Digest #512 → Subscribe² | Upgrade to Pro¹⁰⁹

Hey folks, today’s newsletter is packed. So, let’s just buckle up and get into it.

TLDR; inside today’s newsletter

• Gemini’s Memory upgrade, Microsoft's dominance, and China's AI progress

• ICYMI: new Notion AI course and workshop rescheduled

• snack n skill - build an AI research assistant for tracking companies

• 6 new AI tools including a Linkedin search tool

• 6 interesting posts from enterprise AI adoption to Meta's new moves

• to-do's

 🔎 Trends & news

• Gemini finally got a feature to save information about you¹²⁷ (they had a prototype when it was called Bard—RIP). It’s called “Saved Info” and is similar to Memory in ChatGPT. But unlike ChatGPT’s auto-saved memories, you explicitly tell Gemini what to remember about you. It’s less magical, but I am cool with it—it doesn’t inflate expectations.

• GPT-4o got a new bump²⁵²—this time in its creativity. It seems to have made it dumber²⁷² though. Also, Advanced Voice Mode¹³⁴ is now available on Desktop too for Plus users.

• Datadog²⁴³ sat down with Google’s Director of AI to discuss the current and future states of AI, ML, and LLMs on Google Cloud. Discover 7 key insights for technical leaders, covering everything from upskilling teams to observability best practices, when you download the eBook.²⁴³*

• Microsoft's Ignite event dropped some numbers that caught our eye: Nearly 70% of Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft 365 Copilot now¹⁸⁰. They also announced "Copilot Actions" - think of it as IFTTT but for your Microsoft workspace. Set up custom automations right inside your usual apps.

• Wordware AI⁴⁴¹ is building the tools to really make prompting the next programming language. They just raised a $30M seed round and are already being used by Instacart and Runway. (I'm an investor)
  *sponsored

👀 ICYMI: New stuff we’ve launched

• Our workshop on how enterprise SaaS admins leverage AI⁶⁶ is now rescheduled to Dec 4.

• We have a new course: Using Notion AI for business workflows¹⁷⁹. It covers setting up AI workspaces, app integrations, plus advanced automation.

• New blog: Master lead generation¹⁵¹ with these 4 AI-driven techniques.

🍽️ Snack ‘n’ skill

Learn how to build an AI company research assistant

Staying on top of competitor updates and target accounts is crucial but incredibly time-consuming. We hosted a workshop with Chris Brownridge where he showed us a clever AI workflow that blew our minds - a Slack bot that automatically researches companies and keeps sales teams informed. Here's how to build your own version using Lindy AI.

Step 1. Set up your data source

Create a Google Sheet with columns for Company Name, Website, Recent News, and Last Updated Date. This sheet will be your central database for company tracking. We've found this structure works best for both manual and automated updates.

Step 2. Configure your AI research workflow

• Create a new workflow in Lindy AI with two triggers: scheduled (like every Monday) and manual (for on-demand updates)

• Connect Google Sheets to pull your company list automatically - no copy-pasting needed

• Add an AI chat step to filter companies needing updates (those not updated in the past week)

• Set up the Internet search action to find recent news about filtered companies

• Configure an AI agent with Google Sheets skills to update the spreadsheet with findings

• Create a Slack integration to send digestible summaries to your team

Tip: While testing, we noticed the AI sometimes gets too detailed. Start with 2-3 companies and adjust the prompt to get the summary length and style that works for your team before scaling up.

This walkthrough is a condensed version of this tutorial²²². Check it out for copyable prompts and detailed setup instructions.

⚙️ Top new tools

• AssemblyAI¹⁶⁵ - The most accurate Speech-to-Text model on the market with >93% accuracy.*

• Suno v4¹⁷⁸ - Better audio, sharper lyrics, and more dynamic song structures with an option to remaster your tracks in v4 quality.

• Attio Sequences¹⁵⁶ - Build email sequences that trigger on real prospect signals.

• Voicepal³²⁰ - Your pocket ghostwriter. Go from idea to first draft in minutes.

• Slap logo on anything²⁷⁰ by Glif - Quick use tool to add a logo to a product (also available as an extension⁶⁸).

• Exa³⁶⁷ just added the ability to do semantic searches over LinkedIn.

More tools here →¹³³
*sponsored

🗣️ Everyone’s talking about

Is China really behind in AI?

DeepSeek AI just replicated OpenAI’s method of getting models to think before answering. The resulting models even beat the o1 models at some benchmarks.

What's going on here?

Chinese AI companies are shipping open-source models that match or outperform western counterparts (closed/open) despite GPU restrictions.

What does this mean?

DeepSeek's new R1-Lite model matches o1-preview's performance on AIME & MATH benchmarks—both tests of complex reasoning and mathematical ability. More importantly, like o1, it shows its thinking process in real-time, and performance improves as the model spends more time reasoning. Unlike o1 though, DeepSeek plans to make this completely open source. Read more here.⁹⁹

Why should you care?

If you're using AI from web products like ChatGPT, Claude or using their cloud APIs, stick with it. The product/developer experience is worth it. But if you’re even thinking about local deployment, DeepSeek and Qwen models (from Alibaba) should be at the top of your mind.

Read our tutorial on using local models with LMStudio⁷⁰.

 📜 Interesting posts

• Menlo Ventures has released its 2024 report on GenAI in the enterprise³²⁹, including spending, use cases and top tools.

• 72% of decision-makers use Gen AI weekly, compared to 37% in 2023 - Wharton’s AI adoption report with GKB.¹⁴⁵

• The 11 next big things in AI⁴⁸⁴ and data innovations - you should put more weight on the sectors discussed in this blog, rather than the companies.

• You exist in the long context²⁶⁶ - A game by the advisor behind NotebookLM.

• Meta taps Salesforce AI's ex-CEO Clara Shih⁸⁴, for a new product group focussed on building AI tools for its 200M business users.

• TW: The rise of PDF to Brainrot³⁵¹ tools to help children study. Sorry for ruining your weekend 😅.

📌 To-dos

1. Let us know^44† if you have any tutorials or courses you want us to create—we’re always open to ideas.

That wraps things up for today! See you again next week. 👋

Ben

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