Clones, commerce & campaigns (Practical AI #297)

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Chris and Daniel dive into what Trump’s impending second term could mean for AI companies, model developers, and regulators, unpacking the potential shifts in policy and innovation. Next, they discuss the latest models, like Qwen, that blur the performance gap between open and closed systems. Finally, they explore new AI tools for meeting clones and AI-driven commerce, sparking a conversation about the balance between digital convenience and fostering genuine human connections.

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Sponsors:

• WorkOS – AuthKit offers 1,000,000 monthly active users (MAU) free — The world’s best login box, powered by WorkOS + Radix. Learn more and get started at WorkOS.com and AuthKit.com
• Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs.
• Retool – The low-code platform for developers to build internal tools — Some of the best teams out there trust Retool…Brex, Coinbase, Plaid, Doordash, LegalGenius, Amazon, Allbirds, Peloton, and so many more – the developers at these teams trust Retool as the platform to build their internal tools. Try it free at retool.com/changelog

Featuring:

• Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• New Models
  • Qwen2.5
    • Alibaba’s Qwen AI Model
    • Qwen2.5 Turbo Reads Ten Novels in One Minute
  • DeepSeek
    • DeepSeek API Docs Update
  • FLUX
    • Black Forest Labs’ FLUX.1-dev on Hugging Face
  • OuteTTS
    • OuteTTS 0.1 - 350M Blog
    • OuteTTS 0.2 - 500M Blog
    • Smol TTS Update on LinkedIn
  • SmolLVM
    • SmolLVM Updates on LinkedIn
• What Donald Trump’s Win Means for AI
  • Practical AI Podcast: Episode 244
• GetPickle.ai
• Docling
  • Docling Paper on arXiv
  • Docling GitHub Repository
  • Red Hat Blog on Docling
  • LinkedIn Post on PDF Table Extraction
  • Hugging Face Blog on Observers SDK
• AI and Commerce
  • Stripe Blog: Adding Payments to Agentic Workflows
  • LinkedIn Announcement: Payments Integration SDK

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

章

1. Welcome to Practical AI (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: WorkOS (00:00:35)

https://workos.com

3. Time for Tofurkey (00:03:38)

4. Coca-cola AI ads (00:05:32)

5. Election results effect on AI (00:08:52)

6. Open and closed souce under Trump (00:15:47)

7. Sponsor: Notion (00:18:16)

http://notion.com/practicalai

8. Alibaba Qwen & other Chinese models (00:19:55)

9. Security vulnerabilities (00:22:41)

10. Increasing context (00:27:20)

11. Model buffet (00:30:11)

12. Sponsor: Retool (00:35:11)

https://retool.com/changelog

13. GitPickle.ai & AI agents (00:37:05)

14. AI in ecommerce (00:45:57)

15. Useful links (00:50:11)

16. Outro (00:52:24)