Author HubMatthias Bastian

Matthias is the co-founder and publisher of THE DECODER, exploring how AI is fundamentally changing the relationship between humans and computers.
AI and society

Google downplays AI's environmental impact in new study

AI and society

Meta's human-like chatbot personas can mislead users and result in real-world harm

AI in practice

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince sees trouble ahead for the open web

Ad
AI in practice
Short

Anthropic is rolling out new data privacy controls for Claude. Users on the Free, Pro, and Max plans must now actively opt out if they don't want their conversations used to train AI models.

The new setting only applies to new or ongoing chats and can be changed at any time. If you allow data use, Anthropic will keep your chat data for up to five years to help improve its models and security systems. If you opt out, your conversations are stored for just 30 days. These changes don't affect Claude for Work, Education, Government, or API access through partners like Amazon Bedrock.

Users have until September 28, 2025, to make their choice. After that, you'll have to select a data sharing preference to keep using Claude.

AI in practice
Short

Google's Flow tool now gives users a choice each month: five free Veo 3 Fast AI videos or one standard Veo 3 video. Google never spelled out the quality gap between the two models, but the new credit system offers a clue: one standard video costs as much as five Fast videos. Every user gets 100 free credits per month, enough for either option. Flow supports scene editing with AI ensuring consistency. For developers, API pricing starts at $0.040 per second for Fast and $0.0075 per second for standard videos.

Ad
Ad
AI in practice
Short

Google is making its basic editing tools in Google Vids free for everyone. Users can create videos with templates, text, and animations without needing a Gemini subscription. New features include eight-second video clips from photos with audio (Veo 3), AI avatars for scripted presentations, and automatic audio cleanup and transcription. Google says more options like portrait formats, filters, and new backgrounds are coming soon.

According to Google, the video tools are designed for social media, YouTube intros, and training videos. There's also a "Vids on Vids" learning series that walks users through the process.

AI in practice
Short

xAI has released Grok 2 as an open model, including the weights. Elon Musk announced on X that Grok 2.5, xAI's top model for 2024, is now open source. The weights for Grok 2 are available on Hugging Face. Musk also said Grok 3 will be released as open source in about six months.

Grok 2 is available under the xAI Community License. Usage is free for research and non-commercial projects, while commercial use must follow xAI's guidelines. The license prohibits using Grok 2 to develop or train other large AI models. If you redistribute the model, you have to credit the source and include "Powered by xAI."

Ad
Ad
AI research
Short

Open-weight reasoning models often use far more tokens than closed models, making them less efficient per query, according to Nous Research. Models like DeepSeek and Qwen use 1.5 to 4 times more tokens than OpenAI and Grok-4—and up to 10 times more for simple knowledge tasks. Mistral's Magistral models stand out for especially high token use.  

Average tokens used per task by different AI models. | Image: Nous ResearchIn contrast, OpenAI's gpt-oss-120b, with very short reasoning paths, shows that open models can be efficient, especially for math problems. Token usage depends heavily on the type of task. Full details and charts are available at Nous Research.

High token use can offset low prices in open models. | Image: Nous Research
AI in practice
Short

This weekend, Google is giving users three free video generations with its AI video tool Veo 3 in the Gemini app. Veo can create short AI videos with sound and is currently the most realistic video model on the market. The promotion runs until Sunday, August 24, at 10:00 p.m. PT.

A humorous 8-second short video portraying a community theater-style play about AI video generation overheating Google's AI chips. | Video: Veo 3 prompted by THE DECODER

Normally, Veo is only available to paid Gemini users, starting at around $20 per month, or through the API for about 50 cents per second. Google could be using this promotion to test the system's stability ahead of a wider release. Since Veo launched, users have generated millions of videos, according to Google, though this activity isn't mentioned in the company's latest AI energy report.

Ad
Ad
Google News

Bank details

IBAN: DE88 2507 0070 0053 0014 00
BIC: DEUTDE2HXXX
Account holder: Deep Content GmbH
Purpose: Support THE DECODER
AI in practice

Microsoft presents its first large AI models and signals greater independence from OpenAI

AI and society

Google downplays AI's environmental impact in new study

AI in practice

Deepseek’s first hybrid model V3.1 surpasses its R1 reasoning model on benchmarks

Google News