Perplexity’s recent answer to OpenClaw

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Good morning, { AI enthusiasts }. Apple hasn’t been capable of get Siri right, but its smallest computer is likely to be the one actually powering the AI agent era.

Perplexity just spun out its Computer agentic system with a ‘Personal’ local option, pitching itself because the safer alternative to OpenClaw — and certain ramping up the demand for Apple’s small but mighty machine much more in the method.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Perplexity turns Mac mini right into a 24/7 AI agent

  • Musk revives Macrohard as a joint xAI-Tesla project

  • Create agentic workflows in Google Workspace

  • Anthropic Institute to document AI’s disruption

  • 4 recent AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

PERPLEXITY

Image source: Perplexity

The Rundown: Perplexity just debuted Personal Computer, a brand new local version of its Computer AI agent system that runs on a dedicated Mac mini — positioning itself as a safer, controlled rival to the viral OpenClaw.

The small print:

  • The agent gives Perplexity’s Comet assistant persistent local access to files, apps, and sessions on a Mac mini, capable of be managed from anywhere.

  • Perplexity frames it as a safer OpenClaw, with safeguards like tracked activity, sign-off for sensitive tasks, and a ‘kill switch’ to shut the system down.

  • Perplexity Computer launched in late February, providing a cloud-based agentic system that orchestrates different models without delay to finish tasks.

  • Perplexity Max subscribers get early access via a waitlist, with the corporate saying it’s going to provide “support and resources” for the initial cohort of users.

  • Perplexity also released Computer to enterprise, tapping into 20 models and 400+ app connections — together with a Slack integration for team workflows.

Why it matters: Everyone knocks Apple for its AI mishaps, however the Mac mini is unintentionally becoming the default hardware for the AI agent era. Between OpenClaw, Perplexity’s Personal Computer, and the wave of offshoots, always-on local agents are getting safer and easier to establish — and shortly everyone’s going to have one.

TOGETHER WITH SLACK FROM SALESFORCE

The Rundown: How do top teams use Microsoft 365? They integrate it with Slack to create an all-in-one work operating system, connecting every tool, automating workflows, and putting AI at the middle.

Watch this demo to see how 150,000+  Microsoft customers maximize existing tech investments with Slack, including:

  • Best at school integrations with Office, SharePoint, Teams, etc.

  • AI-powered automation and no-code search

  • An open ecosystem with 2,600+ app connections

XAI & TESLA

Image source: Lovart / Elon Musk on X

The Rundown: Elon Musk pushed back on reports that its AI software initiative Macrohard had stalled, revealing xAI’s project is merging with Tesla’s ‘Digital Optimus’ AI agent right into a system he claims can “emulate the function of entire firms.”

The small print:

  • The system will pair Grok with a ‘Digital Optimus’ agent, processing live screen video and inputs and borrowing techniques from Tesla’s FSD tech.

  • Musk says it’ll run on Tesla’s $650 AI4 chip paired with xAI’s Nvidia servers — and calls it “the one real-time smart AI system” available.

  • The post got here after Business Insider reported that 20+ Macrohard engineers had left or shifted roles, with a 600-person data project also on pause.

  • xAI merged with SpaceX in February, but has suffered from a wave of worker exits over the past month, including several co-founders.

Why it matters: “Emulate the function of entire firms” is an enormous claim, but Musk has the pieces for it — custom chips, FSD-trained video processing, and Grok’s reasoning in a single stack. Macrohard could find yourself as probably the most vertically integrated agent play in the marketplace… But his grand visions often take longer than expected to develop.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: On this guide, you’ll learn learn how to create an agent in your Google Workspace that reads form submissions, tracks them in a spreadsheet, after which emails you motion items using Google’s recent AI automation tool called Workspace Studio.

