Happy Sunday, friends!

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

See all 100+ paid subscriber bonuses

There’s still time to shape the future of “Live & Learn” sessions, here:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Alibaba released Qwen-Image-3.0 that can generate realistic outputs and readable text at a micro level of detail.

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Opus 5 performs almost as well as Fable 5 at half the price, with thinking effort toggles to balance cost and output quality.

   2. Record a Skill lets you teach Claude Cowork a repeatable task by recording your screen and narrating your actions as you perform the task.

   3. Voice Mode now supports Opus and Sonnet alongside Haiku and has access to tools like Canva, Gmail, Notion, Slack, and more.

3. ElevenLabs added References to its music generator, so you can upload a track to guide the style, mood, and instrumentation of its outputs.

4. Google released Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber, improving the speed and performance of its models for search and agentic work.

5. Microsoft now runs its own MAI models inside GitHub Copilot and Excel, matching GPT-5.6 quality at a fraction of the cost.

6. OpenAI brought ChatGPT Voice to the desktop app, so you can control your ChatGPT Work or Codex agents by just talking to them.

7. Poolside open-sourced Laguna S 2.1, a coding model with a 1M-token context window built for long-running agentic and software development tasks.

8. xAI news:

   1. Grok Build Workflows can spawn hundreds of parallel AI agents to tackle complex tasks and deliver a unified report once they’re finished.

   2. Grok for Google Workspace brings Grok directly to Docs, Sheets, and Slides with a single installation.

🔬 AI research

1. Alibaba previewed Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4 trillion-parameter model that the company claims is “second only to Fable 5,” with open weights coming soon.

2. Black Forest Labs announced FLUX 3, a multimodal model that can generate videos up to 20 seconds with native audio from text, images, or existing clips.

3. NVIDIA previewed a Synthetic Video Detector that can identify AI-generated videos with 92% accuracy.

📖 AI resources

1. “Anthropic Economic Index Connector” [TOOL]: a connector that lets Claude pull data from the index in response to natural language questions.

2. “Complete Guide to Claude Design” [VIDEO]: great hands-on walkthrough of Claude Design’s new features by Futurepedia.

3. “DeeVid Viral Video Studio” [TOOL]: lets you discover what makes videos go viral, customize every element, and create your next hit faster. [sponsored]

4. “MakePlay” [TOOL]: free tool that lets you type one sentence and get a game you can actually play, not a broken prototype. Runs on Claude Fable 5. [sponsored]

5. “SlidesPilot” [TOOL]: AI PowerPoint generator that turns documents and links into editable PowerPoint decks instantly. [sponsored]

🔀 AI random

1. Neill Blomkamp of District 9 fame released NIGHTBORNE, a 13-minute sci-fi short made entirely with Seedance 2.0, to a mixed reception.

2. OpenAI revealed a security incident where an internal evaluation model escaped its sandbox and hacked Hugging Face's systems to steal benchmark answers.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

Ooof, he almost didn’t make it! What a nail-biter!

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

See all 100+ paid subscriber bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

I was away last week, so we have two weeks’ worth of news to catch up on:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude Code Desktop now has a built-in browser so it can read docs, navigate sites, and interact with web pages directly.

   2. Claude for Teachers gives verified K-12 educators in the US free access to premium features and a built-in teaching skills library.

   3. Cowork is now available on web and mobile, so your background tasks can run on their own without your device needing to be on.

   4. Reflect feature helps you track and visualize your Claude usage so you can better understand your habits.

2. Canva launched Code 2.0, an upgrade to its AI website builder with faster code generation, HTML import, and drag-and-drop editing.

3. Dropbox integrated with ChatGPT and can now help you organize files and conduct multi-step workflows directly inside the app.

4. Google news:

   1. AI Mode in Search now connects to apps like Canva, Instacart, and YouTube Music, so you can finish tasks directly from Search.

   2. Gemini in Chrome rolled out to UK desktop users to help summarize pages, conduct comparisons, and integrate with apps like Calendar, Gmail, and more.

   3. Google Images now features an AI-powered gallery and image generation in Search to mark its 25th anniversary.

   4. Google Photos Video Remix can create shareable video clips with cinematic relighting, background swapping, and other effects.

   5. Google Vids added Gemini Omni editing and personal AI avatars that let you put yourself into video clips.

   6. NotebookLM is now called Gemini Notebook and features native code execution and deeper integration with the Gemini ecosystem.

   7. Waze now includes a motorcycle mode with AI-powered hazard detection plus Gemini conversational search for finding destinations.

5. Meta AI launched Muse Image, an image generator that can edit, restore, and restyle your personal photos using AI.

6. Moonshot AI open-sourced Kimi K3, a multimodal model that gets close to the performance of top-tier frontier models.

7. OpenAI news:

   1. ChatGPT Work connects to Gmail, Google Drive, Salesforce, Slack, and Teams to manage files and run multi-step workflows on your behalf.

   2. GPT-5.6 is a three-tier model family (Sol, Terra, and Luna) with improved intelligence, speed, and agentic capabilities.

   3. GPT-Live voice models let ChatGPT listen and speak at the same time, making voice conversations feel natural with real-time acknowledgments.

8. Perplexity launched Brain, which remembers how you work, switches between AI models faster, and lets you publish websites in one click.

9. PrismML released Bonsai 27B, a powerful AI model that can run directly on phones and laptops for fast, private, offline use.

10. Superhuman launched Auto Drafts 2.0 to write ready-to-send email replies using your inbox, calendar, and personal writing style.

11. Thinking Machines open-sourced Inkling, a multimodal model with controllable thinking effort that can natively process audio, images, and text.

12. xAI news:

    1. Grok 4.5 handles coding, agentic tasks, and knowledge work at close to top-tier model quality while being faster and using fewer tokens.

    2. Grok Automations lets you schedule recurring tasks or create workflows that are triggered by incoming emails.

    3. Grok Build is now open-source, letting developers inspect, customize, and run its coding assistant on their own computers.

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🔬 AI research

1. Apple announced Siri AI, which understands context, takes action across apps, and continues conversations from iPhone to Apple Watch.

2. Roblox previewed Build, a mobile-first tool that lets users create playable games from text prompts without coding.

3. Spotify is testing conversational AI features for Premium users to let them control playback and discover audiobooks, music, and podcasts via text or voice.

📖 AI resources

1. “Claude’s values across models and languages” [RESEARCH]: an Anthropic study of how Claude changes behavior based on language and model version.

2. “CursorBench 3.2” [BENCHMARK]: Cursor’s benchmark that scores coding agents on real, ambiguous tasks from actual development sessions.

🔀 AI random

1. Meta removed its AI image generation from Instagram after three days due to deepfake backlash as it could use anyone’s public photos by default .

2. Suno was hacked to reveal it had scraped over hundreds of thousands of hours of audio from Deezer, Genius, and YouTube.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

Nature sure works in mysterious ways!

Heads-up: I’m away next week, so the next Sunday Rundown is on July 19.

Happy Sunday, friends!

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

See all 100+ paid subscriber bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude Fable 5 has been redeployed after the government lifted its export restrictions, with an improved safety classifier to block harmful requests.

   2. Claude Sonnet 5 is an upgrade to the company’s mid-range model with better coding, reasoning, and tool-use capabilities.

2. Cursor launched a native iOS app in public beta, letting developers build apps and manage coding agents from their phone.

3. Google news:

   1. Gemini Omni Flash and Nano Banana 2 Lite are now available to developers in more places to support conversational video and image creation.

   2. Gemini Spark, the 24/7 AI agent, is now available on macOS to automate desktop tasks, integrating with tools like Canva, Dropbox, and Instacart.

   3. NotebookLM can now turn your sources into 60-second vertical video overviews with narration. (Ultra and Pro subscribers first. Free users later.)

   4. Personal Intelligence can now generate personalized images with Nano Banana based on your data from Gmail, Google Photos, and YouTube.

   5. Take Notes for Me can automatically transcribe Google Meet calls and generate summaries, saving everything to Drive. (Ultra and Pro subscribers.)

4. Runway added Google’s Gemini Omni Flash to its platform, so users can generate and edit videos from images, text, and video inputs.

5. Square now lets restaurants accept orders directly from ChatGPT and Claude, so customers can browse, order, and pay without leaving the chat.

6. X launched an official MCP server that lets AI agents like Claude and Cursor fetch timelines, manage bookmarks, and search posts more easily.

🔬 AI research

1. Google is rumored to be prepping Gemini 3.5 Pro for launch in July, with a two-million-token context window and Deep Think reasoning mode.

📖 AI resources

1. “Getting Started with Loops” [GUIDE]: Anthropic’s look at goal-based agentic loops in Claude. (I wrote a partially related, beginner-friendly take ten days ago.)

2. “Fable 5 vs GPT 5.6 Sol: The Early Results” [VIDEO]: A great dive by AI Explained.

