Okay, imagine this for a second. 96%. That's
the figure for how much AI information, you know,
when it cites its sources, comes straight from
corporate blogs, PR, or journalism. Wow. Not
ads, not random corners of the web, but really
specific sort of curated content. Kind of makes
you rethink where KI gets its smarts, doesn't
it? And maybe even how you'd create your own
content. It really does put those AI report cards
in a different perspective. It's like finding
out your super smart friend basically just reads
very specific magazines and company websites.
He wouldn't guess AI had such particular tastes.
Welcome, listener, to this deep dive. We're digging
into the latest in AI, pulling directly from
a recent newsletter that was just packed with
data. Our mission today is pretty simple. Unpack
it all, find those surprising bits, and basically
give you a shortcut to getting up to speed. That's
the plan. We're going to pull back the curtain
on which AI models are actually, you know, winning
right now. We'll look at practical new features
you can use. And yeah, we'll definitely get into
that fascinating study on where these digital
brains really get their info from. Prepare for
a few aha moments, I think. So today, first up,
we'll look at the actual performance data. Which
models are winning specific races like coding
or math or image generation? It's often not quite
what the headlines shout about. Then we'll hit
some highlights from today in AI, quick hits
on new features, some policy stuff that's making
waves, and even where the big money is moving
in the AI world. And finally, we'll really explore
that new study on AI sourcing. Seriously, it
might just shift how you think about putting
content out there online. Okay, let's dive into
this first part. For a while, the AI scene felt
a bit like, well, a popularity contest maybe.
But now we're getting solid data, actual benchmarks
showing who's best at what. Exactly. And it's
not just changing fast. It's getting super specialized.
You've got Croc 4 jumping onto the LM Arena leaderboard,
making noise, especially with math and reasoning.
But then, almost under the radar, Gemini 2 .5
Pro is just sweeping up wins in category after
category, kind of like the quiet horse that keeps
winning. And if we look at specific tasks, yeah,
the winners get really clear. For general tech
stuff, Gemini 2 .5 Pro is basically top dog right
now on that leaderboard. Yeah. ChatGPT 4 .0 and
its earlier version, 0 .3. they're tied for a
solid second place. Grok 4, which has had a lot
of buzz, is actually tied for third with GPT
4 .5. So it's good, definitely, but not totally
dominating text tasks. And what's fascinating,
like you said, is that specialization. Take coding
there. It's a three -way tie right at the top.
You've got Gemini 2 .5 Pro, DeepSeek R1, and
Clawed Opus 4, all tied, and Grok 4. For coding,
it's way down in 14th place. That's a huge difference
from its overall intelligence score. It really
hammers home the point. Just being smart overall
doesn't mean an AI is great at everything. That's
a really key point. But then Grok 4 flips the
script for math. It's the undisputed champ there.
Gemini and Clawed are right behind it, but Grok
takes the crown. So it's clearly tuned for numbers.
For complex reasoning, Gemini 2 .5 Pro and ChatGPT
4 are leading, and Grok 4 is still strong in
third place there. And when you look at, you
know, understanding images, Gemini 2 .5 Pro leads
again. Then you've got GPT 4 .5, O3, and 4 .0
all tied for second. Okay. And for search tasks,
Gemini 2 .5 Pro actually ties with Perplexity
Sonar Reasoning Pro. It really shows Google's
strength in those visual and search -heavy areas,
which, I mean, makes sense, right? That's their
backyard. Yeah, absolutely. Now, here's where
it gets really interesting for me. Image generation
and editing. OpenAI has this new model, GPT -Image
1, and it's just completely dominating. It's
carved out its own space there doing some incredible
things. Oh, I mean, just imagine trying to scale
up running a billion queries. You'd want these
specialized models, wouldn't you? Each one just
nailing its specific job. It means picking the
right tool isn't just about hype anymore. It's
a real strategic choice. Yeah. This really shows
AI intelligence isn't one score. It's more like
a mosaic, you know, lots of different strength.
And we have to talk about the price tag, right?
