Stability AI has released an AI model that generates stereo audio that is quick and lightweight enough for mobile devices. Called Stable Audio Open Small, the open-source model is the result of a collaboration between the AI startup and chipmaker Arm. While there are several AI-powered apps that generate audio — Suno and Udio among them — most rely on cloud processing, thus can’t be used offline. Stability says Stable Audio Open Small is also IP safe due to being trained entirely on audio from the royalty-free libraries Free Music Archive and Freesound. Continue reading Stability AI Releases a Fast Stereo Audio-Generator for Mobile

Fresh off its legal victory in the years-long courtroom battle with Apple, Epic Games is getting ready to relaunch “Fortnite” in the App Store with a Rewards program offer that encourages people to use its own payment option rather than the iPhone maker’s system. Gamers who make purchases in “Fortnite,” “Rocket League” or “Fall Guys” using Epic’s payment system will get 20 percent credited back as Epic Rewards. The global offer for those in-game purchases is good in perpetuity, whether made using iOS, Android, a PC or the Web, as long as Epic’s payment system is used. Continue reading Epic Games Rewarding Players for Using Its Payment System

Google is adding a “Simplify” feature for iOS users that uses AI to translate complex or technical text into language that aims to be easy to understand. Simplify leverages what Google calls “a novel prompt refinement approach developed by Google Research,” drawing on the company’s proprietary AI, Gemini, to make complicated writing “digestible — without losing key details.” Google’s research indicates people find Simplify’s plainspeak “significantly more helpful than the original complex text” and improved retention. “Simplify uses AI to make dense text on the web easier to understand — without leaving a web page,” Google explains. Continue reading Google Simplify App Makes Tough Text Easier to Understand

Pinterest has added more AI options for visual search, hoping to drive discovery. The idea is to make it easier to segment elements in Pin image searches, building databases of relevant or personally associated products. When users view a Pin, they’ll now also see AI-generated words that can be used to learn more about elements of an image that interest them, including informationally and to facilitate shopping. “We’re breaking down and decoding images so users can quickly search and shop for the details of an outfit — whether it’s an aesthetic, color palette, fit or product category,” according to Pinterest. Continue reading Pinterest Aims to Improve Discovery with Its AI Search Tools

Netflix is testing a short-form video feature for mobile to compete for the attention of those spending time on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. The news came out of the company’s inaugural product and tech event where it also shared plans for an OpenAI-powered search tool that lets users describe their desired content conversationally. Netflix plans to introduce improved real-time recommendations and a redesigned TV homepage, rolling out globally in the coming weeks and months, according to Chief Product Officer Eunice Kim, who presided over the event with Chief Technology Officer Elizabeth Stone. Continue reading Netflix Highlights Original Shows in New Vertical Shorts Feed

Cisco Systems announced the development of a networking chip that uses quantum mechanics. The prototype entanglement source chip, which the company claims can generate up to one million entangled photon pairs per second (at room temperature), was created through the Outshift by Cisco incubator in partnership with UC Santa Barbara. While other companies are building quantum computers, Cisco is focusing on infrastructure, network and security frameworks. The company has also opened a new research facility in Santa Monica, California — Cisco Quantum Labs — dedicated to quantum networking tech. Continue reading Cisco Unveils a New Prototype Chip for Quantum Networking

Artificial intelligence is making big inroads in shopping, with Visa, Mastercard and PayPal all announcing AI-enhanced purchasing. Unveiled at the Visa Global Product Drop event, Visa Intelligent Commerce enables AI “to find, shop and buy for consumers based on their pre-selected preferences,” Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell said, noting “each consumer sets the limits, and Visa helps manage the rest.” That news came a day after Mastercard introduced Mastercard Agent Pay and PayPal emphasized agentic efforts at its Dev Days event last week. Agentic commerce is the use of AI to transact on behalf of a customer or business. Continue reading Visa, Mastercard and PayPal Embrace AI Agentic Commerce

Online graphic design platform Freepik, has unveiled F Lite, a text-to-image generator that the company says was trained only on licensed content, making it safe for commercial use. The 10 billion-parameter F Lite — currently available in two openly-licensed versions — was developed in partnership with Fal.ai, a San Francisco-based AI startup that uses a proprietary inference engine and APIs to enable fast training, inference, and scaling of image, video, audio, and multimodal AI models. Freepik Head of AI Iván de Prado describes F Lite as “a significant milestone in open, responsible AI.” Continue reading Freepik Introduces a Responsibly Trained AI Image Generator