🔀 AI random

1. Netflix will use an AI-generated Gene Wilder voice in its upcoming Wonka’s The Golden Ticket reality show, created with ElevenLabs and the family’s consent.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

“I’m starting to suspect this octopus isn’t the chess grandmaster we were told it was!”

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

See all 100+ paid subscriber bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Anthropic brought the Claude Desktop app to AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Foundry. (Read my recent primer on Claude Code Desktop features.)

2. Figma launched a suite of new AI features like generative plugins, Weave tools, shader fills, and agent upgrades to help designers get more out of their canvas.

3. Google news:

   1. Gemini 3.5 Flash now has built-in computer use, letting AI agents see, click, and type across browser, desktop, and mobile environments.

   2. Gemini in Chrome now lets you select any text or image on screen and send it to Gemini so it can work on specific elements instead of the entire page.

   3. Google Finance is out of beta with AI-generated market briefings and portfolio tracking. (It also comes with a new Android app.)

4. Mistral released OCR 4, a document extraction model that can read PDFs, presentations, and Word docs in 170 languages.

5. Perplexity launched Computer for Counsel, a legal AI agent that connects with external tools to help with contract drafting, document review, and research.

6. Runway launched Agent 2.0 that can turn a single prompt into marketing briefs and campaign assets for multiple platforms.

7. Sakana AI launched Fugu, a multi-agent system that automatically picks the best AI models for each part of your task to deliver top-tier results.

🔬 AI research

1. Anthropic launched Claude Tag that lets teams tag Claude in Slack to work on tasks, answer questions, and surface relevant updates. (Beta for Enterprise users.)

2. ByteDance previewed Seedance 2.5, a video model that can generate native 30-second 4K clips and handle up to 50 reference inputs.

3. OpenAI previewed the new flagship GPT-5.6 Sol model and its smaller siblings, Terra (everyday work) and Luna (fast and cheap). (Limited release for now.)

4. xAI began testing Grok 4.5 in private beta at SpaceX and Tesla, with early results allegedly competitive with frontier models like Claude Opus.

📖 AI resources

1. “AI Watchdog” [TOOL]: searchable database by The Atlantic that lets anyone look up artists, musicians, channels, etc. that were used to train AI models.

2. “FFASR Leaderboard” [BENCHMARK]: new benchmark to test speech-to-text agents on real-world challenges like accents, noise, and multiple languages.

🔀 AI random

1. Getty Images signed a multi-year deal with OpenAI to show licensed photos and videos in ChatGPT search results.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

Nailed it, GLM-5V-Turbo! That’s GPS-level precision right there.

📹 Live & Learn #7: AI vision capabilities

This week’s Live & Learn was all about testing how well AI models “see” stuff:

Live & Learn is taking a hiatus for the next few weeks (vacation, family visits, etc.), but it’ll be back with a vengeance in August.

Stay tuned!

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

See all 100+ paid subscriber bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Adobe expanded its Creative Agent across Firefly and Creative Cloud apps, letting creators describe an outcome and have the agent handle the busywork.

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude Design was upgraded so that it stays on-brand, syncs with Claude Code, and can export results to Adobe, Canva, PDF, and PowerPoint.

   2. Claude Code now supports Artifacts that turn your session work into live, self-updating web pages that you can share with your team.

3. ByteDance launched Seedance 2.0 Mini, a faster, lower-quality version of its flagship AI video model that also costs half as much per generation.

4. Character.AI launched a Creator Bundle with new tools to help you build characters faster, track performance, and get discovered via leaderboards.

5. HappyOyster launched HappyOyster 1.0, an open-ended model for creating and exploring real-time interactive video worlds with prompts. (Try for free.)

6. Meta added AI Mode to Facebook search, along with new photo and video editing presets that let you swap looks, outfits, and styles.

7. Microsoft officially released Copilot Cowork, an AI teammate that can send emails, draft documents, manage your calendar, and browse the web.

8. Midjourney rolled out Draft Mode for V8.1, which lets you quickly generate 24 low-resolution image options before rendering your favorite in full resolution.

9. OpenAI news:

   1. ChatGPT now gives free users more accurate and complete health answers using GPT-5.5 Instant.

   2. Record & Replay lets you demonstrate your work steps to Codex and turn them into editable, reusable skills to share with others.

   3. Scheduled tasks now have a dedicated pane in ChatGPT, making reminders and recurring prompts easier to create and manage.

10. Perplexity launched Brain for Computer, a memory system that learns from completed tasks to make the agent more precise and work better over time.

11. Sakana AI launched Marlin, an autonomous research agent that can think for up to eight hours straight to produce full reports and slide decks.

12. xAI released Grok Imagine Video 1.5, an image-to-video model with better motion consistency and faster generation speed.

13. Z.ai open-sourced GLM-5.2, an agentic model with a one-million-token context window, built for complex coding and long-horizon tasks. (Try it for free.)

📖 AI resources

1. “Americans and AI 2026” [REPORT]: Pew Research survey on how Americans use AI and their attitudes about it.

2. “Is It Agentic Enough?” [GUIDE]: Practical guide for benchmarking open AI models against your own tools and tasks from Hugging Face.

3. “LifeSciBench” [BENCHMARK]: A new evaluation suite from OpenAI to test how AI models handle real-world life-science research tasks.

🔀 AI random

1. SpaceX agreed to acquire Cursor-maker Anysphere for $60 billion in an all-stock deal, just as Cursor teased an upcoming launch of a new AI coding model.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

“Wow! Check out that beautiful view!”

-Hold up, lemme just dislocate my neck and feet real quick…

📹 Live & Learn #6: AI image editing

This week’s Live & Learn was all about conversational AI image editing:

In my next Live & Learn session, I’ll put AI models’ vision capabilities to the test.

Join me on Friday, June 26, at 2PM CET (8AM EST):

Join Live & Learn #7: AI Vision

Also, please let me know what you’d like to get out of these live sessions by taking this quick chat-based survey.

See you there on Friday!

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

See all 100+ paid subscriber bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Amazon added AI merch design to the Shopping app, letting customers describe a design idea to Alexa to have it created and printed on a product.

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude Fable 5 is a top-tier model that leads benchmarks in knowledge work, scientific research, software engineering, and vision. (But do you need it?)

   2. Claude Managed Agents can now run on a schedule and securely access authenticated tools to perform tasks like data sync and reporting.

3. Deezer launched a free AI Music Detector that scans your playlists on Apple Music, Spotify, and 18 other services to detect and flag AI-generated tracks.

4. ElevenLabs released Avatars, persistent AI characters made from reference images that you can use for talking-head videos with lip syncing.

5. Google news:

   1. DiffusionGemma is an open-source model that generates entire blocks of text simultaneously instead of token-by-token, making it 4x faster.

   2. Gemini 3.5 Live Translate delivers near real-time voice translation across 70+ languages while preserving the speaker’s tone and pitch.

   3. NotebookLM can now do multi-step research, write and execute code, and export to 11 new formats. (Only AI Ultra subscribers for now.)

   4. Information Agents in Search can continuously monitor topics and send you updates with links when there’s new info. (Only AI Ultra subscribers for now.)

6. OpenAI introduced a Lockdown Mode that limits ChatGPT’s access to external connections and web search to guard against prompt injection attacks.

7. Perplexity added Deep Research to Computer, letting it spin up agents that turn complex queries into cited reports, decks, dashboards, and more.

🔬 AI research

1. Apple previewed a rebuilt Siri AI powered by Gemini, with a camera mode, cross-app sharing, onscreen awareness, and personalized context.

2. Meta will update the Edits app with an AI assistant and a desktop version to help you brainstorm ideas, analyze performance, and edit videos on a bigger screen.

📖 AI resources

1. “Agents’ Last Exam” [BENCHMARK]: a new tough benchmark that measures model performance across 1,490 real professional workflow tasks.

2. “Anthropic Public Record” [RESEARCH]: a survey of 52,000 Americans to gauge their opinions and feelings on AI deployment and societal impact.

3. “Claude Fable 5 - Full 319-page Breakdown” [VIDEO]: a comprehensive deep dive into Fable 5 by the always excellent AI Explained.

🔀 AI random

1. Anthropic had to disable access to Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 after the US government issued an export control directive aimed at preventing jailbreaks.

2. OpenAI submitted a confidential draft S-1 to the SEC as a formal first step toward a potential IPO.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

I wanted a man to cut himself shaving, not star in a bizarre horror comedy. (Also, very convincing “Ouch” there, bruh. Oscar-worthy.)

📹 Live & Learn update

I had to cancel my last Live & Learn session on short notice a few days ago (Friday).

But I’ll try again this coming Friday with a test of AI chatbots and standalone tools that let you make conversational edits to your images.

Join the session on Friday, June 18, at 2PM CET (8AM EST):

Join Live & Learn: AI Image Editing

Also, please let me know what you’d like to get out of these live sessions by taking this quick chat-based survey.

