In this week’s edition, we’ve got the next frontier in AI shopping, a digital ‘second brain’ that can organize your notes, a surgical robot with remarkable precision, and AI-inspired art to spark your creativity.

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We’re off next week for the Thanksgiving holiday. Look for our next edition on Thursday, Dec. 5th.  Now, let’s get started!

AI Online Retail

Retailers are preparing for a blowout Black Friday next week and AI companies like Perplexity are gearing up to help drive sales.

This week, Arvind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI, unveiled the company’s new shopping assistant, spotlighting how AI is evolving from answering questions to enabling seamless transactions.

Shop Like a Pro turns Perplexity into a one-stop shop, letting users research, compare, and purchase products directly in-app. Instead of shopping in the Amazon ecosystem or hopping from one retailer site to another, the tool is designed to simplify holiday shopping and beyond. For now, only Perplexity Pro subscribers can access this new feature, which offers free shipping on all purchases.

Key features:

• Smart search: Upload a photo of an item and Perplexity will find it or similar products. Or ask complex questions like, “What’s the best budget laptop under $500?”

• All-in-one buying: Compare products, read reviews from multiple sources, and check out—all within the app.

• Merchant partnerships: A new merchant program invites retailers to collaborate on Perplexity’s next-gen shopping system. Shopify integration via ShopPay is already live.

When asked about potential collaboration with Amazon - especially given Jeff Bezos’s stake in Perplexity (one of their major backers) - Srinivas was tight-lipped. Still, he expressed openness to partnering with various companies. You can watch his interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin here.

Srinivas sees the ability to facilitate transactions as the next frontier for AI, with plans to expand into travel and finance.

AI Productivity

Imagine having a second brain that not only remembers everything but organizes and quizzes you on it, too. That's exactly what the AI Notebook app delivers, and college students are taking notice - over 100,000 of them have already made this clever app their go-to learning companion.

Whether you're recording lectures, saving articles, snapping photos, or bookmarking YouTube videos, AI Notebook becomes your digital memory bank. But here's where it gets interesting: the AI doesn't just store your content - it thoughtfully organizes it, creates summaries, and automatically categorizes everything for easy retrieval.

With AI Notebook, you can get:

• Instant summaries of recorded lectures and meetings

• Automatic organization of photos, links, and notes

• Custom templates for different types of content

• AI-generated flashcards and quizzes

What sets AI Notebook apart is its conversational ability. Ask your notebook questions like "What were the key points from last week's economics lecture?" or "Summarize all my notes about climate change" — and watch as it pulls together relevant information from across your saved content.

We recently caught up with AI Notebook creator, Sandy Kong, at SF TechWeek. "Many students have told me that this app is a game changer for them," she shared with our team member Justin. Looking at the rapidly growing user base, it's clear she's onto something.

AI Notebook offers a free tier for testing. For advanced features, plans start at $20/month or $120/year.

AI Medical Breakthrough

One of our faithful newsletter readers sent us this news story (thanks, David!) We were utterly floored, and it had us rethinking the future of surgery. Researchers at Johns Hopkins and Stanford have developed a robot that can learn surgical skills simply by watching videos of experienced surgeons—a groundbreaking leap toward fully autonomous robotic surgery.

Traditional robotic surgery relies on painstakingly programmed instructions for every movement. This new approach, powered by “imitation learning,” allows robots to observe and replicate surgical techniques, dramatically reducing training time and potential errors.

How it works: Researchers used the da Vinci Surgical System, a popular yet imperfect robotic tool with nearly 7,000 units operating worldwide. Its archive of videos—captured from wrist cameras during procedures—provided the training material. Machine learning inspired by ChatGPT translates robotic movements into precise actions. Unlike text-based AI, this model processes kinematics, the language of motion.

The robot mastered critical tasks like manipulating needles, lifting tissue, and suturing. Notably, it can adapt mid-operation, such as retrieving a dropped needle, without external guidance. You can watch a demonstration here.

This breakthrough goes beyond efficiency. Autonomous surgical robots could reduce medical errors with greater precision, ensure consistent outcomes across procedures, and expand access to skilled care in underserved regions. These advancements might one day address the global shortage of surgeons while improving patient outcomes.

AI's Thanksgiving Time Warp

AI-created artwork is igniting heated debate across the art world. Have you heard about the AI robot whose painting of Alan Turing sold for over $1M?

All that aside, we’re having fun turning text prompts into AI-generated art. Deep Dream Generator is an AI-powered tool that can transform your imagination into your own creative expression. 

Check out our humorous depictions of Thanksgiving Day 1950 vs. the year 2100. They were both a bit ‘hit-and-miss’ -- we had to try several times to get the image we liked best.

Our 1950 prompt: Colorized version of a 1950s Thanksgiving Day scene with a well-dressed father and mother, two children, and grandparents gathered around the Thanksgiving table featuring a roasted turkey, with various side dishes including mashed potatoes, cranberries, and corn. (Somehow, we ended up with both a larger and a smaller turkey on the table. Or is that a chicken on the side?)

Our Thanksgiving of the future prompt: Thanksgiving Day in the year 2100. A Thanksgiving intergalactic celebration with a family --mother, father, and two children in futuristic, colorful outfits sitting with an alien around the Thanksgiving table. They are served turkey and side dishes for the holiday meal. (Can you spot the smaller turkey again!?)

Here’s the thing about AI art: it’s a lot like your neighbor’s attempts at deep-frying a turkey—ambitious, occasionally brilliant, but often hilariously unpredictable. It might not be perfect, but it’s endlessly entertaining.

AI in the News (in case you missed it)

• Google DeepMind open-sources AlphaFold 3, ushering in a new era for drug discovery and molecular biology. Read here.

• This AI-generated grandma thwarts scammers with long stories about her cat. Read here.

• People prefer AI-generated poems to Shakespeare and Dickinson. Read here.

• Coca-Cola causes controversy with AI-made ad. Watch here.

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Here.Now.AI Editorial team: Lori, Justin, and Lisa