Think less, do more: Microsoft’s new tiny AI knows when to skip the hard thinking

Microsoft has released Phi-4-reasoning-vision-15B, a compact AI model that processes both images and text and can solve complex math and science problems. Michael Nuñez reports for VentureBeat that the 15-billion-parameter model matches or exceeds the performance of much larger systems while using significantly less computing power and training data. The model is available now on …

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Alibaba releases new Qwen3.5 models that run on laptops and phones

Alibaba’s Qwen research team has released two new series of open source AI models that run on consumer hardware, from desktop PCs to smartphones. The releases cover a range of sizes, from 0.8 billion to 122 billion parameters, and are available for free download under the Apache 2.0 license on Hugging Face and ModelScope. The …

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MiniMax releases M2.5, a frontier AI model at a fraction of rival costs

Chinese AI startup MiniMax has released M2.5, a new large language model that the company says competes with top-tier models from Anthropic and Google while costing significantly less to run. MiniMax offers two versions through its API. M2.5-Lightning runs at 100 tokens per second and costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.40 per million …

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Mistral releases Voxtral Transcribe 2: transcribe on your phone for pennies

Mistral AI has released Voxtral Transcribe 2, a family of speech-to-text models designed for both batch processing and real-time transcription. The company positions the technology as more accurate and significantly cheaper than competing services while enabling on-device processing for sensitive data. The release includes two models. Voxtral Mini Transcribe V2 handles pre-recorded audio files at …

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OpenClaw: This AI assistant can teach itself new skills and control your entire digital life

An open-source AI assistant called OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot and Moltbot) demonstrates how future digital helpers might operate entirely on users’ own computers while offering unprecedented customization and control. Federico Viticci writes on MacStories that the project allows users to interact with powerful language models through familiar messaging apps like Telegram or iMessage. The assistant runs …

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New open source challenger takes on Google in the AI image race

The open source community has a powerful new tool for high precision image generation. GLM Image, a model from the startup Z.ai, demonstrates superior accuracy in rendering complex text compared to Google’s Nano Banana Pro. Carl Franzen reports for VentureBeat that this new model excels at creating information dense visuals such as infographics and technical …

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Qwen-Image-2512: High quality AI images go open source to challenge Google dominance

Alibaba’s Qwen team has released Qwen-Image-2512. This update improves their foundation model for generating images from text. The model is now available for public use and enterprise integration. According to the developers, this version focuses on three main areas: human realism, natural detail, and text rendering. The model aims to reduce the artificial appearance often …

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Mistral 3 brings frontier AI to your pocket with unprecedented openness

Mistral AI has launched Mistral 3, a collection of 10 open-source AI models designed to run on devices ranging from smartphones to enterprise cloud systems. The French startup released all models under the Apache 2.0 license, allowing unrestricted commercial use. The release includes Mistral Large 3, the company’s flagship model, and the Ministral 3 series …

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This new Microsoft AI beats GPT-4o at web tasks and protects your privacy

Microsoft has introduced Fara-7B, a new artificial intelligence agent designed to perform complex computer tasks directly on a user’s device. The model is small enough to run locally, which enhances data security and privacy by keeping sensitive information on the user’s personal computer. As Ben Dickson reports for VentureBeat, Fara-7B operates by visually interpreting the …

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