China’s Alibaba Group has released a Qwen3 LLM series said to be at the leading edge of open-source models, nearly achieving the performance of proprietary models from AI competitors OpenAI and Google. Alibaba says Qwen3 offers improvements in reasoning, tool use, instruction following and multilingual abilities. The Qwen3 series features eight new models — two that are mixture-of-experts and six built on dense neural networks. Their sizes range from 600 million to 235 billion parameters. The size and scope of the Alibaba slate maintains China’s accelerated AI pace in the wake of DeepSeek’s game-changing debut. Continue reading Alibaba Touts Advance in Open-Source AI with Qwen3 Series

News from Adobe MAX London 2025 spanned new Firefly image models to a refreshed web app that includes third-party image generators, an AI agent that automates Photoshop, an updated Firefly mobile app coming soon to iOS and Android, and the Firefly Video model in general release. The latest release of Firefly “unifies AI-powered tools for image, video, audio, and vector generation into a single, cohesive platform and introduces many new capabilities,” according to Adobe, which says that since its debut nearly two years ago, creatives have used Firefly to generate more than 22 billion assets worldwide. Continue reading Adobe Unveils Two New Image Models and Array of Products

Meta Platforms has introduced a new Instagram Reels feature called Blend that lets users customize a video feed for themselves and friends. The invite-only Blends can be built for a single friend or within a group chat. Once created, the feed is refreshed each day with new content, with all members able to add material. The idea is to let friends explore and discover content together while adding a new interactive element that harkens back to social media’s roots, cutting through the recent trend of viral influencer content and ads. Earlier this year it was reported that the new feature was being developed. Continue reading Meta Brings ‘Blend’ Custom Video Feed Feature to Instagram

LG has partnered with AI startup Zenapse and will leverage its proprietary large emotion model (LEM) to power advertising that reflects viewers’ moods and emotions. Building on Zenapse’s “emotional AI and psychographic targeting,” the companies say they will “redefine viewer engagement, personalization, and campaign performance” by applying the technology to LG Ad Solutions’ advanced connected TV platform. As part of the multi-year deal, Zenapse and LG Innovation Labs will work to develop new CTV ad products that integrate emotional intelligence to deliver “more meaningful and measurable brand experiences across 200 million LG smart TVs globally.” Continue reading LG and Zenapse Partner on Emotionally Intelligent Advertising

OpenAI has released two new AI models that use images as part of their reasoning process, “thinking with images.” OpenAI o3 and o4-mini “are the smartest models we’ve released to date, representing a step change in ChatGPT’s capabilities for everyone from curious users to advanced researchers,” the company says. The new entries in the “o” series also have agentic capabilities and can independently “use and combine every tool within ChatGPT, including searching the web, analyzing uploaded files and other data with Python, reasoning deeply about visual inputs, and even generating images.” Continue reading OpenAI Introduces New Models That Can Reason with Images

Agentic AI company Moveworks has opened an AI Agent Marketplace that launches with more than 100 pre-built agents, enabling users to discover, install, and deploy AI assistants that automate business processes. Agentic AI is booming, as businesses seek to offload tasks from human workers to software. To support that, new companies and existing ones have started providing pre-built agents that are more convenient than building them from scratch. “What once took weeks to build can now be installed and deployed in mere minutes,” Moveworks says, touting its library offerings. Continue reading Moveworks Joins Competition in Offering Enterprise AI Agents

Anthropic has upgraded its AI assistant Claude, adding Research, an autonomous capability that integrates with Google Workspace. Claude can now search and reference content in Google Docs as well as communications in Gmail and events in Calendar. “With Research, Claude can search across both your internal work context and the web to help you make decisions and take action faster than before,” Anthropic explains, turning the model into a “true virtual collaborator” for enterprise clients. The expansion puts Anthropic into more direct competition with OpenAI and Microsoft as well as Google with Gemini in the AI productivity space. Continue reading Anthropic Adds Deep Research, Google Integration to Claude