Author: Art Ryan

Elon Musk’s xAI has made an older version of its AI model Grok — specifically, the model weights used to shape Grok 2.5 — available on the open source platform Hugging Face. “The @xAI Grok 2.5 model, which was our best model last year, is now open source,” Musk wrote on X. He added that Grok 3 “will be made open source in about 6 months.” AI engineer Tim Kellogg described the Grok license as “custom with some anti-competitive terms.” Grok, which is prominently featured on X (which in turn recently merged with xAI), has created considerable controversy this year, particularly after the chatbot seemed to become obsessed with “white genocide”…

In a moonshot move, AI search engine Perplexity has offered to buy Chrome from Google for $34.5 billion cash in an unsolicited offer, Reuters reported, and Perplexity has confirmed to TechCrunch. Perplexity tells TC the terms of the offer include a commitment to keep Chrome’s underlying engine, Chromium, open source and continue to invest in it. Perplexity’s offer includes a promise to invest $3 billion into the open source project. Perplexity is also promising not to change the user defaults of Chrome users, including the default search engine. That is, Perplexity is promising to leave Google as the search engine rather…

The Huawei Cloud AI Ecosystem Summit APAC 2025 brought together government leaders, industry experts, and technology partners to discuss how artificial intelligence is already changing the way people work, learn, and live in Malaysia and ASEAN. The gathering highlighted not only new technologies but also the partnerships and governance needed to make AI effective and trustworthy. The summit is part of the Huawei Cloud APAC AI Ecosystem Initiative, a programme aimed at building an inclusive AI community by developing local skills, encouraging cooperation between sectors, and ensuring AI benefits are shared widely. Government support for AI development At the ASEAN AI Summit’s…

OpenAI reportedly said in a Thursday (Aug. 21) court filing that Tesla, SpaceX and X CEO Elon Musk sought financing arrangements or investments from Meta founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg for his $97.4 billion bid for OpenAI. Zuckerberg did not join the bid, the filing said, Reuters reported Friday (Aug. 22). Musk was a co-founder and initial board member of OpenAI, but he left the organization in 2018 due to a disagreement over its future direction and structure. OpenAI submitted the Thursday filing as part of a lawsuit in which it alleges that Musk attempted to harm the company through “a sham bid for OpenAI’s assets” and other means, according to the report. The company…

Star Trek’s fictional Dr. “Bones” McCoy may have had a tricorder, but NASA astronauts could soon have something almost as futuristic and real: An artificial intelligence (AI)-powered medical assistant that can diagnose and help treat illnesses millions of miles from Earth. Google and NASA are testing the “Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant,” an AI-powered system to help astronauts with their healthcare needs during extended space missions to the moon, Mars or even farther out, according to a Aug. 7 Google blog post. Such long-range missions can experience a lag in communications with those on Earth. “Currently, low Earth orbit missions such as those to the International Space…

Google on Thursday (Aug. 21) said it would be offering a complete artificial intelligence (AI) platform to federal agencies and employees for 47 cents in the first year. “Gemini for Government” offers enterprise search, image and video generation, and NotebookLM, Google’s AI-powered note-taking and research assistant. The program also offers agentic AI, a term used to describe autonomous software agents capable of running tasks with limited supervision. Federal employees can use prebuilt AI agents for research and idea generation or create their own. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on a post on X that Gemini for Government is “more than a model, it’s our complete AI platform with our latest AI tools, including NotebookLM and…

Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic is reportedly in advanced talks to raise as much as $10 billion in a new funding round. The amount is higher than the $5 billion reported by Bloomberg on July 29 because of strong investor demand, Bloomberg reported Thursday (Aug. 21), citing unnamed sources. The discussions are ongoing and the terms could change, according to the report. Reached by PYMNTS, Anthropic declined to comment on the report. The company raised $3.5 billion in a Series E funding round in March that gave it a post-money valuation of $61.5 billion. Anthropic said at the time that businesses have integrated its AI assistant, Claude, to perform tasks like turning natural…

OpenAI’s ChatGPT took the world by the proverbial storm when it debuted in 2022, becoming synonymous with artificial intelligence (AI) in the public eye. So it might come as a surprise that OpenAI’s AI models—ChatGPT is the chat interface atop AI models such as GPT-5—is not the one most companies use when they’re deploying AI in their operations. The surprising winner? Claude from Anthropic. According to a July report by venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, Anthropic has the top market share among enterprises, at 32%. OpenAI’s AI models used to have the lead, holding 50% at the end of 2023. But its share has since declined to 25%.…

As AI technology makes its way into the enterprise, Apple is rolling out new tools that will give businesses more granular control over where and how their employees can tap into artificial intelligence. With the release of Apple’s software updates arriving in September, the tech giant is adding another option for enterprise customers: the ability to configure the use of an enterprise version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Apple has already seen the demand for ChatGPT for Enterprise, which OpenAI says now has over 5 million business customers. These companies use the AI service to connect with their own internal data when using…

Site Search ToggleMega Menu Toggle AI Meta partners with Midjourney on AI image and video models Maxwell Zeff 2:41 PM PDT · August 22, 2025 Meta is partnering with Midjourney to license the startup’s AI image and video generation technology, Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang announced Friday in a post on Threads. Wang says Meta’s research teams will collaborate with Midjourney to bring its technology into future AI models and products. “To ensure Meta is able to deliver the best possible products for people it will require taking an all-of-the-above approach,” Wang said. “This means world-class talent, ambitious compute roadmap, and…

