Paula Parisi

In its first week of public beta, Anthropic's “Computer Use” feature is gaining immediate traction, helping people do research and complete coding tasks. Claude works autonomously in Computer Use mode, suggesting broad implications for future productivity and workforce goals. Coming on the heels of OpenAI's Swarm framework, these early forays into independent AI assistants seem to indicate that implementing such systems will be an area of focus for businesses in 2025. Claude can “see” what's onscreen and use its “judgment” to adapt to different tasks, segueing across workflows and software.

Netflix wants to make viewing a more memorable and interactive experience with Moments, a new mobile feature that makes it easy to save, relive and share favorite scenes from movies and series. Launching globally on iOS and coming soon to Android, Moments not only allows you to revisit pivotal plot points, but also lets you restart the film or episode right from that bookmark. Sharing Moments on Instagram, Facebook and other social platforms is reportedly just as easy. You can share a Moment as you create it or, from the My Netflix tab, you can select a scene and tap to share it across all of your platforms.

Consumers continue to let their affinity for FAST and AVOD television services be known. In the latest example, Samsung TV Plus has already attracted 88 million monthly active users worldwide. With growth springing largely from viewers in the 18-49 demographic, the service has become the most-used U.S. app on Samsung TVs. The metrics put it on par with other top competitors in the free ad-supported TV space: Roku, Tubi and Pluto TV. As it becomes a global content force, Samsung TV Plus continues to expand its global presence with recent launches in Singapore and the Philippines, with Thailand soon to come.

Apple has revealed the new iMac, which features an M4 chip and Apple Intelligence in an ultra-thin case. Refreshed versions of all three MacBook Pros are also powered by M4 Pro and M4 Max chips. With the M4, the new iMac performs “up to 1.7x faster for daily productivity, and up to 2.1x faster for demanding workflows like photo editing and gaming, compared to iMac with M1.1,” Apple says, adding that the neural engine in the M4 makes “iMac the world's best all-in-one for AI,” with bespoke Apple Intelligence. Apple released iOS 18.1, which also includes Apple Intelligence features, among them writing and summary tools and a “more natural and conversational Siri.”

Microsoft is previewing GitHub Copilot for Azure in an ambitious expansion of its AI app development toolkit that some say could fundamentally change how developers build software for the AI era. The new premise is that switching from one software to another, as developers often do, should be seamless, not disruptive — sort of a real-time language translation and integration system for code. To fend off the move by Microsoft, AWS announced it is making its Q Developer AI code assistant available as an inline chat add-on accessible from IDEs like JetBrains and Microsoft's own Visual Studio.

Yahoo News has signed up to use San Jose-based cybersecurity company McAfee's deepfake image detection technology. The scalable McAfee system can “quickly identify images that may have been produced or modified using AI, including deepfake images,” flagging them for the Yahoo News editorial standards team for human review. The standards team then “determines whether the flagged images meet the platform's editorial guidelines.” The partnership provides news aggregator Yahoo with an extra layer of protection as it deals with a large network of global publishers in addition to policing its original content.

The first big play from Disney following February's $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games is “ESPN Football Island,” available now as part of the “Fortnite” social gaming platform. The new sports-themed experience is designed to get football in front of younger fans. Games include navigating an obstacle course and “high-intensity box fights,” with the main action centering on “Touchdown Rush,” where players “team up with friends and enter the stadium to navigate rocky terrain, a lava moat, and the other team,” according to ESPN. The experience includes participation from ESPN announcers and will soon feature regular updates highlighting the current season.

Alphabet's revenue increased by 15 percent during the latest quarter, topping $88.3 billion. Powered by advertising and cloud services, profits surged 34 percent to $26.3 billion, exceeding Wall Street expectations of $22.9 billion. The company experienced continued growth in the online marketplace with popular consumer services such as Google Search and YouTube while also expanding in B2B with cloud offerings. All this as the government explores dismantling its business while competitors such as TikTok and Amazon come after its market share. Advertising growth slowed in Q3, yet still notched a healthy year-over-year increase of 10.4 percent.

Meta Platforms revenue was up 19 percent to $40.6 billion in Q3 compared to the same period one year earlier. Profit rose to $15.7 billion — a 35 percent increase from 2023. The company believes that its years of investments in adtech, artificial intelligence and the metaverse are starting to pay off. In Q3, Meta reported $23.2 billion in expenses and capital expenditures of $9.2 billion. And the company isn't taking its foot off the accelerator, having increased its annual spending forecast by $1 billion to a minimum of $38 billion. Additionally, Meta's advertising revenue for Q3 was just a tick under its high-end spend projection of $40 billion.

Propelled by increasing demand for artificial intelligence services, Microsoft cloud solutions, which includes the Azure platform, was the star of the quarter, bringing in $38.9 billion for 22 percent growth year-over-year. Revenue was $65.6 billion, up 16 percent, while profit increased by 11 percent, to $24.7 billion. While Microsoft financials don't break out AI — now embedded across numerous products — Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella says AI “is on track to surpass an annual revenue run rate of $10 billion” by December 31, “making it the fastest business in our history to reach this milestone.”