Another HUGE Week With DOZENS Big Announcements from Top AI Companies...

Hold onto your hats, AI enthusiasts. Just when you thought the tech world might take a holiday breather, this week unleashed an absolute firehose of updates, new models, and features. From image editors that fight for supremacy to AI that can answer your doorbell, here’s your rapid-fire rundown of everything you need to know.

The Image Model Battle Heats Up

The week’s biggest showdown was in image generation. OpenAI launched GPT Image 1.5, a direct competitor to Google’s state-of-the-art “Nano Banana” model, focusing on advanced editing and contextual understanding.

Not to be outdone, Black Forest Labs released Flux 2 Max, another contender promising powerful iterative editing and style transfer. In hands-on tests, Flux showed promise but struggled with precise instruction-following compared to its rivals, particularly in complex compositional tasks.

Audio Gets Isolated

Meta made waves by applying its “Segment Anything” magic to audio. Their new SAM Audio model can isolate individual elements from a sound file—like pulling the guitar track out of a song or isolating a single speaker in a podcast—directly from a simple text prompt.

It’s a potent, free tool now available in Meta’s Playground that could be a game-changer for content creators.

Video Editing Enters the Prompt Era

The video AI space was similarly chaotic. Adobe Firefly introduced text-based video editing, though its current beta is surprisingly basic, limited mostly to trimming clips by editing transcribed text.

Meanwhile, Luma AI launched Ray 3 Modify, a model that lets you “re-skin” videos using a starting and ending reference image. Testing revealed impressive potential but was hampered by long generation times and some initial failed attempts.

Not to be left out, Kling and Alibaba both dropped major video model updates. Kling’s new motion control and lip-sync features for its 2.6 model produced some of the most convincing AI-driven avatar dialogue seen yet. Alibaba’s Wan 2.6 offers similar reference-driven video animation, turning simple prompts into multi-shot scenes.

The Rapid-Fire News Roundup

Phew. And that was just the main events. Here’s the rest of the week’s blitz in lightning round format:

OpenAI's Ecosystem Play: Will let developers submit apps to ChatGPT, creating a fledgling app store. They also announced an “adult mode” (yes, really) for 2026.

Google's Personal Assistant: New agent, C, scans your Gmail, Calendar, and Drive to auto-generate a daily “game plan” briefing.

Google Deep Research can now generate charts and graphs within its reports (for Ultra-tier users).

Model Mania: New model drops were everywhere: Google’s Gemini 3 Flash (fast and cheap), OpenAI’s GPT 5.2 Codex (for coding), Nvidia’s Neotron family (open-source), and Xiaomi’s Mimo V2 Flash.

Microsoft’s 3D Leap: Released Trellis 2, arguably the most impressive image-to-3D model yet.

Amazon's AI Home: Their AI chatbot for Alexa users is impressively knowledgeable, and soon, Ring doorbells will feature an AI to converse with your visitors.

Mistral’s OCR 3 is now the best model for converting handwriting to text.

Meta AI glasses are getting “Conversation Focus,” which amplifies the voice of the person you’re talking to in noisy rooms.

🗞️ The Icing on the Cake

In a fitting cap to a week of massive, sometimes messy, AI output, Merriam-Webster’s 2025 Word of the Year is official: “Slop.”

Defined as “digital content of low quality produced in quantity by AI,” it’s a term that perfectly encapsulates a year—and a week—of relentless, overwhelming synthetic creation.

The Bottom Line: As one breathless reporter signed off, the holiday slowdown never came. If this was December, the new year in AI is going to be a wild ride. Stay tuned, and stay curious.

AI News, OpenAI, Meta, Google AI, Adobe Firefly, Machine Learning, GPT Image 1.5, SAM Audio, Tech Roundup, AI Models

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Author: Travis Sparks
Silicon Valley Newsroom

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The Next Version of The Internet - "Web3" Explained, and a Few Things EVERYONE Should Be Aware Of ASAP...

Web 3 is being referred to as the next phase of the internet, but what exactly is it?

Essentially, web 3 is an internet that proponents claim is owned by users.

What does that mean? Right now, the internet is dominated by a few companies such as meta, Amazon, and Google, and chances are that many of the online platforms you use are dominated by one of these giants.

Web 3 would cut out the middleman and spread ownership among users using blockchain technology.

People are not appropriately paid for their participation in web 2 platforms, according to proponents of web 3.  Google may pay you x per million views on YouTube, but you're surely entitled to more, but the whole goal of crypto in general is to remove the intermediary for web3 platforms. 

The entire aim of those technologies is to cut out the platform intermediaries...

Google,  Amazon, and Facebook's Web3 would allow you to conduct online payments without going via a financial institution such as a bank; instead, platforms would include cryptocurrencies and nfts. A non-fungible token, or nft, is a type of blockchain receipt that confirms ownership of internet goods such as art, music, gifs, and even tweets. 

The data is decentralized, which means that no single entity controls all of your data; instead, your data is spread around the network and safeguarded, ensuring that it is properly stored and that no single person is in charge of the entire show. 

Instead of an IPO, a hypothetical web 3 version of Facebook would create a cryptocurrency token and airdrop it to early adopters. Users would be rewarded for going viral and could earn tokens based on engagement. Tokens could also be used to vote on policies like content moderation. The value of those tokens would be determined by the platform's success, which means each person with a token would have a stake in the platform's success.

That's why blockchain project consultant Amy Lee is saying the change wouldn't just be social, but financial as well if web3 takes off.

But when it comes to people posting illicit stuff that we all agree shouldn’t be allowed - can it actually be removed? There are technical restrictions to this that most people are unaware of. For example, web3 would accommodate concepts like the metaverse, which are virtual worlds where individuals can socialize, work, and play as avatars.