The revenue charts tell a story that would have seemed impossible just three years ago: AI servers are now generating more money than iPhones for Taiwan’s manufacturing giants. For the first time in decades, Taiwan’s manufacturing titans are watching their bread-and-butter consumer electronics businesses get overtaken by artificial intelligence infrastructure – a shift that’s rewriting the playbook for an industry that was built on assembling the world’s smartphones and laptops. What took Apple nearly two decades to build, AI servers have displaced in less than three years, signalling an inflexion point that companies like Foxconn are navigating actively, diversifying beyond…

The privacy defenders at Proton have deployed an upgrade to their AI assistant, Lumo, that promises faster and more intelligent responses. AI assistants can be incredibly useful for drafting emails, planning a trip, or just satisfying a random curiosity, but there’s always that nagging feeling that every question you ask, every idea you explore, is being logged, analysed, and fed back into a massive corporate machine. You’re constantly trading a bit of your privacy for a bit of convenience. Lumo is now a whole lot smarter. Proton is calling it version 1.1, and the main takeaway is the AI assistant is better…

The revenue charts tell a story that would have seemed impossible just three years ago: AI servers are now generating more money than iPhones for Taiwan’s manufacturing giants. For the first time in decades, Taiwan’s manufacturing titans are watching their bread-and-butter consumer electronics businesses get overtaken by artificial intelligence infrastructure – a shift that’s rewriting the playbook for an industry that was built on assembling the world’s smartphones and laptops. What took Apple nearly two decades to build, AI servers have displaced in less than three years, signalling an inflexion point that companies like Foxconn are navigating actively, diversifying beyond…

Malang (ANTARA) – An Indonesian official has urged university students to strengthen their skills to meet the rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) talent amid intensifying global competition in the technology sector. Bonifasius Wahyu Pudjianto, Head of the Human Resources Development Agency (BPSDM) at the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs, said AI applications have now penetrated various fields, from device features and language translation to health diagnostics. “We have calculated the need for digital talent, particularly over the next five years until 2030. According to consulting firm Kearney, the demand reaches 600,000 people annually, while our estimate is 453,000…

Stocks in US AI technology companies fell in value at the close of trading yesterday, with the NASDAQ Composite index down 1.4%. Among those losing value were Palantir, down 9.4% and Arm Holdings down 5%. According to the Financial Times [paywall], Tuesday saw the biggest one-day fall in the market since the beginning of August. Some traders put the falls down to a report released [PDF] by an AI company, NANDA, which noted the high failure rate of many generative AI projects in commercial organisations. Project NANDA originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and describes itself as an organisation that’s building…

AI models can respond to text, audio, and video in ways that sometimes fool people into thinking a human is behind the keyboard, but that doesn’t exactly make them conscious. It’s not like ChatGPT experiences sadness doing my tax return … right? Well, a growing number of AI researchers at labs like Anthropic are asking when — if ever — might AI models develop subjective experiences similar to living beings, and if they do, what rights they should have. The debate over whether AI models could one day be conscious — and merit legal safeguards — is dividing tech leaders.…

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) on Thursday (Aug. 14) launched USAi, a secure artificial intelligence (AI) platform designed to help all federal agencies test and adopt generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools more quickly, safely and at no cost. Through USAi.gov, federal employees can log in and try out AI tools in a secure space that complies with regulations. These tools include AI chatbots, coding assistants and AI that provides document summaries. The tools are in the cloud, not on employee computers. This shared sandbox lets government employees safely try out AI tools before deciding if they want to adopt it. By centralizing experimentation, GSA…

While the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have lately cast a gimlet eye on state-level AI regulations, a comprehensive review of state legislation by the Brookings Institution found 260 AI-related measures that had been introduced in state houses through just the first six months of 2025. Of those, 22 have passed into law, while the rest remain pending or were rejected. New York led the pack with 36 bills introduced, of which 2 have passed thus far, while Texas passed the most AI measures, enacting four of 15 introduced. Illinois, California, and Maryland were also AI hothouses, with 21, 19, and…

Apple is behind Google in the race to add artificial intelligence (AI) features to smartphones, according to Wall Street Journal Personal Tech Columnist Nicole Nguyen. An iPhone user, Nguyen wrote Wednesday (Aug. 20) that her experience with Google’s upcoming Pixel 10 showed that Google has “lapped” Apple as both companies work to develop the “killer AI-powered phone.” Nguyen highlighted the Pixel 10’s AI-powered ability to surface information when needed, provide translations via a real-time voice clone and transcript, coach users to take good photos, and edit photos that have already been taken. “The race continues and for now, Apple has a lot of catching up to do,” Nguyen wrote. Apple did not…

DeepSeek said its new artificial intelligence model released this week surpasses its flagship R1 tool in some ways. The launch of the V3.1 helps keep the Chinese company in the AI game as it prepares its latest iteration of its flagship model, Bloomberg reported Thursday (Aug. 21). V3.1 returns answers to queries faster and is the first step to creating an AI agent, the company said, per the report. The version has been customized to work with next-generation Chinese-made AI chips. DeepSeek rocked the tech world earlier this year when it debuted R1, showing how Chinese companies could take on high-profile rivals in the United States…