Category: AI Literacy

IBL News | New York

Supabase, an open-source platform used by vibe coders and general developers for managing Postgres databases, achieved a $2 billion valuation after raising $200 million in its Series D round.

This funding round was led by Accel, with contributions from Coatue, Y Combinator, Craft Ventures, Felicis, and angel investors, including Kevin Weil from OpenAI, Guillermo Rauch from Vercel, and Taylor Otwell from Laravel.

Founded in 2020, and currently used by two million developers who manage 3.5 million databases, Supabase [its team in the picture above] introduced itself as an alternative to Google’s Firebase.

Its sign-up rate has just doubled in the past three months due to the Vibe coding movement, with apps like Vercel, Bolt, Lovable, Cursor, and Replit, among others.

Guillermo Rauch, CEO at Vercel, who first invested in Supabase in 2021, sees Vibe coding as a key tailwind for the startup.

Vercel, last valued at $3.25 billion, is widely viewed as a leader in the vibe coding movement.

IBL News | New York

OpenAI launched three new models — GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano — in its API this month, featuring larger context windows (up to 1 million tokens) and improved performance in coding and instruction over GPT‑4o and GPT‑4o mini.

“To this end, the GPT‑4.1 model family offers exceptional performance at a lower cost,” said the company.

“For tasks that demand low latency, GPT‑4.1 nano is our fastest and cheapest model available; it delivers exceptional performance at a small size with its 1 million token context window.”

Only available via the API, GPT‑4.1 arrives as OpenAI rivals like Google and Anthropic released, respectively, Gemini 2.5 Pro, which also has a 1-million-token context window, and Claude 3.7 Sonnet. Also, Chinese AI startup DeepSeek launched an upgraded V3.

“OpenAI’s ambition is to create an “agentic software engineer,” as CFO Sarah Friar put it during a tech summit in London last month.

GPT-4.1 costs $2 per million input tokens and $8 per million output tokens. GPT-4.1 mini is $0.40/million input tokens and $1.60/million output tokens, and GPT-4.1 nano is $0.10/million input tokens and $0.40/million output tokens.

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar on the race to build artificial general intelligence (Goldman Sachs’ Disruptive Tech Summit in London on March 5, 2025)

“And then the third that is coming is what we call A-SWE. We’re not the best marketers, by the way, you might have noticed. But Agentic… https://t.co/oFd0SKGu3S

— Tibor Blaho (@btibor91) April 12, 2025

IBL News | New York

Over 2,000 K-12 schools in 100 countries have installed Brisk’s Chrome extension, which allows teachers to write lesson plans, tests, and presentations, and grade work, since its launch in February 2025.

With 40 tools, the platform uses generative AI, computer vision, and other features.

The most popular tool in the stack, “Targeted Feedback,” uses generative AI to read student essays (on Google Docs) and create comments tailored to age, a grading rubric, or other standards. Before sharing anything with students, teachers can review and edit the comments.

“The existing edtech stack as we know it, which is around 140 different tools that the average teacher in the U.S. uses in a given school year, is not ready for AI,” said Brisk’s CEO and founder, Arman Jaffer.

The San Francisco-based Brisk raised $15 million in funding with investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Owl Ventures, South Park Commons, and Springbank Collective.

The funding will be used in part to build more tools, and in part to expand to more platforms. A Microsoft integration, aimed at the many Microsoft shop schools, is planned for autumn 2025.

IBL News | New York

OpenAI released the image generation feature of ChatGPT to its API on Wednesday, allowing developers to integrate it into their apps and services.

Launched in late March, this feature went viral for its ability to create realistic Ghibli Studio-style photos and AI action figures. Over 130 million ChatGPT users created more than 700 million images in just the first week of the tool’s availability, according to the company.

OpenAI’s natively multimodal model, gpt-image-1, can create images across different styles, follow custom guidelines, leverage world knowledge, and render text.

Developers can generate multiple images at a time using gpt-image-1 and control the generation quality, thereby adjusting the speed.

All images created are watermarked with C2PA metadata, allowing them to be identified as AI-generated by supported platforms and apps.

According to OpenAI, gpt-image-1 employs the same safety guardrails as image generation in ChatGPT.