Live & Learn concept in a nutshell:

• I pick 3-5 tools in the same category

• I test them live and rate them on 3-5 specific dimensions

• I end up with a leaderboard based on my observations and ratings

See you there on Friday!

Join Live & Learn: AI Image Editing

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

See all 100+ paid subscriber bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Google open-sourced Gemma 4 12B, a multimodal model that processes text, images, and audio natively in a single pass and can run on a home laptop.

2. H Company open-sourced Holo3.1, a family of AI agents that can click, type, and navigate apps on the web, desktop, and mobile while running on your own device.

3. Ideogram launched Ideogram 4.0, an image model with the most reliable text rendering of any open-weight release, free for non-commercial use.

4. JetBrains open-sourced Mellum2, a fast coding model that can act as a specialist in bigger multimodel pipelines to handle routing, summarization, and refactoring.

5. Krea released Krea 2 Turbo, a faster version of Krea 2 that can create high-quality images in about two seconds. (Try it for free.)

6. Microsoft rolled out its first in-house coding model, MAI-Code-1-Flash, directly inside GitHub Copilot, free and optimized for fast, lightweight coding tasks.

7. MiniMax open-sourced M3, a natively multimodal model with 1M context, frontier performance, and coding skills designed for long-running agent tasks.

8. Nous Research launched Hermes Desktop, a native app for installing, configuring, and chatting with Hermes Agent without using the terminal.

9. OpenAI news:

   1. ChatGPT can now send emails directly from a conversation, so you can draft, edit, and fire off a message without leaving the chat.

   2. Codex can now adapt to your specific job role thanks to plugin bundles for marketing, sales, support, and more with relevant apps and skills.

   3. Dreaming lets ChatGPT process your past chats in the background to build a persistent understanding of your preferences. (Paid US accounts only for now.)

10. Reve launched Reve 2.0, a 4K image generator that lets you control exactly where elements appear using visual layouts rather than just text prompts. (Try for free.)

11. Runway brought its Aleph 2.0 model to the API, letting developers make precise video edits while preserving the rest of the clip.

12. TwelveLabs launched Rodeo, an AI video copilot that lets you find and assemble footage using plain language without manual scrubbing.

13. xAI released Grok Imagine 1.5 Preview, which lets you turn still images into cinematic 720p videos with natural-language prompts.

🔬 AI research

1. GitHub announced a Copilot Desktop App in technical preview, letting developers manage coding agents, create secure sandboxes, and review changes.

2. Microsoft introduced Scout, an always-on Microsoft 365 agent that schedules meetings, flags stalled decisions, and learns your priorities over time.

3. Perplexity teased a hybrid inference system for Perplexity Computer that automatically splits AI tasks between your device and the cloud.

📖 AI resources

1. “EVA-Bench Data 2.0” [BENCHMARK]: a set of 121 tools and 213 real-world scenarios to test AI voice agents across different enterprise domains.

🔀 AI random

1. Anthropic confidentially filed a draft S-1 for a proposed IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission. (But let’s hope it gets its house in order soon.)

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

I don’t know what’s happening here, but we need this in the Olympics ASAP.

📹 Live & Learn #5: AI logo makers

I’m back with the Live & Learn concept, where I test and rate AI tools, like so:

• I pick 3-5 tools in the same category

• I test them live and rate them on 3-5 specific dimensions

• I end up with a leaderboard based on my obserations and ratings

This week, I looked at and ranked five AI logo generators:

In the next Live & Learn, I will be testing chatbots and standalone tools that let you make edits to images.

Join the session on Friday, June 12, at 2PM CET (8AM EST):

Live & Learn: AI Image Editing

Also, please let me know what you’d like to get out of these live sessions:

Help shape "Live & Learn"

(It’s just a single open-ended question with a few AI-assisted follow-ups.)

Thanks!

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

See all 100+ paid subscriber bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

🗞️ AI news

Here’s what happened in AI this week:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude Opus 4.8 brings incremental upgrades over 4.7 and several new features at the same cost. (But initial reactions are not positive.)

   2. Dynamic Workflows let Claude Code write orchestration scripts to run hundreds of parallel subagents to handle complex tasks.

2. ElevenLabs news:

   1. Dubbing v2 preserves emotional nuance when translating video content across languages by conditioning it on the original video. (Try for free.)

   2. Music v2 lets you create full songs that can switch genre mid-track with improved instrumentals, multilingual support, and richer vocals. (Try for free.)

3. Microsoft news:

   1. 365 Copilot is now more deeply embedded and loads faster inside Office apps like Excel and Word, so you can invoke it without breaking your flow.

   2. MAI-Image-2.5 is #3 on Arena’s text-to-image leaderboard and delivers sharp text and commercial-quality photography. (Try it free on Arena.)

4. OpenAI brought Codex computer use and remote control to Windows, so it can operate your desktop apps and continue coding sessions from the phone.

5. Perplexity made Computer available directly in Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word as native add-ins, so you can use it without leaving your Office apps.

6. Runway launched an MCP server that lets you create images and videos directly inside ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, or Replit without leaving the app.

7. xAI launched Grok Build, its coding agent with automation tools and image/video generation, in early beta for SuperGrok and X Premium+ users.

🔬 AI research

1. Apple previewed a new Siri for iOS 27 powered by Google Gemini, with improved reasoning, persistent chat history, and a standalone app.

📖 AI resources

1. “DeepSWE” [BENCHMARK]: New “contamination-free” benchmark that measures coding agents on original, long-horizon software engineering tasks.

2. “How to evaluate AI agents (2026 edition)” [GUIDE]: practical guide to testing AI agents in production by Ben Hylak.

🔀 AI random

1. YouTube is making AI labels more prominent across the platform and adding automatic detection to help spot photorealistic AI content.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

“Hey, barkeep, got any of them self-filling bottles with self-making cocktails that spontaneously catches on fire?”

“Say less.”

📹 Live & Learn is back

During the next Live & Learn session, I’ll be testing and rating AI logo makers.

Join the session on Tuesday, June 2, at 2PM CET (8AM EST):

Live & Learn: AI Logo Makers

Let me know what would make the session extra useful by taking this quick survey:

Help shape "Live & Learn"

(It’s one open-ended question with a few AI-assisted follow-ups.)

Thanks!

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

See all 100+ paid subscriber bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

🗞️ AI news

Here’s what happened in AI this week:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Alibaba released Qwen3.7-Max, its new flagship agent model built for coding, workflow automation, and long-horizon tasks. (Try for free at Qwen Chat.)

2. Amazon launched Alexa Podcasts, so you can request a custom audio episode on any topic that Alexa researches, writes, and narrates. (Alexa+ users only.)

3. Cohere open-sourced Command A+, a mixture-of-experts agentic reasoning model that can run on just two H100 GPUs. (Try for free on Hugging Face.)

4. Cursor launched Composer 2.5, a coding agent that matches frontier model performance at a fraction of the cost.

5. Google news (mainly from I/O 2026):

   1. AI Mode was upgraded with Gemini 3.5 Flash and now includes search agents and can build mini-apps to handle tougher questions and tasks.

   2. Antigravity 2.0 is a new standalone desktop app that can orchestrate many AI coding agents at the same time and schedule background tasks.

   3. Gemini 3.5 Flash is the company’s best-in-class model for coding and long-horizon agent tasks that’s also four times faster than frontier alternatives.

   4. Gemini Omni Flash can create and edit videos from any combination of audio, images, text, and video inputs.

   5. Gemini Spark is a 24/7 personal AI agent that handles multi-step tasks across your Calendar, Docs, Drive, Gmail, Sheets, and more.

   6. Pomelli gained agentic features that can help businesses create brand identities, brand books, and full websites in just a few clicks.

   7. Project Genie can now use Google Street View to let you explore an AI-generated version of any real-world location. (Gemini Ultra users for now.)

   8. Stitch Agent lets you build, stream, and steer app designs in real time from text, voice, code, or existing design files. (Try for free.)

   9. SynthID expanded its AI watermarking across Chrome, Gemini, Google Search, and Pixel to help people spot when content was made with AI.

6. Granola launched Briefs that generate a pre-meeting summary of what was discussed last time and what to focus on just before you join.

7. Ideogram launched an MCP server to let AI chatbots and agents generate and edit images directly in the chat.

8. Krea released LoRA fine-tuning for Krea 2 in beta, so you can train the model on your own images to lock in a specific style, character, or object.

9. Leonardo AI launched 3D Generation, which can turn a prompt or image into an exportable .glb model without leaving the platform.

10. Microsoft launched an improved Bing Image Search that organizes image results into AI-labeled groups that help you find what you’re after faster.

11. OpenAI news:

    1. Appshots lets Mac users send any open app window straight into Codex without copying anything manually.

    2. ChatGPT for PowerPoint lets you generate and edit Microsoft PowerPoint slides using natural language. (Try for free during global beta)

    3. Verify is a new tool that lets you check whether an image was made or edited by OpenAI’s models. (Try it for free.)

12. Stability AI open-sourced the Stable Audio 3.0 family of music models that can generate 6-minute tracks and were trained on fully licensed data. (Try it for free.)

