Plutonic Rainbows

Persico’s work on the album opens with a burst of real-world textures that blend found sounds, birdsong and ambient recordings into a soundscape that feels both contemporary and steeped in history. On tracks like ‘The Center Cannot Hold’ and ‘Brutal Threshold’, her inventive layering of pebbly noises and breathy vocal drones creates an impression of communing with the past, all while utilising modern sound manipulation techniques.

Throughout the album, Persico, with help from Belgian sound designer Koenraad Ecker, transforms everyday recordings into rich tapestries of audio that hint at sacred, folk and operatic traditions. This process reveals the hidden energy of old spaces, as elements such as distant police sirens and corroded metallic scrapes gradually expose the deep, archival layers embedded in the recordings.

The album continues this experimental journey by exploring various sonic territories on tracks like ‘Maze’, ‘Rashid Karami’, ‘Kairos’ and ‘Voices Organ’. Whether it’s the evocative call to prayer merging with environmental sound or the industrial rhythms and meditative mantras that punctuate the pieces, each track offers a fresh perspective on how the legacy of historic spaces can shape and inspire the modern auditory experience.

You can purchase the album here.

Thankfully, just a few days after it was announced for professional users in the United States, the European Union has finally gained access to this new technology. I tried it out today and found it exceptionally impressive. It actually employs the full 03 model, which has yet to be released for public use. The power of this new technology is that it can search the entire web and collect real-time information before reasoning about that information.

I have built a lightweight Flask web application featuring a binary evaluation system with 'Yes' and 'No' buttons and integrated AJAX to dynamically load new prompts without reloading the page, while storing user feedback in a CSV file. I enhanced the interface by splitting the prompt into two distinct boxes — one for the description and one for the seed words — styling the seed words in bold without a redundant label, matching the font sizes, and adding complementary border colours, all while retaining a hidden comment box for future feedback. Moving forward, I plan to expand the list of available prompts and transition to using SQL for storing the results.

OpenAI has unveiled Deep research, a new AI agent integrated into ChatGPT, designed to autonomously conduct multi-step internet research for complex tasks. Leveraging the upcoming OpenAI o3 model, this tool is optimized for web browsing and data analysis, enabling it to find, analyze, and synthesize information from various online sources, including text, images, and PDFs. This capability allows deep research to generate comprehensive reports in approximately 10 minutes, a task that would typically take a human researcher several hours.

Deep research is particularly beneficial for professionals in fields such as finance, science, policy, and engineering, who require thorough and precise information. Additionally, it caters to discerning consumers seeking personalized recommendations for significant purchases like cars, appliances, and furniture. Each output is fully documented, providing clear citations and a summary of its reasoning process, which facilitates easy reference and verification of information. This feature is especially effective in uncovering niche, non-intuitive information that would typically require browsing numerous websites.

While deep research marks a significant advancement in AI capabilities, experts advise caution in relying solely on AI-generated outputs without human verification. The tool is currently available to ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the U.S., with plans for broader access in the future. OpenAI acknowledges potential limitations, such as the AI’s ability to distinguish authoritative information from rumors and accurately convey uncertainty. Despite these challenges, deep research represents a substantial step toward OpenAI’s broader goal of developing artificial general intelligence capable of producing novel scientific research.