NVIDIA's new brain for robots

PLUS: Microsoft's new voice model, AI music goes mainstream, and Perplexity's revenue sharing

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Gen AI Art
August 27, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

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NVIDIA just unveiled its new Jetson Thor computer, a chip designed to serve as the central brain for the next wave of advanced robotics. It delivers a massive leap in on-device AI processing power, aiming to enable more complex, real-world interactions for machines.

This powerful new chip packs server-level performance into a form factor small enough for a robot's body. By enabling robots to make complex decisions locally, is this the foundational technology needed to finally move intelligent machines out of controlled factories and safely into our daily lives?

Today in AI:

  • NVIDIA's new Jetson Thor for advanced robotics

  • Perplexity launches publisher revenue sharing

  • Microsoft releases open source voice model

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What’s new? NVIDIA has launched its new Jetson Thor, a powerful computer designed to act as the brain for the next generation of robots. The chip provides a massive 7.5x leap in AI processing power to enable complex, real-world interactions.

What matters?

  • This new computer delivers 2,070 teraflops of processing power, packing formerly server-level performance into a form factor that fits inside a robot's body.

  • It enables robots to fuse data from multiple sensors like cameras and radar to make split-second decisions locally, without relying on the cloud.

  • Leading companies like Agility Robotics and Boston Dynamics are already integrating Thor into their humanoid robots to handle dynamic warehouse and real-world tasks.

Why it matters?

This level of on-device processing is critical for moving robots out of predictable factories and into complex, human-centric environments. It marks a foundational step toward creating machines that can operate safely and intelligently alongside people.

What’s new? Perplexity is attempting to mend fences with media outlets by launching a revenue-sharing initiative that allocates $42.5M to publishers whose content informs its AI search results.

What matters?

  • To participate, media outlets will receive 80% of the proceeds from a new $5 monthly Comet Plus subscription.

  • Publishers earn revenue whenever their articles generate traffic via Perplexity, are used in search answers, or are included in tasks completed by the AI assistant.

  • The move comes amid pressure from active copyright lawsuits, with The CEO said the goal is to create the “equivalent of Apple News+ for AIs.”

Why it matters?

This program is one of the first major attempts to establish an economic model where AI agents compensate creators for content consumption. The key question is whether splitting revenue from a $5 subscription will provide meaningful income for publishers or just be a symbolic gesture.

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What’s new? Microsoft has released VibeVoice, a new open-source text-to-speech model that can generate up to 90 minutes of realistic, multi-speaker audio, making high-quality synthetic dialogue more accessible to developers.

What matters?

  • VibeVoice is a 1.5B parameter model built on Alibaba's Qwen2.5, enabling it to produce complex, conversational audio with up to four distinct speakers.

  • The model moves beyond simple speech generation by packing in powerful emotional controls and even cross-lingual singing capabilities.

  • Thanks to an 80x improvement in audio data compression, VibeVoice is efficient enough to run on consumer-grade hardware.

Why it matters?

This release democratizes access to high-fidelity audio generation, traditionally limited by proprietary systems and heavy computing requirements. It opens up new possibilities for independent creators to produce podcasts, audiobooks, and other long-form content with dynamic, AI-generated voices.

Everything else in AI

xAI filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI, alleging their exclusive ChatGPT-iOS integration creates an illegal monopoly that harms competitors like Grok.

A16z launched a pro-AI super PAC alongside OpenAI's Greg Brockman, committing over $100M to influence midterm elections and combat stricter AI regulations.

Stanford published a new study indicating that job roles exposed to AI have seen a 16% decline for young workers aged 22-25 since 2022.

Researchers discovered a new "ClickFix" exploit that hides malicious code in invisible text, tricking AI summarization tools into prompting users to run ransomware.

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