Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4.8, a new version of its most advanced publicly available AI model. The update arrives just 41 days after its predecessor, Opus 4.7, and brings measurable improvements in coding performance, agentic tasks, and — notably — honesty. The model is available immediately at the same price as before. Standard pricing …
ElevenLabs has launched Music v2, a new version of its AI music-generation model that can switch between genres within a single track. Ivan Mehta reports for TechCrunch that the model is built to handle complex vocals and compositions, arriving nearly ten months after the company released its first music-generation model. According to ElevenLabs, the model …
Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has defended his company’s AI-driven transformation of Search while acknowledging growing publisher concerns about vanishing web traffic. Nilay Patel posts for The Verge’s Decoder podcast an in-depth conversation with Pichai after Google’s annual I/O developer conference, covering everything from internal restructuring to the timeline for artificial general intelligence (AGI). …
A new startup called Trajectory is building a platform that helps AI products improve continuously by learning from real user interactions. Maxwell Zeff reports for WIRED that the company was founded by researchers who previously worked at Google DeepMind, Apple, and OpenAI, and has raised a $15 million seed round at a $115 million valuation. …
YouTube is making it easier for viewers to identify AI-generated content on its platform. Todd Spangler reports for Variety that the platform is introducing automatic AI content labels and moving existing disclosures to more visible positions on the page. Until now, YouTube required creators to manually disclose AI use. Going forward, YouTube will also apply …
A new generation of AI tools is reshaping how software is built and, according to their most devoted users, how work itself is done. Steven Levy reports for WIRED on the rapid rise of AI agents, tracing how two tools — Anthropic’s Claude Code and the open-source project OpenClaw — have ignited what many in …
Spotify has struck a deal with Universal Music Group that allows subscribers to create AI-generated covers and remixes of songs from participating artists. Anna Nicolaou reports for the Financial Times. The agreement makes Spotify the first major streaming platform to launch a commercial AI music product with backing from a major record label. Spotify co-chief …
A new Gallup survey shows that opposition to data centers in the United States has reached a striking level. Seven out of ten Americans now oppose having a data center built near their home. Nearly half of those respondents say they strongly oppose such projects. Tim Craig reports for The Washington Post that more Americans …
Researchers have developed a lightweight memory module for AI agents that retains information across long interactions without expanding the context window or relying on external retrieval systems. Called delta-mem, the system adds just 0.12% of additional parameters to a base language model while outperforming much larger alternatives on memory-intensive tasks, Ben Dickson reports for VentureBeat. …
AI data centers consume roughly 0.04 percent of all freshwater used in the United States each year. That figure, including both water used inside data centers and water used by power plants to generate their electricity, comes from Andy Masley, writing for his own publication. He argues that fears about AI draining water supplies are …