That's the reality check. Grok 4 might score
high on intelligence, but it's also $6 per million
tokens. And remember, tokens are kind of like
the words or word parts the AI processes. That's
a premium. Right. If you need the absolute smartest
and budget isn't the main issue, Grok 4 is up
there. But let's say you want like... 95 % of
that performance for maybe half the cost. Gemini
2 .5 Pro to 4 Mini look really solid. It boils
down to cost efficiency. And if you want the
smartest AI for the lowest cost, DeepSeek R1
actually takes that spot. So for you listening,
the takeaway here is pretty clear. Choosing an
AI model now is less about the overall buzz and
way more about matching it to your specific task
and, well, your wallet. OK, let's shift gears
a bit. Let's get into some of the faster moving
developments, new features, policy stuff, business
news. This is our Today in AI segment. First
off, have you seen this Warren Buffett mega prompt
floating around? I think I saw something about
that. Yeah. Yeah. It claims it can turn chat
GPT into like an expert market analyst. Sounds
amazing, right? But got to remember, even with
the world's best prompt. GPT doesn't have a CFA.
It's not a chartered financial analyst. Right.
It's a tool maybe for analysis, but it's definitely
not a replacement for actual human financial
expertise. You still need your own judgment.
Absolutely. That's such a critical point, especially
with money advice. AI can help, but it doesn't
replace expertise or critical thinking. Now,
something maybe more practical day to day. Chat
GPTs. Ghost mode. Oh yeah, the privacy feature.
Exactly. If you just want a quick chat, don't
want your info saved or used for training, this
is great. It's free, it's private, and it forgets
everything the second you're done. Like a digital
etcha sketch for conversations. And speaking
of making it more personal, ChatGPT also got
moods. You can actually tell it how to act, how
to talk, think, its whole vibe. Imagine setting
it to cynic if you need someone to poke holes
in your ideas late at night. Or maybe Sage if
you're looking for something more profound. It
makes the AI feel, I don't know, more adaptable.
And speaking of adaptable or maybe just fast,
Google dropped Gemini 2 .5 flashlight. They're
calling it their fastest 2 .5 model yet. Yeah.
And the cost just... Ten cents per million input
tokens. Wow, that's cheap. Yeah, really cheap.
So it's aimed at high volume stuff where you
need speed and low latency above all else. OK,
now shifting to policy, there was a pretty big
move in the U .S. recently. Our source material
says that Trump signed an order aiming to ban
woke AI models from federal contracts. The order
says models need to be truth seeking and ideologically
neutral. And the source specifically notes that
XAI might benefit most from this. Just relaying
what the source reported here, obviously not
taking a stand. Understood. And on the finance
side of AI, a big funding round for Gupshup.
They just raised $60 million, mostly equity.
They're looking to grow in India, Latin America,
places like that. They handle a ton of messages,
right? Yeah, over 120 billion messages a year
for like 50 ,000 businesses. And there's even
chatter about a potential IPO in the next year
and a half, two years. So big money is definitely
flowing. Ultimately, what stands out here is
AI getting more personal, more adaptable, but
also really specialized for certain needs and
business cases. Right. Let's keep the pace up.
Let's do a quick run through of some interesting
new AI tools and other industry buzz that's changing
the game. Okay. Yeah. seeing this explosion of
new AI tools, right? Designed for very specific
jobs, making things easier like Bonsai. It claims
it can turn any document into an engaging video
course in just 15 minutes. 15 minutes, seriously?
That's the claim. Think about that for training
or education or just explaining something complicated
fast. Yeah, that's potentially huge. And then
there's Product Fit. This one creates web content,
ad stuff, and even gives you a dashboard showing
user interest in real time. It's all about figuring
out your audience and reaching them better, taking
out some of the guesswork. And for designers,
there's AI Image Maker. It's a free online tool
for design and image processing. Sounds pretty
powerful. And another one, Turbo Style, lets
you tweak styles, swap visuals, try out design
ideas for websites. These tools really feel like
they're spreading creative power around. Making
sophisticated stuff more accessible, yeah. Okay,
some quick industry hits. VO3. It's apparently
making pro -level commercial concepts now, and
the descriptions say they're shockingly realistic.
Wow. The quality leap in video generation is
getting kind of scary, making it harder to tell
AI from reality. No kidding. And Anthropic, you
know, the company behind Claude, they've quietly
hit. Over $4 billion in annual recurring revenue.
$4 billion. Quietly. Yeah. Apparently leading
the B2B AI space, that's a massive number, shows
how much businesses want these AI solutions.
Definitely. Also, this is interesting. Google's
AI is apparently creating zero -click webs. Basically,
you get the answer right in the search results.
No need to click a link. Right. I've seen that
more and more. The source we read suggested this
could mean maybe 10 % of users just stopped browsing
further because they got their answer right there.
