OpenAI drops o3-mini

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DeepSeek’s moment in the sun just got eclipsed by OpenAI’s latest releases: deep research and o3-mini. And for the first time, anyone can try o3-mini out, not just paid subscribers. We’ll dive into how to use it as well as how it compares to its rivals.

Today’s Insights

• Today in AI: OpenAI’s big news, DeepSeek backlash, and emotional AI agents

• Tutorial: How to automate competitor analysis using ChatGPT tasks

• Frontier: Diving deeper into OpenAI

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

• News, memes, what’s trending on socials, and more

TODAY IN AI

1. OpenAI drops o3-mini after weeks of hype: Whether you’re a die-hard Pro subscriber or a casual ChatGPT user, you can now try OpenAI’s latest reasoning model, which tackles complex math and science questions by “thinking through” them first. Keep reading for more on what o3-mini can do, plus a deeper look at OpenAI’s latest surprise: deep research.

1. The DeepSeek backlash begins: Hundreds of companies are racing to block DeepSeek’s R1 out of concerns that their employees’ data could fall into the hands of the Chinese government. The US Navy and Congress banned its use, too, while government officials investigate whether DeepSeek smuggled Nvidia chips through Singapore to get around the US chip ban.

2. A new spin on AI customer service agents: Today’s AI customer service agents can be pretty oblivious to our emotions. With that in mind, Ex-Alphabet and Meta execs are developing a new platform called Palona that lets companies infuse their agents with unique personalities that can adjust on-the-fly to customers’ needs.

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FROM THE FRONTIER

Everything you need to know about OpenAI’s o3-mini and deep research

OpenAI dodged DeepSeek’s punch last week and landed a haymaker of its own with o3-mini model. But the company wasn’t done blowing our minds and decided to up the ante with a Sunday night surprise: ChatGPT deep research. Here’s what you need to know:

o3-mini

• For the first time, anyone can try out the startup’s latest reasoning model, even free users. Meanwhile, paid users can now toggle between low, medium, and high-intelligence versions depending on what they’re using it for.

• Pro users get unlimited access, and Plus subscribers get as many as 150 messages per day, while free users will have more limited usage limits.

• How does it perform? It generally matches or beats its predecessor o1 at most logic-heavy tasks while being much more affordable and efficient.

• Is it better than DeepSeek’s R1? Yes and no. When using the low and medium-effort options, o3-mini lags just behind R1 across several benchmarks. But when you kick it into full gear with the “high” setting, it generally beats R1 in both science and math. Not to mention, the soon-to-be-released full version of o3 will likely pull ahead of R1 by an even wider margin.

ChatGPT deep research

• It’s a new AI agent that works like your very own comprehensive research assistant. It’s designed for professionals who need detailed and accurate information analysis, particularly in the world of finance, science, policy, and engineering – but is open to anyone with a Pro plan. (Coming soon to Plus, Team, and Enterprise users.)

• With deep research, OpenAI says: “You give it a prompt, and ChatGPT will find, analyze, and synthesize hundreds of online sources to create a comprehensive report at the level of a research analyst.”

• It achieves a 26.6% on Humanity’s Last Exam, twice the score of o3-mini. It’s also “powered by a version of the upcoming OpenAI o3 model that’s optimized for web browsing and data analysis.”

• It’s already gotten praise from many in the AI world, like Ethan Mollick who called it “very good,” Dan Shipper, who said it was like “a bazooka for the curious mind,” and OpenAI’s own Felipe Million, who used deep research to help understand his wife’s breast cancer treatment options and claims it “is going to change the world.”

THE AI ACADEMY

How to automate competitor analysis using ChatGPT tasks

• Go to ChatGPT and sign in with your account.

• Click on the model drop down menu at the top and select ‘ChatGPT-4o with scheduled tasks’ from the menu.

• Now enter your prompt to schedule a task and press enter.

• For the prompt below, turn on the ‘Search web’ option at the bottom of the prompt box to get the best results.

Sample Prompt: ‘Create a task to check the content on this competitor’s page [insert competitor’s page URL] every day at [enter time]. Notify me of any content changes compared to the previous day, and how it compares to the content on our company page here [insert your company page URL]. Also, provide SEO recommendations on how to optimize our content to compete with very well [enter competitor’s name]’

• You can add multiple competitors and see the scheduled task list by clicking on ‘View all tasks’.

• ChatGPT will automatically monitor your competitors and will remind you at the scheduled time.

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AI & TECH NEWS

Everything else you need to know today

💭 Problem Solver: All Microsoft Copilot users will now get to use the platform’s Think Deeper feature at no cost. It uses OpenAI’s reasoning model, o1, to think through challenging problems.

🏅 Speed Demon: AI chipmaker Cerebras says its servers are the fastest place to host DeepSeek’s new R1 model — running up to 57 times faster than Nvidia GPUs.

💼 AI’s Impact: Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman announced the company is starting a new team made up of economists, psychologists, and other experts who will explore how AI is reshaping “patterns of work, life, connection, creation, and play.”

👓 Quick Pivot: Apple has abandoned work on a pair of augmented reality glasses that would have paired with its Mac computers, although it’s still pushing ahead on a successor to its pricey yet powerful Vision Pro headset.

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PROMPT OF THE DAY

LinkedIn Headline

Prompt: You are a LinkedIn personal branding expert with years of experience. Help me create a LinkedIn headline that effectively communicates my experience, qualifications, and unique value. Consider incorporating keywords relevant to my industry as mentioned in the resume below and showcasing my passion or mission. My headline should be a snapshot that captures attention and encourages visitors to explore my profile further. Give me 10 different headlines. 
My Resume: [Paste Your Resume]

_{Source: Careerflow}

SOCIAL SIGNALS

What’s trending on socials today

❓Ask Me Anything: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his colleagues held a Reddit AMA to answer all your burning questions about o3-mini and “the future of AI.”

📈 Trend Spotting: Andreessen Horowitz’s Olivia Moore shared what she thinks is the next big trend in AI, making up 22% of Y Combinator’s latest batch of startups.

🔮 Future Proof: Computer scientist Pradyumna Prasad’s essay “How to have a career when OpenAI’s o3 drops” is making its rounds on the web now that o3-mini is finally out in the world.

🎧 Song Sage: SF-based AI startup Riffusion just launched a new platform that can generate songs based on text, audio, or visual prompts. The twist is that it’ll gradually pick up on your musical preferences over time and adjust its outputs accordingly.

AI-GENERATED IMAGES

Life in Color

Midjourney Prompt: PBR Modern interior design, accentual and subtle, features an office front desk made of pink spheres and inflatable material in the shape of spheres, designed in the style of Zaha Hadid, as seen in the photography from ArchDaily. --stylize 50

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Zain & the Superhuman AI team