🔬 AI research

1. Apple previewed AI-powered accessibility updates like Vision Pro eye-tracking wheelchair controls, natural language Voice Control, and more.

2. Figma announced its Design Agent that works inside your file, follows your design system, and makes edits directly on the canvas. (Request early access.)

3. Google news:

   1. AI Studio is adding a mobile app so you can start AI projects on your phone and continue on your desktop. (Pre-register for the app now.)

   2. Universal Cart will let you add items via Gmail, Gemini, Google Search, and YouTube into an AI cart with automatic price alerts and stock notifications.

4. Microsoft previewed MagenticLite, a lightweight multi-agent framework optimized to run browser and file tasks with small models.

5. Spotify news:

   • Fan-made covers will let Premium subscribers create AI-generated covers and remixes of songs from participating Universal Music artists.

   • Personal Podcasts can create AI audio episodes on any topic from a prompt, PDF, or link on a recurring schedule. (Premium subscribers only.)

📖 AI resources

1. “Two Rival Bets on AGI: Google I/O Highlights” [VIDEO]: fascinating look at the different pathways to AGI pursued by different labs, from AI Explained.

🔀 AI random

1. Anthropic hired Andrej Karpathy (ex-Tesla and OpenAI co-founder) to work on Claude pre-training and speeding up frontier model research.

2. OpenAI had its reasoning model autonomously disprove an 80-year-old “unit distance” geometry problem, with results verified by Fields medalist Tim Gower.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

I wanted distorted, surrealist version of a person reflected in the mirror, following their motions. This…is not that.

📹 Live & Learn: What shall I tackle next?

After a brief break, I’m planning to return to my weekly Live & Learn sessions again.

Let me know what types of tools you’d like me to test:

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoy my work, here’s how you can help:

• ❤️Like this post if it resonates with you.

• 🔄Share it to help others discover this newsletter.

• 🗣️Comment below, —I love hearing your opinions.

Why Try AI is a passion project, and I’m grateful to those who help keep it going. If you’d like to support me and unlock cool perks, consider a paid subscription:

Subscribe now

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

Check out the "Sunday Bonus" directory

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

🗞️ AI news

Here’s what happened in AI this week:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Amazon launched Alexa for Shopping that can research products, compare prices, track deals, and automate routine purchases.

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Agent View lets you manage all your Claude Code sessions from a single dashboard to see which ones are running, need input, or are completed.

   2. Claude for Legal comes with 20+ MCP connectors and 12 plugins tailored to specific legal work and practice areas.

   3. Claude for Small Business includes 15 ready-to-run workflows for finance, HR, operations, and sales with connections to Canva, PayPal, and more.

3. Krea launched Krea 2 image model with style transfer that lets you match any aesthetic from reference images and moodboards.

4. Meta news:

   1. Incognito Chat lets you have fully private AI conversations on WhatsApp with messages that don’t get saved or seen by anyone, including Meta.

   2. Muse Spark went from research to general availability and is now accessible across all of Meta’s apps (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp).

5. Microsoft added new Copilot features to Edge on desktop and mobile, including long-term memory, multi-tab reasoning, and study tools like flashcards.

6. OpenAI news:

   1. Codex is rolling out to the ChatGPT app on iOS and Android, letting you kick off coding tasks and other long-running projects from your phone.

   2. Personal Finance connects ChatGPT to 12,000+ financial institutions, so you can ask questions about your spending and get live dashboards in the app.

🔬 AI research

1. Google news:

   1. Gemini Intelligence is coming to Android this summer with Gemini built into Chrome, multi-step task automation, and intelligent speech-to-text.

   2. Gemini Spark is an always-on AI agent that runs in the background to handle your daily tasks (expected to be announced at Google I/O).

   3. Magic Pointer will turn your mouse cursor into a context-aware mini AI agent that intuitively understands your requests based on where you’re pointing.

2. Thinking Machines Lab previewed interaction models that can respond, interrupt, and translate in real time across audio, video, and text.

3. xAI announced Grok Build, a coding agent that can write files, run commands, and build apps from natural language. (Early beta for SuperGrok Heavy users.)

📖 AI resources

1. “AI IQ” [BENCHMARK]: a new platform that scores frontier AI models on an IQ curve, with cost comparisons, intelligence trends, and live rankings.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

This clip of me playing chess against a robot is practically flawless, but an eagle-eyed Grandmaster might be able to spot a few subtle inconsistencies.

📹 My Cozora image-to-video workshop

On May 7, I had the pleasure of joining of Cozora for a one-and-a-half-hour practical session on image-to-video models.

I shared hands-on examples of using images with AI video, showcased different techniques, and discussed their practical applications.

It was a lot of fun and jam-packed with actionable tips. I even threw in a take-home reference sheet with key takeaways.

Paid subscribers can watch the full session here:

Watch the Workshop

If you’re not already a member, note that all of my subscribers are eligible for discounts on Cozora memberships:

• Free subscribers get 10% off

• Paid subscribers get 50% off

In related news: I expect to get back to my Live & Learn sessions the week after next, so if you have input on future topics, format, and so on, please share it here:

Help shape "Live & Learn"

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

Check out the "Sunday Bonus" directory

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

🗞️ AI news

Here’s what happened in AI this week:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Adobe launched a Productivity Agent in Acrobat Express that turns PDFs into shareable AI workspaces you can interact with.

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Agent Templates for financial services give teams 10 ready-to-run Claude workflows to help with pitch prep, KYC screening, and more.

   2. Claude Code rate limits have doubled, and there are no longer peak-hour limitations for Pro and Max accounts.

   3. Claude for Microsoft 365 is out for all paid plans, bringing Claude into Excel, PowerPoint, and Word (as well as Outlook in public beta).

   4. Managed Agents now have Dreaming (automatic memory review between sessions), Multiagent Orchestration, and Outcomes (working against a rubric).

3. Cursor introduced /orchestrate, a new skill that spawns specialist subagents to handle complex tasks in parallel.

4. ElevenLabs added a Studio Agent to ElevenCreative: an AI collaborator embedded in the audio/video timeline that lets you create without switching tools.

5. Google news:

   1. AI search results will now quote first-hand insights from Reddit, forums, and social media, featuring creator handles and clickable source links.

   2. Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is generally available as the fastest, most cost-efficient model in the Gemini 3 family, designed for ultra-low latency tasks.

6. LTX Studio launched Flows, a node-based canvas that lets you design and run visual generation workflows in batches.

7. OpenAI news:

   1. GPT-5.5 Instant in ChatGPT comes with fewer hallucinations, better image analysis, and clear explanations of what memories shaped its response.

   2. Codex can now work directly in Chrome on macOS and Windows, letting you run parallel coding agents across multiple browser tabs.

8. Perplexity news:

   1. Computer for Professional Finance connects to licensed data providers like Morningstar and can run pre-built analyst workflows in Microsoft Teams.

   2. Personal Computer is now out as a native macOS app that can run agentic tasks across local files, Mac applications, the web, and 400+ connectors.

   3. Premium Health Sources will pull peer-reviewed clinical journals into Perplexity answers.

9. Spotify launched a beta AI personal podcast feature that creates and saves daily briefings and learning content directly to your library.

10. Unity launched Unity AI in open beta, letting developers generate scenes from images, write scripts, and create placeholder assets without leaving the editor.

11. xAI launched Grok Voice Mode for Apple CarPlay, letting you talk to Grok hands-free in your car.

🔬 AI research

1. Subquadratic introduced SubQ, an AI model that can read long documents in one go without having to split them into smaller chunks. (Request early access.)

📖 AI resources

1. "Turning Claude’s Thoughts Into Text" [RESEARCH]: Anthropic's new study on helping to decode Claude’s internal “activations” into plain text.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

My prompt was: “Two men tumble out of a dingy kitchen’s rear exit, arguing and fighting.” At no point did I request a door-glitching giant in a dissolving tank top.

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoy my work, here’s how you can help:

• ❤️Like this post if it resonates with you.

• 🔄Share it to help others discover this newsletter.

• 🗣️Comment below—I love hearing your opinions.

Why Try AI is a passion project, and I’m grateful to those who help keep it going. If you’d like to support me and unlock cool perks, consider a paid subscription:

Subscribe now

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

Check out the "Sunday Bonus" directory

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

🗞️ AI news

Here’s what happened in AI this week:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Alibaba released Qwen-Image-2.0-Pro, an image model with improved output quality, multilingual text rendering, and better instruction-following.

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude Connectors for creative tools like Adobe Creative Cloud, Blender, and SketchUp let you use these apps directly in chat via natural language requests.

   2. Claude Security lets Enterprise accounts scan codebases for vulnerabilities and get AI-suggested fixes. (In public beta for Enterprise customers.)

