AI News Today

OpenAI says its new voice mode can speak and listen at the same time, a key ability for live translation.

Android Bench is evolving, and developers can help guide that process.

Anthropic recommends using the expensive Claude Fable 5 mainly as a planner for smaller models instead of running it on every task. Combined with Sonnet 5 in the "Advisor" pattern, this setup hits 92 percent of Fable 5's solo performance at 63 percent of the cost. The article Anthropic's fix for Fable 5's high cost is turning it into a manager that delegates to Sonnet 5 appeared first on The Decoder .

Founded in 2024, Prime Intellect’s goal is to give organizations capabilities to train their own agentic systems without relying on frontier AI labs.

Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 tops all six new industry-specific performance indices from Artificial Analysis, covering finance, law, and medicine. But that lead comes at a steep cost. In the Strategy & Ops Index, a single task runs $3.48 with Fable 5, more than a hundred times what DeepSeek V4 Pro charges at $0.03. The score difference is just 12 points. The article Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 dominates new industry benchmarks at a steep premium appeared first on The Decoder .

There are a lot of fast-growing AI startups, but some are growing even faster, they say.

The robotaxi stopped, called 911, and waited for the San Mateo Police to show up.

<p>They suck up energy and water, and blast out heat. Just who is better off from all this investment – aside from tech bros?</p><p>The two great existential threats of our time – the climate crisis and AI – come hurtling together in the explosion of datacentres across Australia and around the world.</p><p>You can hardly avoid hearing about them these days, either with awed reverence of the promised benefits to humankind or with fear and anger given the implications for the climate, inflation, j

Google Deepmind is adding four new features to Managed Agents in the Gemini API. Agents can now run asynchronously in the background, connect directly to remote MCP servers, use custom functions alongside sandbox tools, and refresh credentials without losing state. The article Google Deepmind adds background execution and MCP support to Gemini API managed agents appeared first on The Decoder .

<p>Meta said it was working with officials to be a ‘good neighbor’ and drinking water supplies were not affected</p><p>Officials in Wyoming said a contractor for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/mark-zuckerberg">Mark Zuckerberg</a>’s tech company, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/meta">Meta</a>, flushed bacteria-contaminated water into public sewers during construction of a controversial new AI <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/datacenters--us-">datacente

<p>Political campaigns are increasingly deploying AI and deepfakes to further their messaging, and the scale of spread has experts concerned </p><p>From the comfort of his bed, Jonathan Rinaldi, a political candidate for a city council seat in Queens, New York, tinkered away on his iPhone, prompting an artificial intelligence chatbot to mock up fake news hits and endorsements he had never received.</p><p>During the campaign last October, Rinaldi shared one of those stories, made to appear real w

When it comes to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), large language models just don’t have what it takes. Models like ChatGPT and Claude are great at text, but they’re less skilled at understanding how things actually move through space and time — an essential skill for producing intelligence that generalizes. That gap, it turns out, might be filled by gaming data. That’s the bet behind General Intuition, a […]

Chinese AI developer MiniMax is working on a new large language model with 2.7 trillion parameters. MiniMax plans to release the model as open source. The article Chinese AI startup MiniMax plans to open-source a 2.7 trillion parameter model later this year appeared first on The Decoder .

Kevin Weil's new role at Stoke Space suggests reusable rockets are the next hot thing in Silicon Valley.

Meta is testing a prototype of AI-powered headsets with "Super Sensing" that use a camera and microphone to record every moment of the wearer's life. The article Meta tests always-on AI glasses that capture your entire day appeared first on The Decoder .

Meta's Superintelligence Labs ships Muse Image, its first image generation model. Like OpenAI's GPT Image 2, it works as an agent, using tools like code execution and web search to refine its own results. A controversial @-mention feature lets users generate images of other people using their public Instagram photos without consent. The opt-out model is likely to collide with the GDPR and the EU AI Act. The article Muse Image is technically impressive, but Meta's use of Instagram photos raises q

A new book claims that Mystery, who teaches awkward men how to hit on women, had sex and smoked weed with an AI chatbot named Miss Shira Always.

<p>I can’t blame my patients for turning to its straightforward assessments. But it has real risks – and care may require human messiness</p><p>“Chat told me I should break up with him.”</p><p>I instructed my face to remain therapist-neutral, but I must have smirked. The truth is, I was annoyed. We had been discussing the viability of this relationship for weeks, and in an instant AI had brought the answer. “How do you feel about it?” She said this had been her gut feeling all along. The followi

<p>Those with high levels of vocational training, including tradespeople, are least exposed to AI displacement, according to government review</p><ul><li><p>Get our <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/email-newsletters?CMP=cvau_sfl">breaking news email</a>, <a href="https://app.adjust.com/w4u7jx3">free app</a> or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/series/full-story?CMP=cvau_sfl">daily news podcast</a></p></li></ul><p>Artificial intelligence has yet to cause widespread job losse

Verity Harding tells WIRED that the US government’s nationalistic attitude toward AI is evidence that a worst-case scenario is taking shape.

