Exploring the Rise of AI Companion Apps and Their Societal Implications

Our 220th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 08/30/2025

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Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and co-hosted by Daniel Bashir
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In this episode:

• Google's newly released Gemini 2.5 image editing model showcases remarkable advancements, enabling highly accurate modifications of subjects while retaining their original features.
• Anthropic expands Claude with an AI browser agent for Chrome and adds features to remember past conversations, enhancing the user experience and personalization.
• NVIDIA and AMD to share revenue from AI chip sales to China with US government, marking a notable shift in export control policies and trade practices.
• AI companion apps are experiencing substantial growth, with projected revenues expected to reach $120 million by 2025, raising questions about social implications and user engagement.
  

Timestamps + Links:

• Tools & Apps
  • (00:02:12) Google Gemini's AI image model gets a 'bananas' upgrade | TechCrunch
  • (00:05:32) Anthropic launches a Claude AI agent that lives in Chrome | TechCrunch
  • (00:08:30) Anthropic’s Claude chatbot can now remember your past conversations | The Verge
  • (00:11:46) Google Launches AI ‘Guided Learning’ Tool to Teach Users
  • (00:14:55) Apple Intelligence’s ChatGPT integration will use GPT-5 starting with iOS 26 | The Verge
  • (00:15:39) OpenAI Adds New Features to Codex, Like IDE Extension and GitHub Code Reviews
• Applications & Business
  • (00:16:49) Lovable projects $1B in ARR within next 12 months | TechCrunch
  • (00:18:56) Decart hits $3.1 billion valuation on $100 million raise to power real-time interacti | Ctech
  • (00:20:19) Cohere raises $500M to beat back generative AI rivals | TechCrunch
  • (00:21:25) Pony AI, Nearing Full-Year Robotaxi Goal, Eyes European Markets - Bloomberg
  • (00:22:41) Co-founder of Elon Musk's xAI departs the company | TechCrunch
• Projects & Open Source
  • (00:24:39) Meta AI Just Released DINOv3: A State-of-the-Art Computer Vision Model Trained with Self-Supervised Learning, Generating High-Resolution Image Features - MarkTechPost
  • (00:27:02) GLM-4.5: Agentic, Reasoning, and Coding (ARC) Foundation Models
  • (00:29:49) China’s DeepSeek Releases V3.1, Boosting AI Model’s Capabilities - Bloomberg
  • (00:30:36) Open weight LLMs exhibit inconsistent performance across providers
  • (00:32:02) Microsoft Released VibeVoice-1.5B: An Open-Source Text-to-Speech Model that can Synthesize up to 90 Minutes of Speech with Four Distinct Speakers - MarkTechPost
• Research & Advancements
  • (00:33:43) Deep Think with Confidence
  • (00:36:30) Generative AI reshapes U.S. job market, Stanford study shows
• Policy & Safety
  • (00:41:42) Inside the US Government's Unpublished Report on AI Safety | WIRED
  • (00:44:10) U.S. Government to Take Cut of Nvidia and AMD A.I. Chip Sales to China - The New York Times
  • (00:45:13) Anthropic Settles High-Profile AI Copyright Lawsuit Brought by Book Authors
  • (00:46:56) AI companion apps on track to pull in $120M in 2025 | TechCrunch