3. Cognition launched Devin for Terminal, a coding agent that runs locally on your computer but can hand off to a cloud agent when needed.

4. Google news:

   1. Gemini now generates and exports files directly from chat, including Google Docs, Excel, Sheets, Slides, PDFs, Word documents, and more.

   2. Google Translate now lets you practice pronunciation by speaking translations out loud and getting instant AI feedback.

5. Mistral news:

   1. Medium 3.5 is an open-source reasoning and coding model that can be self-hosted on as few as four GPUs. (Try for free in Le Chat.)

   2. Vibe can now run coding sessions in the cloud, so you can launch multiple jobs in parallel and come back to a finished task.

6. NVIDIA open-sourced Nemotron 3 Nano Omni, a small multimodal model that lets agents reason across video, audio, images, and text.

7. OpenAI added Advanced Account Security to ChatGPT and Codex, letting you lock your account with passkeys or physical security keys to protect sensitive data.

8. Poolside released Laguna M.1 and Laguna XS.2, agentic coding models built for long-horizon tasks (XS.2 is small enough to run on a single GPU).

9. Spotify launched a “Verified by Spotify” badge so you can tell at a glance whether an artist is human rather than AI.

10. xAI launched Grok 4.3 at a very low API price point and also released a new voice cloning suite.

🔬 AI research

1. Google news:

   1. Ask YouTube is an experimental search feature that lets Premium US subscribers ask questions and get a mix of text summaries, videos, and Shorts.

   2. Google Photos Wardrobe will soon be able to scan your photo library to create a “digital closet” so you can mix-and-match and virtually try on outfits.

2. Microsoft previewed a Legal Agent in Word that helps with contract review and redlining. (Available via the Frontier early access program.)

📖 AI resources

1. “Claude for Personal Guidance” [STUDY]: Anthropic’s look at how people actually use Claude along with observed sycophancy patterns.

🔀 AI random

1. OpenAI traced GPT-5‘s curious obsession with “goblin” metaphors to reward training for the “Nerdy” personality mode.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

I asked DALL-E 2 to visualize a living room scene a few seconds before the smoke alarm goes off. It sure delivered.

📹 Live & Learn #4: AI text-to-visual tools

Live & Learn is a relatively new Substack Live concept where I test and rate AI tools.

Here’s how it works:

• I pick 3-5 tools in the same category

• I test them live and rate them on 3-5 specific dimensions

• I end up with a leaderboard based on the ratings from the session

This week, I looked at five text-to-visuals tools:

Heads up: There won’t be a Live & Learn next week.

That’s because I’ll instead be doing my Cozora expert session about practical applications of image-to-video tools on Thursday, May 7, 11 AM ET / 5 PM CET.

I expect to return to Live & Learn the week after, so stay tuned!

Leave a comment

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

Search all 95 Sunday Bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

🗞️ AI news

Here’s what happened in AI this week:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Alibaba open-sourced Qwen3.6-27B, a cost-efficient 27B model that outperforms much larger ones on agentic coding tasks.

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude Connectors expanded to 200+ everyday apps, letting Claude pull in relevant data mid-chat and chain multiple services together.

   2. Cowork can now build Live Artifacts: dashboards and trackers connected to your data sources that auto-refresh when opened.

3. DeepSeek open-sourced DeepSeek-V4, a reasoning model with a 1M-token context window that approaches the performance of top-tier closed models.

4. Google news:

   1. AI Studio now gives Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers higher usage limits and new models for prototyping and vibe-coding projects.

   2. Deep Research and Deep Research Max can perform autonomous research across your files or specialized data sources using MCP connections.

   3. Gemini for Home added a Continued Conversation feature that lets your smart speaker retain context after a response and handle follow-up questions.

5. Microsoft added Copilot’s agentic capabilities to Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, letting it perform multi-step actions directly in your documents.

6. Moonshot AI open-sourced Kimi K2.6, a coding model that can coordinate 300 simultaneous sub-agents for complex, long-horizon programming projects.

7. OpenAI news:

   1. ChatGPT for Clinicians helps verified US physicians, nurse practitioners, and pharmacists with medical research and documentation work.

   2. ChatGPT Images 2.0 is a SOTA image-generation model with thinking capabilities that can reason through your prompts.

   3. Codex Chronicle builds context from your screen activity, so Codex knows what you’re working on automatically. (Opt-in preview for Pro subscribers.)

   4. GPT-5.5 is a flagship model for complex coding, research, and data analysis that is also more token-efficient than competing models.

   5. Workspace Agents let teams build shared AI agents for long-running tasks in the cloud. (For ChatGPT for Business, Enterprise, and Edu plans.)

8. TwelveLabs launched Pegasus 1.5, which extracts structured, timestamped metadata from videos up to two hours long so you can better analyze them.

9. X launched Custom Timelines that lets you pin up to 75+ AI-curated topics to your home tab. (In early access for Premium subscribers.)

🔬 AI research

1. Alibaba announced Qwen3.6-Max-Preview, with improved agentic coding, world knowledge, and instruction following for real-world tasks.

📖 AI resources

1. “GPT 5.5, DeepSeek V4, and the Compute War” [VIDEO]: great level-headed deep-dive by AI Explained.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

Well, at least you’re aware of your own limitations, Gemini.

📹 Live & Learn #3: AI Slide Deck Makers

The “Live & Learn” format is really coming into its own, thanks to great feedback from everyone who responded to my surveys. Keep your suggestions coming!

From now on, there’s more structure to my live tests and the scoring.

Future “Live & Learn” sessions will:

• Focus on 3-5 tools in the same category for an apples-to-apples comparison

• Have 3-5 specific dimensions we rate them on

• Wrap-up with a leaderboard we fill out together during the session

This week, we tested five AI slide deck makers and ended with a two-way tie for first place:

Watch "Live & Learn #3"

Next time, we’ll be testing AI tools that automatically create helpful visuals like charts and diagrams out of text. It’s happening on Friday, May 1, at 2:00 PM CET.

Join "Live & Learn" - May 1, 2:00 PM CET

Please let me know what you want to get out of this particular session and “Live & Learn” in general:

Help shape "Live & Learn"

(It’s just two open-ended questions with a few AI-assisted follow-ups.)

Thanks!

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

Search all 95 Sunday Bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

🗞️ AI news

Here’s what happened in AI this week:

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Alibaba open-sourced Qwen3.6-35B, a sparse coding agent that matches larger models on agentic tasks. (Try for free on Hugging Face.)

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude Code “Routines” let you schedule automated workflows that run in the cloud without relying on your computer being awake.

   2. Claude Desktop app was redesigned for better Claude Code workflows with parallel coding agents, built-in terminal, in-app editing, and more

   3. Claude Opus 4.7 is the newest frontier model with improved reasoning and complex agentic coding, as well as better vision capabilities.

   4. Claude Design turns prompts into polished prototypes, slides, and visuals with built-in collaboration and design elements.

3. Blackmagic Design released DaVinci Resolve 21 with a dedicated Photo page and expanded AI editing tools for video and image workflows.

4. Character.ai news:

   1. PipSqueak 2 is a faster and smarter chat model paired with an upgraded Memory, so your characters remember more details across conversations.

   2. c.ai Books lets you “step inside” classic novels like Alice in Wonderland and role-play through the plot as different characters.

5. Google news:

   1. AI Studio added a Tab Tab Tab prompt autocomplete feature to its vibe-coding environment, so Gemini can intelligently supplement your ideas.

   2. Chrome added Skills that let you save and trigger custom Gemini prompts with one click directly from the browser.

   3. Gemini app is now available on Mac as a native desktop experience.

   4. Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS is the latest text-to-speech model with audio tags that let developers build AI voice apps with more natural, expressive speech.

   5. Google desktop app for Windows has built-in AI Mode search and lets you share your screen to ask questions about its contents.

   6. Personal Intelligence uses Nano banana to generate AI visuals from your Google Photos library.

6. Microsoft launched MAI-Image-2-Efficient, an image model that’s 22% faster and 41% cheaper than its bigger cousin.

7. Midjourney launched V8.1 Alpha, which generates native 2K HD images three times faster and cheaper than V8 and features an overhauled “Describe” tool.

8. Mozilla released Thunderbolt, an open-source, self-hosted AI client that keeps your conversations local and private.

9. OpenAI updated Codex with computer use, a built-in browser, 90+ plugins, image generation, and memory, turning it into a full-on desktop agent.

10. Opera launched a Browser Connector MCP that lets Claude and ChatGPT read your open tabs and take screenshots directly in the browser.

11. Perplexity released Personal Computer for Mac that can manage local files, apps, and web actions in a secure sandbox environment. (Max subscribers only.)

🔬 AI research

1. Adobe previewed Firefly AI Assistant, a tool that automates multi-step tasks across Creative Cloud apps in response to plan-language prompts.

