Archive, page 18

ByteDance unveiled Seedance 2.5 at Volcano Engine's FORCE conference, a video generation model capable of producing clips longer than 30 seconds - a threshold few AI video tools have crossed. The model is expected to launch in early July alongside four other newly announced AI models from the company.

REI, the outdoor and cycling retailer, drew widespread mockery this week after posting an AI-generated image on Instagram that depicted handlebars growing directly out of a bike seat - a physically impossible configuration that many followers were quick to point out. The incident adds to a growing list of public AI image blunders from brands that have skipped careful review of generated visuals before publishing them.

Meta's Oversight Board has issued recommendations calling on the company to strengthen protections for ordinary people targeted by sexualized AI-generated deepfakes. The board's suggestions focus on making the reporting process easier and more effective for non-public figures. It marks a continued push by oversight bodies to hold major platforms accountable for harms tied to generative AI content.

Google DeepMind and independent film studio A24 have announced a long-term research partnership focused on AI filmmaking. Google is also making a roughly $75 million investment in A24, according to the Wall Street Journal. The deal pairs one of the leading AI research labs with a studio known for distinctive, filmmaker-driven projects.

A major European retail trade group is pushing back against the EU AI Act's transparency requirements, arguing that AI-generated product imagery - think a sofa in a computer-generated living room - should not be classified alongside deepfakes. The dispute exposes a genuine ambiguity in the regulation's language that has real consequences for how online retail operates. With platforms like Zalando reporting that 90 percent of their marketing content is already AI-generated, the stakes are signifi

Snap is spinning off its internal AI video team into a new independent company called Dotmo, with the move driven primarily by the high costs of developing generative video technology in-house. The staff involved are departing Snap to focus solely on AI video work under the new entity. It marks another instance of Snap shedding an internal unit rather than continuing to absorb the expense of frontier AI development.

Rafik Anadol Studio has opened Dataland, billed as the world's first museum dedicated to AI arts, with Google Cloud providing the underlying infrastructure and Google Arts & Culture lending institutional support. The museum marks a notable step in bringing generative AI art into a dedicated physical and cultural space. It represents one of the more concrete attempts to treat AI-generated art as a serious curatorial discipline.

Adobe is rolling out a redesigned Firefly AI studio in private beta, bringing editing and image generation into a single interface. A key addition is the ability to save named visual elements - characters, objects, and backgrounds - so they can be reused consistently across projects without drifting in appearance.

Adobe is integrating AI agents into its core Creative Cloud applications, including Photoshop and Premiere, allowing users to describe a desired outcome in plain language while the software carries out the underlying multi-step tasks. The rollout also extends to third-party platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude. The move reflects a broader shift in how professional creative tools are beginning to handle complex, multi-action workflows.

Midjourney, best known for its AI image generator, has unveiled its first hardware product: a full-body ultrasound scanner designed to image muscle, fat, bone, and organs. CEO David Holz described the device as aiming for image quality comparable to MRI, and envisions it being used as frequently as once a day. The announcement comes alongside plans for a San Francisco spa where the scanner would be available to the public.

Odyssey ML has raised $310 million from Amazon, Nvidia, and AMD, pushing its valuation to $1.45 billion. The startup is focused on building 3D world models - AI systems that can understand and generate structured representations of physical space. The round also draws in notable backers including Google chief scientist Jeff Dean and CIA-linked venture fund IQT.

Google's June 2026 Pixel Drop brings a set of updates focused on creative tools and productivity, including new text-to-video capabilities powered by Gemini Omni. The update also refines screen recording and improves multitasking across Pixel devices. It continues Google's pattern of rolling out AI-driven features to its hardware lineup through periodic software drops.

The Qwen team has released Qwen-RobotSuite, a collection of three specialized models targeting different challenges in embodied AI: physical manipulation, world modeling, and navigation. Each model draws on existing Qwen language and vision foundations while introducing architecture and training choices tuned for robotics tasks. The release comes with benchmark results and details on the data pipelines used to train each system.

Austin-based photographer and director of photography Cassandra Klepac recently noticed AI-generated images of women appearing in a beauty magazine, raising concerns about the implications for working photographers. The incident highlights how generative AI is quietly making its way into fashion and beauty editorial content. Her reaction has sparked a broader conversation about transparency, labor, and the future of commercial photography.

Meta has rolled out a new set of AI-powered tools across Facebook, including photo-editing features and a chatbot capable of answering questions and making recommendations. The additions follow a broader industry trend of embedding generative AI assistants into established social platforms. For users, the practical difference from existing tools may be difficult to spot.

Adobe has rolled out new Creative Cloud updates to Lightroom and Photoshop that give photographers more control over AI-assisted workflows, particularly around photo culling and selection. The changes are aimed at reducing the time photographers spend manually sorting through large batches of images. The updates reflect Adobe's ongoing effort to make AI tools feel more transparent and adjustable rather than fully automated.

Cutback has introduced Selects, an AI editing assistant designed to handle the early, time-consuming stages of long-form video editing. The tool ingests raw footage, organizes it automatically, and produces a draft edit based on a single text prompt. It targets creators and editors who spend significant time just getting footage into a workable shape before any real editing begins.

Mirage, a video world model developed by Microsoft Research and academic collaborators, introduces a persistent spatial memory system that stores scene information in latent space rather than relying on pixel-based point clouds. The approach keeps environments visually consistent across long camera movements while significantly reducing compute and memory costs. Moving object tracking across segments remains an open limitation.

A new model called "Count Anything" aims to be the first general-purpose AI system capable of counting objects in virtually any image using only a text prompt. Researchers report it cuts counting error rates roughly in half compared to prior approaches. The system handles a wide range of subjects - from crowd scenes to microscopic cell samples - though very dense arrangements and vague descriptions remain challenging.

Despite years of bold claims about AI transforming filmmaking, very few projects have emerged that feel like genuine entertainment audiences would seek out. A new short film, "Dear Upstairs Neighbors," offers a different approach - one built on custom-trained versions of Google DeepMind's Veo and Imagen models rather than off-the-shelf AI tools. It may point toward what a more serious production pipeline actually looks like.

MiniMax M3, a multimodal model supporting text, image, and video, is now available through NVIDIA's accelerated compute platform with a free API endpoint. The model incorporates sparse attention mechanisms, making it well-suited for long-context tasks. It marks a notable expansion of MiniMax's distribution reach via NVIDIA's infrastructure.

Avataar AI has released a distilled video generation model priced at $0.005 per second of output, positioning it as a cost-conscious option for the Indian market. The model is designed with cultural and regional awareness built in, targeting the practical demands of businesses operating at India's scale. It represents a focused approach to making AI video generation accessible beyond Western-centric platforms.

A growing number of platforms - including Artlist Studio, ComfyUI, Flora, and Amazon's Project Nara - are competing to become the go-to AI production environment for filmmakers. The race is less about which underlying model is most capable and more about which workflow best fits how film professionals actually work. IndieWire examines what these platforms are building and what the film industry is looking for.

Mixbook has introduced Story Mode, a prompt-based tool that lets users describe the style and feel of a photo book in plain language before the AI assembles it. The company claims the feature speeds up the creation process by 3.5 times and cuts the time from start to order in half.