NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS

This AI-Designed Enzyme Breaks Down Plastic 25x Faster

Plastic waste is everywhere—piling up in landfills, drifting through oceans, even shedding from our clothes. Most of these plastics take hundreds of years to break down. While recycling was supposed to help, the reality is that most plastic never gets reused because the process is too slow and expensive.

But what if enzymes could do the work instead?

London-based startup Epoch Biodesign is using AI to design plastic-eating enzymes. The company just raised $18.3M to help its team of biologists, chemists, and software engineers develop enzymes to break down synthetic fabrics like polyester and nylon far quicker than anything in nature.

Here’s their story:

• Scientists have long known that some enzymes can digest plastic—but they work too slowly to be practical.

• Epoch’s team trained AI to accelerate nature’s process, designing enzymes that break down plastic 25 times faster.

• Instead of waiting millions of years for evolution to refine these enzymes, AI can test thousands of variations in a fraction of the time, unlocking solutions that wouldn’t have been possible before.

Why it matters: Plastic recycling has always been a challenge—it's expensive, inefficient, and energy-intensive. Epoch’s approach changes that by using enzymes (instead of heat and chemicals) to break down plastic at a lower cost and with less environmental impact.

One of the biggest culprits is the fashion industry, with most clothing today made from synthetic fabrics.

That’s why Inditex (the company behind Zara) has signed a multi-year deal with Epoch, hoping to turn old clothes into new ones. If Epoch can scale this tech, it could change how we handle plastic waste. Instead of sitting in landfills for centuries, plastic could be continuously broken down and reused.

Fun fact: Epoch Biodesign began as a high school science project by founder Jacob Nathan. 😁😁

The New Sesame Voice Assistant Is Really Uncanny

The AI world has been abuzz with the introduction of Sesame's Conversational Speech Model, a voice assistant that has left many users both amazed and unsettled.

Sesame AI’s voice assistant feels strangely human—it pauses, hesitates, interrupts, and even changes its mind mid-sentence, mimicking the natural quirks of human speech. At times, it feels so natural that you almost forget you’re talking to AI.

That’s what makes it so unsettling. We expect to be able to distinguish AI voices from real people, but Sesame pushes past that with effortless and fluid conversations. You can interrupt, switch topics, or change your mind, and it keeps up without missing a beat.

It can even adjust its tone based on mood, responding with encouragement, humor, or subtle pauses that make it seem like it’s really listening.

This is where AI enters what is known as the “uncanny valley”: that space where technology feels almost human… but not quite. We’ve gotten used to AI sounding artificial, but when it starts mimicking human speech this naturally, it’s really eerie. 😬

The company behind this innovation, Sesame AI, has already raised $10 million to push its conversational tech even further.

The Ethical Implications: While Sesame's breakthrough tech dazzles, it carries a dark shadow—imagine scammers wielding voices indistinguishable from your loved ones. How will we know who's really on the line?

You have to try it to understand what I mean. It’s free to use. Check it out here:

ps. I had a quirky little conversation about weekend worthy movies and vegan recipes with “Miles”.