AI News Brief: Piloting the world’s first double-blind AI evaluations. Google DeepMind recently announced the world’s first ‘double-blind evaluation’ mechanism for proprietary frontier AI models, aiming to solve the benchmark contamination problem — where a model that has already ‘seen’ the test questions gets a high score that’s meaningless as a reference.
AI news flash: Google Search’s AI Mode has added three travel planning and booking features, headlined by folding Google Flights’ existing price-tracking tool into the AI Mode conversation flow. Users just describe their departure point, destination, and dates, and AI Mode pulls real-time data from over 300 partner airlines and travel sites to surface the latest fares and best options. If you’d rather wait and see whether prices drop…
AI News Brief: Gemini has launched the Omni 1.1 Flash version, adding a suite of creative control and generative video features, made available to developers through the Gemini API in Google AI Studio. The goal is to give generative video tools greater controllability, faster iteration speed, and quality that meets the bar for production deployment. The update centers on three core features, starting with ‘Scene Extension’, which seamlessly continues an existing video from where it left off.
AI news brief: Nvidia is reportedly closing in on a $12.9 billion acquisition of Hugging Face, according to a Wednesday night report from The Information citing sources familiar with the matter. Business Insider first reported over the weekend that Hugging Face had been in talks with potential acquirers, and Wednesday’s report further noted the negotiated figure could value the company at over $13 billion, though no formal agreement has been signed yet and the deal could still fall through…
AI News Brief: OpenAI announced that starting this Thursday, it will begin showing ads on ChatGPT’s free tier and Go subscription tier in the Indian market. The move comes right after the company revised its terms of service earlier this month, which explicitly stated that ads would be shown to users while they use the AI assistant going forward. OpenAI revealed back in February that India’s weekly active users had surpassed 100 million, with a significant portion concentrated in the free tier or the lower-priced Go plan. According to the company…
AI news brief: OpenAI announced it’s expanding its market presence in Brazil, strengthening collaboration with local developers, businesses, and communities to drive AI adoption across the country. This move is seen as part of OpenAI’s ongoing strategy to deepen its footprint in Latin America, using stronger local ties to help Brazilian developers and businesses adopt and use AI tools more effectively. See the original article for details.
AI News Flash: Anthropic has signed a roughly $45 billion compute leasing deal with UK AI infrastructure company Nscale, according to sources who spoke to TechCrunch. Nscale, founded in 2024, has previously partnered with companies like Microsoft, and will now provide compute power to Anthropic via Nvidia’s latest-generation Vera Rubin chip system.
AI News Brief: Instinct, led by 23-year-old founder Noah Shinn, is the startup behind Spear Street Technology’s AI assistant, whose valuation has surged this summer amid the AI boom. The company told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that it closed a $250 million Series B round co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark…
AI News Brief: not directly related to TSMC’s packaging story, just translated as-is. Taiwan’s Powertech Technology announced plans to launch the world’s first panel-level packaging line for AI chips as early as early 2027, targeting production of server CPUs, AI compute chips, and advanced optical components. This move would put Powertech ahead in the next…
Japan’s Financial Services Agency will require domestic financial institutions to expand cybersecurity risk management beyond directly outsourced vendors to a broader network of partners, extending oversight to money transfer firms, fintech companies, telecom providers, and other third- and fourth-tier supply chain players, driven by rapidly advancing AI models raising cybersecurity risks across the financial system.