Google has introduced a new ultra-light model called Gemma 3 270M ideal for smartphones and other on-device use cases. The open-source model is power-efficient and small enough to run locally in the absence of an Internet connection, as Google demonstrated in internal tests using a Pixel 9 Pro SoC. With just 270 million parameters, Gemma 3 270M is a fraction of the size of flagship LLMs, which typically have billions of parameters. While Google’s new model was not made for complex conversational use, it is “designed from the ground up for task-specific fine-tuning with strong instruction-following.” Continue reading Google Says New Gemma 3 Is Ideal for Mobile, Edge Devices

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

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

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

Grok Imagine is xAI’s new video and image generator, which is currently available via the X social platform, the Grok mobile app, and Grok web interface. Imagine replaces AI image generator Aurora, which was retired in May following a string of offensive posts that led to media criticism and user concerns. Despite the backlash, Elon Musk’s xAI seems determined to have Imagine push conventional limits, with a “spicy” mode that outputs imagery including adult content. Its text-to-image capabilities work with text or voice prompts, while the video tool relies on image prompts to make short clips using images from a user’s gallery or generated by Grok. Continue reading Grok Imagine from xAI Offers Video Generation, ‘Spicy’ Mode

OpenAI is releasing two lower-cost, open-weight reasoning models in an effort to be more competitive with Meta, Mistral and DeepSeek and they will be the first OpenAI models available from Amazon. The new offerings — gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b — will be among the model choices on AWS’s Bedrock and SageMaker AI services. Both models are said to be well-suited for agentic use. The gpt-oss-120b model performs comparably to OpenAI o4-mini on core reasoning and can run on a single 80GB GPU. The gpt-oss-20b model is compared to OpenAI o3‑mini and can run on edge devices with just 16GB of memory. Continue reading Open-Weight Models Are a First from OpenAI in AWS Catalog

OpenAI has reportedly secured another $8.3 billion in funding, for a valuation of $300 billion. The new investment is a major coup for the firm, coming months ahead of schedule in its plan to secure $40 billion in funding by the end of the year. The company previously secured a $30 billion commitment from SoftBank if certain goals are achieved by the start of 2026. The funding news comes as ChatGPT is close to reaching 700 million weekly active users, including a significant jump in new users over the last several months. The company has also experienced an increase in paying subscribers as more enterprises and educators turn to AI. Continue reading OpenAI Raises $8.3B as ChatGPT Nears 700M Weekly Users

Google has upgraded Gemini 2.5 with a feature called Deep Think that “could be a powerful tool in creative problem solving,” according to the company. Deep Think uses parallel thinking techniques, letting Gemini “generate many ideas at once and consider them simultaneously, even revising or combining different ideas over time, before arriving at the best answer.” Its ability to reason through highly complex problems makes Deep Think mode a powerful tool for researchers, Google says, adding that it also excels at coding. Deep Think is available in the Gemini app to subscribers of Google AI Ultra, priced at $250 per month. Continue reading Google Intros Deep Think Reasoning Model for AI Ultra Subs

Apple posted quarterly revenue of $94 billion, up 10 percent year-over-year, the largest quarterly growth spurt for the tech giant since December 2021. Net profit of $23.4 billion was a new record for the June quarter and up nearly 9 percent from the prior year. Sales of Apple’s iPhones totaled $44.6 billion for the quarter, a 13 percent increase year-over-year, with growth posted across “every geographic segment” and a record number of upgrades as customers raced to beat the impact of anticipated tariffs, according to the company. The results for Apple’s fiscal Q3 exceeded Wall Street estimates. Continue reading iPhone Sales Jump 10 Percent, Driving Apple to Record Profit