Chatbot platform Character.AI is rolling out its video generator, AvatarFX, in general release after a month in closed beta. It’s also adding a sharing feature called Scenes and Streams that will serve content to Character.AI’s community feed, coming soon to mobile. Users can now tap AvatarFX to create up to five videos per day, starting by uploading a photo, choosing a voice and writing dialogue for the character. Character.AI started as 1:1 text chat in the summer of 2023. Now the company is “expanding into a multi-modal world” with “more ways for creators to build immersive narratives and dynamic experiences.” Continue reading Character.AI Goes Wide with AvatarFX, Adds Mobile Features

China’s Manus AI has unveiled a text-to-video generator it says can transform “prompts into complete stories — structured, sequenced, and ready to watch. With a single prompt, Manus plans each scene, crafts the visuals, and animates your vision,” the company announced last week. Manus generated buzz in March for its agentic approach to AI, and now it is putting that autonomous technology to work on generative AI, promising story generation within minutes. Last month, the firm that developed Manus, Butterfly Effect, reportedly secured $75 million in funding led by U.S.-based Benchmark for a nearly $500 million valuation. Continue reading Manus AI Takes an Agentic Approach with Its Video Generator

Two weeks after its global rebranding of GroupM to WPP Media, the bespoke London-based marketing behemoth is launching Open Intelligence, an “AI identity solution” that WPP says will better target viewers with privacy-conscious solutions that more effectively message on behalf of its clients. Built around what WPP calls “the industry’s first Large Marketing Model,” Open Intelligence is “trained on the world’s largest and most diverse set of audience, behavioral, and event data,” culled from WPP’s decentralized partnership network. “Our model learns continuously from trillions of signals across more than 350 partners in over 75 markets,” the company claims. Continue reading WPP Media Launches Industry’s First Large Marketing Model

AMC Networks has partnered with Runway to use the AI startup’s models and technology in the TV studio’s marketing and development processes. The Cablevision-owned AMC Networks brand — home to cable TV hits such as “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad” and “The Walking Dead” that have found new audiences on the AMC+ streaming service — plans to use AI in everything from identifying key scenes for promotional use to ideating new ideas, previsualization and special effects. Lionsgate entered a similar deal with Runway last year that had the reciprocal benefit of allowing the AI company to use the studio’s content to train models. Continue reading AMC Networks the Latest to Partner with Runway for AI Tools

The Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) is the new name the Trump administration’s Department of Commerce has bestowed on the Biden-era’s AI Safety Institute. The change aims to “ensure Commerce uses its vast scientific and industrial expertise to evaluate and understand the capabilities of these rapidly developing systems and identify vulnerabilities and threats within systems developed in the U.S. and abroad,” the Department announced. As part of the update, CAISI becomes the industry’s primary federal government point of contact for testing and collaborative research related to commercial AI systems. Continue reading Safety Institute Is Now Center for AI Standards and Innovation

Bytedance-owned social video platform TikTok is improving ways in which users can customize their For You feed, letting them increase emphasis on subjects of interest with Manage Topics and adding AI-powered Smart Keyword Filters to suppress content they don’t want to see. While the social platform has featured keyword filters for some time, the new filters are smart enough to catch a broader range of unwanted content. Users can now include up to 200 filtering keywords and let AI do the rest “to capture additional videos featuring similar words, synonyms and slang variations” that reduce unwanted content in the For You feed. Continue reading TikTok Adds Features Letting Users Fine-Tune ‘For You’ Feed

At its annual State of Unreal event, Epic Games demonstrated the formidable capabilities of its creator tools, showcasing open-world updates in Unreal Engine 5.6 and moving the MetaHuman photo-real 3D character generator out of early access and into general availability — its character and animation output now able to be used in competing game engines Unity and Godot and in software packages including Maya, Houdini and Blender. Game studio CD Projekt Red, creator of the popular “The Witcher” series, joined Epic in demonstrating how Unreal 5.6 lets teams build large-scale open worlds that run smoothly on current-generation phones and PCs. Continue reading Epic Games Unveils Updates to Unreal Engine, MetaHumans

Microsoft’s Bing mobile search app for Android and iOS is adding a free Bing Video Creator feature powered by OpenAI’s Sora. Text-to-video model Sora was previously available only by subscription through ChatGPT Plus for $20 per month or the $200 monthly ChatGPT Pro. The integration will enable creation of five-second vertical video clips on mobile, with horizontal capability coming soon. Although a major investor in OpenAI, Microsoft has made headway with its own signature AI offerings, including Bing Image Creator and the Copilot AI assistant. The Bing Mobile app is available worldwide via the App Store for iOS and the Play Store for Android. Continue reading Microsoft Debuts Mobile Bing Video Creator Powered by Sora

