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.” Read more

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. Read more

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. Read more

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. Read more

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. Read more