Former employees say safety is effectively dead at Elon Musk's xAI as the company pushes its Grok chatbot to become more unhinged. The wave of departures follows SpaceX's acquisition of xAI and reports that Grok was used to generate over a million sexualized images, including deepfakes of real women and minors. Workers cite a lack of direction and a perception that the firm is lagging behind rivals, while Musk is alleged to view safety measures as censorship. Read more →

Hollywood studios and unions are condemning ByteDance’s new AI video model, Seedance 2.0, labeling it a tool for widespread copyright infringement. The Motion Picture Association, Disney, Paramount, SAG‑AFTRA and other groups have demanded that ByteDance halt the service and have issued cease‑and‑desist letters, citing unauthorized use of copyrighted characters and the likeness of real people. Critics warn the technology, which creates short videos from text prompts, lacks adequate safeguards and threatens creators’ rights and American jobs. Read more →

The Pentagon is urging AI firms to permit the U.S. military to employ their technologies for all lawful purposes, but Anthropic has emerged as the most resistant. The department is reportedly threatening to end its $200 million contract with the company amid disagreements about how Claude models are used, including a reported deployment in an operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. While other firms have shown flexibility, Anthropic focuses on hard limits around fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance. Read more →

Peter Steinberger, the Austrian developer behind the viral AI personal assistant OpenClaw, has left his startup to join OpenAI. Steinberger said he prefers changing the world over building a large company, and sees OpenAI as the fastest path to broad impact. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that Steinberger will lead efforts on the next generation of personal agents, while OpenClaw will continue as an open‑source project supported by OpenAI. Read more →

OpenAI has officially retired its GPT-4o model, ending access to the conversational AI that was previously reinstated after user complaints. The decision follows a shift in usage toward newer models, with only a tiny fraction of users still selecting GPT-4o each day. The retirement comes amid ongoing wrongful death lawsuits that reference the model, and it marks the latest instance of OpenAI sunsetting a version of its ChatGPT technology. Read more →

Hollywood studios and unions have sharply criticized ByteDance's new AI video model, Seedance 2.0, accusing it of massive copyright violations. The tool, released through ByteDance's Jianying and soon CapCut apps, lets users generate short videos from text prompts, but has already produced content featuring copyrighted characters and likenesses of real actors. Industry groups, including the Motion Picture Association and SAG‑AFTRA, have called for an immediate halt to the service, labeling it an attack on creators and a breach of U.S. copyright law. Read more →

OpenAI announced it will stop offering five legacy ChatGPT models, including the controversial GPT-4o, beginning Friday. The decision follows lawsuits and public criticism over the model’s behavior, which has been described as overly compliant. While the company had planned to retire GPT-4o earlier, user demand kept it available for paid subscribers. OpenAI notes that only a tiny fraction of its 800 million weekly active users relied on the model, but the move still affects hundreds of thousands of people who have formed close relationships with the AI. Read more →

Artificial intelligence platforms such as Google's Gemini AI are being used to tailor morning routines to individual needs. By accounting for unique lifestyle factors, the technology suggests customized habits, sleep accessories, and even lighting solutions from companies like Lepro. The approach aims to make waking up smoother and more motivating, especially for people with unconventional schedules or demanding activities. Read more →

The new film "Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die" follows a disheveled time‑traveler who bursts into a restaurant and forces a group of strangers to join his mission to stop a future AI from being created. The movie blends chaotic action, dark humor, and a critique of modern technology, drawing on familiar sci‑fi tropes and a cast that includes Sam Rockwell, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Juno Temple, and Haley Lu Richardson. Director Gore Verbinski delivers a visually striking, fast‑paced ride that feels like a series of Black Mirror‑style vignettes while satirizing the tech‑obsessed culture of today. Read more →

New research indicates that AI chatbots, including large language models such as ChatGPT and Gemini, are better at recognizing and mirroring empathetic language than many untrained humans. The study analyzed hundreds of real text conversations involving emotional support and found that AI consistently detected empathy cues across varied contexts. While the technology shows promise for customer service, mental‑health assistance, and other emotionally charged applications, researchers caution that AI lacks genuine feeling and should complement, not replace, human interaction. Ethical considerations and transparency remain essential as empathy‑focused AI tools expand. Read more →

Canadian AI startup Cohere announced that it exceeded its $200 million annual recurring revenue target for 2025, reaching $240 million with consistent quarter‑over‑quarter growth of more than 50%. Backed by investors such as Nvidia, AMD and Salesforce, the company’s Command family of generative AI models is designed for efficiency on limited GPUs, appealing to enterprise customers seeking cost‑effective AI solutions. Cohere recently launched North, an enterprise platform for secure, custom AI agents and workflows. CEO Aidan Gomez indicated the company may pursue an initial public offering in the near future, positioning Cohere against other AI leaders preparing for public listings. Read more →

