Google launched the world’s best model with all the fanfare of a firmware update for a toaster, but the consensus speaks for itself.

What is it?

Simply put, Gemini 3 Pro is the best language model by virtually every measure. This isn’t a subjective value judgement. Here are the benchmarks:

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index tells the same story:

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Sora 2 is a genuinely impressive video model, but it’s baked into a social media app built for ultra-short meme clips, which undersells its creative potential.

What is it?

When OpenAI first teased its original Sora model back in February 2024, people went nuts. But Sora wouldn’t launch to the public until December, and by that time, it was well behind many top-tier video models.1

With Sora 2, OpenAI is convincingly back in the game:

There’s a lot to like about Sora 2.

It can handle complex physics, including intricate scenes like gymnastics and fight sequences. It can create videos in many different styles. And, like Veo 3, Sora 2 natively generates its own audio effects and dialogue.

While there are no third-party benchmarks or leaderboard rankings yet, Sora 2 feels roughly on par with Veo 3 (depending on the use case).

Here are three quick comparisons of my own:

Prompt #1: Over-excited blonde influencer is holding a smartphone with the Substack feed on it. She near-screams: “You guys have to check out Why Try AI. It’s so, so good. But what do I know? I don’t even exist!”

Veo 3:

Sora 2:

I don’t know why both models decided to throw in a semi-psychotic giggle at the end, entirely unprompted, but here we are.

Prompt #2: A drunken 1800s pirate tries to use a modern laptop but can’t figure it out. In frustration, he bangs the keys and says “Blast this shiny chest o’ letters—won’t open no matter how I pound it!”

Veo 3:

Sora 2:

I love the bonus details, from Veo 3’s exploding laptop to Sora 2’s off-script method acting improv.

Prompt #3: A horse wearing a top hat tap dances to music on its hind legs

Veo 3:

Sora 2:

Veo 3 looks more realistic, but I like how Sora 2 came up with an entire jingle. No true dancing on hind legs from either model, however.

The bottom line is that both are impressive and not too far apart.

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How do you use it?

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ByteDance’s Seedream 4.0 gives Nano Banana a run for its money with top-tier image generation and editing.

What is it?

Just when you thought we were done, folks!

It’s only been two weeks since Google’s Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image) “killed” Photoshop, but we already have a shiny new kid on the block: Seedream 4.0.

The latest model from ByteDance goes toe-to-toe with Nano Banana on image editing tasks, while also being on par with GPT image generation at making new images.

This video has plenty of helpful side-by-side image editing tests:

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It’s time for another Thursday “Hot Take.”

TL;DR

Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (aka “Nano Banana”) is now the world’s best image model that also excels at detail-preserving edits, but let’s not equate “good enough for the average Joe” with “Photoshop extinction event.”

What is it?

Gemini 2.5 Flash Image is Google's latest image model, which made quite a splash last week under its pre-release nickname, "Nano Banana."1 Two days ago, Google officially claimed ownership of the model.

While Nano Banana is topping leaderboards for text-to-image generation, what truly makes it special is its ability to make precise edits to existing images while keeping characters consistent and preserving details.

Here's a quick taste:

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HeyGen’s Avatar IV creates lifelike, expressive talking avatars from a single image that can lip-sync to any audio or script—are deepfakes too easy now?

What is it?

Avatar IV is a new AI avatar model from HeyGen:

Not so long ago, creating a custom avatar with HeyGen or Synthesia required you to record a training video and submit it for professional processing.

Now, it takes one image, one script (written or recorded), and a few minutes. That’s it:

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Yet another Thursday post in the “Hot Takes” format.

TL;DR

Genspark’s Super Agent is a genuinely competent general agent that reasons and performs complex tasks, but it’s been overlooked in the avalanche of agent hype.

What is it?

Last week, Genspark announced its “fast and reliable” Super Agent:

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TL;DR

Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental can create and edit images natively.

What is it?

Yesterday, Google’s Logan Kilpatrick announced the release of Gemini 2.0 Flash with native image generation:

Gemini can now create multi-step illustrated stories from a single prompt, edit existing images directly, rework uploaded images, and more.

The best part?

It’s 100% free to try.

How do you use it?

The easiest way to try the new model is via Google AI Studio.

Here’s the step-by-step process:

1. Go to aistudio.google.com and log in with your Google account.

2. Select “Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental” from the model picker. Note: You want the gemini-2.0-flash-exp model, not the default Gemini 2.0 Flash. (I know, I know.)

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Anthropic just launched the impressive Claude 3.7 Sonnet, but it’s still locked inside the old interface without built-in access to the web.

What is it?

Claude 3.7 Sonnet is a new state-of-the-art model that incorporates a traditional LLM and a reasoning model in one.

It goes toe-to-toe with or outperforms frontier models like Grok 3, DeepSeek-R1, and OpenAI’s o-family on most benchmarks:

How do you use it?

Simple: Just go to the usual claude.ai website.

If you’ve never used Claude before, you’ll need to create an account.

If you have, Claude 3.7 Sonnet will now be the default model:

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OpenAI just released a “Deep Research” agent that can autonomously research and reason about complex topics. It’s the third “Deep Research” tool in less than two months, but it’s arguably the most capable.

What is it?

OpenAI describes it as “an agent that uses reasoning to synthesize large amounts of online information and complete multi-step research tasks.”

Basically, you ask Deep Research a question or give it a research task, and it sets off on its own to create a plan, read through relevant literature, explore different research avenues based on its findings, and seek additional information to produce the final report.

By early accounts it’s quite impressive, offering a “near PhD-level analysis” according to Ethan Mollick.

It’s also, confusingly, the third such agent with exactly the same name.

Here’s the timeline:

• December 11, 2024: Google released a “Deep Research” assistant for paying Gemini Advanced users.

• January 27, 2025: Genspark launched a “Deep Research” agent with similar…

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Hot Takes are occasional timely posts that focus on fast-moving news and releases, in addition to my regular Thursday and Sunday columns.

If Hot Takes aren’t your cup of tea, simply go to your account at www.whytryai.com/account and toggle the “Notifications” settings accordingly:

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TL;DR

DeepSeek released an image model called Janus-Pro-7B, which some claim makes better images than DALL-E 3 and Stable Diffusion, but it’s nowhere near in my tests.

What is it?

DeepSeek describes Janus-Pro-7B as “a novel autoregressive framework that unifies multimodal understanding and generation.”

In short, this means you can use the same model to process image inputs and generate new images. This makes Janus-Pro-7B quite flexible, combining the capabilities of task-specific models in a single one.

That—and the fact that it’s yet another open-source model—is worthy of praise.

But DeepSeek also shared a few benchmarks that show Janus-Pro-7B outperforming OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 and Stable Diffusion 3 Medium:

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Hot Takes are occasional timely posts that focus on fast-moving news and releases, in addition to my regular Thursday and Sunday columns.

If Hot Takes aren’t your cup of tea, simply go to your account at www.whytryai.com/account and toggle the “Notifications” settings accordingly:

Subscribe now

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