Perplexity’s $42.5M publisher peace offering

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. After months of tension with publishers, Perplexity is finally opening its wallet — introducing a $42.5M revenue-sharing program that acknowledges AI agents devour content identical to humans do.

The corporate’s latest Comet Plus subscription attempts to create latest economics for an industry watching its traditional model collapse, but publishers might find the maths doesn’t quite add up.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Perplexity’s $42.5M publisher revenue program

• Elon Musk’s xAI sues Apple, OpenAI

• Learn effectively with ChatGPT’s “Study & Learn” mode

• Microsoft’s SOTA text-to-speech model

• 4 latest AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

PERPLEXITY

💰 Perplexity’s $42.5M publisher revenue program

The Rundown: Perplexity just unveiled a brand new revenue-sharing initiative that allocates $42.5M to publishers whose content appears in AI search results, introducing a $5 monthly Comet Plus subscription that offers media outlets 80% of proceeds.

The main points:

• Publishers will earn money when their articles generate traffic via Perplexity’s Comet browser, appear in searches, or are included in tasks by the AI assistant.

• This system launches amid energetic copyright lawsuits from News Corp’s Dow Jones and cease-and-desist orders from each Forbes and Condé Nast.

• Perplexity distributes all subscription revenue to publishers minus compute costs, with Pro and Max users getting Comet Plus bundled into existing plans.

• CEO Aravand Srinivas said Comet Plus will likely be “the equivalent of Apple News+ + for AIs and humans to devour web content.”

Why it matters: While legal issues likely play an enormous think about this latest shift, the model is one among the primary to acknowledge the truth of content clicks occurring via AI agents as much as humans. However the economics of splitting revenue across a $5 subscription appears like pennies on the dollar for outlets scuffling with funds within the AI era.

TOGETHER WITH SANA

💡Sana’s strongest AI upgrade yet

The Rundown:  Sana Agents just got a significant boost with GPT-5, now able to immediately automating complex workflows like syncing Salesforce, updating docs, and sending follow-ups — multi function command. Launch no-code AI agents in minutes to adapt reports on the fly and hook up with your entire tool stack.

What you may do now:

• Powerful multi-step workflow automation with AI agents

• Generate dynamic, context-aware outputs like docs, presentations, apps, and more

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Drive enterprise-wide innovation today with Sana Agents.

XAI, APPLE, & OPENAI

👨🏻‍⚖️ Elon Musk’s xAI sues Apple, OpenAI

The Rundown: Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, just filed a lawsuit in Texas against each Apple and OpenAI, alleging that the iPhone maker’s exclusive partnership surrounding ChatGPT is an antitrust violation that locks out rivals like Grok within the App Store.

The main points:

• The grievance claims Apple’s integration of ChatGPT into iOS “forces” users toward OAI’s tool, discouraging downloads of competing apps like Grok and X.

• xAI also accused Apple of manipulating App Store rankings and excluding its apps from “must-have” sections, while prominently featuring ChatGPT.

• The lawsuit seeks billions in damages, arguing the partnership creates an illegal “moat” that offers OpenAI access to lots of of hundreds of thousands of iPhone users.

• OpenAI called the suit a part of Musk’s “ongoing pattern of harassment,” while Apple maintained its App Store is designed to be “fair and freed from bias.”

Why it matters: Elon wasn’t bluffing in his X tirade against each Apple and Sam Altman earlier this month, but this wouldn’t be the primary time Apple’s been faced with legal accusations of operating a walled garden. The lawsuit could set the primary precedent around AI market competition just because it enters mainstream adoption.

AI TRAINING

📚 Learn effectively with ChatGPT’s “Study & Learn” mode

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn use ChatGPT’s Study & Learn flow to know complex topics through guided, step-by-step problem-solving and interactive quizzes that prevent the “copy-the-answer” trap.