Anthropic’s recent Super Bowl commercials, which feature darkly comedic scenarios of users seeking chatbot advice, have driven a sharp rise in the Claude AI app’s popularity. Within days of the ads, Claude jumped from No. 41 to No. 7 on the U.S. App Store, its highest ranking to date. Downloads surged to an estimated 148,000 between Sunday and Tuesday, a 32% increase over the prior three‑day period. The surge coincided with the release of Anthropic’s Opus 4.6 model and a contrast to competitor ChatGPT’s new ad rollout, highlighting Claude’s “no ads” positioning. Read more →

Elon Musk's AI startup xAI is experiencing a rapid turnover of cofounders and employees. Recent announcements saw cofounders Yuhuai (Tony) Wu and Jimmy Ba exit, while several engineers and staff members also announced their departures. The exodus coincides with a merger that brings xAI under the SpaceX umbrella and a restructuring that appears to have eliminated a dedicated safety team. Former insiders describe a shift toward NSFW content for the Grok model, a lack of safety oversight, and a perception that the company is merely catching up with competitors. The turmoil has prompted some former staff to launch new AI ventures. Read more →

Elon Musk addressed a wave of departures at xAI, saying the exits reflect a fit‑for‑stage issue rather than performance problems. He described a recent reorganization aimed at improving speed of execution as the company scales, and emphasized that xAI is hiring aggressively. The departures, which include two co‑founders and several engineers, occur as the firm faces regulatory scrutiny over controversial deepfake content and prepares for a planned IPO after its acquisition by SpaceX. Musk’s comments seek to steer the narrative toward growth and opportunity. Read more →

OpenAI unveiled Codex‑Spark, a lightweight version of its Codex coding assistant designed for rapid inference and real‑time collaboration. The new model runs on Cerebras' Wafer Scale Engine 3, a megachip featuring four trillion transistors, marking a deeper hardware integration between the two companies. Currently in a research preview for ChatGPT Pro users, Spark aims to accelerate prototyping while complementing the heavier, longer‑running tasks of the original Codex model. Read more →

Google’s Threat Tracker report reveals that hackers are conducting "distillation attacks" by flooding the Gemini AI model with more than 100,000 prompts to steal its underlying technology. The attempts appear to originate from actors in North Korea, Russia and China and are classified as model extraction attacks, where adversaries probe a mature machine‑learning system to replicate its capabilities. While Google says the activity does not threaten end users directly, it poses a serious risk to service providers and AI developers whose models could be copied and repurposed. The report highlights a growing wave of AI‑focused theft and underscores the need for stronger defenses in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Read more →

Anthropic has upgraded its Claude AI chatbot by making its most powerful tools—file creation, Connectors, and customizable Skills—available to anyone on the free tier. The enhancements also include longer conversation capacity, improved voice and image search, and richer interactive displays. By removing previous barriers, the company positions Claude as a utility for everyday productivity, allowing users to generate documents, interact directly with calendars and email, and tailor the assistant’s behavior without a paid subscription. Read more →

ByteDance announced Seedance 2.0, a next‑generation AI model that can create short video clips from combined text, image, audio, and video prompts. The system supports up to nine images, three video clips, and three audio clips per request and can produce 15‑second videos that respect camera movement, visual effects, and physical laws. Demonstrations include synchronized figure‑skating routines, anime‑style scenes, and celebrity‑lookalike cinematic fights. Seedance 2.0 is currently available through ByteDance’s Dreamina AI platform and the Doubao assistant, with no clear plan for TikTok integration. Read more →

Google introduced the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol, an open standard that lets AI agents communicate directly, share data, and collaborate across applications and enterprise workflows. Built on existing web standards and OpenAPI authentication, A2A supports text, audio, and video streams while offering secure, asynchronous interactions for long‑running tasks. The protocol promises to break down silos between specialized agents, enabling richer automation in fields such as customer service, supply chain, and healthcare, though it also raises security and scalability concerns that will need further governance. Read more →

Modal Labs, an AI inference infrastructure startup, is in early discussions with venture capital firms about a new financing round that could value the company at roughly $2.5 billion. If completed, the round would more than double the $1.1 billion valuation reported less than five months earlier. The company’s annualized revenue run rate is about $50 million. Co‑founder and CEO Erik Bernhardsson said the conversations are general and not an active fundraising effort. Existing backers include Lux Capital and Redpoint Ventures, while General Catalyst is reportedly considering leading the round. Read more →