As enterprises rely more heavily on AI integration to compile research and summarize things like meetings and email threads, the need for contextual search has become increasingly important. AI startup Cohere has released Embed 4 to make the task easier. Embed 4 is a multimodal embedding model that transforms text, images and mixed data (like PDFs, slides or tables) into numerical representations (or “embeddings”) for tasks including semantic search, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and classification. Supporting over 100 languages, Embed 4 has an extremely large context window of up to 128,000 tokens. Continue reading Cohere’s Multimodal Embed Model Organizes Enterprise Data

OpenAI is working to build a social network that will compete against Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Instagram, reports say. Though still in the early stages, the project is revolving around an internal prototype that is said to involve a social feed that leverages ChatGPT’s image generator. It’s unclear if an OpenAI social app would be standalone or integrated with ChatGPT, but either way it would most likely heighten the competition between rivals Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who recently fended off an unsolicited offer by Musk to purchase his company for $97.4 billion. Continue reading OpenAI Reportedly Has Prototype for Its Own Social Network

Among the many tech advancements unveiled at Google Cloud Next include a major generative media upgrade to Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s managed AI development platform. The new Vertex AI Media Studio lets enterprise users generate complete videos from scratch using text prompts. Lyria, Google’s text-to-music model is now available on Vertex in private preview. Both are subject to an “allowlist.” Chirp 3 now creates custom voices with just 10 seconds of audio input, while Imagen 3 has gained improved abilities for reconstructing missing or damaged portions of an image. Continue reading Vertex AI Movie Studio Can Create Videos from Start to Score

Google has turned its Firebase backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platform into a full-stack AI workspace called Firebase Studio that builds custom apps in a browser-based environment. Available to anyone with a Google account during its preview phase, Google says Firebase Studio will be useful to beginners and pros alike, with Gemini-powered AI agents that can be used to automate the process of building, launching and monitoring mobile and web apps and related infrastructure. Firebase Studio “includes everything developers need to create and publish production-quality AI apps quickly, all in one place,” the company announced at Google Cloud Next 2025. Continue reading Google Firebase Now Full-Stack App Developer in a Browser

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

Generative AI program Midjourney has issued V7 in alpha, marking its first new model in almost a year. Notable updates include personalization turned on by default, which users must first set up — a process Midjourney says takes 5 minutes — and can then toggle on or off at any time. Another new flagship feature, Draft Mode, lets users render lower resolution images at “half the cost and 10 times the speed,” according to Midjourney, emphasizing “it’s so fast that we change the prompt bar to a ‘conversational mode’ when you’re using it on Web.” Draft Mode also supports voice prompts. Continue reading Midjourney Launches V7 Image Generator with Voice Prompts

Alibaba Cloud has released Qwen2.5-Omni-7B, a new AI model the company claims is efficient enough to run on edge devices like mobile phones and laptops. Boasting a relatively light 7-billion parameter footprint, Qwen2.5-Omni-7B understands text, images, audio and video and generates real-time responses in text and natural speech. Alibaba says its combination of compact size and multimodal capabilities is “unique,” offering “the perfect foundation for developing agile, cost-effective AI agents that deliver tangible value, especially intelligent voice applications.” One example would be using a phone’s camera to help a vision impaired-person navigate their environment. Continue reading Alibaba’s Powerful Multimodal Qwen Model Is Built for Mobile

OpenAI has activated the multimodal image generation capabilities of GPT-4o, making it available to ChatGPT users on the Plus, Pro, Team and Free tiers. It replaces DALL-E 3 as the default image generator for the popular chatbot. GPT-4o’s accuracy with text, understanding of symbols and precision with prompts combined with well multimodal capabilities that allow the model to take cues from visual material have transformed its image capabilities from largely unpredictable to “consistent and context-aware,” resulting in “a practical tool with precision and power,” claims OpenAI. Continue reading OpenAI Delivers Native GPT-4o Image Generator to ChatGPT

Google has released what it calls its most intelligent AI model yet, Gemini 2.5. The first 2.5 model release, an experimental version of Gemini 2.5 Pro, is a next-gen reasoning model that Google says outperformed OpenAI o3-mini and Claude 3.7 Sonnet from Anthropic on common benchmarks “by meaningful margins.” Gemini 2.5 models “are thinking models, capable of reasoning through their thoughts before responding, resulting in enhanced performance and improved accuracy,” according to Google. The new model comes just three months after Google released Gemini 2.0 with reasoning and agentic capabilities. Continue reading Google Debuts Next-Gen Reasoning Models with Gemini 2.5

San Mateo, California-based game developer Roblox has released a 3D object generator called Cube 3D, the first of several models the company plans to make available. Cube currently generates 3D models and environments from text, and in the future the company plans to add image inputs. Roblox says it is open-sourcing the tool, making it available to users on and off the platform. Cube will serve as the core generative AI system for Roblox’s 3D and 4D plans, the latter referring to interactive responsiveness. The launch coincides with the Game Developers Conference, running through Friday in San Francisco. Continue reading Roblox Reveals Its Generative AI System Cube for 3D and 4D

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

Popular social media platform Pinterest is now labeling generative AI content. The app, which earned a reputation as fertile ground for design inspiration related to hand-crafted goods and human artistry, has recently been plagued by an onslaught of “AI slop,” something its regular users have been complaining of on Reddit and to Pinterest directly. The GenAI content was often used to redirect people to spammy sites, according to a recent report. Pinterest’s labeling news coincides with an earnings report of $1.15 billion in Q4 revenue, marking an 18 percent increase year-over-year. Continue reading Pinterest AI Labeling Policy Unveiled as Q4 Earnings Top $1B

Instagram is experimenting with a community chat feature that lets users gather in groups of up to 250. Meta’s photo- and video-sharing network is prototyping the feature internally, though external sources with knowledge of it are comparing it to Discord since it reportedly allows users to form chats around different topics and control who can join. While participation is said to be capped at 250 simultaneous users per community, all are invited to join and message. Instagram has had a flurry of new features, among them a video tool called Edits, and “profile cards” geared toward small businesses that want a more professional presence on the app. Continue reading Instagram Is Internally Testing Discord-Style Community Chat

Flora is a new software interface built by AI creatives for creative AI applications. Much like Apple reinvented the personal computer UI to make it feel natural for people who were not IT specialists, Flora aims to reframe the way designers and artists interact with generative AI. “AI tools make it easy to create, but lack creative control,” the startup’s founder Weber Wong says, opining that such tools have proven “great for making AI slop, but not for doing great creative work.” Wong’s goal is to make an AI interface everyone will find comfortable and intuitive, simplifying use and curating “the best text, image, and video models.” Continue reading Flora Is a New AI Interface Geared Toward Helping Creatives

Alibaba has open-sourced its Wan 2.1 video- and image-generating AI models, heating up an already competitive space. The Wan 2.1 family, which has four models, is said to produce “highly realistic” images and videos from text and images. The company has since December been previewing a new reasoning model, QwQ-Max, indicating it will be open-sourced when fully released. The move comes after another Chinese AI company, DeepSeek, released its R1 reasoning model for free download and use, triggering demand for more open-source artificial intelligence. Continue reading Highly Realistic Alibaba GenVid Models Are Available for Free