Today in AI: AI becomes free travel planner | Deepseek seeks popularity | Microsoft AI helps doctors
Storyboard18 brings you the top AI news of the week.
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The world of Artificial Intelligence has only begun to affect human lives. In times like these, staying up-to-date with the AI world is of utmost importance. Storyboard18 brings you the top AI news of the day.
Former big tech engineers launch free AI travel planner
A group of former engineers from Google, Meta, and Waymo have launched a new AI-powered travel tool that offers users free, fully generated travel itineraries. The generative AI system can plan end-to-end trips—covering activities, accommodation options, and transport routes—though it currently stops short of handling direct bookings, according to a report by ZDNet. The startup behind the tool hasn’t yet disclosed its long-term monetization plans, but the service is free to use for now.
This innovation comes amid a larger shift in the tech world, as top talent moves from major tech giants to niche AI startups, and as the travel industry embraces generative AI to streamline planning and enhance user experiences. By eliminating the need for manual research and itinerary-building, tools like this could reshape how travellers plan their trips—making personalised travel planning faster, easier, and more accessible.
Bill Gates’s Daughter Shares How ChatGPT Helps Her Fashion-Tech Startup Go Viral: ‘AI Supercharges Me’
Phoebe Gates, the 22-year-old daughter of billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, has revealed she uses ChatGPT nearly every day to craft viral content for her fashion-tech startup, Phia. She shared her approach to harnessing AI on a recent episode of The Burnouts podcast, which she co-hosts with Phia co-founder Sophia Kianni.
Rather than relying on guesswork, Gates said their strategy is rooted in data analysis and systematically decoding what succeeds online. “I use AI almost every single day, and it supercharges me,” she explained. “We’re not just guessing what works, we are using tools to decode what already has.”
Kianni elaborated on their process, saying they don’t “start from scratch” but instead analyze top-performing videos on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. These videos are meticulously catalogued into spreadsheets, breaking down their success factors—such as lighting, pacing, narrative structure, and emotional tone.
By studying these elements in detail, Gates and Kianni aim to reverse-engineer the qualities of viral content, using AI like ChatGPT to brainstorm, structure, and refine ideas tailored to their audience. The approach underscores a broader trend of startups adopting advanced AI tools to amplify marketing and content creation efforts.
How Microsoft’s New AI Tool is tackling medicine’s tough diagnoses
Many AI models have earned praise for acing multiple-choice medical exams like the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). But such tests don’t truly reflect the complex, real-world challenges of diagnosing patients.
Microsoft says it believes it has made real progress on that front. The company has unveiled the Medical AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO)—a system designed to handle not just straightforward exam questions, but messy, nuanced patient cases that can stump even experienced doctors.
Crucially, Microsoft claims its system can often perform better than many human physicians—and do so at a lower cost. Diagnostic errors and delays remain a major problem worldwide. Billions of people struggle to get accurate answers, even as healthcare costs continue to rise.
“Across Microsoft’s AI consumer products like Bing and Copilot, we see over 50 million health-related sessions every day. From a first-time knee-pain query to a late-night search for an urgent-care clinic, search engines and AI companions are quickly becoming the new front line in healthcare,” the company said in a blog post.
Remember DeepSeek? Many companies embrace its AI models despite security concerns
After making waves—and triggering national security warnings—in January, Chinese AI company DeepSeek has mostly slipped from the headlines. But while controversy raged over its V3 chatbot and R1 reasoning models (which led to bans on government use in countries including the U.S.), the technology itself hasn’t stalled.
Instead, DeepSeek’s models continue to perform impressively. In various benchmarks, they now rank second or third behind only OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini—consistently outpacing competitors like Perplexity, xAI’s Grok, and Anthropic’s Claude.
According to The Wall Street Journal, there’s real interest among U.S. companies in exploring DeepSeek’s technology. Several CIOs told the publication they’re “thrilled” by the possibility of DeepSeek’s approach helping to drive down AI development costs in the U.S.
DeepSeek itself claims to have spent just $5.6 million training one of its models—a fraction of the $100 million to $1 billion range cited by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for comparable systems, the Journal reports.
Perplexity unveils $200-a-month ‘max’ plan promising limitless AI productivity
Perplexity has rolled out a new premium subscription tier called Perplexity Max, priced at $200 per month or $2,000 per year.
The new plan builds on the existing $20-a-month (or $200-a-year) Perplexity Pro tier, adding significant upgrades. Subscribers get unlimited access to advanced AI models in Perplexity Research and Labs, unlimited queries in the Perplexity Labs productivity suite, early access to new features and products, and priority customer support, according to a company help center page.
Perplexity Max is currently available on the web app and iOS, with plans to roll it out to Android and desktop apps soon.
In a blog post published Wednesday, the company also announced that an Enterprise version of Max will be launched “in the near future. Perplexity Max is our most advanced subscription tier yet, built for those who demand limitless AI productivity and immediate access to the newest products and features from Perplexity,” the company wrote in its announcement.
