# AI News for RSPR - May 24, 2025 - **Prompting Developments in Past 12 mo:** In the past year or so, a new prompting technique is going mainstream. It's called **self-consistency**, originally proposed by [Wang et al. (2022)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.11171). It's where the model is prompted to generate multiple answers and then “vote” on the best one. Researchers found evidence this technique boosts reasoning abilities. https://www.promptingguide.ai/techniques/consistency - **January 16, 2025:** New survey on how PR pros (1000+ surveyed) now use AI tools: [muckrack]([https://muckrack.com/research/state-of-ai-in-pr](https://muckrack.com/research/state-of-ai-in-pr)) - **3 out of 4 PR pros now use AI**: That’s nearly three times more than in 2023. They now use it for five tasks on average, up from three last year. - **93% say AI speeds up their work**, and 78% report it improves work quality. - **55% of PR pros lack AI usage guidelines from their companies**. Down from 72% last year, but most PR pros still work without clear direction. - **January - February, 2025:** Chinese vs American AI - **January 20:** Chinese AI company DeepSeek releases R1 "reasoning" model, claiming "Performance on par with OpenAI-o1", while being "20 to 50 times cheaper to use", with training achieved extremely cheaply (comparatively) and without state-of-the-art hardware (from manufacturers like NVIDIA). They also gave the model a liberal license (for the enthusiasts). Essentially, the company is going viral. - **One reason for the virality:** DeepSeek's web UI includes a new feature that no one has seen before: there's a research function (using the R1 reasoning model) that takes a few minutes to generate a report with citations. And it's really useful. - **January 27:** DeepSeek displaces ChatGPT as the App Store’s top app. - **Same day:** Nvidia (NVDA) Market Cap Falls Nearly $600B (17%), biggest one-day loss in U.S. history. The next largest losses are Broadcom (losing $200B) and Oracle (losing $77B). Microsoft (-2.1%), Google (4.2%), AMD (6.4%), and many others lose billions. By the end of the day, DeepSeek triggered a $1T tech stock wipeout. - **Fallout:** Large tech companies go into defense mode: - **Nvidia:** justifies their insane prices (double down on newer, better, faster). - **OpenAI** (private, so didn't lose money): scrambles to release new models and features to please users. - **February 2:** OpenAI introduces "deep research" to Pro users. Deep research takes 5-10 minutes to collect 30-60 online sources and produces a report. - **February 25:** OpenAI makes deep research available to Plus users. - **April 25:** OpenAI increases deep research rate limit for all users. - **Recovery:** OpenAI reported 400 million weekly active users as of February 2025, up 33% from 300 million in December. Today, Nvidia has mostly recovered. - **March 25, 2025:** A new case study claims content ranking on Google’s first page was mentioned by ChatGPT or Perplexity **77% of the time** for the same query. https://www.growandconvert.com/ai/google-seo-and-llmo/#:~:text=%2A%20We%20show%20up%2077,between%20Google%20rankings%20%26%20AI - **April 2, 2025:** A B2B company case study claims it restructured its site content around common user questions, added real-time data updates, and emphasized expert authorship; they claim that within a month, it became the **#1 result on Perplexity for its key queries and saw 32% of new leads coming through AI search referrals**. https://contently.com/2025/04/01/how-search-has-changed-with-llm-optimization/#:~:text=Within%20four%20weeks%2C%20they%20secured,entirely%20new%20client%20acquisition%20channel - **May 20, 2025:** Google's I/O 2025. Regarding AI in Search: - **AI Mode Launch:** Rolling out today in the U.S. (no Labs signup required). As apposed to AI Overview, AI Mode is a dedicated tab enabling AI search, including what they call advanced reasoning, multimodality, and deeper follow-up capabilities. Uses "query fan-out" technique to break down questions and run multiple simultaneous searches. - **Deep Search:** Coming to Labs soon - can issue hundreds of searches and create expert-level, fully-cited reports in minutes for thorough research queries. - **Search Live:** Real-time visual search using camera - talk back-and-forth with Search about what you see, powered by Project Astra capabilities. - **Agentic Features:** AI Mode can now handle tasks like finding and purchasing event tickets, making restaurant reservations, and booking appointments. Starting with partners like Ticketmaster, StubHub, Resy, and Vagaro. - **Enhanced Shopping:** Virtual try-on for billions of apparel items, plus agentic checkout that can purchase items via Google Pay when prices meet your criteria. - **Personal Context:** AI Mode will incorporate your Gmail data and past searches for personalized results (opt-in). - **Custom Visualizations:** AI Mode will create interactive charts and graphs for sports and finance queries using real-time data. - **Performance Note:** AI Overviews driving 10%+ usage increase in major markets, with Gemini 2.5 now powering both AI Mode and AI Overviews in the U.S. - **The core theme:** moving from information retrieval to intelligent task completion and personalized assistance. - **May 22, 2025:** Anthropic released their next generation of Claude models : - Claude Opus 4—"the best coding model in the world", leading in coding benchmarks - Claude Sonnet 4, which balances performance and efficiency. [https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-4](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-4) - **May 22, 2025:** I learned a new word: **nascent** - just coming into existence and beginning to display signs of future potential.