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Practical AI news for people running businesses. Today, United Airlines shuts the door on AI agents booking flights, new payment data shows what businesses actually spend on AI, and Google launches a cheap tool for quick yes or no decisions. Rex Factor, who writes Proof of Work, joins us on the spending story. Plus three quick hits, and what each one means for you.
Today's stories
- 00:20 United Airlines is restricting unauthorized third-party AI agents and assistants from booking and managing trips, on its own website and app and through travel agencies and aggregators. Agents can still search and show flights, but a person must complete the purchase. United cites account security, unintended purchases and FAA and DOT rules; CEO Scott Kirby told the WSJ he doesn't want "another middleman". If you sell online, decide your own rule for agents before they arrive at checkout. (United, United FAQ, The Verge, CNBC)
- 02:07 Ramp's October AI Index, from card and bill payments at 85,000+ US businesses: AI spend up 1.65% to a new high; the median firm pays $16.32 per employee per month, the top 1% a median $10.2K; 1% of businesses drive 80% of OpenAI and Anthropic revenue; engineering is 72% of classified spend, while customer support rose from 0.8% in June to 13.3% in October; average price per million tokens fell 21% in a month. Rex Factor, who writes Proof of Work, on how far to trust the data and how to price a support chatbot. (Ramp, Ramp AI Index, The Decoder)
- 04:17 Google launches the Gemini Decisions API with Gemini Decision 1: up to 1,000 yes/no, multiple choice or rubric questions against one input (text, images, audio, video, PDFs), with a confidence score per answer, in 150 to 250 ms, at $0.10 per million input tokens and nothing for output. Good for small back-office checks; send low-confidence answers to a person, and ask vendors whether the saving reaches your bill. (Google, Google AI Studio docs)
Quick hits
- OpenAI retires ChatGPT's Advanced and Standard Voice on December 11 and moves everyone to Live Voice; live video and screen sharing stay on Advanced Voice until Live supports them. (OpenAI Help Center, Android Authority)
- Databricks unveils an always-on Genie agent that works in the background on longer jobs and asks people for decisions; Genie Ontology is generally available, and the always-on mode goes to preview and beta first. (Databricks, TechCrunch)
- Meta releases Muse Ember, its smallest and cheapest model, for repetitive agent work like extraction and routing, at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output. (Meta, Meta pricing)
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AI. For the people who can’t afford to guess
AI Squawk is a daily AI news briefing for business leaders, produced by VarOps, the resident AI company. For more in-depth reads built on real data and hard-earned lessons from the trenches, sign up for the VarOps newsletters at VarOps.com ›
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