Welcome to AI Tool Report!

Friday’s top story: Microsoft has launched Copilot Vision, an ‘AI companion’ that reads web pages with you, answers your questions, and helps you find what you’re looking for.

✨ Change is coming…what do you think is next for AI Tool Report? Cast your vote at the end of the newsletter.

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🌤️ This Morning on AI Tool Report

1. 💞 Microsoft stops loneliness with AI browsing companion?

2. 💼 How to start your career as an AI Consultant with Innovating with AI

3. 📰 12+ publishers partner with Perplexity

4. 🎅 How to get festive photos with Christmas AI photo generator 

5. 🖼️ How to create SVG code using ChatGPT

6. 🫵 Trump appoints AI czar

7. 🍐 On the 1st Day of (OpenAI’s) Shipmas, My True Love Sent to Me…Hefty Fees?

Read Time: 5 minutes

FACT OF THE DAY

🤔 According to Salesforce, AI adoption among US workers has slowed over the last three months: Growing from 32% to just 33% (compared to 8% this time last year), this is down to a lack of employee AI training and uncertainty around how to use AI.

STOCK MARKETS

🐂 AI and tech stocks consolidated during Thursday’s trading as investors digest raised evaluations. Microsoft was the out-performer on the day and is on a 5-day up-streak, breaking higher out of the large consolidation that it has been in since the end of August. In other news, Bitcoin continued its’ bull run reaching a high of over $104,000. Profit-taking saw prices drop back below the pivotal $100,000 level to end the day. Learn more.

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ADVANCEMENTS

💞 Microsoft stops loneliness with AI browsing companion?

Our Story: After first announcing it in October, Microsoft has released a preview of Copilot Vision—an “AI companion” that can visually process, understand, and respond to questions, as you’re browsing the web, so “browsing no longer needs to be a lonely experience”—to US Copilot Pro subscribers.

🔑 Key Points:

• When activated, Vision can read the webpage you’re on, with you, answer questions, and complete tasks like translating text, finding places to stay, interpreting photos, and highlighting specific products.

• Microsoft—keen to dodge bad press, following the Windows Recall “privacy nightmare” (a tool that continuously takes screen screenshots)—has stressed that no audio, images, or text is stored or used to train models.

• To further alleviate safety and privacy concerns, Microsoft also established that Vision just works with sites they’ve approved—ie. it swerves sensitive/paywalled content—although they’ll “add more sites over time.”

🤔 Why you should care: Alongside alleviating privacy and safety concerns, Microsoft is committed to “taking feedback to allay publishers’ concerns” and has established that Vision "honors website controls for usage of their content,” respects websites “machine-readable controls on AI,” (like rules that disallow bots from scraping data for AI training), and will not store or use publisher content to train its models, clearly keen to curry favor with news outlets (and prevent any further lawsuits).

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TOGETHER WITH INNOVATING WITH AI

💼 Start your career as an AI Consultant

The AI consulting market is about to grow by a factor of 8X – from $6.9B to $54.7B in 2032.

But how does an AI enthusiast become an AI consultant?

How well you answer that question makes the difference between just “having AI ideas” and being handsomely compensated for your contribution to an organization’s AI transformation.

Thankfully, you don’t have to go it alone – our friends at Innovating with AI have welcomed 300 new students into The AI Consultancy Project, their new program that trains you to build a business as an AI consultant.

Some of the highlights current students are excited about:

• The tools and frameworks to find clients and deliver top-notch services

• A 6-month plan to build a 6-figure AI consulting business

• Students getting their first AI client in as little as 3 days

And as a reader of AI Tool Report, you get early access to the next enrollment cycle.

1. Muraena.ai’s AI search finds you high-value B2B leads, 10x faster ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5 (G2)

2. Pointer is an AI agent for seamless Google Docs editing

3. Introhook generates viral video intros with AI

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AI SEARCH

📰 12+ publishers partner with Perplexity

Our Story: AI search engine, Perplexity, has signed partnership deals with over 12 new global media outlets—including the LA Times, Adweek, The Independent, and Mexico News Daily—from diverse regions like the UK, Japan, Spain, and Latin America, to enhance global reach and content diversity.

🔑 Key Points:

• Partnering publishers will share revenue generated by ads on Perplexity, have access to Perplexity’s technology, and get support to build new features, while Perplexity is “excited” to serve more “factual, valuable answers.”

• Although they refused to share specifics, Perplexity is locking their publishing partners in with “multi-year” deals, promising “double-digit” percentages and compensation for each article that’s served to searchers.

• Unsurprisingly, the NYT and Dow Jones haven’t partnered with Perplexity, after one sent a ‘cease-and-desist’ asking them to stop using their content without permission, and the other accused them of “content kleptocracy.”

🤔 Why you should care: Alongside the NYT and Dow Jones (which runs the Wall Street Journal), Forbes is another publication that has threatened Perplexity with a lawsuit, after finding they were using its paywalled content—which Copyleaks (AI that detects AI-generated text) verified, after announcing Perplexity was summarizing paywalled content as recently as October. Wired also discovered that they were ‘paraphrasing ‘ its stories, sometimes inaccurately. And although Perplexity has argued that it does cite its sources, they are often found to be wrong.

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TOGETHER WITH AI CHRISTMAS PHOTO GENERATOR

Turn Selfies into Festive Family Photos in Seconds

Christmas Photo Generator is a user-friendly AI platform that makes it fun, quick, and easy to create beautiful, festive photos without the hassle and cost of hiring a professional photographer or studio.

Upload your selfie, choose from over 120+ festive styles and backgrounds—including Christmas trees, cozy cabins, and snowy mountains—and get studio-quality, heartwarming, festive photos in minutes.

Give the perfect gift this Christmas, and start creating your festive family photos!

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Friday’s Prompt: How to create SVG code using ChatGPT

Type this prompt into ChatGPT:

Results: After typing this prompt, you will get SVG code to create graphics for websites or online applications.

P.S. Use the Prompt Engineer GPT by AI Tool report to 10x your prompts.

🎙️Inside AI Tool Report: How to Grow a Newsletter to 400,000 Subscribers

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POLITICS

🫵 Trump appoints AI czar

• Following rumors last week that President-elect, Donald Trump, was planning to appoint a ‘czar’ to coordinate federal AI policy, he’s given ex-PayPal COO—David Sacks—the role of “AI & Crypto Czar.”

• Sacks—a VC, an ally of Elon Musk, presenter of the ‘All-In’ podcast, and a Trump confidant—will be “a special government employee” who can serve up to 130 days a year without publicly disclosing his assets.

• As czar, he’ll “guide policy for the Administration in AI and Cryptocurrency” to ensure the US remains a global leader in both; prevent big tech bias and unfair censorship, and create a legal framework for the crypto industry.  

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LAUNCHES

🍐 On the 1st Day of (OpenAI’s) Shipmas, My True Love Sent to Me…Hefty Fees?

• OpenAI’s ‘12 days of Shipmas’ campaign—where OpenAI will ship/demo something new for the next 12 days—launched with a surprising 1st-day gift: An o1 ‘pro mode’, and a new ‘Pro’ subscription, costing $200 p/m!

• The o1 pro mode—available just for ChatGPT Pro users—is 50% quicker, can complete more complex math and writing tasks, and performs better in math, coding, and PhD-level science benchmarks.

• The lucky (and rich) new Pro subscribers, for $200p/m, get access to all OpenAI’s models—including GPT-4o, Advanced Voice Mode, and the full version of o1—as OpenAI moves to triple revenue targets by next year.

🌟 Change is in the air…

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Until next time, Martin & Liam.

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