ByteDance-owned TikTok is officially launching its TikTok for Artists music insights tool two months after reports surfaced that the service was testing the resource in select countries. Billed as an “all-in-one” analytics platform, the company says TikTok for Artists provides detailed data about the performance of an artist’s music and posts on TikTok, as well as insights into how the community is engaging with the performer’s content. In addition to providing actionable marketing support, the tool is designed to help artists boost fan engagement and inform content creation. TikTok is also launching a new Pre-Release tool designed to help artists promote upcoming material. Continue reading TikTok for Artists: New Analytics Platform Gets Official Launch

Hollywood heavyweight Jeffrey Katzenberg has thrown his support behind an AI advertising startup called Creatify, leading its Series A round with $1.5 million via WndrCo. Katzenberg is also taking a board seat at the two-year-old firm, which claims more than 1.5 million global users and 10,000 teams using its tech to create social media-centric video ads, leveraging AI avatars and real-time testing. Marketing teams can use its tools to “spin up high-quality video creative in minutes (not weeks),” the company claims, mentioning a client that uses Creatify to generate 1,000-plus ads per month. Continue reading Katzenberg’s WndrCo Invests $1.5M in AI Ad Startup Creatify

Google has quietly released the AI Edge Gallery app, which lets users download models and run them locally without Internet connectivity. Available for Android and eventually on iOS, the experimental app is hosted on GitHub where it can be downloaded for free. Users can find compatible models capable of running on-device, like Google’s Gemma 3n, and run them offline to do things like generate images, get answers to questions, and write and edit code using the processor of supported smartphones. While locally running models aren’t as powerful as their cloud counterparts, they offer more privacy and can sometimes be faster. Continue reading Google AI Edge Gallery App Runs Models Locally on Android

Twitch is upgrading its presentation capabilities with the addition of vertical viewing and dual-format streaming. The popular Amazon-owned gaming platform is also adding 2K video in open beta for all partners and affiliates, broadening accessibility for high-definition formats. In January 2024, Twitch began experimenting with HD including 4K, which remains in closed beta for select users. The format tests were part of Twitch’s Enhanced Broadcast initiative with Nvidia and OBS Studio, purveyor of the open broadcaster format. Creators with access to Enhanced Broadcasting in Twitch Studio can use dual formatting to simultaneously stream in horizontal and vertical formats. Continue reading Twitch Announces New Features to Enhance Mobile Viewing

An internal OpenAI document revealed as part of a discovery demand in the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google reveals OpenAI’s plan to turn ChatGPT into the public’s primary Internet interface. Although heavily redacted, the document effectively reveals OpenAI’s goal is to have ChatGPT replace Google Chrome and Search with an “AI super assistant that deeply understands you and is your interface to the Internet.” Aside from bolstering Google’s position that it has competition and is not an impregnable monopoly, the information contained therein provides an in-depth look at OpenAI’s roadmap. Continue reading OpenAI Seeks to Make ChatGPT New Gateway to the Internet

DeepSeek-R1-0528 is here, and this latest iteration is generating almost as much stir as the initial open-source R1 reasoning model did in January. The Chinese startup, owned by quantitative analysis firm High-Flyer Capital, is touted by one media outlet as “near parity in reasoning capabilities with proprietary paid models such as OpenAI’s o3 and Google Gemini 2.5 Pro.” Promised are stronger capabilities in complex reasoning centered on math, science, business and coding, along with improved features for developers and researchers. As with the earlier release, the DeepSeek-R1-0528 is available under the MIT License, which supports commercial use and allows customization. Continue reading DeepSeek’s New Update Heightens Rivalry with U.S. AI Firms

Google is celebrating 10 years of Google Photos by introducing a redesign of the Photos editor, including helpful new tools. The Photos editor gets some AI editing features previously available only on Pixel phones as part of its generative AI Magic Editor. The Photos platform is also expanding access to its AI-powered text-to-image Reimagine and automatic framing and related features first introduced with the Pixel 9. The company explains there are currently more than 1.5 billion monthly Photos users that have stored 9+ trillion photos and videos. The updates reflect Google’s AI push as it continues to integrate Gemini across its growing family of products and services. Continue reading Google Photos Rolling Out Redesign and New AI Editing Tools