Discover the AI Tools

Baidu's Shen Dou says mandating AI use doesn't work. Instead, the company gives each employee a monthly 1,000 yuan allowance to freely try out mainstream large models, no strings attached. The idea is to let workers discover AI's value on their own. Meanwhile, Baidu's AI revenue hit a record 52% of total revenue in Q1 2026, and founder Robin Li proposes a new metric for the AI era: Daily Active Agents (DAA).

StepZen has unveiled the STEPX Neo, touted as the world's first smartphone built from the ground up for large language models. The prototype, shown at WAIC 2026, features an AI agent named Amoo that can handle tasks like booking hotels or finding concert tickets. It's a big step from simple voice assistants to true AI companions.

At the 2026 World AI Conference, WeRide unveiled WIIT, a physical AI foundation model that breaks down real-world scenes into tiny 'physical facts.' This approach helps AI grasp spatial relationships and dynamic changes, moving beyond simple data processing toward true environmental understanding for autonomous driving and robotics.

Autonomous driving company WeRide just unveiled WITT, a physical AI model that breaks down reality into tiny 'fact units.' Think of it as teaching AI to understand the world the way we do—by spotting what really matters in a scene, whether it's a pedestrian, a traffic light, or a car. This could make self-driving cars smarter and safer.

影视飓风推出的49元AI实战课，上线首日狂卖10万份，日销售额超490万元。课程涵盖AI图像生成、视频制作等，但用户评价两极分化。这已是影视飓风第二次在低价知识付费领域大获成功，此前其视频剪辑课也曾单日销量破10万。

Tongyi Lab's Wan-Streamer v0.2 slashes AI response delay to 550 milliseconds, enabling real-time, natural conversations with a full-body digital human. This end-to-end multimodal model integrates listening, seeing, speaking, and performing in a single Transformer, making AI interactions feel truly human. From language practice to psychological counseling, its applications are vast.

At the 2026 World AI Conference, Wang He, founder of Galaxy General Robotics, predicted that embodied intelligence will hit a breakthrough before 2028, matching ChatGPT's conversational prowess. He envisions robots handling 70-80% of untrained tasks, sparking excitement and debate about the future of AI.

Chongqing has officially launched 'Yu Xiaojian', an AI medical assistant that covers all 233 secondary and above public hospitals in the city. Developed by the local health commission, big data bureau, and Ant Group, the tool offers smart triage, cloud companionship, real-time report queries, and AI explanations. After piloting in 32 hospitals since October 2025, it has served over 2 million users, marking a big step toward AI-powered healthcare.

At WAIC 2026, DeWu App and Qianjue Robot unveiled the world's first AI authentication robot. It uses an AI brain trained on billions of inspection samples to spot fake products with over 99.9999% accuracy. The robot can scan a pair of sneakers and generate a report in about 5 seconds, covering categories like shoes, bags, watches, and cosmetics. This marks a big step toward smarter, faster product authentication.

NVIDIA has released the Nemotron-3-Embed series, with the 8B version topping the RTEB retrieval benchmark. The series includes three open-source models optimized for RAG, code retrieval, and agent memory, supporting 34 languages and 32K token contexts. The 1B NVFP4 variant retains 99.5% precision while doubling throughput on Blackwell architecture.

Google has officially renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook, integrating it into the Gemini brand while adding cloud computing capabilities. Users can now write and run code directly within the notebook, enabling complex data analysis without leaving the app. The update rolls out first to AI Ultra and enterprise users, with broader availability soon.

Google Vids just got a major update: upload a selfie and a voice recording, and it creates a digital avatar that looks and sounds like you. The new Gemini Omni model powers conversational video editing, letting you tweak backgrounds, lighting, and effects step by step without starting over. This turns Vids into a serious competitor to AI video startups like HeyGen and Synthesia.

AI旅行平台Fora完成6000万美元D轮融资，估值达到10亿美元，正式跻身独角兽行列。本轮由Forerunner和Tactile Ventures领投，Insight Partners和Thrive Capital等参投，累计融资达1.385亿美元。Fora计划利用新资金扩大AI助手Via的应用，帮助旅行顾问处理行政事务，提升效率。

DoorDash has launched a limited beta of dd-cli, an AI command-line tool that lets developers order food directly through an AI assistant. Currently available to macOS developers in the US and Canada via waitlist, the tool represents a step toward agentic commerce, where AI agents handle tasks like ordering, grocery shopping, and finding deals without opening an app.

1Password与AI助手Claude达成合作，推出了一项看似矛盾却巧妙的功能：让AI帮你填写密码并执行任务，但真正的密码被锁在保险箱里，AI根本接触不到。当Claude想登录网站时，1Password会明确告知要使用哪个凭证并征求你的同意，授权仅在当前任务有效，完成后立即撤销。目前该集成仅支持Mac平台，需要同时安装1Password桌面版和浏览器扩展，以及Claude桌面版和Chrome扩展。

A hacker leaked Suno's internal source code, revealing how the AI music platform scraped millions of songs from YouTube, Deezer, and Genius to train its models. The breach, which occurred in late 2025, also exposed user data including emails and partial credit card info. This could intensify copyright lawsuits from major record labels.

Several Chinese banks have launched AI-themed credit and debit cards that offer large model tokens and AI membership benefits instead of traditional points. The move targets tech-savvy users and developers, but experts question whether ordinary consumers will find the perks appealing. The cards, developed with UnionPay and AI firms like Kimi and Alibaba Cloud, reflect a growing trend of integrating AI into financial products.

xAI's Grok just launched an automation feature that lets you set up tasks to run on a schedule, trigger on incoming emails, or even reply on your behalf. It's like having a personal assistant that never sleeps—create a task in plain English, choose when it runs, and let Grok handle the rest. Available now on grok.com and the Grok app.

Google is testing a new feature for Gemini that lets users tweak the AI's voice with four sliders: speed, energy, formality, and friendliness. Discovered in a beta version of the Google app, this update aims to make interactions more natural and personalized, moving beyond preset voice options. It's a step toward more human-like AI conversations.

Zhipu AI's annual recurring revenue (ARR) has reportedly reached $1 billion as of July 2026, growing 15-fold in just five months. The company's early focus on AI coding capabilities, with rapid model iterations and competitive pricing, has driven this explosive growth. This milestone highlights the booming commercialization of generative AI, especially in coding and video generation, while intensifying competition among domestic and overseas players.