🌀 Apple's iPad Air gets M3 chip and all-new Magic Keyboard
OpenAI commits $50M to elite academic institutions with new research consortium

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Hey there, AI enthusiasts. Apple has taken a significant step in blurring the distinction between tablets and laptops with its new M3-powered iPad Air lineup and redesigned Magic Keyboard.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is strengthening ties with academia through a major financial commitment that could accelerate innovation across multiple disciplines.
In Today’s AI Daily:
- Apple unveils M3 iPad Air with redesigned Magic Keyboard
- Nothing launches Phone (3a) Pro with 50MP periscope telephoto camera
- OpenAI commits $50M to academic consortium with 15 institutions
- Elicit introduces source-verified research reports
- Meta releases Fast3R for high-speed 3D reconstruction
APPLE
🍎 Apple unveils iPad Air with M3 chip and revamped Magic Keyboard

Image source: Apple
The AI Daily: Apple just introduced its new iPad Air lineup powered by the M3 chip, bringing advanced graphics architecture to the Air series for the first time alongside a completely redesigned Magic Keyboard.
Key notes:
- The M3-equipped iPad Air delivers up to 2x faster performance than M1 models and 3.5x faster than A14 Bionic versions.
- Available in two sizes: 11-inch ($599) and 13-inch ($799), with pre-orders starting today and availability on March 12.
- The new Magic Keyboard features a larger trackpad, 14-key function row, and starts at $269 for the 11-inch model.
- Apple also updated the entry-level iPad with the A16 chip and double the starting storage at $349.
- Both models support Apple Intelligence features including Clean Up tool, Image Wand, and ChatGPT integration.
Why it matters: Apple continues to blur the line between its tablets and laptops with these performance and accessory upgrades. The new Magic Keyboard's function row directly addresses a long-standing criticism, while the aggressive entry iPad pricing demonstrates Apple's commitment to maintaining market dominance as competition from Android tablets intensifies.
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NOTHING
📱 Nothing unveils Phone (3a) Pro with advanced camera system

Image source: Nothing / Screenshot
The AI Daily: Nothing just launched two new midrange smartphones—the Phone (3a) Pro and Phone (3a)—featuring identical performance specs but significant camera differences.
Key notes:
- Both phones use the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor with advanced cooling and up to 20GB RAM Booster.
- The Pro model boasts a superior camera system with a 50MP periscope telephoto lens offering 3x optical zoom and up to 60x ultra zoom.
- Both feature a 6.77" FHD+ flexible AMOLED display with 3000 nits peak brightness.
- The devices run Nothing OS 3.1 (based on Android 15) with integrated ChatGPT and AI productivity features.
- Both include 5000mAh batteries with 50W fast charging and the signature Glyph Interface.
Why it matters: Nothing continues pushing for distinction in the crowded smartphone market with its combination of distinctive design, competitive specs, and innovative AI integrations, though the camera system is now the primary differentiator between models.
OPENAI
🎓 OpenAI launches $50M academic consortium

Image source: The AI Daily / Midjourney
The AI Daily: OpenAI just unveiled NextGenAI, a groundbreaking consortium uniting 15 leading research institutions to accelerate breakthroughs and transform education through AI technologies.
Key notes:
- The initiative commits $50M in research grants, compute funding, and API access to students, educators, and researchers.
- Founding partners include elite institutions like MIT, Harvard, Oxford, Howard University, and the California State University system.
- Projects range from accelerating rare disease diagnosis at Harvard to digitizing centuries-old texts at Oxford's Bodleian Library.
- The consortium builds on OpenAI's educational efforts following ChatGPT Edu's launch in May 2024.
Why it matters: This partnership bridges the critical gap between academia and industry, ensuring AI benefits extend to laboratories, libraries, hospitals, and classrooms. As research institutions gain access to cutting-edge tools, we'll likely see accelerated innovation across healthcare, education, and scientific discovery far beyond what any single institution could achieve alone.
WE CHOOSE, YOU EXPLORE
🗞️ What Matters in AI Right Now?
Elicit launched Reports, a deep research tool providing source-verified citations with exact quotes and transparent, customizable research processes.
Cohere introduced Aya Vision, adding multimodal capabilities to its open-weight multilingual 8B and 32B models for enhanced visual understanding.
xAI made Voice Mode available to all iOS Grok users without requiring a subscription, expanding free access to its audio interface.
Podcastle launched AI Voice Hub, offering over 450 lifelike AI voices for text-to-speech conversion with rapid processing times.
THUDM (ChatGLM) released CogView4, an open-source bilingual text-to-image model under the Apache 2.0 license that performs well on the DPG Bench.
OpenAI announced plans to gradually roll out GPT-4.5 to Plus subscribers over several days to manage high demand while maintaining service quality.
Meta unveiled Fast3R in collaboration with the University of Michigan, enabling 3D reconstruction of 1000+ images in a single forward pass at up to 251 FPS.
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