THE FRIDAY DOWNLOAD: AI Companions, Brain-Scanning Breakthroughs, and Smarter Models (November 7, 2025)

This week on The Friday Download, we recapped:

• AI Companion Apps Surge: Paradot goes viral as users explore emotional bonds with personalized AI companions.
• Healthcare Breakthrough: New AI models detect early signs of Alzheimer’s using retinal scans, enabling earlier intervention.
• Tech Snack: OpenAI releases o3-mini, a compact reasoning model supporting wider accessibility in AI development.

References:

• Paradot App Trend Coverage – TechRadar & TikTok Usage Reports, 2025

• AI Retinal Screening Study – Journal of Neurology / BioRxiv Preprint, 2025

• OpenAI o3-mini Release Notes – OpenAI Developer Blog, 2025