That's a huge shift for content creators who
rely on those clicks. It's like Google's becoming
the destination, not just the map. That has enormous
implications. And speaking of Google, Google
Photos is adding AI features too, letting you
remix photos, turn pics into videos. Meanwhile,
the talent shuffle continues. Microsoft apparently
hired around two dozen people from Google's DeepMind
AI lab. A talent war is definitely still hot.
Yeah. You know, I still wrestle with prompt drift
myself sometimes, where the AI just kind of forgets
what you asked it initially after a long chat.
Trying to keep up with all these new tools and
how they keep changing. It's a lot. It'll tell
me about it. But the takeaway from all this rapid
change is clear, isn't it? The AI landscape is
just incredibly dynamic. There are new tools
popping up for pretty much every niche you can
think of. Sponsor. Okay, let's get to our final
segment. And this one I think is really fascinating,
especially if you create content online or even
if you just care about where AI gets its information
from. We're going to dive deep into how these
models actually source what they tell you. Yeah,
this is so crucial. It helps us peek under the
hood, understand the knowledge base these powerful
tools are built on. Muckrak published this huge
study analyzed over a million citations. From
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. This isn't guesswork,
it's actual data on what AI reads. And the big
headline finding from the study is, well, it's
pretty striking. 96 % of the citations in AI
Answers come from content that started as corporate
communications, PR, or journalism. 96 %? Almost
everything cited comes from what we used to call
earned media, or maybe company -owned blogs and
stuff. Not from ads. Wow. Just think about that.
If you produce any kind of information online,
that directly impacts your strategy. The study
even broke down citations by the type of task
the user was doing, which gives even more insight.
Like, if people were asking for advice, 48 %
of citations were from corporate blogs. Almost
half. And if you ask for step -by -step instructions,
47 % blogs, 23 % Wikipedia. If you need help
with a creative task, 43 % blogs, 26 % journalism.
It really underscores the power of good old -fashioned
blog content. as an AI knowledge source? Yeah,
it's surprisingly dominant. When it came to comparing
things, 35 % of citations were from aggregators
like Wikipedia, 33 % from blogs. Factual lookups,
similar split, 33 % aggregators, 33 % blogs.
But when it came to current events, journalism
was king. 49 % of citations from big news sources,
Reuters, AP, Financial Times. So the quick summary,
the TLDR. It's pretty clear, right? Blogs rule
for casual questions and how -tos. News sources
dominate for what's happening right now. It paints
a really specific picture of how AI consumes
and cites information. And what's also really
interesting is that the models have different
habits. ChatGPT, the study found, cited journalism
the most, lots of mainstream news. Claude, on
the other hand, tended to lean more on academic
papers, government sources, technical documents.
Huh. So they have different appetites. Yeah,
different preferred feeding grounds, you could
say. for content creators here feels pretty significant.
The old SEO tricks? Probably not enough anymore.
The study even mentioned that putting podcasts
on YouTube might give you better odds of being
cited by AI. Interesting. So format matters too.
Yeah, it's not just keywords. It's about how
accessible and structured and authoritative your
content seems to these models. The biggest lesson
here, I think, for anyone creating content today
is that the format and the original source really
matter for whether AI will even find it, let
alone cite it. Okay, so let's try and tie this
all together. What does it all mean? We've seen
today that AI intelligence isn't really one single
score, is it? It's much more like a mosaic of
different strengths, specialized skills, and
each often has its own price. You really have
to think about your specific needs and budget.
And we're getting more ways to interact with
AI, too. More nuance, from giving it a mood to
trying out these incredibly powerful new tools
for pro -level video or images. The speed of
it all is just blistering. Yeah. And maybe the
most fundamental thing we talked about is getting
a clearer picture of where AI's knowledge actually
comes from. It's not some kind of magic, right?
It's built on this huge ocean of human information,
but predominantly, it seems, from corporate blogs
and established journalism. That's a really big
realization about our digital knowledge system.
This whole deep dive really shows that, yeah,
the tech is powerful, but Understanding the details,
the strengths, the weaknesses, even the learning
habits, that's the key to actually using it well.
It definitely raises a big question, doesn't
it? Yeah. If AI is learning so much from current
content, especially blogs and news, what does
that mean for how information lasts over time
and how trustworthy it is in this digital age
we're building? Yeah, something to think about
next time you get an AI answer. Where did that
really come from and what does that imply about
its context, maybe even its accuracy? We really
hope this deep... dives give you some fresh perspective,
maybe some useful insights you can act on. You've
been listening to The Deep Dive. Thanks so much
for joining us. We'll be back soon with another
one. Out to your music.