Entertainment studio Cineverse has joined forces with Banyan Ventures, the venture arm of former ABC Entertainment Group and WME Chairman Lloyd Braun, on MicroCo, a native AI platform that will generate micro-dramas and micro-series — “serialized, short-form, mobile-first content” that has become a craze in China. Launching in 2026, the platform has drawn comparisons to Quibi, the short-form content company founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg in 2018 and shuttered two years later, burdened by production costs. MicroCo plans to use AI to keep costs down. The company is aiming for a “freemium” model combining some free access along with paid subscriptions. Continue reading Cineverse, Banyan to Launch Platform for GenAI Micro-Series

Google DeepMind has unveiled Genie 3, a world-building model that uses text and image prompts to generate 3D environments in real time. Still in research preview, Genie 3 can output “several minutes” of video that can be navigated in real time at 24fps and a resolution of 720p. Because it remembers the rules of the world it creates, Genie 3 allows agents to predict how the environment evolves and how actions affect it. Google says world models are “a key steppingstone” to artificial general intelligence, or AGI, since they can train AI agents in “an unlimited curriculum of rich simulation.” Continue reading Genie 3 World Model Produces Minutes of Video in Real Time

AI audio firm ElevenLabs has launched Eleven Music, which lets businesses and individuals generate studio-caliber music using natural language prompts. Users can generate tracks in any genre or style, even adding vocals in different languages. The Eleven Music model was developed in partnership with music licensing firm Merlin and independent publisher Kobalt. Artists and songwriters from the two groups will participate in the development of Eleven Music Pro, a subsequent model planned for release in the coming months. The company says it built-in guardrails to protect rightsholders. Continue reading ElevenLabs Debuts Eleven Music with Kobalt, Merlin Backing

Live streaming service Sling continues to innovate in the price-performance category, adding a $5 Day Pass that consumers without full-feature (or even skinny) subscriptions will likely find convenient for sports and other special events. The company is offering a $10 Weekend Pass and $15 Week Pass to complement a regular monthly subscription price that starts at $46. “Just in time for football season … fresh, flexible ways to tune in,” Sling touts, proclaiming a “mission to challenge industry norms” with “fan-first streaming solutions at a time when consumers are demanding more control and less cost.” Continue reading Sling Shakes Up Television with Live Streaming Starting at $5

South Korea-based electronics giant Samsung has released the first TV set to use its new Micro RGB backlight technology. Measuring 115-inches, the 4K TV is being released in the company’s home country priced at roughly $32,300, with plans to hit U.S. shelves next, followed by a global rollout and additional screen sizes. Samsung’s proprietary Micro RGB technology arranges individually controlled red, green and blue micro RGB LEDs — each less than 100µm in size, less than the width of a human hair — behind the panel, enabling precision control over each color. The tech is drawing comments like “game changer” and “makes LED look outdated.” Continue reading Samsung Rolls Out New 4K TV, Its First with Micro RGB Tech

Meta Platforms has released an update for its Brand Rights Protection tools, which help businesses find and report misuse of their brand across advertising and user-generated content posted on popular social platforms Facebook and Instagram. Simultaneously, the company is expanding scam ad reporting to all Brand Rights Protection accounts, enabling businesses to report suspected scam ads at scale, and rolling out a simplified takedown request protocol to save brands time. The new features “include some of the most requested” tools by businesses who rely on these brand safety suites. Continue reading Meta Expands Brand Rights Protection on Its Social Platforms

Nvidia has unveiled the Blackwell Server Edition GPU designed for enterprise servers. The reveal was made at the ACM SIGGRAPH 2025 computer graphics conference, which started Sunday and runs through Thursday in Vancouver. The company also introduced a host of resources for robotics developers that include a new AI family called the Cosmos World Foundation Models, or Cosmos WFMs, which generate “physics-aware” videos. Notable among them is Cosmos Reason, an open and customizable 7-billion-parameter reasoning vision language model (VLM) for physical AI and robotics. Continue reading SIGGRAPH: Nvidia Touts Server Chip, Cosmos World Models

Elon Musk’s xAI has made Grok 4 available on its free tiers as it seeks to take advantage of initial user dissatisfaction with OpenAI’s new GPT-5. The company has positioned Grok as freewheeling and uncensored, a contrast to GPT-5, which has been criticized on Reddit and other social platforms as a “corporate beige zombie” with too many guardrails. After its February debut, Grok 3 was reined-in with checks including removal of its native image generator in March. Grok 4 was released in July with integrated image and video features as well as a “Spicy” mode for creating risqué content. Continue reading Grok 4 Offered Free in xAI Move on ChatGPT-5 Market Share

