BB Digest: 5 AI apps got new powers

Digest #503 → Subscribe | Upgrade to Pro

Hey folks, two callouts from us today;

1. Our free AI Marketing program is open for registration. It’s three weeks long, async, with some live sessions and projects. Learn more here. The program kicks off on November 4th.

2. We’re hiring! We are looking for tutorial creators—all our current creators were community members first 😍. Want to write tutorials for Ben’s Bites? Here’s the job post.

TLDR; inside today’s newsletter

• Perplexity big move, NotebookLM Business, and Microsoft's autonomous agents

• ICYMI: 3 banger tutorials for building AI-powered workflows

• snack n skill - a bite-sized lesson to automate meeting management

• 7 new tools for graphic design, accounting and more

• 9 interesting posts on building and adopting AI products

• to-do’s

Alright, let’s get to it!

 🔎 Trends & news

• Big moves at Perplexity - Pro and Enterprise users can now search internal files alongside web content, plus new AI-powered Spaces for team collaboration. Early enterprise customers include NVIDIA, Dell and Bridgewater, with more integrations planned for Crunchbase and FactSet data.

• NotebookLM drops the beta tag and levels up with customizable Audio Overviews. You can now guide AI hosts on topics and expertise levels while working in the background. Google also announces NotebookLM Business, opening pilot applications ahead of full launch later this year.

• Microsoft expands Copilot with autonomous agents - Create custom AI workers in Copilot Studio (preview next month) plus 10 ready-made agents for Dynamics 365.

• ChatGPT now has a desktop app for Windows in beta, and Advanced Voice mode is available to all EU users too.

• Claude’s iOS, Android and the new iPad app now support projects. Plus, check this repo to quickly start building a financial data analyst powered by Claude.

• Finally, a developer tool that makes digging around for the answer a thing of the past. Unblocked augments your source code with context from GitHub, Slack, Confluence, Jira, and more, so your team gets accurate answers without having to search for them. Save an hour or more a day with Unblocked.*
  *sponsored

👀 ICYMI: New stuff we’ve launched

• Build a meeting management system that automatically extracts and assigns tasks. (tutorial walkthrough below)

• Create your own “talk to PDF” app - Learn how to build a simple app to query PDF documents using Replit and AI.

• Use Claude to conduct a detailed Net Present Value analysis for internal investment decisions.

🍽️ Snack ‘n’ skill

Learn how to turn meetings into organized tasks

Manual note-taking and task tracking from meetings eat up valuable time. But what if AI could automatically extract action items from your meetings and organize them in a structured way? This tutorial shows how to build a system that turns meetings into actionable tasks without manual note-taking.

Step 1. Set up your task-tracking foundation

Create a Notion database with specific columns for tasks, assignments, and meeting links. This will be your central hub for all meeting-related action items.

Step 2. Build your automation workflow

• Connect TLDV to automatically record and transcribe your meetings

• Use Zapier to process transcripts with OpenAI’s AI models and extract action items

• Set up a formatting step to split tasks into structured data

• Create loops to handle multiple tasks from single meetings

• Send extracted tasks directly to your Notion database

• Organize tasks with calendar and board views for easy tracking

Tip: Start with a test meeting to fine-tune the AI's task extraction prompts before rolling it out to your team.

This walkthrough is a condensed version of this tutorial. Check it out for step-by-step instructions and configuration details.

⚙️ Top new tools

• hiring.studio by Metaview*: A fine-tuned LLM to help recruiting teams generate interview questions along with rubrics.

• Playground AI launched Playground v3 - A new image generation model focused on graphic design.

• Replicate Playground - Experiment with image models like FLUX and others (in beta).

• Kick - Accounting software that does the work for you.

• Program builder by Sparkwise - Design your custom learning journey.

• Feta - A better way to run stand-ups, retros and sync-ups.

• Convo - Qualitative user research powered by AI.

More tools here →
*sponsored

 📜 Interesting posts

• i h8 ai - a short movie made with Meta Movie Gen.

• Thinking like an AI - A little intuition can help to identify how to use it.

• Solving complex problems with OpenAI o1 models.

• Data and insights on how AI is changing work—inside Microsoft.

• How GenAI can help doctors and nurses with their administrative workloads.

• How publishing execs are incorporating generative AI tools into their workflows.

• a16z partners share strategies for building AI products here and here.

• IBM launched Granite 3.0 - A new suite of local AI models for enterprises.

• Some gossip: Greg Brockman is returning to OpenAI soon and Mira Murati might be raising a $100M seed round for building AI products.

📌 To-dos

1. Let us know if you have any tutorials or courses you want us to create—we’re always open to ideas.

That wraps things up for today! See you again on Thursday. 👋

Ben