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🔓 Monday’s AI Report:

1. 🤯 Microsoft ditches OpenAI?

2. 🎯 In partnership with Taplio

3. 🤖 Is Manus the next R1?

4. 📜 US AI Bills at record high

5. 🔐 In partnership with Incogni

6. ⚙️ Trending AI Tools

7. 🏗️ Practical AI Applications

8. 📑 Recommended Resources

Read Time: 5 minutes

🎙️ Catch up on the latest episode of The AI Report podcast, where we chat with Founder of Valley—Zayd Syed Ali (who sold his first business for seven figures at just 18)—about how to craft effective AI-generated messaging and how he handles the stress of being a multi-millionaire.. Watch it here.

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📈 AI STOCK TRACKER

The US stock market is poised for a lower open, with Nasdaq futures down 0.6%, amid escalating trade tensions and concerns over China's deflationary pressures

LATEST IN AI

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🤯 Microsoft ditches OpenAI?

🚨 Our Report — Microsoft is developing its own in-house AI reasoning models (which are reportedly comparable to OpenAI’s o1 and o3 mini-reasoning models) and searching for an alternative model, other than OpenAI’s GPT, to power its CoPilot chatbot, to reduce its reliance on the start-up, despite previously being its biggest investor.

🔓 Key Points:

• Microsoft’s reasoning models—MAI—performed well in tests measuring how it completes tasks like document editing and scheduling, and Microsoft is planning to sell access to developers—competing directly with OpenAI.

• Microsoft is also reportedly testing a variety of different AI models from other AI companies—including Meta, xAI, DeepSeek, and Anthropic—to integrate into CoPilot in place of ChatGPT.

• As part of its agreement with OpenAI, Microsoft has the right to use the start-up's IP, but OpenAI is apparently refusing to share information on how its o1 reasoning model works, further increasing tensions.

🔐 Relevance — This comes after Microsoft and OpenAI recently renegotiated their partnership agreement so OpenAI can use other cloud service providers—not just Microsoft—which was perhaps the first sign of growing tensions and rivalry between the two, as Microsoft looks to hedge its bets and find the most strategic way to capitalize on the AI boom, after reportedly growing anxious about OpenAI’s pricing model and the speed of development.

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🤖 Is Manus the next R1?

🚨 Our Report — The capabilities of the ‘general-purpose’ AI agent, Manus—developed by Chinese start-up ‘The Butterfly Effect’ and hyped as the ‘next R1’ after it launched last week—are under question just days after its release.

🔓 Key Points:

• Initially, Manus—which was launched by invite-only—received rave reviews as being “the most impressive AI tool ever tried” by industry leaders, which saw it gain 138,000 users in just a few days.

• However, due to unexpected popularity, The Butterfly Effect had to reduce its availability as their “server resources were planned to meet a demonstration level” and couldn’t, therefore, handle the volume of users.

• Manus was built using a combination of existing AI models, including Anthropic’s Claude and fellow Chinese firm Alibaba’s Qwen, to allow it to perform tasks like drafting research reports.

🔐 Relevance — When it launched, The Butterfly Effect hyped up Manus’ capabilities, claiming it could do anything from buying real estate to programming video games and was superior to OpenAI’s deep research model, Operator, but several early users have reported error messages, “endless loops,” and silly mistakes, suggesting that—although it’s an early release—it might not live up to the hype as an R1 replacement.

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📜 US AI Bills at record high

• Despite Trump's decision to revoke Biden's AI EO on his first day in office, the number of pending AI bills in the US is currently 781, which exceeds the total of all AI bills proposed in 2024.

• Recently proposed ones include a bill related to regulating the development and use of high-risk AI in consequential decisions and one that would make insurers disclose if they used AI when reviewing documents.

• This comes after pressure mounts for the US to publish an AI framework similar to the EU’s AI Law, although the Trump administration is reluctant to impose heavy AI governance as it may stifle innovation/competitiveness.

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TOGETHER WITH INCOGNI

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TRENDING AI TOOLS

1. Fyxer AI: The AI Executive Assistant that gains you an hour a day by organizing emails, tone-matching replies, and summarizing meeting notes.⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5

2. Stealth Interview helps users excel in technical interviews

3. GoEnhance transforms videos into different anime styles

PRACTICAL AI

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RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

STARTUPS

Name: HighSpot
Value: $493.2M
Funding raised: $644.9M (Secondary Market)

HighSpot is an AI-based, one-stop-shop sales enablement platform that uses AI to provide data-driven suggestions to help sales reps make more sales.

QUICK HITS

• Meredith Whittaker slams AI agents as having security issues

• Google deletes ‘diversity’ from responsible AI team webpage

• Musk could still stop OpenAI’s for-profit transition

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