Pricing is $5 per million input tokens for text and $10 per million input tokens for images, and $40 per million output tokens for images. That translates to around 2 cents, 7 cents, and 19 cents per generated image for low, medium, and high-quality square images, respectively.

OpenAI said that companies like Adobe, Airtable, Wix, Instacart, GoDaddy, Canva, and Figma are already using or experimenting with gpt-image-1. Figma’s Figma Design platform, for example, now allows users to generate and edit images via gpt-image-1, while Instacart is testing the model for images related to recipes and shopping lists.

imagegen is launched in the openai api!

build cool stuff plz

— Sam Altman (@sama) April 23, 2025

IBL News | New York

OpenAI released this month o3 and o4-mini, the smartest models trained to think for longer before responding, typically in under a minute.

These agentic models can search the web for public utility data, write Python code to build a forecast, generate a graph or image, and explain the key factors behind the prediction, chaining together multiple tool calls.

They tackle multi-faceted questions and produce detailed and thoughtful answers to solve more complex problems.

OpenAI o3 is our most powerful reasoning model that pushes the frontier across coding, math, science, visual perception, and more,” said OpenAI.

“It performs especially strongly at visual tasks like analyzing images, charts, and graphics. In evaluations by external experts, o3 makes 20 percent fewer major errors than OpenAI o1 on difficult, real-world tasks—especially excelling in areas like programming, business/consulting, and creative ideation.”

OpenAI o4-mini is a smaller model optimized for fast, cost-efficient reasoning—it achieves remarkable performance in math, coding, and visual tasks.

IBL News | New York

SchoolAI raised $25 million in Series A funding in a round led by Insight Partners. Existing investors include NextView Ventures, The General Partnership, and Peterson Ventures. SchoolAI’s total funding is $32 million to date.

SchoolAI’s Classroom Experience platform combines AI assistants for teachers that help with classroom preparation and administrative work. At the same time, SchoolAI’s Spaces uses personalized AI tutors, games, and lessons that can adapt to each student’s unique learning style and interests.

These tools give teachers actionable insights into student performance and allow them to deliver targeted support when it matters most.

According to the company, SchoolAI is used in over a million classrooms across all 50 U.S. States and over 80 countries worldwide. The platform is embedded in more than 400 school districts through strategic partnerships that train teachers and students on how to use AI safely and in a managed way.

Launched for classrooms in August of 2023, SchoolAI noted how teachers, instructional coaches, and school leaders are using their tools:

• “Personalized Learning Companions: Teacher-designed AI ‘Spaces’ that adapt to each student’s interests, learning pace, and style. These 1:1 AI tutors can provide immediate support, dramatically increasing student engagement and learning.
• Simple Teacher Workflows: Easy-to-use AI assistants that help teachers prepare for class: lesson planning, targeted assessments, personalized feedback, and other administrative tasks–freeing teachers to focus on meaningful student connection while staying aligned to district and state standards.
• Deep Accessibility and Support Features: SchoolAI supports more than 99 languages for supporting multilingual students, has real-time text-to-speech and speech-to-text for younger students, custom instructions for targeted student accommodations, and additional accessibility features for easy reading and writing.
• Data-Driven Support Systems: Real-time dashboards can surface actionable data and insights, revealing which students need academic or other support, help students stay on track, flag concerns, and raise opportunities to improve future lessons.
• Seamless Integration With Existing Tools: SchoolAI integrates directly with established platforms like Canvas, PowerSchool, and Google Classroom, so teachers can use AI with the tools they and their students are already using.
• Enterprise-Grade Security & School-Ready Safety: A safe, managed, and secure learning environment fully compliant with FERPA and COPPA regulations, with SOC 2 certification providing the highest standards of data protection for students and schools.”

IBL News | New York

Hosting platform WordPress.com launched a free AI-builder tool for creating brand-new websites this month. The tool uses a chat-style, conversational interface for typing in prompts.

Companies like Squarespace and Wix offer AI-powered builders to speed up website design and creation.

However, more advanced design tools are required to deploy complex integrations or e-commerce sites that go beyond some text and images.

WordPress.com’s tool includes 30 free prompts before users choose a paid hosting plan, starting at $96 per year.