2. Canva announced AI 2.0, a major platform overhaul with prompt-based editing, persistent brand memory, and HTML import.

3. Microsoft is testing OpenClaw-style always-on AI agents inside Microsoft 365 Copilot that proactively handle business tasks across apps.

📖 AI resources

1. “2026 AI Index” [REPORT]: Stanford HAI’s annual deep-dive on the state of AI with key takeways on adoption trends, economic impact, etc.

2. “Automated Alignment Researchers” [REPORT]: Anthropic’s study on using Claude to automate scalable AI oversight research.

3. “Half of Americans Use AI Services” [POLL]: Ipsos/Epoch poll of Americans’ AI usage and workflows.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

When Gemini thinks you’re the epitome of classic beauty…

📹 Live & Learn #2: Four AI app builders

Last session, I tested four no-code AI app builders with the same app request. The contenders came in different flavors and had their own spin on the task.

Watch "Live & Learn" #2

During the next “Live & Learn,” I’ll be test-driving several AI slide deck makers.

The session will be on Friday, April 24, at 2:00 PM CET:

Join Live & Learn - April 24, 2PM CET

To help me make the session more useful and relevant, share your thoughts:

Take The Survey

(The survey is just one open-ended question with AI-assisted follow-ups.)

Thanks!

Welcome back to the weekly AI news roundup.

Search all 95 Sunday Bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

I was away during Easter, so we have two weeks’ worth of AI developments to catch up on. Let’s get to it!

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Alibaba news:

   1. HappyHorse-1.0 is a SOTA video model that anonymously topped global video leaderboards before being claimed by the company.

   2. Qwen3.5-Omni is a family of natively omnimodal models that can simultaneously process and generate text, images, audio, and video.

   3. Qwen3.6-Plus is the upgraded flagship model with stronger reasoning and coding capabilities that can reliably handle complex real-world tasks.

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude Cowork is now generally available with admin controls like role-based access, spend limits, and analytics for company-wide deployment.

   2. Computer Use now runs directly in Claude Code CLI, so it can visually verify and fix what it builds by interacting with the screen.

   3. Microsoft 365 Connectors rolled out for all Claude plans, so you can link Claude to your OneDrive, Outlook, and SharePoint directly.

3. Arcee AI open-sourced Trinity-Large-Thinking, a reasoning model scoring #2 after Cladude Opus-4.6 on PinchBench while being 96% cheaper. (Try for free.)

4. Cursor now lets you launch coding agents from your phone and run and control them remotely on any machine.

5. GitHub added a focused review agent called “Rubber Duck” to Copilot CLI that uses a second model to review code and catch errors before they compound.

6. Google news:

   1. Gemini app added interactive simulations that showcase concepts right in the chat. (I previously compared ChatGPT and Claude versions.)

   2. Gemini added Notebooks for organizing chats, files, and custom instructions per project, with built-in syncing to NotebookLM.

   3. Gemma 4 is a family of open models for advanced reasoning and complex multi-step tasks that is faster and cheaper to run on edge devices.

   4. Google AI Edge Eloquent is a free offline dictation app for iOS that transcribes speech and removes filler words automatically. (Download it here.)

   5. Google Colab introduced a Learn Mode and Custom Instructions, turning Gemini into a personalized coding tutor.

   6. Google Vids added Veo 3.1 video generation with 10 free monthly clips, plus AI avatars and custom music tools.

   7. Veo 3.1 Lite is a cost-efficient video model that’s more than 50% cheaper than Veo 3.1 Fast.

7. HeyGen news:

   1. Avatar V can capture and consistently recreate your likeness in any setting, from just a 15-second video recording.

   2. Topaz Labs is now integrated into the platform, letting you natively upscale videos to 4K.

8. Meta is rolling out a new flagship model called Muse Spark, capable of multimodal reasoning and visual understanding across all Meta AI touchpoints.

9. Microsoft news:

   1. MAI-Transcribe-1 turns speech into text across 25 languages, even in noisy environments, and is both faster and cheaper than existing offerings.

   2. MAI-Voice-1 generates expressive speech from just a few seconds of input and can produce a minute of audio in under a second.

10. OpenAI news:

    1. ChatGPT Pro now has a $100/month tier with 5x more Codex usage than Plus.

    2. Codex now offers pay-as-you-go seats for teams with reduced annual pricing for ChatGPT Business.

    3. Codex launched as a plugin for Claude Code, so you can use OpenAI’s coding models inside Claude Code workflows.

11. Perplexity news:

    1. Computer launched inside Slack to help teams run analysis, generate code, and trigger workflows directly from Slack channels and DMs.

    2. Computer for Taxes uses IRS materials to help US users prepare their federal returns through its AI agent.

    3. Plaid integration lets you securely link bank accounts, credit cards, and loans for a full view of your personal finances.

12. Pika launched a Video Chat Skill (in beta) powered by PikaStream 1.0 that gives any AI agent a face and voice for real-time video conversations.

13. Salesforce gave its Slackbot 30+ new features, including automated meeting notes, daily recaps, and AI-powered task management.

14. Softr launched a no-code platform with an AI co-builder that creates functioning business apps from plain-language descriptions.

15. Topaz Labs shipped a Precision update, making its video models faster and better at upscaling clips to 4K.

16. World Labs rolled out Marble 1.1 and Marble 1.1 Plus, with improved visual details and larger, more complex generated worlds.

17. X added a Grok-powered photo editor to the post composer, letting you ask for edits and tweaks to images before posting.

18. Z.ai open-sourced GLM-5.1, a coding model that can work autonomously for up to eight hours and tops several software engineering benchmarks.

🔬 AI research

1. Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview is a powerful ureleased frontier model capable of finding and exploiting previously hidden software vulnerabilities.

📖 AI resources

1. “Claude Mythos: Highlights from 244-page Release” [VIDEO]: An excellent deep dive by AI Explained.

2. “Emotion concepts and their function in a large language model” [RESEARCH]—study by Anthropic on distinct emotions that shape how a model behaves.

🔀 AI random

1. Anthropic accidentally leaked the Claude Code source files, exposing internal architecture and planned features and sparking security concerns.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

When a vectorized version of you ends up looking like knock-off Freddie Mercury.

📹 Live & Learn #1: Testing AI tools together

In the first-ever “Live & Learn” session, I learned a tiny bit about AI tools and a whole lot about Substack’s screen-sharing limitations and the importance of double-checking audience settings. (I explain more here.)

Watch the recording

I really want these “Live & Learn” sessions to become a fun way for us all to nerd out about AI together. They don’t have to be limited to the AI tools I prepare for testing.

So bring your own tool suggestions, questions, and other AI things to share with me and the audience. I’ll make sure the live chat is actually open to all subscribers next time. (Oops!)

Join "Live&Learn" - April 16, 2:30PM CET

Also, please let me know what you’d like to get out of these live sessions:

Help shape "Live & Learn"

(It’s just a single open-ended question with a few AI-assisted follow-ups.)

Thanks!

Heads up: I’m away for Easter, so the next Sunday Rundown is on April 12

Happy Sunday, friends!

Welcome back to the weekly look at generative AI that covers the following:

• Sunday Rundown (free): this week’s AI news + a fun AI fail.

• Sunday Bonus (paid): an exclusive segment for my paid subscribers.

Search 90+ Sunday Bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

If you’re consistently missing out on my emails, remember to check your “Promotions” tab and mark whytryai@substack.com as a “Safe Sender.”

Let’s get to it.

🗞️ AI news

Here are this week’s AI developments.

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Ai2 open-sourced MolmoWeb, a browsing agent that navigates websites and reads the screen like a human to complete tasks. (Try the demo.)

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude mobile now lets you access tools like Amplitude, Canva, and Figma directly from your phone instead of relying on a laptop.

   2. Claude Code added Auto Mode that lets it run longer tasks with fewer interruptions by auto-approving safe actions while blocking risky ones.

3. ByteDance news:

   1. CapCut launched a Timeline-Free Video Studio that lets you create and edit AI video clips using plain language instead of traditional timeline editing.

   2. Seedance 2.0 video model finally rolled out to the wider public via CapCut.

4. Cohere open-sourced Transcribe, a SOTA model that accurately converts audio into text and offers multilingual support for real-world use cases.

5. Google news:

   1. Gemini now lets you import memory and chat history from other AI tools, making it easier to switch without losing your personalization.

   2. Gemini 3.1 Flash Live is a real-time voice model that delivers faster, more natural conversations and is especially well-suited for low-latency agents.

   3. Lyria 3 Pro can now generate full 3-minute tracks and parse structured elements like “verse,” “chorus,” and “bridge” prompts.

   4. Search Live expanded globally and is now powered by Gemini 3.1 Flash Live for more natural voice conversations directly inside Google Search.

6. Instagram added AI transitions to Stories that can turn a collection of still photos into an animated video clip.

7. Lovart launched a Move Object tool that lets you reposition any element in an image by selecting, dragging, and prompting for changes.