Step-by-step:

1. In ChatGPT, select “GPT-5” → click “+” → open “More” settings → toggle on “Study & Learn”

2. Set response time: Auto (default), Easy (easy prompts), or Considering (for detailed scaffolding)

3. Prompt with structure: “Help me solve [topic] step-by-step. Ask me for every intermediate value before moving on” or “Quiz me on [subject] with MCQ and short answers”

4. Work through guided steps — ChatGPT acts as a tutor, checking each answer before revealing the subsequent step

5. Download or save your session for future reference and study notes

Pro tip: Use specific instructions like “Socratic hints only” or “Don’t reveal final answer until I ask” for higher learning retention. Alternate between explanations and quizzes, and request variations like “Same problem, latest numbers” or “Find my mistake” to deepen understanding.

PRESENTED BY CONCIERGE

👋 Your brand’s AI answer engine

The Rundown: Today’s SaaS buyers use AI daily to reply their questions, and don’t have any patience for a scavenger hunt. Concierge is a Perplexity-style answer engine, trained on your organization, that lives in your website and delivers accurate, personalized responses to ultra-specific questions.

Modern brands use Concierge to:

• Handle any buyer query (regardless of how technical) with advanced RAG in your sources & media

• Control and visibility over every conversation, with guardrails and sentiment evaluation

• Construct trust with website visitors before they’re willing to commit to a demo

Try Concierge to show every query right into a conversation — and each conversation into revenue.

MICROSOFT

🎙️ Microsoft’s SOTA text-to-speech model

The Rundown: Microsoft just released VibeVoice, a brand new open-source text-to-speech model built to handle long-form audio and able to generating as much as 90 minutes of multi-speaker conversational audio using just 1.5B parameters.

The main points:

• The model generates podcast-quality conversations with as much as 4 different voices, maintaining speakers’ unique characteristics for hour-long dialogues.

• Microsoft achieved major efficiency upgrades, improving audio data compression 80x and allowing the tech to run on consumer devices.

• Microsoft integrated Qwen2.5 to enable the natural turn-taking and contextually aware speech patterns that occur in lengthy conversations.

• Built-in safeguards robotically insert “generated by AI” disclaimers and hidden watermarks into audio files, allowing verification of synthetic content.

Why it matters: While previous models could handle conversations between two, the power to coordinate 4 voices across long-form conversations is wild for any model — let alone an open-source one sufficiently small to run on consumer devices. We’re about to maneuver from short AI podcasts to full panels of AI speakers doing long-form content.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🗣️ VibeVoice – Microsoft’s latest open-source, long-form text-to-speech model

• 🌎 Mirage 2 – Generate real-time, playable world engines from text or images

• 🎥 MuseStreamer 2.0 – Baidu’s upgraded image-to-video model

• 📚 AI Elements – Vercel’s customizable React components for AI interfaces

📰 The whole lot else in AI today

YouTube is facing backlash after creators discovered the platform using AI to use effects like unblur, denoise, and clarity to videos without warning or permission.

Silicon Valley heavyweights, including Greg Brockman and A16z, are launching Leading the Future, a super-PAC to push a pro-AI agenda on the U.S. midterm elections.

Nvidia announced that its Jetson Thor robotics computer is now generally available to supply robotic systems the power to run AI and operate intelligently in the true world.

Google introduced a brand new multilingual upgrade to NotebookLM, expanding its Video and Audio Overviews features to 80 languages.

Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative researchers introduced rbio1, a biology-specific reasoning model designed to help scientists with biological studies.

Brave uncovered a security vulnerability in Perplexity’s Comet browser, which allowed for malicious prompt injections to present bad actors control over the agentic browser.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Don F. in Los Angeles, CA:

“I take advantage of Make.com to generate a weekly automation that runs every Sunday night to assist me plan my meals for the week. I created a document containing the last 6 months of my meal titles and grocery lists, which an LLM scans. It then sends five latest meal ideas and a listing of ingredients right into a draft folder on my computer. I configured parameters within the prompt, including meals my kids like and dislike (equivalent to avoiding spicy foods), which meals are repeatable, and ordered the ingredient list to make my supermarket route easier (fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, etc.). I can then edit the suggestions, select my favorite meals, and email the list to myself.”

How do you utilize AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: Apple in talks to make use of Google’s AI for brand new Siri

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Musk brings Zuck into OpenAI drama

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Drones that fly like birds of prey

• Today’s AI tool guide: Learn effectively with ChatGPT’s latest mode

• SVP to our next workshop @ 4 PM EST Friday: Essential ChatGPT Suggestions

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown