Sabrina Ortiz

AI investments continue surging, evident in headlines, fundraising rounds, stock rallies, and product launches. But executives are having second thoughts.

The AI company Dataiku released a new global report based on a Harris Poll survey of more than 800 CIOs worldwide, and it found that CIOs are not only facing regret from their AI investments, but also hold anxiety about what AI’s ability to perform means for their organization's future and their jobs.

A majority of CIOs (74%) said their role will be at risk if their company does not deliver measurable business gains from AI within the next two years. At the same time, they are not seeing the results, yet they are being questioned about them. The report found that:

• 74% say they regret at least one major AI vendor or platform decision made in the last 18 months.
• 62% say their CEO has directly questioned or challenged those decisions.
• Nearly one-third (29%) say they have repeatedly been asked to justify AI outcomes they could not fully explain.

“ROI is a real question, but the honest answer is that we're early. It's normal that measurement frameworks haven't caught up with a technology whose application is still being defined,” Kurt Muehmel, Head of AI Strategy at Dataiku, told The Deep View. “The pressure is real. But the answer isn't to stop investing, it's to stop investing badly.”

To maximize the value of AI investments, Muehemel recommends avoiding a single model provider. Advantages of this approach include: switching to better models as they evolve rapidly, leveraging cheaper alternatives if the AI bubble pops, and avoiding the need to rebuild your entire system when swapping out a model.

A Gartner report that surveyed more than 300 CFOs and finance leaders also found that they are willing to increase AI spending in 2026 based on the future promise of AI. The report found that 60% of CFOs plan to increase AI investments in the finance function by 10% or more in 2026, while another 24% expect gains of 4% to 9%.

“This investment surge is driven by a 'Return on the Future' mindset, which prioritizes long-term strategic disruption and competitive parity over immediate financial gains,” said Nauman Raja, Director Analyst at Gartner. “After all, 88% of CFOs view AI as a critical mandate for future efficiency, so its potential of being a disruptive force is too great for CFOs not to invest in and try to achieve gains with.”

Smart glasses bring AI into your world. They could also identify anyone in it.

Meta has dominated the AI smart-glasses market, with its Ray-Ban collaboration becoming the world's best-selling AI glasses, moving over 7 million units sold in the past year. The appeal lies in seamlessly integrating mics, cameras, and speakers into a lightweight design. However, a New York Times report reveals that Meta is exploring using those same cameras for a new facial recognition feature.

The feature, internally called “Name Tag,” would allow the wearer to identify the people around them, as well as relevant information through the Meta AI assistant: the same one currently used for general queries, according to the four people involved with the plans who spoke to the NYT.

According to two sources, the feature would be limited in scope, potentially recognizing only people the wearer is connected to on Meta platforms or those with public Meta accounts, rather than identifying anyone indiscriminately.

An internal May document obtained by the NYT also reveals Meta planned to pilot the feature with attendees at a conference for the blind before rolling it out more widely, signaling it’d be first marketed as an accessibility feature. Beyond accessibility, the feature could deliver benefits for users and Meta alike.

“For consumers, facial recognition removes the barriers and embarrassment of being caught in a situation when you think you know someone, but aren’t 100% sure,” said Ramon Llamas, Research Director, Mobile Devices and AR/VR at IDC. “For Meta, facial recognition on the glasses can help strengthen the connections among its different products and services and drive longer usage of each.”

Notably, the document suggests Meta planned to leverage the "dynamic political environment" in the United States to distract from potential backlash from civil society groups. Meta has experienced similar scrutiny before.

In 2024, two Harvard Students integrated a facial recognition service that allowed them to identify strangers and retrieve personal information. At the time, the company stated that the flashing light on the glasses serves as an indicator to the public that the camera is running. Meta also had to shut down it’s decade old Facebook facial recognition technology in 2021 due to privacy concerns.

“It raises many questions as to what would be a reasonable approach to privacy regarding what information can be accessed, to what extent, how reliable that information is, and so much more,” added Llamas. “That’s where Meta has to come up with the right formula for reasonable usage.”