8. Luma Labs released its Uni-1 reasoning image model that thinks through your request before generating an image to ensure better prompt adherence.

9. Mistral AI launched Voxtral, a low-latency multilingual text-to-speech model that supports nine languages and lets you fine-tune the voices.

10. OpenAI upgraded ChatGPT shopping with visual browsing and side-by-side comparisons that help you find and evaluate products in seconds.

11. Smallest.ai launched Lightning V3, a text-to-speech model that supports 15 languages and lets you customize tone, pace, and style in natural language.

12. Suno released v5.5 with Voices, Custom Models, and My Taste features to create personalized music that better reflects your style and even uses your own voice.

🔬 AI research

1. Anthropic is rolling out Computer Use in Claude Cowork that lets Claude control your desktop to complete tasks (In research preview for paid accounts on macOS).

📖 AI resources

1. “ARC-AGI-3” [BENCHMARK]: new benchmark from the ARC Prize Foundation to test agent performance on previously unseen problems. (Try for yourself.)

🔀 AI random

1. OpenAI is shutting down Sora entirely to focus on its core business. (The Sora social media play was always a questionable decision in my book.)

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

Gemini, exactly one second after reading my article critical of AI ass-kissing:

💰 Sunday Bonus #95: Create social posts from any article with the Content Repurposer skill

Today, I’m expanding the Claude Code Essentials page with yet another Claude skill.

Content Repurposer turns any article into social posts tailored to your platforms, voice, and audience.

You can grab the generic version with the default settings, but you’ll get better results by customizing the skill.

The configurator lets you select your platforms, describe your audience, paste in your voice guidelines, and one-click download a personalized skill file that’s ready to go.

Content Repurposer covers nine platforms out of the box, but you can always add your own. For visual platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, the skill also suggests visual concepts, image prompts, and captions to accompany them.

Grab and customize it here:

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Welcome back to the weekly look at generative AI that covers the following:

• Sunday Rundown (free): this week’s AI news + a fun AI fail.

• Sunday Bonus (paid): an exclusive segment for my paid subscribers.

Search 90+ Sunday Bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

If you’re consistently missing out on my emails, remember to check your “Promotions” tab and mark whytryai@substack.com as a “Safe Sender.”

Let’s get to it.

🗞️ AI news

Here are this week’s AI developments.

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Adobe expanded access to Firefly Custom Models and video tools, letting you you train AI to generate images and videos in your own style.

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude Code channels let you control Claude through third-party messaging MCPs, starting with Discord and Telegram.

   2. Cowork now incorporates the Projects feature, so you get to keep your related tasks and context in a single place.

3. Character.ai launched Imagine Gallery, an organized space to save and share AI-generated images from your chat sessions.

4. Cursor launched Composer 2, a coding model that can execute long multi-step tasks with better accuracy and at a lower cost.

5. Google news:

   1. AI Studio now incorporates Antigravity and Firebase to help you turn prompts into full-stack apps with backend, authentication, and APIs built in.

   2. Personal Intelligence rolled out to free users, so Gemini can remember your preferences, projects, and personal context across conversations.

   3. Stitch evolved into an AI-native design canvas in Google Labs that lets you create and edit full-fledged app interfaces from prompts.

6. Manus launched My Computer for your desktop that gives its AI agent direct access to your local files, apps, and tools.

7. Microsoft launched MAI-Image-2, a text-to-image model for design work that excels at photographic images and text. (Try it for free.)

8. MiniMax released M2.7, a competitive model for software engineering, productivity, and agentic tasks. (Try it for free.)

9. Mistral open-sourced Small 4, a cost-efficient model that combines reasoning, multimodality, and agentic coding in one.

10. OpenAI launched GPT-5.4 mini and GPT-5.4 nano for faster coding, tool use, and high-volume API work.

🔬 AI research

1. Anthropic is rolling out Dispatch that lets you send tasks to Claude Cowork from your phone. (Research preview for paid subscribers.)

2. Midjourney opened its V8 model for alpha testing with faster image generation and better text rendering.

3. NVIDIA is previewing NemoClaw that can one-click install always-on agents like OpenClaw with better built-in privacy and security.

4. OpenAI is reportedly working on a desktop “superapp” that combines ChatGPT, Codex, and its Atlas browser into a single platform.

5. Together AI is working on Mamba-3, a new state space model that’s faster and cheaper than traditional LLMs with better accuracy on long-running tasks.

📖 AI resources

1. “State of AI 2026” [REPORT]—a series of reports on AI workplace impacts from NVIDIA based on surveys with thousands of leaders.

2. “US Job Market Visualizer” [REFERENCE]—Andrej Karpathy’s project that maps how AI affects different types of jobs.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

Really, Gemini? That’s where you draw the line?!

💰 Sunday Bonus #94: Find relevant tools and frameworks to improve your Claude Code setup

Last week, I built a brand-new “Claude Code Essentials” page and shared three self-installing Claude Code skills.

Today I’m adding a fourth:

Workspace Upgrader helps you identify and prioritize new skills, tools, and frameworks that improve your Claude Code setup.

It autonomously scans your entire working folder (config files, subfolders, documents, notes, etc.) and searches the web for resources to make your specific workspace better.

You get a neat visual report with prioritized recommendations:

For every recommendation, Claude estimates the impact and effort it would take to implement:

It’s a great way to find new skills, MCPs, tools, frameworks, etc. that are directly relevant to how you actually work.

Grab the self-installing skill here:

Read more

Welcome back to the weekly look at generative AI that covers the following:

• Sunday Rundown (free): this week’s AI news + a fun AI fail.

• Sunday Bonus (paid): an exclusive segment for my paid subscribers.

Search 90+ Sunday Bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

If you’re consistently missing out on my emails, remember to check your “Promotions” tab and mark whytryai@substack.com as a “Safe Sender.”

Let’s get to it.

🗞️ AI news

Here are this week’s AI developments.

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Adobe news:

   1. Firefly Image Editor now combines generative AI features like Generative Fill, Remove, Expand, Upscale, and Background Removal in a unified workspace.

   2. Photoshop added a conversational AI Assistant that lets you describe edits in plain language or draw directly on the image to make changes.

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude can now build interactive visualizations directly in the chat to help you better understand different concepts.

   2. Claude models now have a 1-million-token context window to handle entire codebases or countless documents. (Max or Enterprise accounts only.)

3. Canva launched Magic Layers that split AI-generated images into separate, editable layers so you can customize your design more granularly.

4. Genspark launched AI Workspace 3.0 with autonomous AI employees that can join meetings, manage emails, and run workflows on your behalf.

5. Google news:

   1. Google Maps added Ask Maps and Immersive Navigation, so you can ask questions about your route and see AI overlays while navigating.

   2. Gemini Embedding 2 is a natively multimodal embedding model that maps text, images, video, audio, and documents into a single searchable space.

      

   3. Google Workspace got new Gemini-powered features to help you create documents and analyze data more efficiently.

6. LTX Studio released LTX-2.3 that creates 4K videos with sharper detail, crisper sound, and better prompt adherence than its predecessor.

7. Meta news:

   1. AI anti-scam alerts across Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp can detect and flag suspicious messages and accounts.

   2. Facebook Marketplace got new Meta AI seller tools that turn photos into full listings, auto-reply to buyers, and create seller profile summaries.

8. NVIDIA news:

   1. ComfyUI App View and RTX AI upgrades make creating and upscaling AI-generated videos on a regular PC faster and easier.

   2. Nemotron 3 Super is an open 120-billion-parameter model built for agentic AI workflows with top-tier performance on multistep tasks.

9. OpenAI news:

   1. ChatGPT now has interactive visual explanations for math and science that break down complex concepts in a step-by-step, hands-on way.

   2. Sora added “References,” letting you save consistent characters, settings, props, costumes, or camera styles to reuse across videos.

10. Perplexity launched Computer for Enterprise, linking 20 AI models to 400+ apps for automated agent workflows.

🔬 AI research

1. Anthropic announced Claude Code Review that uses a multi-agent setup to automatically check pull requests for issues before merging.

2. Luma AI teased UNI-1, a reasoning image model that thinks through the request before generating visual outputs.

3. Microsoft news:

   1. Copilot Cowork will let you hand off multi-step tasks to AI agents to execute across Microsoft 365.

   2. Copilot Health will pull in data from wearables, health records, and lab results to help you make sense of it and prep for doctor visits.

4. OpenAI is reportedly planning to bring its Sora video model into ChatGPT, so you can create videos without leaving the chat interface.

5. Perplexity announced Personal Computer, a dedicated remote Mac mini that connects your local apps to Perplexity’s autonomous agents. (Join the waitlist.)

📖 AI resources

1. “Autoresearch” [TOOL]—Andrej Karpathy’s open-source tool that automatically runs multiple experiments to find the best training setup for an AI model.