As the smart home world prepares for the Matter 1.5 update this fall, the Connectivity Standards Alliance is releasing a 1.4.2 update designed to bridge the gap, making devices more secure and efficient. Improvements include support for Wi-Fi-only commissioning. Using Wi-Fi Unsynchronized Service Discovery (USD), the protocol bypasses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) radios in onboarding devices to Matter over Wi-Fi, providing a path to more affordable devices. A host of security upgrades includes cryptographic Vendor ID (VID), ensuring that the admins installed on a device are authentic. Continue reading Matter Releases an Update as a Next Step Toward Version 15

The Walt Disney Company and Fox Corporation are joining forces to market their sports streaming services. In addition to being sold separately, ESPN’s upcoming direct-to-consumer platform and FOX One will be offered as a $39.99 monthly bundle starting October 2. Both individual services debut August 21, with ESPN charging $29.99 per month and FOX One priced at $19.99 monthly. FOX One will include Fox’s NFL and MLB telecasts as well as FOX News, FOX Weather, FOX Business, FOX Broadcasting and more, while the ESPN DTC service will include access to ESPN’s linear networks, ESPN+ and ESPN on ABC. Continue reading ESPN DTC and FOX One Merging into Mega Package This Fall

Kansas-based AMC Entertainment Holdings reported substantially improved financials for Q2 2025, reducing losses by 150 percent year-over-year to $4.7 million from $32.8 million from the same period a year prior. The world’s largest theater chain reported a 26 percent attendance increase during the period. CEO Adam Aron attributed the strong showing to an industrywide box office recovery that produced strengthened results across AMC Theatres in the U.S. and Odeon Cinemas in Europe. Total revenue of $1.4 billion marked a 35 percent improvement compared to Q2 2024, and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) grew a stunning 150 percent to $189 million. Continue reading AMC Entertainment Turns Corner: Sales Surge, Losses Narrow

AMC Networks increased streaming revenue by 12 percent to $169 million in Q2 despite an 18 percent dip in U.S. ad sales. The company — whose portfolio of streaming platforms includes AMC+, Sundance Now, Acorn TV, Shudder, HIDIVE and ALLBLK — added 200,000 new subs in the April through June period, ending the quarter with a total of 10.4 million, a 2 percent increase. AMC said it now calculates streaming subscribers on the basis of paid signups. Ongoing challenges in the U.S. cable and satellite TV markets that berth the bulk of its business continue to drag on the balance sheet. AMC’s cable and satellite brands include AMC, BBC America, IFC, IFC Films, SundanceTV and WE tv. Continue reading AMC Networks: Streaming Revenue Growth, Drop in Ad Sales

OpenAI is rolling a new foundation model, GPT-5, via API for developers and enterprise users in three branded sizes — gpt-5, gpt-5-mini and gpt-5-nano — “to give developers more flexibility to trade off performance, cost, and latency.” The company said Thursday that it is also making GPT‑5 available to all ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Team and Free tier users. Enterprise and Education tier users are promised access this week. While GPT‑5 in the API platform is the reasoning model that powers maximum performance in ChatGPT, “GPT‑5 in ChatGPT is a system of reasoning, non-reasoning, and router models,” OpenAI explains. Continue reading OpenAI Announces Launch of GPT-5 Model Across All Tiers

Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4.1, an upgrade to Opus 4 that reportedly improves on agentic tasks, computer coding and reasoning. Pricing has not increased from what customers were paying for Opus 4, and the company promises “substantially larger improvements to our models in the coming weeks.” The move comes as Anthropic nears a new funding round targeting $3 to $5 billion, which could place a valuation of up to $170 billion on the startup. Recurring revenue hit $5 billion as of late July, which could increase to $9 billion by the end of the year. Claude Opus 4.1 was released two days before OpenAI unleashed GPT-5, and performs comparably in coding benchmarks. Continue reading Anthropic Seeks to Raise $5 Billion, Debuts Claude Opus 4.1

Meta Platforms has launched a war against scammers who have infiltrated its popular messaging service WhatsApp, reportedly taking down more than 6.8 million accounts on the platform and adding features to help people identify fraudulent schemes in group and individual chats. Meta claims the scams go far beyond WhatsApp, involving crime syndicates linked to known fraud communities around the world. These criminal scam centers commonly use forced labor to target people across multiple apps, commonly disrupting WhatsApp, the mobile SMS tree that underpins private text messaging, as well as users of ChatGPT, TikTok, Telegram and blockchain. Continue reading WhatsApp Deletes Scam Accounts and Adds Safety Features