The metaverse has also gotten a lot of attention recently, notably with Facebook changing itself to meta in 2021 to emphasize its concentration on this new sector.

So what are web 1 and web 2 if that's web 3? 

From the 1990s to the early 2000s, web 1 was defined by static web pages that allowed users to do little more than download material. During this time, the internet was essentially attempting to imitate traditional media such as periodicals, newspapers, and newsletters. Web 2 began in 2004 and allowed people to download and upload information. Think of web 2 as the social media era, when the internet transitioned from being a computerized version of existing media to becoming its own distinct entity.

Another important aspect of web one is that it ran on open source protocols, so html, http, and so on. Some critics worry that the hyped-up web 3 will need to be centralized in order to be realized, which goes against its entire court principle. The problem is that Ethereum, the blockchain on which most of this is based, is known to be inefficient, with transactions being expensive and requiring a lot of energy. 

Some argue that having widespread blockchain activity is technically unattainable because there's no viable way to scale those networks.  Even though the goal of web3 is to transfer power from big companies to users, big venture capital firms have already made huge investments in web3 technology in 2021, VCs invested around 18 billion dollars in this space some critics think of web3 as more of a power shift than decentralization I've been skeptical of this concept of decentralization.

The core parts of web3 are now worth hundreds of billions of dollars...

So you could say we're already in web 3 beta. Metaverse games with crypto and nft enabled economies would be included in the future iteration of web 3. Those games are already in development and are expected to be released in the next two to three years. "Once the public catches on, and sees the vast improvements over traditional social media, I believe it will take off fast" said one crypto consultant on twitter.

Definitions and ideas about the feasibility of web 3 vary, but one thing is certain: digital platforms and the ways we use them will continue to evolve. 

here that will go and to what extent it will go is difficult to predict, but I'm confident that the next ten years will be very exciting.

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Author: Michael Bison
TechNewsCity Silicon Valley Newsroom

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Are Facebook's New Glasses w/ Built-In Camera "DANGEROUS"?

Mark Zuckerberg has announced the launch of the first Facebook smart glasses, the Ray-Ban Stories, which shoots photographs, records videos, answers calls, and lets you listen to music. Given that it must be associated with a phone through Bluetooth, they essentially perform the same functions as the phone in your pocket.

What is the Real Reason for Their Existence? Since Snapchat declined his offer to acquire them, Zuckerberg has been obsessed with ensuring that Facebook gets everything Snapchat has, which is why they appeared shortly after Snapchat unveiled its 'Spectacles' spectacles.

These are unquestionably more attractive than Snapchat's Spectacles. On the surface, the spectacles appear to be the classic Ray-Bans.

The temples are somewhat broader, but the design remains unchanged. They come in a variety of colors and are made of several types of glass. The Meteor model, with transparent glass and an olive green frame, was put to the test at ABC. If you're still not convinced, you can get a degree in optics.

The two photographic sensors on the front, which are perforated and allow the user to shoot images and record movies for up to 60 seconds, are what distinguishes these lenses. Each camera has a 5 MP resolution, and the information they capture is of exceptional quality. Particularly if the lighting is nice. They are not suggested for use at night or in circumstances where there is very little light.

The gadget may be used to make a hands-free call or listen to music. It comfortably satisfies two functions, as we were able to verify throughout the testing. Meta, for example, has made it feasible to listen to music on the device without the sound being hardly audible to the rest of the room. Furthermore, the noise of the surroundings is not separated, which is beneficial if they are used to riding a bicycle or running.

Furthermore, by sliding your finger over one of the pins on the glasses, you may adjust the volume or pick up the phone. Ray-Ban Stories are also compatible with Facebook's virtual assistant, allowing users to ask the gadget to shoot a photo or video simply by saying, "Hey, Facebook..." If you like, you may do it manually by pressing the button on the right side of the glasses.

Requires Their App..

You'll need to download the app - yep, another app - Facebook View, which is available for iOS and Android, on your phone to access the images and movies made with the glasses. This requires Bluetooth pairing with the glasses. When collecting content, all you have to do is put on your glasses and open the 'app,' which will begin the download in a couple of seconds.

Which, of course, brings up the subject of privacy...

Apart from worrying what data Facebook can obtain with the required app, some are dubbing them "Facebook Spy Glasses," implying what may be done if a suspicious individual buys a set.

They don't appear like a camera or a phone, and no one near the person wearing them will suspect they're being watched.

An LED light in the right corner of the front of the lenses illuminates whenever the user is collecting material as a warning to the others. Furthermore, it is impossible to disable. But a simple workaround like... covering it with a piece of tape, will make it disappear.

Finally, it is true that a user with malicious intent can film or photograph third parties without alerting them and without using these glasses. Although it is more visible with the telephone, it is possible.

Side By Side Facebook VS Snapchat Smart Glasses

All for a ridiculously high price...

Currently, a pair costs roughly $300 US, which is around $150 more (twice the price) as Snapchat's newest and second-generation spectacles, the Spectical2's.

But, to be fair, the extra cost for Facebook's comes from the fact that you're purchasing a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, and a side-by-side comparison shows that Facebook's sunglasses do look A LOT better.

I guess I'm not in the target demographic?

I have a GoPro, and there are occasions when I want to film something, but I've never wished my GoPro was strapped to my face. While the convenience of having your hands free is appealing, I can already strap my GoPro to myself, mount it on a tripod, and so forth.

However, if this is the best option for what you're doing and you have the funds, I'd have a look at them before purchasing Snapchat Spectacles.

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Alex Benningram
TechNews.CITY / New York Newsroom

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