EP 537: Perplexity goes agentic, Google Gemini updates, NYT/Amazon team up & more AI News That Matters

Unknown Source June 02, 2025 51 min

artificial-intelligence generative-ai investment ai-infrastructure google openai microsoft nvidia

🎧 Listen to Original

90 Companies

74 Key Quotes

4 Topics

1 Insights

🎯 Summary

Podcast Episode Summary: EP 537: Perplexity goes agentic, Google Gemini updates, NYT/Amazon team up & more AI News That Matters

This episode of the Everyday AI Show focuses on a rapid-fire roundup of significant, practical AI news from the past week, highlighting major shifts in agentic capabilities, enterprise integration, and crucial data licensing agreements.

1. Focus Area

The primary focus is Applied Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, specifically covering:

The evolution of AI search engines into agentic workflows (Perplexity Labs).
Major enterprise integration updates for Google Workspace powered by Gemini.
Significant data licensing deals between major news organizations and tech giants (NYT/Amazon).
Emerging trends in affordable robotics hardware (Hugging Face Reachy Mini).
Concerns regarding AI misuse in official government documentation (HHS report).

2. Key Technical Insights

Perplexity Labs Agentic Capabilities: This new mode allows for complex, multi-step tasks—like generating reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and simple web apps—by leveraging deep web browsing and code execution, similar to Claude Artifacts or Gemini Canvas, but with a strong emphasis on downloadable assets.
Gemini Proactive Summarization in Workspace: Gemini is now automatically generating and updating summary cards for long email threads in Gmail and providing instant summaries/insights for videos stored in Google Drive, moving AI assistance from reactive prompting to proactive utility.
Open-Source Robotics Accessibility: The launch of the $3,000 Hugging Face Reachy Mini positions itself as the “Raspberry Pi for robotics,” aiming to democratize development for humanoid and in-home AI applications through affordable, customizable hardware.

3. Business/Investment Angle

The Agentic Pivot: Perplexity’s move into agentic creation tools (Labs) is viewed as a necessary pivot to avoid being “swamped” by larger competitors, focusing on creating tangible outputs (slides, assets) beyond standard search results.
News Media Licensing as Inevitable Strategy: The NYT/Amazon deal signals a major trend where news organizations are choosing licensing agreements over litigation (despite the ongoing NYT vs. OpenAI suit) as the only viable path to monetize content used for LLM training while maintaining discoverability.
Enterprise AI Utility: The rollout of automatic Gemini features directly into Workspace (Gmail, Drive) is a critical step for driving ROI on Gen AI investments within large organizations, moving AI from experimental tools to integrated daily workflows.

4. Notable Companies/People

Perplexity: Launched “Labs,” deepening its agentic capabilities for complex output generation.
Google (Gemini): Rolling out automatic email summarization and video summarization within Google Drive for Workspace and AI Premium users.
The New York Times (NYT): Struck its first major licensing deal with Amazon to allow content use for training foundational AI models.
Amazon: Will integrate NYT content into products like Alexa to improve AI relevance.
Hugging Face: Released the open-source, affordable Reachy Mini robot hardware.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. / HHS: Involved in a controversial government health report marred by numerous fake and botched AI-generated citations.

5. Future Implications

The conversation suggests the industry is rapidly moving toward specialized, integrated AI agents that perform multi-step tasks autonomously (Perplexity Labs). Furthermore, the licensing deals indicate that data rights and monetization for training data are being settled through commercial agreements rather than solely through legal battles. The integration of AI directly into enterprise tools (Workspace) without user initiation shows AI is becoming a background utility, though the HHS citation scandal highlights the immediate danger of unchecked LLM use in high-stakes, official contexts.

6. Target Audience

This episode is most valuable for AI/Tech Professionals, Business Leaders, and Product Managers who need to stay current on practical AI developments, understand emerging competitive landscapes (Perplexity vs. OpenAI/Google), and track how enterprise software is integrating generative AI capabilities.

🏢 Companies Mentioned

Samsung ✅ big_tech

Google V03 ✅ ai_application

Stability AI ✅ ai_company

Apple ✅ big_tech

The New York Times ✅ media_partner

The Athletic ✅ unknown

New York Times Cooking ✅ unknown

Gen AI ✅ unknown

White House ✅ unknown

Washington Post ✅ unknown

Associated Press ✅ unknown

Human Services ✅ unknown

Kennedy Jr ✅ unknown

Robert F ✅ unknown

Google Gemini AI Ultra ✅ unknown

💬 Key Insights

"A job apocalypse is coming, well, at least according to Anthropic CEO Daria Modi, who warned that AI could eliminate up to 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years."

Impact Score: 10

"Don't trust anything anymore. You can't, right? Anything you see online rather than thinking, is this AI-generated or is this real? Right? You should probably assume from now on, right? And think this will add, which is why they weren't making this available kind of as an open-source model. This will add to the deepfake problem, right? To the misinformation, disinformation epidemic that's sweeping the nation..."

Impact Score: 10

"Amazon and The New York Times have struck a deal... to allow the tech giant to use its editorial content across Amazon's AI platforms."

Impact Score: 10

"a government health report led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and released by the Department of Health and Human Services was found to contain a ton of fake and botched scientific citations, raising concerns over the use of generative AI in official policy documents."

Impact Score: 10

"because of the context window and being able to use Gemini 2.5 Pro is nutty, as well as video."

Impact Score: 10

"Also, the open-source nature of Reachy Mini means developers can modify both its software and hardware, which I think means this is going to be the thing that ultimately pushes humanoid and like robotics into the mainstream, into the home."

Impact Score: 10

📊 Topics

#artificialintelligence 181 #generativeai 17 #investment 4 #aiinfrastructure 3