CES Highlights and Tools to Spark Big Ideas

🔥 This Week’s Top Industry News

CES 2025 just wrapped, and boy, did it deliver. 

Tech dreams were on full display, and the AI world had some absolute mic-drop moments. 

• EngineAI showcases real-life humanoid robotics

A Chinese robotics firm shared footage of its SE01 humanoid strolling outside their Shenzhen office. 

It’s giving I-Robot (2004) but IRL. Creepy? Cool? Maybe both.

• TransPixar is changing the game for Hollywood

This AI tool can generate transparent visual effects for AI-generated videos. 

Translation? VFX production just leveled up in a way that’s going to have filmmakers absolutely geeking out.

• Nvidia’s bringing the heat (again)

Nvidia made a splash at CES with many announcements. Three standouts are:

• GR00T Blueprint: A tool for developers to create massive datasets to teach humanoid robots skills through imitation. Basically, robots are learning to learn. 

• Project Digits: A $3,000 superpowered personal computer. It runs on the GB10 chip (1,000x more powerful than a laptop) and lets anyone run AI models at home. Yep, AI for the people.

• Cosmos:  An open-source platform loaded with foundation models for physical AI. 

Trained on 20 million hours of video. Perfect for robotics and autonomous vehicles. 

• Microsoft’s Phi-4 goes fully open-source

Microsoft dropped Phi-4 on Hugging Face, and it’s a beast. 

A 14B parameter model trained on high-quality synthetic data. 

The best part? It’s under an MIT license, so it’s free to use commercially. Open AI, it’s your move.

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🧠 This Week’s Practical Use Case

It’s 2025, and you’re ready to hit the ground running with fresh business ideas. 

But let’s be honest—sometimes the creative juices need a little push. 

Staring at a blank screen?

Feeling like all your great ideas were left in 2024? 

No worries.

Here’s a practical use case for three new tools we just discovered: 

Step 1: Spark Ideas with IdeaSpark

I personally love this part. IdeaSpark is like having a brainstorming buddy who’s always full of good suggestions.

• How It Works: You tell it what industry you’re in (e-commerce, content marketing, pet grooming—you name it) and the type of ideas you need.

• What Happens: It spits out fresh, tailored ideas to get those wheels turning.

• Example: Let’s say you’re in content marketing. It might suggest: “Launch a weekly video series called ‘Behind the Scenes’ to give your audience an insider look at your business.”

Boom. You’re already on your way.

Sidenote: here are a few more newsletters you may want to follow in the space.

Step 2: Organize Your Thoughts with MindMap AI

Now that you’ve got some ideas, it’s time to bring order to the chaos. MindMap AI is here to help.

• How It Works: You plug in all your random ideas, and it instantly turns them into a clean, visual mind map.

• What Happens: Suddenly, your scattered thoughts look like a well-organized plan.

• Example: That “Behind the Scenes” video series? MindMap AI might group it under “Social Media Campaigns” alongside other ideas like “TikTok Challenges” or “Customer Spotlights.” You’ll see connections you didn’t even realize were there.

This step is like magic—it takes the overwhelm out of brainstorming and gives you a roadmap.

Step 3: Refine Your Ideas with Whimsical AI

Here’s where it gets even better. Whimsical AI helps you dig deeper and polish those rough ideas.

• How It Works: You bring it your ideas, and it pushes back with questions, suggestions, or tweaks to make them even stronger.

• What Happens: You go from “hmm, maybe this could work” to “this is genius.”

Example: It might take that “Behind the Scenes” series and suggest themed weeks like “Product Design Week” or “Meet the Team Week.” Suddenly, your idea feels fresh, fun, and ready to go.

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