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

Anthropic’s new mobile conversation voice mode for its large language model Claude lets it search Google Docs, Drive, Calendar and more on smartphones. Just a week after debuting two new LLMs — Claude Opus 4 and Sonnet 4 — Anthropic announced the mobile updates for its Claude AI chatbot for iOS and Android and said it is extending web search for all users on free Claude plans. While Claude’s conversational voice interface is currently available only in English and only via mobile, an API for desktop use and browser-based support are part of future plans. Amazon and Google both have investment stakes in San Francisco-based Anthropic. Continue reading Anthropic Touts Mobile Voice Mode, Free Search for Claude

OpenAI has upgraded its autonomous web browsing agent Operator to the new reasoning model OpenAI o3 from the prior GPT-4o multimodal LLM engine. The update is being released globally in research preview this month for those who subscribe to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Pro for $200 per month. Operator serves OpenAI’s “computer-using agent” (CUA), a model trained to interact with graphical interfaces that uses the Web to perform tasks for people. “Using its own browser, it can look at a webpage, and interact with it much like a human would by typing, clicking, scrolling and more,” OpenAI explains. Continue reading New Reasoning Model Improves Smarts of OpenAI Operator

Nvidia has released NeMo microservices into general availability with version 25.4, pivoting its profile from a modular toolkit for creating custom generative AI models to emphasizing it as a platform for building AI agents at scale. As AI agents have become an in-demand commodity, Nvidia is leveraging the fact that NeMo’s capabilities seem purpose built to help them grow and thrive. Built around the Kubernetes open-source container management system, NeMo microservices are offered as “an end-to-end developer platform for creating state-of-the-art agentic AI systems,” according to Nvidia. Continue reading Nvidia Positions Its NeMo Microservices for AI Agent-Building

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

A new open-source code reasoning model called DeepCoder-14B-Preview has hit the market. Built atop DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen2.5 using reinforcement learning (RL), it aims to provide more flexibility by combining high-performance code generation with reasoning capabilities for real-world applications. Its performance is said to be comparable to OpenAI’s o3-mini, “but with a smaller footprint,” say its developers, the research-driven AI companies Together AI and Agentica. “We democratize the recipe for training a small model into a strong competitive coder,” explains Together AI. Continue reading Researchers Debut Preview of DeepCoder Reasoning Model

Google has debuted a new accelerator chip, Ironwood, a tensor processing unit designed specifically for inference — the ability of AI to predict things. Ironwood will power Google Cloud’s AI Hypercomputer, which runs the company’s Gemini models and is gearing up for the next generation of artificial intelligence workloads. Google’s TPUs are similar to the accelerator GPUs sold by Nvidia, but unlike the GPUs they’re designed for AI and geared toward speeding neural network tasks and mathematical operations. Google says when deployed at scale Ironwood is more than 24 times more powerful than the world’s fastest supercomputer. Continue reading Google Ironwood TPU is Made for Inference and ‘Thinking’ AI

San Francisco-based AI startup Deep Cogito has released five AI models in preview, making them available under an open-source license agreement. The models come in sizes 3B, 8B, 14B, 32B and 70B, with plans to release 109B, 400B and 671B versions in the weeks and months ahead. As for the current models, “each outperforms the best available open models of the same size, including counterparts from Meta, DeepSeek and Alibaba, across most standard benchmarks,” Deep Cogito claims, noting that the 70B model in particular “outperforms the newly released Llama 4 109B MoE model.” Continue reading Deep Cogito Is Out of Stealth with Hybrid Reasoning Models

Amazon has updated its Nova model series, with Nova Reel 1.1 now able to generate AI videos of up to two minutes as well as gaining a new ‘multi-shot’ feature. Announced in December, Nova Reel marked Amazon’s initial foray into generative video. AWS developer advocate Elizabeth Fuentes says that Nova Reel accommodates user prompts of up to 4,000 characters that can generate a series of six-second shots for a sequence totaling two minutes. The company also introduced the Nova Sonic real-time voice model that supports third-party enterprise development. Continue reading AWS Updates Nova Reels and Adds Nova Sonic Voice Model

OpenAI has debuted three new models for transcription and voice generation — gpt-4o-transcribe, gpt-4o-mini-transcribe and gpt-4o-mini-tts. The text-to-speech and speech-to-text AI models are designed to help developers create AI agents with highly customizable voices. OpenAI claims these models will power natural and responsive voice agents, moving AI out of the text-based communications stage and into intuitive spoken conversations. The suite outperforms existing solutions in accuracy and reliability, OpenAI says, especially with “accents, noisy environments, and varying speech speeds,” making them well-suited for customer call centers and meeting notes. Continue reading OpenAI Pushes Conversational Agents with Three New Models

A new Discord Social SDK allows developers to integrate the platform in-app for games. Discord is massively popular with gamers; the company estimates PC players alone spend more than 1.5 billion hours each month on the platform. This free SDK can extend the user experience beyond the third-party content in which it becomes embedded to reach the platform’s community of over 200 million monthly active users. “Developers can power friends lists, cross-platform messaging, voice and more for all players — with or without a Discord account,” the company announced. Continue reading New Discord Social SDK Integrates Platform In-App for Games

Baidu has launched two new AI systems, the native multimodal foundation model Ernie 4.5 and deep-thinking reasoning model Ernie X1. The latter supports features like generative imaging, advanced search and webpage content comprehension. Baidu is touting Ernie X1 as of comparable performance to another Chinese model, DeepSeek-R1, but says it is half the price. Both Baidu models are available to the public, including individual users, through the Ernie website. Baidu, the dominant search engine in China, says its new models mark a milestone in both reasoning and multimodal AI, “offering advanced capabilities at a more accessible price point.” Continue reading Baidu Releases New LLMs that Undercut Competition’s Price

Feeling the pressure from the “open agent” movement and specifically Chinese startup Butterfly Effect and its new product Manus, OpenAI has expanded the capabilities of its own AI technology, launching new tools to help businesses and developers build their own agents. The company’s new Responses API has the functionality of two earlier tools, the Chat Completions API (facilitating ChatGPT queries and responses) and the Assistants API (for multi-step reasoning and file access). The company is also issuing an Agents SDK, a suite of tools for creating and deploying agents that bundles the Responses API. Continue reading OpenAI Ramps Up Its Agent Functions as Competition Surges

Butterfly Effect is the latest Chinese AI firm to get global attention, having drummed up interest in Manus, positioned as a “general agent” that can scour online resources to produce reports. Companies like OpenAI and Google are competing in this space, called deep research. Butterfly Effect says Manus has surpassed OpenAI Deep Research on the GAIA benchmark and the world is listening. The Manus Discord server swelled to more than 138,000 members in the past weeks, and “invite codes” to gain access at this “invitation-only” phase are allegedly going for thousands of dollars on Chinese sales app Xianyu. Continue reading Startup Claims AI Agent Manus Is an Autonomy Breakthrough

Google has added Gemini Embedding to its Gemini developer API. This new experimental model for text translates words, phrases and other text inputs into numerical representations, otherwise known as embeddings, which capture their semantic meaning. Embeddings are used in a wide range of applications including document retrieval and classification, potentially reducing costs and improving latency. Google is also testing an expansion of its AI Overviews search feature as part of a Gemini 2.0 update. Called AI Mode, it helps explain complex topics by generating search results that use advanced reasoning and thinking capabilities. Continue reading Google Updates AI Search and Intros Gemini Text Embedding