience Tools

Amazon is ramping up its AI activity, reportedly planning to release its own advanced reasoning model as part of the company’s Nova family. The Nova line was introduced in December at re:Invent and the new addition could debut as early as June. Its reasoning prowess is being compared to the abilities of OpenAI’s o3-mini and DeepSeek-R1. But reports say Amazon is taking the hybrid reasoning approach embraced by Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet (Amazon has a 10 percent stake in Anthropic). The e-retail giant is also preparing for an agentic AI push, having established a dedicated unit, reports say. Continue reading Amazon Plans an AI Push with Nova Reasoning Model, Agents

In an expansion of their existing strategic partnership, Salesforce and Google have entered into a seven-year, $2.5 billion deal that will allow Salesforce customers to build Agentforce agents using Gemini and to deploy Salesforce on Google Cloud. The companies plan to more tightly integrate connections between platforms like Salesforce Service Cloud and Google Cloud’s Customer Engagement Suite, as well as Slack and Google Workspace, “empowering AI agents and service representatives with unified data access, streamlined workflows, and advanced AI capabilities, regardless of platform,” the companies said. Continue reading Salesforce Brings Gemini to Agentforce in $2.5B Google Deal

Microsoft’s expansion of AI agents within the Copilot Studio ecosystem was a central focus of the company’s Ignite conference. Since the launch of Copilot Studio, more than 100,000 enterprise organizations have created or edited AI agents using the platform. Copilot Studio is getting new features to increase productivity, including multimodal capabilities that take agents beyond text and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) enhancements to enable agents with real-time knowledge from multiple third-party sources, such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk. Integration with Azure is expanded as 1,800 large language models in the Azure catalog are made available. Continue reading Microsoft Pushes Copilot Studio Agents, Adds Azure Models

Runway is launching Act-One motion capture system that uses video and voice recordings to map human facial expressions onto characters using the company’s latest model, Gen-3 Alpha. Runway calls it “a significant step forward in using generative models for expressive live action and animated content.” Compared to past facial capture techniques — which typically require complex rigging — Act-One is driven directly and only by the performance of an actor, requiring “no extra equipment,” making it more likely to capture and preserve an authentic, nuanced performance, according to the company. Continue reading Runway’s Act-One Facial Capture Could Be a ‘Game Changer’

Microsoft next month moves to public preview with a Copilot Studio feature that lets users create autonomous AI agents. The agents had been in private preview since the spring, and the tech giant’s move to take them public comes after Salesforce launched its own agentic program in September. Microsoft also has plans to add 10 autonomous agents to Dynamics 365, an enterprise suite geared toward resource planning and customer relationship management. Microsoft announced the news this week at its “AI Tour” event in London. Copilot is Microsoft’s branded AI assistant, while Copilot Studio lets people customize their Copilot assistants. Continue reading Microsoft Widens Copilot AI Agent Preview, Adds Templates

The European Commission has released a list of more than 100 companies that have become signatories to the EU’s AI Pact. While Google, Microsoft and OpenAI are among them, Apple and Meta are not. The voluntary AI Pact is aimed at eliciting policies on AI deployment during the period before the legally binding AI Act takes full effect. The EU AI Pact focuses on transparency in three core areas: internal AI governance, high-risk AI systems mapping and promoting AI literacy and awareness among staff to support ethical development. It is aimed at “relevant stakeholders,” across industry, civil society and academia. Continue reading Amazon, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI Join the EU’s AI Pact

Synthesia, which uses AI to create business avatars for use in content such as training, presentation and customer service videos, has announced a major platform update. “Coming soon” with Synthesia 2.0 are full-body avatars that include hands capable of a wide range of motions. Users can animate motion using skeletal sequences on which the persona selected from the catalog can then be automatically mapped. Starting next month, the Nvidia-backed UK company will offer the ability to incorporate brand identity — including typography, colors and logos — into templated videos. A new translation tool automatically applies updates to all languages. Continue reading Lifelike AI Avatars to Get New Features with Synthesia Update