<p>From repainted walls to imaginary lawns, estate agents say modified photos help buyers ‘visualise the potential of a property’. But how much AI enhancement is too much? Agents, viewers and trading standards experts tell all</p><p>It is twilight on a desirable street in Chiswick, or it could be Hampstead, Wilmslow or Hove. A spectacular sunset has left a vivid stripe of orange fading into a violet sky. Against this saturated backdrop, a large Victorian house is clearly outlined despite the dar

A key delay from a state agency means robotaxi rides in the company’s new Ojai vehicle might be free for a few more months.

OpenAI is launching GPT-5.6 on Thursday after the U.S. government lifted its release ban following additional testing. Binding standards for future model approvals still don't exist. OpenAI says the Sol model beats Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 on coding benchmarks at about half the cost. The article OpenAI's GPT-5.6 launches Thursday after a delay forced by the U.S. government appeared first on The Decoder .

AI chip maker SambaNova has raised at an $11B valuation months after Intel was rumored to be trying to buy it for about $1.6 billion.

"HalluSquatting" weaponizes LLMs' inability to say "I don't know."

Get the latest Litter-Robot Discounts on Litter-Robot self-cleaning litter boxes, accessories, and more.

<p>Report finds widespread overbidding as rapid AI growth generates increased wealth in city where housing is scarce</p><p>San Francisco’s AI boom has buyers spending unprecedented amounts of money on homes – much more than sellers are asking for.</p><p>A new analysis from real-estate brokerage Compass, found that in the first half of 2026, <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/sf-homes-over-asking-22334362.php">more than 140 homes</a> in the city sold for at least $1m above th

As part of Meta’s Muse Image model rollout, Instagram users with public accounts need to opt out to block AI generations of their content.

Joshua Achiam spent nearly nine years at OpenAI researching AI safety and made a memorable appearance in the Musk v. Altman trial.

Meta is launching the first AI image generation model made by its Superintelligence Labs division. The Muse Image model now powers the image-making tools across the Meta AI app, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and it's coming soon to Facebook and Messenger, according to an announcement on Tuesday. It's part of the growing Muse family of AI […]

Open source models’ success isn’t coming at the expense of frontier labs. Instead, they each seem to capture two phases of the same life cycle.

Microsoft is the latest Silicon Valley giant to cut back on its AI spending.

Microsoft is replacing AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic with its own MAI models in products like Excel and Outlook. Tens of thousands of queries per week already run through them. AI chief Mustafa Suleyman wants to "ultimately eliminate" the cost of external models. For Copilot customers, that could mean less performance for the same price. The article Copilot goes cheap as Microsoft phases out OpenAI and Anthropic models to cut costs appeared first on The Decoder .

Cohere has released Transcribe Arabic, an open-source model for Arabic speech recognition that the company says outperforms Whisper and OmniASR on dialects, code-switching, and bilingual Arabic-English speech. The 2-billion-parameter model is available on Hugging Face under the Apache 2.0 license. The article Cohere Transcribe Arabic is an open-source model built for Arabic's toughest transcription problems appeared first on The Decoder .

Starting Tuesday, Anthropic's Claude Cowork AI platform will be available on mobile and web for the first time. The expanded access is rolling out first to Max subscribers and coming to Claude users on other plans "in the coming weeks." Claude Cowork was previously only accessible through the Claude desktop app for macOS and Windows, […]

Anthropic is rolling out its AI agent Claude Cowork to mobile and web. Until now, the feature was limited to the desktop app. The agent keeps working in the background even when the laptop is closed and pings users on their phone when it needs a decision. The move blurs the line between Chat and Cowork even further. The article Anthropic's Claude Cowork AI agent is now available on mobile and web appeared first on The Decoder .

With this update, users can start a task from their desk, get status updates on their phone, and pick up the finished output later — even if their laptop is closed.

It's early, but the plan is to reduce dependency on Nvidia and Huawei.

According to Reuters, Chinese authorities are looking into restricting foreign access to the country's most powerful AI models. Alibaba, Bytedance, and Z.ai would all be affected. The move means both superpowers now treat AI as a strategic asset. For Europe, the convenient shortcut of relying on cheap Chinese open-source models could close much faster than expected. The article China eyes export curbs on its top AI models, and Europe is caught in the middle appeared first on The Decoder .

Claude Cowork now keeps working on tasks even after you close your laptop. It’s part of a larger push toward smartphone-controlled agents.