📅 Zoom's agentic AI Companion 📅
Beyond meeting assistance

Zoom has announced a significant update to its AI Companion, expanding capabilities with new agentic features rolling out from March through summer 2025. The enhanced system incorporates meeting agenda creation and task management immediately, with more advanced functionality coming later. The key innovation is transitioning from basic meeting tools to an agentic productivity platform powered by both Large and Small Language Models. These improvements help users better prepare for, conduct, and follow up on meetings while managing workflows more efficiently across the Zoom ecosystem.

🗣️ Google Chirp 3 🗣️
Next-level voice technology

Google has introduced Chirp 3 to Vertex AI, a powerful speech-to-text and HD text-to-speech model that significantly enhances AI-powered voice interactions. This advancement enables developers to create more natural-sounding voice assistants, audiobooks, and customer support agents with expanded support for eight new voices across 31 languages. Current implementation includes strict safety guardrails to prevent misuse while offering integration directly into apps alongside Gemini and Imagen models for comprehensive multimodal experiences.

🤏 Mistral Small 3.1 🤏
Desktop AI powerhouse

Mistral AI has released Mistral Small 3.1, a versatile model that can understand both text and images with impressive results. This freely licensed model runs efficiently on standard gaming computers and newer Macs while providing quick responses for everyday tasks. Mistral Small 3.1 performs better than similar models from competitors like Google and OpenAI, and can process very long documents in one go. This makes powerful AI technology accessible to individual users and small businesses without requiring expensive cloud services or specialized hardware.

INTERESTING NEWS

👩‍⚕️ AI nurses address healthcare staffing crisis 👩‍⚕️

According to AP News, hospitals are increasingly deploying AI nurse assistants to help address critical staffing shortages in healthcare. These systems handle routine tasks like documentation, patient monitoring, and medication management, allowing human nurses to focus on direct patient care. Early implementations show promising results in reducing burnout and improving care quality, though experts emphasize these tools are designed to augment rather than replace human healthcare workers as the industry navigates challenging workforce dynamics.

🖼️ Google AI used for watermark removal 🖼️

TechCrunch reports that users are exploiting Google's new AI model to remove watermarks from images, raising serious concerns about copyright protection and content authenticity. This unintended use case highlights the ongoing challenge of balancing powerful generative capabilities with responsible implementation. The development has prompted discussions about the need for more robust technical safeguards and potential regulatory measures to prevent misuse of AI image manipulation tools, especially as these technologies become increasingly accessible to the general public.