Meta acquires AI audio startup WaveForms

✨TodayOnAI’s Daily Drop

• Meta acquires AI audio startup WaveForms

• Pinterest CEO says agentic shopping is still a long way out

• Microsoft to Retire Lens Scanner App, Pushes Users to Copilot AI

• 💬 Let’s Fix This Prompt

• 🧰 Today’s AI Toolbox Pick

Meta

Meta acquires AI audio startup WaveForms

🚀 TodayOnAI Insight: Meta has acquired AI voice startup WaveForms, bolstering its newly formed Superintelligence Labs. The move marks Meta’s second high-profile AI audio purchase in a month, signaling an aggressive push into advanced speech generation and emotional AI.

🔍 Key Takeaways:

• WaveForms, founded just eight months ago, raised $40M from Andreessen Horowitz at a $160M pre-money valuation.

• Co-founders Alexis Conneau (ex-Meta, ex-OpenAI, co-creator of GPT-4o Advanced Voice Mode) and Coralie Lemaitre (ex-Google) have joined Meta.

• Focused on passing the “Speech Turing Test” — making AI speech indistinguishable from human voices.

• Also developed “Emotional General Intelligence” to interpret and manage self-awareness in speech.

• Comes a month after Meta’s acquisition of PlayAI, reflecting a pattern in AI audio talent consolidation.

💡 Why This Stands Out: Speech synthesis is shifting from functional voice assistants to deeply human-like, emotionally resonant AI. Meta’s rapid-fire acquisitions suggest it wants not just to lead in generative voice but to own the infrastructure for lifelike, emotionally aware communication. The real question: how close are we to AI voices we can’t — and maybe don’t want to — tell apart from humans?

Pinterest

Pinterest CEO says agentic shopping is still a long way out

🚀 TodayOnAI Insight: Pinterest CEO Bill Ready told investors the platform already functions as an “AI-enabled shopping assistant,” though he believes the fully “agentic web,” where AI autonomously shops for users, is still years away. Pinterest is leaning on AI-driven personalization, visual search, and multimodal models to guide users from inspiration to purchase—positioning itself early in the shopping journey while avoiding the pitfalls of hands-off AI agents.

🔍 Key Takeaways:

• Pinterest uses proprietary AI for recommendations, personalization, multimodal search (text + images), and AI-powered ad targeting.

• Ready says autonomous shopping agents remain a “very long cycle” away due to user trust and adoption barriers.

• AI powers proactive recommendations, making Pinterest feel like a personal stylist to many users.

• The company faces user pushback over AI-generated, low-quality pins and alleged overreliance on automated moderation.

• Q2 results: $998M revenue beat expectations, but adjusted EPS (33¢) missed forecasts; Gen Z now makes up over half of monthly users, with male users up 95% YoY.

💡 Why This Stands Out: Pinterest’s stance reflects a pragmatic view of AI’s retail future—embracing assistive intelligence while sidestepping premature automation. The company’s focus on taste-based discovery rather than transactional AI suggests a deliberate bet on human-led decision-making in commerce. The open question: when autonomous agents finally arrive, will platforms built for inspiration still hold the user’s trust?

Microsoft

Microsoft to Retire Lens Scanner App, Pushes Users to Copilot AI

🚀 TodayOnAI Insight: Microsoft is shutting down its decade-old mobile scanning app, Microsoft Lens, directing users instead to its Copilot AI app — which notably lacks many of Lens’ signature features. The transition underscores Microsoft’s shift from focused utility tools toward AI-driven, integrated experiences.

🔍 Key Takeaways:

• Microsoft Lens will be retired from iOS and Android starting Sept 15, 2025, removed from app stores by Nov 15, and lose scanning capability on Dec 15.

• Launched in 2015 as Office Lens, the app converted documents, receipts, and whiteboards into editable formats like PDF, Word, and PowerPoint — without subscription upsells.

• Lens offered unique features like business card-to-OneNote saving, read-aloud accessibility tools, and direct cloud integration.

• Copilot AI app supports basic scanning but lacks many of Lens’ integrations and accessibility options.

• Lens remains popular, with 92.3M downloads since 2017 and 322K in the past month alone.

💡 Why This Stands Out: The Lens shutdown signals Microsoft’s deeper pivot toward AI-first productivity, even at the expense of well-loved, task-focused apps. It also highlights a growing tension in software design: do users really want multifunctional AI hubs if it means losing the simplicity and reliability of single-purpose tools?

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🧰 Today’s AI Toolbox Pick

• 🍋LemonSqueezy (Finance Tool): Handles the tax compliance burden so you can focus on more revenue with less headache.

• 💻ZipWP (Web Design Tool): Creates stunning websites in seconds.

• ⚙️DupDub (Content Tool): An all-in-one content creation platform that allows you to craft your content effortlessly and streamline your workflow.