Microsoft has begun expanding the reach of its Copilot feature set, bringing its AI capabilities to Office apps for anyone currently subscribed to Microsoft 365 Personal or Family. For customers in the US and Europe, those features are only available with an extremely pricey Copilot Pro subscription. For Personal and Family subscribers, the upgrade costs an extra 20 monthly, which is more than double the cost of the basic Microsoft 365 subscription. But that's all about to change. Also: Microsoft Copilot vs. Copilot Pro: Is the subscription fee worth it?

Following the success of OpenAI's GPT series of large language models, an increasing number of institutions are proposing "foundation" models for artificial intelligence that, like GPT, are "pre-trained" to have very broad capabilities in a domain of knowledge. We saw this last week with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang proposing a "world foundation model" for autonomous vehicles and robots. On Tuesday, at the annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, AI computer startup Cerebras Systems and medical research powerhouse Mayo Clinic presented findings of what they're calling a foundation model for genomics that can tease out the genetic root of inherited conditions. The goal is to "build the ChatGPT of healthcare," according to Cerebras and Mayo Clinic. The first breakthrough of the year-long collaboration is the potential capability to predict drug response from patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

SAVE 59.94: Prime members can grab a black pair of Echo Buds for 49.99 and get 6 months of free access to Amazon Music Unlimited, which saves you a total of 59.94. Life is not cheap these days, which means when we see the word "free," we're all ears. Amazon is currently offering us a deal that's quite impressive if you're interested in a new pair of earbuds (and streaming music for free). As of Jan. 15, a black pair of Echo Buds costs 49.99 and comes with 6 months of free access to Amazon Music Unlimited. Typically, the service costs 9.99 per month, which means you'll save a total of 54.94.

Until now, ChatGPT has been a useful assistant, hoping to help at the command of a quick prompt. But what if ChatGPT could carry out tasks for you without even being asked? On Tuesday, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Tasks, a feature that lets users prompt the chatbot once to carry out recurring tasks in the future. For example, in the demo, a user asks ChatGPT to send them a work out reminder every morning along with a motivational speech. Today we're rolling out a beta version of tasks--a new way to ask ChatGPT to do things for you at a future time.

Axios is expanding its local newsletter presence from 30 to 34 cities. In its continued pretense of benefiting newsrooms, OpenAI has partnered with Axios in a three-year deal to cover Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Kansas City, Missouri; Boulder, Colorado; and Huntsville, Alabama. What does OpenAI get in exchange for its funding? Oh, just the ability to use Axios content to answer users' questions. Like the close to 20 newsrooms that OpenAI has already partnered with, Axios seems to have forgotten that the scorpion did end up stinging the frog.

SAVE 35: As of Jan. 15, the Amazon Echo is on sale for 64.99 at Amazon. This is 35% off its list price of 99.99. If you're looking to add more smart devices into your home, why not start with an Amazon Echo? This round little device can serve as a central hub for select smart devices and as a high-quality speaker to play all of your favorite tunes, audiobooks, or podcasts. What's even better is you can pick it up right now at a discounted price on Amazon for a limited time. The Amazon Echo in twilight blue is down to 64.99 (unfortunately, the other colors of the Amazon Echo are not discounted at the moment).

What does it mean for a writer, such as a novelist, to have a unique "voice"? And does artificial intelligence (AI) help or hurt that voice? Microsoft researchers set out to answer that question with a small study using 19 fiction writers, 30 readers, and short passages written with the help of OpenAI's GPT-4. The research takes its title from a comment by one of the writers -- "it was 80% me, 20% AI." What prompted the study are "concerns that vast transformations of the writer economy are likely underway" as a result of generative AI, writes lead author Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang of the University of Southern California, who collaborated with five scholars from Microsoft Research Montréal.

The era of ChatGPT doing stuff for you has arrived. On Tuesday, OpenAI announced "tasks," a ChatGPT feature that performs, well, tasks, for users. Tasks, rolling out as a beta feature for ChatGPT Plus, Teams, and Pro users over the next few days, enables users to ask ChatGPT "to do things for you at a future time" said the announcement. "From a weekly news briefing, daily weather updates, or even a reminder when concert tickets go on sale," think of tasks as scheduled ChatGPT prompt. Tasks feels like a familiar combination of Google Alerts, your personal calendar, and ChatGPT's existing capabilities.

ChatGPT has had support for voice conversations since the end of 2023, but if you're new to OpenAI's chatbot, figuring out how to converse with it can be tricky since there are a couple of ways to go about it. In this guide, I'll explain the main differences between ChatGPT's two voice modes and how to use both of them. As of the writing of this article, OpenAI offers two different ways of interacting with ChatGPT using your voice: "Standard" and "Advanced." The former is available to all users, with usage counting against one's message limit. "Advanced," meanwhile, has more granular restrictions.

I am a user of tools. I work a great many hours each week. Anytime I find a tool that helps me meet my deadlines, do something I otherwise couldn't do, or get a little more sleep or personal time, I add it to my kit bag, even if that means spending some money. For example, I've invested in an entire army of camera robots because they help me turn out better and more interesting videos. When Apple Intelligence was announced, and its big features were tied to the iPhone 16 series, I decided it was time to upgrade my four-generation old iPhone 12 Pro Max. I bought my iPhone 16 Pro Max specifically for the productivity benefits I expected to get from Apple Intelligence.