Step-by-step:

  1. Go to Workspace Studio (request access if unavailable), create a brand new Flow, select “When a form response is available in” because the starter, and pick your form

  2. Add a brand new step and choose Summarize > Content from previous steps > Variable > Form response. Within the prompt box, give the shape’s purpose

  3. Add a Resolve step with the prompt “Read this summary [summary variable] and choose if it meets [your criteria for escalation]”

  4. Click Add substep > Notify me by email and add the AI summary within the message body together with every other form variables

Pro tip: You should utilize this workflow to triage inbound leads, handle internal troubleshooting, onboard clients, and more.

PRESENTED BY TELY AI

The Rundown: Your buyers are asking AI questions — and AI is answering together with your competitors, not you. Tely makes AI like ChatGPT, Google, and Claude recommend your small business as an alternative.

With Tely AI, you’ll be able to:

  • Get really useful in ChatGPT, Google, Perplexity, and Claude in as little as 1 week

  • Fully hands-off: no writers, no agencies, no managing content

  • Costs lower than hiring freelancers or maintaining a marketing team

  • Ideal for area of interest industries where expertise matters

ANTHROPIC

Image source: Lovart / The Rundown

The Rundown: Anthropic unveiled the Anthropic Institute, a brand new group combining three teams under co-founder Jack Clark to review AI’s societal impacts, launching amid the corporate’s legal battle with the Pentagon over its blacklisting as a supply-chain risk.

The small print:

  • The ~30-person team will merge Anthropic’s Frontier Red Team, Societal Impacts, and economics research groups, with plans to double staff yearly.

  • The Institute plans to share learnings from constructing frontier models with the general public, while engaging staff and industries facing AI displacement head-on.

  • Founding hires include ex-DeepMind researcher Matt Botvinick, economist Anton Korinek, and Zoe Hitzig, who resigned from OAI over ads in ChatGPT.

Why it matters: Anthropic has not been shy about banging the drum on AI’s coming disruption, and now it has a complete think tank dedicated to it. If a strong AGI-level system really does arrive this 12 months (and a few may argue they’re already here), having an institute already studying its fallout may grow to be one in every of the smarter bets in AI.

QUICK HITS

  • 🗣️Unwrap Customer Intelligence – Turn unstructured customer feedback into data-backed insights that inform your product roadmap*

  • ⚙️ Agent 4 – Replit’s coding agent with infinite design canvas, team workflows

  • 🧠 Nemotron 3 Super – Nvidia’s 120B reasoning AI with 1M token context

  • 🎧 TADA – Hume AI’s open-source TTS AI with expressive and reliable outputs

Replit raised $400M at a $9B valuation, while dropping Agent 4, a coding agent that ships 10x faster with parallel agents, deeper collaboration, and broader construct options.

Microsoft filed an amicus temporary in support of Anthropic in its lawsuit against the Pentagon’s supply chain blacklist, calling for a restraining order on the ban.

Amazon imposed a 90-day code safety reset after AI changes led to outages that cost 6.3M lost orders in at some point, now requiring dual sign-offs for crucial deployments.

NVIDIA released Nemotron 3 Super, an open-source 120B reasoning model built for multi-agent workflows with a 1M-token context window and 5x faster speeds.

Cloudflare introduced a /crawl API endpoint that scrapes entire web sites in a single call, in a notable pivot from the corporate known for selling anti-bot protection.

Amazon launched Health AI, a free agentic assistant that may read medical records, book appointments, and manage prescriptions, with five free visits for Prime members.

COMMUNITY

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 Jigar P. in Canada:

“I exploit AI as a learning partner to support my son’s communication and language development. He’s on the Autism spectrum. I generate tailored WH-question exercises (who, what, where, when, why) so he can practice understanding and answering.

I also use AI to design vocal and speech exercises that help reduce echolalia by encouraging him to maneuver from repeating the query to giving his own response. As a substitute of counting on generic worksheets, I create learning materials that adapt to what he finds difficult and what keeps him engaged. AI helps me produce recent examples, practice prompts, and role-play scenarios, so the practice stays fresh and consistent.”

How do you employ AI? Tell us here.

That is it for today!

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