Researchers have presented an AI model for cardiac ultrasound based on Meta’s JEPA architecture that outperforms common methods such as masked autoencoder or contrastive learning, according to their benchmarks.
An SEC filing reveals that Nvidia plans to spend $26 billion on open-weight AI models over the next five years. The move doubles as a strategic response to the growing dominance of Chinese open-source models – and a way to keep developers locked into Nvidia’s hardware ecosystem.
Google has introduced "Ask Maps," a conversational feature powered by its Gemini models. Users can ask questions in plain language, like "Is there a public tennis court with lights on that I can play at tonight?" or "My phone is dying — where can I charge it without having to wait in a long line for coffee?" The feature taps into data from more than 300 million locations and reviews from over 500 million contributors.
Results show up on a personalized map based on past searches and saved places. Users can book tables, save or share locations, and jump into navigation directly. Ask Maps is rolling out first in the US and India on Android and iOS, with a desktop version on the way.
Google also announced "Immersive Navigation," a revamped turn-by-turn system with a 3D view of surroundings, including buildings, overpasses, and lane markings. Gemini models generate the visuals by analyzing Street View and aerial imagery.
Immersive Navigation launches first in the US, expanding to more iOS and Android devices, CarPlay, Android Auto, and cars with built-in Google over the coming months.
OpenAI is reportedly planning to fold its video AI Sora directly into ChatGPT. So far, Sora has only been available as a standalone mobile and web app. OpenAI originally pitched it as a viral hit and potential TikTok alternative, a strategy that seemed to work early on, partly thanks to massive copyright infringements.
That momentum didn't last. According to The Information, the app has slid from No. 1 to No. 165 in the Apple App Store since launching last fall. CEO Sam Altman reportedly admitted internally that hardly anyone was sharing videos publicly. Rolling Sora into ChatGPT might fix that: with around 920 million weekly active users, the move would naturally drive more video generation. The standalone app will stick around for now, The Information reports.
Google already offers video generation in Gemini, though with tight capacity limits and only for paying subscribers. OpenAI will likely go a similar route: the company is strapped for compute, burns through cash supporting the roughly 95 percent of free ChatGPT accounts, and video generation is especially resource-hungry.
Google’s first native multimodal embedding model brings text, images, video, audio, and documents into one vector space, cutting out the need for separate models in AI pipelines.
Anthropic is updating its Claude add-ins for Excel and PowerPoint with shared context, reusable workflows, and broader cloud support.
Anthropic is adding three new features to its Claude for Excel and Claude for PowerPoint add-ins. The two add-ins now share conversation context, so Claude can read cell values, write formulas, and edit slides in a single session without users having to repeat information.
The company is also introducing what it calls Skills, reusable workflows that teams can share as one-click actions for tasks like financial model reviews or deck analysis. A preinstalled starter set covers common use cases.
Both add-ins are now available through Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, and Microsoft Foundry, letting companies pick the cloud provider that works best for them. All features are available to paying users on Mac and Windows.
Many of these capabilities are already built into the Claude app itself, particularly in Cowork mode, which is now also part of Microsoft's Copilot.
Grammarly is apparently using the names of journalists and authors without permission for an AI feature called "Expert Review." The feature offers writing tips that are supposedly "inspired" by experts like Stephen King or Neil deGrasse Tyson. Even people who have already died, such as Carl Sagan, are reportedly included. As The Verge, Platformer, and Wired report, the feature also lists numerous tech journalists, including Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel and other editors. None of them were reportedly asked beforehand.
After the backlash, Grammarly reportedly offered only an opt-out option via email - no apology. Alex Gay, vice president of product marketing at parent company Superhuman, said the feature never claimed direct involvement from the experts. According to The Verge, some of the feature's source links pointed to spam sites or completely unrelated content. Expert descriptions also contained outdated job titles. The AI suggestions show up in Google Docs looking like real user comments, which can easily mislead people.