Users can take over, edit, and add pages, and change the site design manually.

IBL News | New York

Marketers using agents and the right AI stack are dramatically accelerating workflows and development cycles following a new practice called Vibe Marketing.

The traditional way of operating with marketing teams of copywriters, designers, analytists, media buyers — working in silos — is being challenged by the new world of a single marketing testing multiple angles in real-time by using tens of AI agents.

Experts say that these Vibe Marketing practices result in a 20x acceleration and substantial financial savings.

They take advantage of autonomous tools and applications used in another recent trend, Vibe Coding, with various solutions such as Replit, Vercel, Bolt, and Lovable. (Read at iblnews.org The New Trend of ‘Vibecoding’: Non-Programmers Creating Software Tools with AI.)

This phenomenon can be a complete paradigm shift in marketing, transforming the $250 billion industry.

Marketing expert Greg Isenberg commented, “The cool thing is that a single marketer with the right stack can now outperform entire agencies or internal teams; there is an opportunity now to be 10x more efficient than the competition.”

Some of the software applications and functionalities of these AI-driven agents are:

• CRMs that browse the web and autonomously find prospects, analyze content, extract data, and craft personalized messages.

• A tool that captures competitor ads, analyzes them, and auto-generates variations for your brand (free competitive intelligence)

• AI-driven maps showing customer segments and conversion flows using census data

• Platforms generating digital product launches, sales pages, email sequences, and ads.

Some of the most common tools include:

• Workflow Builders: Make, n8n, Zapier

• Agent Platforms: Taskade, Manus, Relay, Lindy

• Software (lead magnets, microsites, etc): Replit, Bolt, Lovable, Vercel

• Marketing AI: Phantom Buster, mosaic, Meshr, Icon, Jasper

• Creative tools: Flora, Kling, Leonardo, Manus

Remember how VIBE CODING (replit, bolt, lovable) transformed 8-week development cycles into 2-day sprints? The same 20x acceleration is hitting marketing teams RIGHT NOW

It’s called VIBE MARKETING (I’ll explain what it all means).

The old world – marketing teams with 10+… pic.twitter.com/Egod1IvnXl

— GREG ISENBERG (@gregisenberg) March 22, 2025

• Forbes: VCs Wake Up To Vibe Marketing: AI Reshaping The $250 Billion Industry

IBL News | New York

Stability AI released in research preview mode this week Stable Virtual Camera, a model that transforms 2D images into immersive 3D scenes with realistic depth and perspective.

With its tool, Stability is adding generative AI to virtual cameras, often used in digital filmmaking and 3D animation to capture and navigate scenes in real-time.

The model is available for research use under a noncommercial license. It can be downloaded on Hugging Face, and the code is accessible on GitHub. The full research paper is here.

“We invite the research community to explore its capabilities and contribute to its development,” said the company.

The model can generate videos that travel along “dynamic” camera paths or presets, including “Spiral,” “Dolly Zoom,” “Move,” and “Pan.”

In its initial version, Stable Virtual Camera may produce lower-quality results in certain scenarios, admitted Stability AI.

The current version generates videos in square (1:1), portrait (9:16), and landscape (16:9) aspect ratios up to 1,000 frames in length.

“Input images featuring humans, animals, or dynamic textures like water often lead to degraded outputs.”

“Additionally, highly ambiguous scenes, complex camera paths that intersect objects or surfaces, and irregularly shaped objects can cause flickering artifacts, especially when target viewpoints differ significantly from the input images.”

Stability, the firm behind the popular image-generation model Stable Diffusion, raised new cash last year as investors, including Eric Schmidt and Napster founder Sean Parker, sought to turn the business around.

Techcrunch states, “Emad Mostaque, Stability’s co-founder and ex-CEO, reportedly mismanaged Stability into financial ruin, leading staff to resign, a partnership with Canva to fall through, and investors to grow concerned about the company’s prospects.”

“In the last few months, Stability has hired a new CEO, appointed “Titanic” director James Cameron to its board of directors, and released several new image-generation models. In March, the company partnered with chipmaker Arm to bring an AI model to generate audio, including sound effects, to mobile devices running Arm chips.”