The future of the feature is still not guaranteed, as the company is reportedly evaluating how the feature could be released in a way that addresses “safety and privacy risks,” according to the documents. Meta similarly considered adding facial recognition to the original launch of its AI glasses in 2021, but decided against it.

When will Siri's promised upgrade arrive? Don't hold your breath, at least not yet.

Since last June, Apple users have been waiting for the promised Siri overhaul, one that would make the assistant more conversational and capable of taking actions on your behalf using personal context. Bloomberg previously reported that Apple had set an internal March release target with the iOS 26.4 update, but a new report reveals the features will now be staggered across multiple future updates.

The delay stems from recent testing snags that revealed software problems, including Siri taking too long to handle requests, according to people familiar with the matter cited in the report. However, some new features may arrive as soon as iOS 26.5, as internal versions of that update already include notices about certain Siri upgrades.

Internal test versions of iOS 26.5 reveal it will include two unannounced features: a new web search feature that functions similarly to Perplexity, and custom image generation. Following Apple’s track record with iOS release schedules, the wait between iOS 26.4 and iOS 26.5 will likely be short.

Yet, the most anticipated feature might not be included. An internal version of 26.5 lets users “preview” Siri’s capability of referencing personal data to add context to prompts, with that “preview” designation likely being a sign that the full-on feature is not ready to ship just yet.

The report cites a landslide of other challenges, including running behind on advanced commands for voice-controlled in-app actions, early tester accuracy issues and bugs, Siri defaulting to OpenAI’s ChatGPT instead of Apple’s technology, which now includes AI tech from Google Gemini.

This isn’t stopping Apple’s ambitions as the company is reportedly also working on a revamped, chatbot-like Siri for iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, as we previously reported.

AI already builds apps and writes essays, and now adds milk to your grocery cart.

On Wednesday, Uber launched a Cart Assistant in the Uber Eats app, a new AI-powered feature that helps add items to your grocery shopping. All you have to do is find your grocery store and type the items you’d like to add to your cart. 

You can also add an image or screenshot of a recipe or list, even if it's handwritten, which Cart Assistant analyzes to choose the items. If, like me, your first concern was pricing, Uber says that the assistant will automatically take factors such as availability, price, and promotions into account.

The assistant also takes into account your past orders to prioritize selections of your familiar or previously ordered items. As with your usual cart, you can edit the basket to swap selections or add more items. Users can access the beta version of the cart assistant by simply tapping the purple cart icon in the Uber Eats app.

While it has a simple functionality, Uber said in the release that it is only an “early step” in how Uber Eats incorporates agentic AI to solve “practical problems.” Of course, the company isn’t new to using AI in its offerings; it has used AI to power features across both its ridesharing and delivery services for years, including dynamic pricing, routing, and personalization.

Other food delivery services have developed similar technology. For example, in December, OpenAI and Instacart deepened their partnership to bring fully integrated grocery shopping into ChatGPT via the Instacart app. With the app, users can use AI to add items to the cart with simple prompts, review the cart, and place the order through the ChatGPT Instant Checkout feature.

A court filing in an ongoing trademark dispute revealed details about the AI hardware device OpenAI and Jony Ive are building. And it's not coming until next year.

OpenAI will not use the name "io" for its hardware devices due to a trademark infringement lawsuit from iyO, an AI audio device startup, as first reported by Wired. OpenAI had acquired Jony Ive's hardware company “io” in May for $6.5 billion and planned to use the name for its AI hardware line.

The court filing attained by Wired also featured comments from Peter Welinder, OpenAI’s vice president and general manager, who stated that the product will become available in February 2027. This comes after OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, said the device was scheduled to be released in the second half of 2026 to Axios House in Davos.

OpenAI has remained tight-lipped about the details of the AI hardware, yet there have been a string of reports on what it could be. The Financial Times previously reported that OpenAI was working on a “a palm-sized device without a screen that can take audio and visual cues from the physical environment and respond to users’ requests,” according to people familiar with the matter.

