Hey everyone,
2025 is wrapping up, and we wanted to say thanks. This year, we published over 1,700 articles and 50 newsletters. We hope some of them were useful to you.
With our relaunch done, we're looking forward to 2026—staying on top of things and digging deeper where it matters.
If you have ideas or feedback, we'd love to hear from you: hello@the-decoder.com
And if you want to support our work, a subscription helps a lot.
Thanks for reading. Happy holidays! 🎄
Matthias, Max & Jonathan
OpenAI's advertising plans for ChatGPT are taking shape. According to The Information, employees are discussing various ad formats for the chatbot. One option would have AI models preferentially weave sponsored content into their responses. So a question about mascara recommendations might surface a Sephora ad. Internal mockups also show ads appearing in a sidebar next to the response window.
Another approach would only show ads after users request further details. If someone asks about a trip to Barcelona and clicks on a suggestion like the Sagrada Familia, sponsored links to tour packages could appear. A spokesperson confirmed to The Information that the company is exploring how advertising might work in the product without compromising user trust.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has previously called AI responses shaped by advertising a dystopian future—especially if those recommendations draw on earlier, private conversations with the chatbot. Yet that appears to be precisely what OpenAI is now working on: advertising powered by ChatGPT's memory function, which could tap into personal conversation histories for targeted ads.
Qwen has released an improved version of its image editing model that better maintains facial identity during edits. The Chinese AI company published Qwen-Image-Edit-2511 on Hugging Face, an upgrade to the earlier Qwen-Image-Edit-2509. The biggest improvement is how the model handles people. It can now make creative changes to portraits while keeping the subject recognizable, the company claims. Group photos with multiple people also work better now.
The update also brings improvements to lighting control, camera angles, industrial product design, and geometric calculations. Qwen has baked popular community LoRAs (small add-on models) directly into the base model. The model ships under the Apache 2.0 license. A demo is available on Hugging Face, and users can test the model for free via Qwen Chat.
Pulitzer Prize winner John Carreyrou and other authors are suing OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, xAI, and Perplexity for book piracy. The AI companies allegedly stole their works from illegal online libraries. The lawsuit has a strong case, and this time the plaintiffs are going after the big bucks instead of the “pennies” of a class action settlement.
A comprehensive collection of "Claude Skills" is now available on GitHub. These skills are customizable workflows that teach Anthropic's AI assistant Claude to perform specific tasks repeatedly and in a standardized way. The collection includes more than 50 skills across nine categories: Document Processing (Word, PDF, PowerPoint), Development Tools (Playwright, AWS, Git), Data Analysis, Business and Marketing, Communication, Creative Media, Productivity, Project Management, and Security.
Users can add skills in Claude.ai through the settings, store them in Claude Code's configuration folder, or integrate them via API. Each skill consists of a folder with a SKILL.md file. The repository is under Apache 2.0 license and accepts contributions.
Since skills are essentially just a collection of prompts in a folder, getting the most out of AI means customizing these prompts to fit your needs. That said, the repository is a solid source of inspiration. And as skills seem to be becoming the standard approach, it's worth exploring the topic beyond Claude.ai.
Zhipu AI has introduced GLM-4.7, a new model specialized in autonomous programming that uses "Preserved Thinking" to retain reasoning across long conversations. This capability works alongside the "Interleaved Thinking" feature introduced in GLM-4.5, which allows the system to pause and reflect before executing tasks. The model shows a significant performance jump over its predecessor, GLM-4.6, scoring 73.8 percent on the SWE-bench Verified test. Beyond writing code, Zhipu says GLM-4.7 excels at "vibe coding" - generating aesthetically pleasing websites and presentations. In a blog post, the company showcased several sites reportedly created from a single prompt. Benchmark comparisons show a tight race between GLM-4.7 and commercial Western models from providers like OpenAI and Anthropic. | Image: Zhipu AI
The model is available through the Z.ai platform and OpenRouter, or as a local download on Hugging Face. It also integrates directly into coding workflows like Claude Code. Z.ai is positioning the release as a cost-effective alternative, claiming it costs just one-seventh as much as comparable models.
The Qwen team at Alibaba Cloud has released two new AI models that create or clone voices using text commands. The Qwen3-TTS-VD-Flash model lets users generate voices based on detailed descriptions, allowing them to precisely define characteristics like emotion and speaking tempo. For example, a user could request a "Male, middle-aged, booming baritone - hyper-energetic infomercial voice with rapid-fire delivery and exaggerated pitch rises, dripping with salesmanship." According to the manufacturer, the model outperforms the API for OpenAI's GPT-4o mini-tts, which launched earlier this spring.
The second release, Qwen3-TTS-VC-Flash, can copy voices from just three seconds of audio and reproduce them in ten languages. Qwen claims the model achieves a lower error rate than competitors like Elevenlabs or MiniMax. The AI is also capable of processing complex texts, imitating animal sounds, and extracting voices from recordings. Both models are accessible via the Alibaba Cloud API. You can try demos for the design model and the clone model on Hugging Face.
OpenAI is using automated red teaming to fight prompt injections in ChatGPT Atlas. The company compares the problem to online fraud against humans, a framing that downplays a technical flaw that could slow the rise of the agentic web.
