AI

Google yesterday launched Nano Banana 2, the consumer brand for Gemini 3.1 Flash Image. The upgrade includes sub-second 4K image synthesis across multiple aspect ratios, character consistency for up to five characters, fidelity for up to 14 objects in a single workflow, and precise text rendering accurate enough for marketing mockups and greeting cards. Continue Reading →

Burger King is rolling out an AI platform called "BK Assistant" with a voice assistant named Patty. Patty takes drive-thru orders, monitors restaurant operations, and notifies managers when equipment needs maintenance or products run low. Every U.S. Burger King will have one by the end of 2026. Sounds reasonable, except… Continue Reading →

Anthropic is doing its best to transform Claude into an enterprise platform. They've announced the creation of private plugin marketplaces for Cowork that will let organizations build, customize, and distribute AI agents across departments. Continue Reading →

Stanford and Yale researchers extracted 95.8% of a copyrighted novel, word for word, from Claude 3.7 Sonnet. Gemini 2.5 Pro gave up 76.8% of Harry Potter without even requiring a jailbreak. Grok 3 handed over 70.3%. GPT-4.1 was the most resistant at 4.0%, but it still coughed up text after enough attempts. Thirteen books were tested. The words came out. Continue Reading →

Google Labs just launched Pomelli Photoshoot, a free tool that turns any product photo into a professional studio or lifestyle shot. Pick a product image, choose a template, generate, and refine. The tool applies your brand's visual identity (what Google calls "Business DNA") to keep everything on-brand across campaigns. The target audience is small and medium-sized businesses that cannot afford professional product photography. I tested it. It works as described. Continue Reading →

Google DeepMind just launched Lyria 3 in the Gemini app. Type a text prompt (or upload a photo) and you will get a 30-second track with auto-generated lyrics, vocals, and custom cover art. The model is available in eight languages to anyone 18+. YouTube creators worldwide can also access it through Dream Track for Shorts soundtracks. Every track carries a SynthID watermark. Continue Reading →

An early preview of WebMCP, a standard co-authored by Google and Microsoft that makes it easy for agents to navigate websites, is now available in Chrome 146. This feature was added so quietly last week that a lot of people missed it. Continue Reading →

Cohere, the $5.5 billion Toronto-based AI company, just launched Tiny Aya: an open-source family of models that supports 70+ languages and runs entirely offline on devices. No cloud required. No API fees. While OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic fight over who can build the biggest brain, Cohere went small and wide. Continue Reading →

ByteDance released Seedance 2.0 this week, and within hours Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson typed a two-line prompt and generated Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt on a rooftop. It went mega-viral. Riffs on Spider-Man, Titanic, Stranger Things, Lord of the Rings, and Shrek followed by the hundreds. The MPA denounced "massive" copyright infringement. Rhett Reese, who wrote the Deadpool films, posted: "It's likely over for us." Continue Reading →

T-Mobile announced that it will embed real-time AI translation directly into its cellular network. Any caller on any phone can dial *87* during a call to get live, two-way translation in more than 50 languages. No app. No download. No special hardware. Continue Reading →