Other details in the report said the device would be about the size of a smartphone that people could communicate with using cameras, microphones, and speakers. In practice, this sounds similar to the Rabbit R1, a handheld device that got off to a rocky start because it was unable to deliver on the agentic capabilities it advertised. More recently, reports have stated that OpenAI is planning a smart earbud.

After working on the launch of Claude 3 through Claude 4, Michael Gerstenhaber left Anthropic to join Google five months ago, where he's now focused on bringing AI to more people and organizations.

During his time at Anthropic, Gerstenhaber became invested in the value of AGI and the importance of sharing it with the world. Given its vertical stack, Google was better positioned in the space to achieve that goal.

“So I left because I accidentally got AGI pilled along way, Dario [Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO] has a very specific effect on people, and I believe that the technology is one of the biggest of our time, probably the biggest,” said Gerstenhaber. “Distributing the technology has become, if not a moral endeavor, a very exciting endeavor for me because of its importance.”

Like OpenAI, Anthropic is racing toward AGI, but the two companies frame their missions differently. Amodei has spoken out about the risks of AGI, including the displacement of entry-level white-collar jobs. At the same time, OpenAI explicitly centers AGI as its goal. We reached out to Anthropic for comment on Gerstenhaber's assessment, but the company did not have a response.

At Google, Gerstenhaber serves as Vice President of Product for Vertex AI and Agents, the company's platform for building and deploying AI in the enterprise. The role puts him at the center of Google's AI cloud infrastructure, everything from inference APIs to agentic capabilities, where he works directly with customers to find the right solutions.

“At Google, we do have that ability to distribute. We're the only Cloud that's vertically integrated among the power plants with the data centers, with the TPUs in the data centers, with access to the smartest models in the world, whether it's ours or my former colleagues, and the platform itself with customers on the cloud,” said Gerstenhaber.

He has already seen AI drive meaningful workflow transformations across companies, including through agentic solutions. For instance, he cited a large pharmaceutical company that delegated statistical analysis and coding of clinical data to agents. Another example was Thomson Reuters’s development of agentic products, such as CoCounsel and Westlaw, for legal research.

He acknowledged AI agents haven't reached their full expected value, not because the technology isn't ready, but because of trust issues. Organizations lack clear ways to define scopes, struggle with accountability when AI fails, and can't easily evaluate whether workflows are performing correctly. His advice for implementation? Take bite-sized steps.

“People should find the scope over which they don't need a human at all, and that might be a very narrow scope, not a very ambitious scope," said Gerstenhaber and, "then you'll widen the aperture from there.”

One day after Anthropic's Super Bowl ad slammed OpenAI for adding ads to its chatbot, OpenAI powered ahead with its advertising plan.

On Monday, OpenAI announced it had begun testing ads in ChatGPT for logged-in adult users on the Free and Go subscription tiers in the US. The company justified its decision by saying it is a necessary measure to continue to deliver intelligence at high quality while keeping free and low-cost options.

“Keeping the Free and Go tiers fast and reliable requires significant infrastructure and ongoing investment,” said the company in the release. “Ads help fund that work, supporting broader access to AI through higher quality free and low cost options, and enabling us to keep improving the intelligence and capabilities we offer over time.”

The company also reassured users that the answers will be completely independent from the ads and the ads will not influence ChatGPT's answers. This reassurance is likely a response to Anthropic’s latest ad campaign shown during the Super Bowl, which portrayed a chatbots’ response quality and helpfulness being skewed by the ad inclusion.

The ads submitted by advertisers are matched to users based on the topic of the conversation, their past chats, and interactions with ads. However, OpenAI says the advertisers do not have access to the users' chats, chat history, memories, or personal details. All they will have access to is aggregate data of the ad’s performance.

OpenAI added that ads will not be shown if the user is under 18 or if the conversation relates to a sensitive topic such as health, mental health, or politics. Users retain some level of control by being able to dismiss ads, delete their ad data, share feedback, and more. If users wish to not see ads at all, they can upgrade their accounts to any of the paid tiers or opt out of ads in the Free tier for fewer daily free messages. In other words, you get additional free usage of ChatGPT if you view more ads.

