OpenAI has partnered with Booking.com to create the SME AI Accelerator, a program that will provide free, practical AI training to small and medium-sized businesses across six European countries. The initiative combines in‑person workshops, virtual sessions, and lessons from the OpenAI Academy to demonstrate how AI can boost productivity, efficiency, and competitiveness. Targeting 20,000 firms, the program aims to close the gap between AI adoption rates of large enterprises and SMEs, which currently stand at 55% versus 17% respectively. The effort forms part of a broader EU economic blueprint to strengthen the region’s AI ecosystem. Read more →

Amazon announced a new suite of frontier artificial intelligence models—Nova Lite, Nova Pro, Nova Sonic and Nova Omni—at its re:Invent conference. Alongside the models, the company introduced Nova Forge, a tool that lets cloud customers add their own data at various stages of model training to create specialized versions. Early adopters such as Reddit, Booking.com, Sony and Nimbus Therapeutics are testing the service. Amazon claims the Nova 2 Pro model matches or exceeds leading competitors on benchmark tests, positioning the offering as a customizable alternative for businesses seeking domain‑specific AI capabilities. Read more →

OpenAI has rolled out a suite of new app integrations for ChatGPT, allowing users to connect accounts from services such as Spotify, Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Expedia, Figma, and Zillow. By linking these accounts, users can ask ChatGPT to perform tasks like creating playlists, searching for hotels, designing graphics, finding online courses, planning trips, generating diagrams, and locating homes—all within the chat interface. The company notes that connections share data with the model, prompting users to review permissions, and offers a simple way to disconnect apps. Additional partners—including DoorDash, OpenTable, Target, Uber, and Walmart—are slated to join later, with the rollout currently limited to the United States and Canada. Read more →