🔀 AI random

1. Grammarly disabled its Expert Review tool after it was found to attribute AI writing feedback to real writers’ names without their consent.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

Yeah, so maybe don’t take geography lessons from Grok Imagine, kids.

💰 Sunday Bonus #93: Three Claude Code skills that auto-customize themselves to your project

I already shared two “Claude Code” Sunday Bonuses before:

• 9 simple-yet-powerful Claude Code workflows for everyday users

• 100+ use cases & prompts for Claude Code (swipe file)

Today, I’m combining them into a single page called “Claude Code Essentials” and throwing a brand-new bonus into the mix that revolves around useful skills:

Skills are reusable instructions that Claude Code follows every time you run them.

I’ve built many skills for my own needs, but three stood out as being useful to anyone.

So I bundled them into a Skills Starter Pack: self-installing skills that customize themselves to your setup in minutes:

1. Draft Reviewer: Run this whenever you have a piece of writing to review.

   

2. Session Saver: Run this at the end of each productive Claude Code session.

   

3. Workspace Auditor: Run this monthly to keep your setup in good shape.

   

The part I’m happiest with is that these aren’t cookie-cutter downloads.

Each skill scans your project first, then walks you through a short interview to build a version of itself that fits how you actually work.

From your side, it’s one copy-paste trigger prompt and a few quick answers.

Claude Code crafts the entire skill on its own, right in your working folder.

Enjoy:

Read more

Welcome back to the weekly look at generative AI that covers the following:

• Sunday Rundown (free): this week’s AI news + a fun AI fail.

• Sunday Bonus (paid): an exclusive segment for my paid subscribers.

Search 90+ Sunday Bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

If you’re consistently missing out on my emails, remember to check your “Promotions” tab and mark whytryai@substack.com as a “Safe Sender.”

Let’s get to it.

🗞️ AI news

Here are this week’s AI developments.

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Alibaba open-sourced Qwen3.5 Small, a family of compact multimodal models optimized for on-device use with strong performance despite their small size.

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude Memory is now free for everyone, with a new import tool to migrate preferences and context from other AI chatbots.

   2. Scheduled Tasks in Claude Code desktop let you automate regular tasks for Claude to run on a schedule.

   3. Skill Creator is now better and can help you test, measure, benchmark, and improve your Agent Skills. (Learn more about Claude Code skills here.)

3. Google news:

   1. AI Mode rolled out Canvas in the US, so you can accomplish writing and coding tasks directly inside search.

   2. NotebookLM can now turn notes into cinematic video summaries powered by Nano Banana Pro and Veo 3. (Only for Gemini Ultra subscribers for now.)

   3. Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is the fastest, most cost-efficient model in the Gemini 3 family.

4. LTX Studio launched dubbing and captions that can translate videos into 175 languages with accurate lip sync. (Enterprise-only feature for now.)

5. Microsoft open-sourced Phi-4-Vision-Reasoning, a compact multimodal reasoning model that excels at vision-language, math, and science tasks.

6. OpenAI news:

   1. ChatGPT for Excel is rolling out in beta to help you build models and generate outputs directly in Excel, powered by GPT-5.4.

   2. The Codex app launched on Windows, letting you manage multiple agents that collaborate on long-running tasks.

   3. GPT-5.3 Instant offers smoother conversations, fewer hallucinations, and less defensive or moralizing phrasing.

   4. GPT-5.4 is the company’s latest and best reasoning model with a 1M-token context window and improved coding and tool use.

7. Perplexity introduced Skills for Perplexity Computer, letting you teach it repeatable actions and capabilities that it can apply automatically.

8. xAI released Grok 4.20 Beta 2 with better instruction following, reduced hallucinations, and LaTeX support for scientific text.

🔬 AI research

1. Anthropic started rolling out a speech-to-text Voice Mode in Claude Code, so far to just 5% of users but with a wider expansion planned in the coming weeks.

2. OpenAI is rolling out Codex Security in research preview for AI-driven vulnerability detection and patching.

📖 AI resources

1. “Labor Market Impacts of AI” [REPORT]: Anthropic’s study outlining early hiring slowdowns in the most AI-exposed roles.

2. “Understanding AI and Learning Outcomes” [REPORT]: OpenAI’s framework to measure how AI affects learning retention, motivation, and problem-solving.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

Boy, that escalated quickly. Grok Imagine proudly brings you…a self-fatality?

💰 Sunday Bonus #92: Create supporting visuals for any text with "Article Visualizer"

If you’re anything like me, you don’t have the world’s best eye for design.

This means I often struggle to find ideas for visuals that can illustrate my articles.

Enter: Article Visualizer.

It’s a simple Google Opal app that analyzes your text (paste it in or provide a URL), and proposes up to five visual concepts to support your content: comparison charts, diagrams, infographics, graphs, etc.

You pick the one you prefer and get a finished visual to download:

If you liked Data Narrator, this is its sibling:

• Data Narrator helps you make sense of data by visualizing it

• Article Visualizer helps your readers better understand concepts in your articles

All you need is a free Google account.

Enjoy:

Read more

Welcome back to the weekly look at generative AI that covers the following:

• Sunday Rundown (free): this week’s AI news + a fun AI fail.

• Sunday Bonus (paid): an exclusive segment for my paid subscribers.

Search all 90+ Sunday Bonuses

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s Thursday deep dive:

If you’re consistently missing out on my emails, remember to check your “Promotions” tab and mark whytryai@substack.com as a “Safe Sender.”

Let’s get to it.

👩‍💻 AI releases

1. Alibaba open-sourced Qwen 3.5 Medium, a series of efficient models that match frontier performance while being small enough to run locally.

2. Anthropic news:

   1. Claude Code Remote Control lets you kick off a session on your computer and continue it remotely from another device. (Max plans only for now.)

   2. Cowork Finance plugins turn Claude into a finance specialist that can handle end-to-end tasks and carry context between Excel and PowerPoint.

   3. Cowork Scheduled Tasks let you describe a task, pick a frequency, and have Claude automatically execute it. (In preview for paid plans only.)

3. Cursor launched Cloud Agents that get their own virtual machines to independently write and test code, with many running in parallel.

4. Google news:

   1. Flow has merged several tools to help you create and edit images and videos together in one workspace in a more organized way.

   2. Nano Banana 2 delivers Pro-level image generation and editing at faster speeds with better subject consistency and cleaner text. (Try it for free.)

   3. Opal, the no-code app builder I covered a while back, added an agent step that can reason and automatically pick relevant tools. (Try it for free.)

5. Notion launched Custom Agents: AI teammates that can run workflows like task triaging, standups, and inbox management on a schedule.

6. OpenAI’s new Codex-to-Figma integration lets Codex turn Figma designs into production-ready code using real layout and component data.

7. Perplexity launched Perplexity Computer that autonomously runs research, coding, design, and workflow tasks across different apps and tools.

8. QuiverAI released Arrow 1.0, a first-of-its-kind model that generates editable SVG graphics from text prompts. (Try it for free.)

9. Wispr Flow launched an Android app that turns messy speech into polished text across 100+ languages. (Download it here.)

🔬 AI research

1. Google news:

   1. Circle to Search will be able to recognize multiple objects in a single image, coming soon to Galaxy S26 and Pixel 10.

   2. Gemini multi-step tasks will soon let it book rides or reorder food in the background while you keep using your phone.

2. Microsoft previewed Copilot Tasks, letting Copilot plan and execute tasks on its own virtual computer and browser. (Join the research preview waitlist.)

📖 AI resources

1. The rise of AI Recommendation Poisoning [ARTICLE]—a look by Microsoft at the rise in prompt injections inside “Summarize with AI” buttons.

2. “Deadline Day for Autonomous AI Weapons & Mass Surveillance” [VIDEO]—important deep dive by AI Explained.

🔀 AI random

This week is just filled with what one might call “AI oopsies”:

1. Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI models recommended nuclear strikes in 95% of war game simulations, a study finds. (They didn’t surrender even when losing.)

2. DJI patched a Romo robot vacuum bug after an engineer using an AI coding assistant accidentally gained access to live feeds and data of nearly 7,000 devices.

3. OpenClaw went rogue on Meta’s AI safety director, deleting 200+ emails and ignoring stop commands until she physically ran to her computer to kill it.

🤦‍♂️ AI fail of the week

This, kids, is why you must first create a proper starting frame.
(You can see the non-fail version in this article.)

💰 Sunday Bonus #91: Find your ideal AI solution with “AI Scout”

There’s no shortage of AI tool directories and “top 100” lists out there.

But they’re mostly endless buffets, leaving you to figure out what’s actually relevant to your situation.

AI Scout takes the opposite approach: You explain what you need, it asks you a few follow-up questions, and then heads out to find tools and workflows tailored especially for you.

Soon, you get a nicely polished page with three tailored recommendations:

AI Scout explains how each solution relates to your situation and provides concrete next steps you can take.

Have at it:

Read more