New OpenAI ‘Deep Research’ Agent Turns ChatGPT into a Research Analyst By John K. Waters 02/12/25 OpenAI has introduced a new “Deep Research” feature that enhances ChatGPT with the capabilities of a “research analyst” that automates time-consuming research …

Educause HECVAT Vendor Assessment Tool Gets an Upgrade Educause has announced HECVAT 4, the latest update to its Higher Education Community Vendor Assessment Toolkit. HECVAT is a community-driven tool designed to help institutions evaluate solution providers against an institution’s policies …

Google Announces Upgrade to Flagship Gemini AI Platform, Enhancing Multimodal Capabilities Google has launched Gemini 2.0, designed to empower enterprise users and developers with advanced multimodal capabilities and enhanced performance. The update aims to solidify Google’s position as a leader …

Registration Now Open for Tech Tactics in Education: Thriving in the Age of AI Tech Tactics in Education has officially opened registration for its May 7 virtual conference on “Thriving in the Age of AI.” The annual event, brought to …

Report: Attackers Change Tactics as Ransomware Payoffs Decline Attackers are changing tactics as they collect less money from ransomware payoffs, according to a new report from Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm. For years, cybersecurity experts have advised that organizations not …

California State University Launches Systemwide ChatGPT Edu Deployment In the largest deployment of ChatGPT to date, California State University is rolling out ChatGPT Edu, OpenAI’s generative AI product designed for education institutions, to more than 460,000 students and 63,000-plus staff …

Pima Community College Launches New Portal for a Unified Digital Campus Experience Arizona’s Pima Community College is elevating the digital campus experience for students, faculty, and staff with a new portal built on the Pathify digital engagement platform. The MyPima …

AWS, Microsoft, Google, Others Make DeepSeek-R1 AI Model Available on Their Platforms By John K. Waters 02/04/25 Leading cloud service providers are now making the open source DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model available on their platforms. The Chinese startup generated intense …

3Play Media Launches AI-Enabled Accessibility Tools Accessibility provider 3Play Media has introduced new AI-enabled video accessibility solutions designed to help colleges and universities meet ADA Title II compliance regulations. The package includes audio description, captioning, and live captioning tools that …

Agentic AI Named Top Tech Trend for 2025 Agentic AI will be the top tech trend for 2025, according to research firm Gartner. The term describes autonomous machine “agents” that move beyond query-and-response generative chatbots to do enterprise-related tasks without …