OpenAI and Anthropic were already creating buzz from their Super Bowl ads before the big game even happened. But then came the plot twist: newcomer ai.com made the biggest splash.

During the fourth quarter of the game, ai.com ran a thirty-second minimalist ad inviting users to create an account, simply saying, “AGI is coming. Get your @handle now.” While the call to action was clear, the product’s purpose was incredibly vague.

So what exactly does ai.com offer users? The founder and CEO of Crypto.com, Kris Marszalek, has now founded ai.com, a new AI platform positioned to stand out from competitors by focusing solely on AI agents that can tackle a wide range of tasks for anyone, regardless of technical proficiency. The AI platform was announced in a press release, with the official launch scheduled for after the commercial.

“The key differentiating feature is the agent’s ability to autonomously build out missing features and capabilities to complete real-world tasks,” said the company in its release. “Such improvements will subsequently be shared across millions of agents on the network, massively increasing the utility of each agent for ai.com users.”

When the commercial aired, so many people rushed to the website that it crashed. Marszalek took to X to say that while the company was prepared for scale, it was not prepared for the “insane level of traffic” it received.

Once users create their handle, they can immediately get started building their agent in what the company advertises is “going from zero to AI agent in 60 seconds.” The company touts that soon these agents wil be able to do advanced tasks such as trading stocks and “even update their online dating profile,” while remaining private and “under the user’s control.”

The “ai.com” domain was purchased in April 2025 for an estimated $70 million, believed to be the largest domain purchase in history, paid to the seller in cryptocurrency, according to the Financial Times. Additionally, Super Bowl ads themselves cost $8 to $10 million.

Marszalek, however, is no stranger to building a user base through elaborate marketing, having garnered over 150 million Crypto.com users since its 2016 launch through expensive strategies involving celebrity endorsements and partnerships with major organizations, including a $700 million deal to rename the Staples Center to the Crypto.com Arena in 2021.

Apple's playbook: enter late, do it better, make it mainstream. AI hardware could be next.

In an internal meeting, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke to employees about the importance of the AI moment, calling it “one of the most profound opportunities of our entire lifetime,” and highlighted the company's strong position to deliver meaningful AI features to customers, according to a Bloomberg report. One way the company plans to do so: hardware.

“There will be new categories of products and services that are enabled through AI, and we’re extremely excited about that,” said Cook. “We’re excited about the opportunities that it opens for Apple.”

This would be a different approach for Apple, which, to date, has had limited success competing in the AI race. Despite announcing an AI overhaul for Siri at WWDC 2024 to make the AI assistant a more advanced personal intelligence system, it has yet to deliver on the promise. 

Yet, this year, Apple is preparing to turn things around, with the first step being its multi-year agreement with Google to use Gemini’s AI models to power its next-gen version of Siri. Apple also has plans to turn Siri into the company’s first artificial intelligence chatbot with the launch of iOS 27, according to another Bloomberg report. While these voice assistant updates have been highly anticipated, delving into hardware would open a new frontier. 

AI devices are gaining traction, with smartglasses being the first big hit. Shipments grew 110% YoY in the first half of 2025, according to Counterpoint Research. Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis recently said the Gemini-powered Samsung smartglasses could arrive as soon as this summer. 

While other AI wearable form factors, such as rings, pins, and more, have emerged, none have taken off with consumers. OpenAI is developing its much-anticipated AI hardware device in collaboration with Jony Ive, Apple's former design lead. That may be the first real stab at a mainstream AI device. The latest reports suggest it will be a smart AI earbud.

Still, Apple has a huge advantage in hardware. It knows how to build high-quality, well-designed devices, and it has a loyal early-adopter base ready to buy. It can also pair the device with a valuable set of services for music, fitness, and more. Most importantly, it has a track record of popularizing new device categories. However, that may depend on Apple taking a creative leap and not sticking to a safe choice, such as an Alexa-like AI smart speaker with a screen that has reportedly been in the works.