Anthropic has launched a paid tier catering to business customers as well as a free mobile app for iOS users featuring its chatbot Claude. The generative AI startup — which has backing from Amazon, Google and Salesforce — is positioning itself to compete with companies like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft that focus on enterprise plans for revenue while also offering individual plans. Anthropic’s Team plan starts at $30 per user per month, on par with competing enterprise products, and requires a minimum of five seats. Anthropic has been beta testing Team over the past few quarters in industries including legal, tech and healthcare. Continue reading Anthropic Debuts Enterprise Plan, Free Claude App for iPhone

Slack AI is a new paid add-on for enterprise clients that want to boost productivity using artificial intelligence. Generative capabilities in the initial release include personalized responses to questions, channel recaps and thread summaries that promise to “catch you up on long conversations in one click.” Slack says pilot data indicated customers including Uber and Anthropic “could save an average of 97 minutes per user each week using Slack AI to find answers, distill knowledge and spark ideas.” Slack AI is backward compatible, generating information based on the history built over time on the platform. Continue reading Slack AI Brings Generative Features to Channels and Threads

Sam Altman has wasted no time since being rehired as CEO of OpenAI on November 22, four days after being fired. This week, the 38-year-old leader of one of the most influential artificial intelligence firms outlined his “immediate priorities” and announced a newly constituted “initial board” that includes a non-voting seat for investor Microsoft. The three voting members thus far include former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor as chairman and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers — both newcomers — and sophomore Adam D’Angelo, CEO of Quora. Mira Murati, interim CEO during Altman’s brief absence, returns to her role as CTO. Continue reading Altman Reinstated as CEO of OpenAI, Microsoft Joins Board

American consumers set a new online shopping record for Black Friday, spending $9.8 billion on November 24, a record for the famous sales day and a 5.7 percent increase over 2022, according to Adobe Analytics. Thanksgiving Day online sales were also strong, rising 5.5 percent to $5.6 billion, per Adobe, which predicts that Cyber Monday numbers will blow past both those days, projecting U.S. consumer spending of between $12 billion and $12.4 billion for another new record. A notable trend during the holiday shopping weekend was increased reliance on “buy now, pay later” deals. Continue reading Black Friday Sets Sales and Mobile Shopping Records in U.S.

Just four days after being pushed out by the OpenAI board, Sam Altman will be reinstated as CEO of the company he co-founded. His return as chief executive was announced in a series of online posts. In addition, most of the company’s board members will be replaced. Following Altman’s firing, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had announced Altman would lead a new advanced AI research team to run independently within Microsoft. However, hundreds of OpenAI employees, including co-founder and board member Ilya Sutskever, continued to push for Altman’s return, threatening to quit if he was not reinstated. Continue reading In Latest Twist, Sam Altman Is Reinstated as CEO of OpenAI

Former Apple designers Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno last week officially launched the Humane Ai Pin they’re positioning as a smartphone replacement. The $700 wearable magnetically attaches to clothing. A $24 per month T-Mobile data subscription is required for connectivity. Described as “a download device and software platform built from the ground up for AI,” it’s got an ultra-wide RGB camera, depth sensors and motion sensors, and a speaker that creates “a bubble of sound” that can be loud or soft. Preorders for the Ai Pin begin November 16, with shipments scheduled to begin in early 2024. Continue reading Humane’s $700 Ai Pin Is Positioned to Replace Smartphones

During its Surface and AI event in New York City on Thursday, Microsoft introduced a pair of new Surface laptops and an array of generative AI upgrades to Bing Chat, Windows Copilot and more. Taking center stage in hardware was the company’s more powerful Surface Laptop Studio 2 and the ultra-portable Surface Laptop Go 3. Also unveiled was the Surface Go 4 for Business, the latest miniature version of its Surface Pro tablet, and the company’s large touchscreen Surface Hub, designed for office use. Beginning this month, Microsoft rolls out Copilot — “your everyday AI companion” — in a free Windows 11 update, followed by Bing, Edge, and Microsoft 365 this fall. Continue reading Microsoft Unveils Next-Gen Surface Devices, New AI Features