Blackmagic Design is live with URSA Cine Immersive pre-orders. If it meets its late Q1 2025 ship date the $29,995 the camera will be the first on the market optimized for the Apple Immersive Video (AIV) format compatible with the Apple Vision Pro mixed-reality headset. Currently, there isn’t much content that takes advantage of the Vision Pro’s immersive features. The Cine Immersive captures 3D footage in resolution of 8160 x 7200 per eye at 90 fps. The package includes a fixed-distance lens and 8TB of onboard network storage. Also in Q1, DaVinci Resolve Studio will be updated to support AIV editing. Continue reading URSA Cine Immersive for Apple Vision Pro Set for Q1 at $30K

Attempting to stay ahead of OpenAI in the generative video race, Google announced Veo 2, which it says can output 4K clips of two-minutes-plus at 4096 x 2160 pixels. Competitor Sora can generate video of up to 20 seconds at 1080p. However, TechCrunch says Veo 2’s supremacy is “theoretical” since it is currently available only through Google Labs’ experimental VideoFX platform, which is limited to videos of up to 8-seconds at 720p. VideoFX is also waitlisted, but Google says it will expand access this week (with no comment on expanding the cap). Continue reading Veo 2 Is Unveiled Weeks After Google Debuted Veo in Preview

Meta has added new features to Ray-Ban Metas in time for the holidays via a firmware update that make the smart glasses “the gift that keeps on giving,” per Meta marketing.  “Live AI” adds computer vision, letting Meta AI see and record what you see “and converse with you more naturally than ever before.” Along with Live AI, Live Translation is available for Meta Early Access members. Translation of Spanish, French or Italian will pipe through as English (or vice versa) in real time as audio in the glasses’ open-ear speakers. In addition, Shazam support is added for users interested in easily identifying songs. Continue reading Ray-Ban Meta Gets Live AI, RT Language Translation, Shazam

Twelve Labs has raised $30 million in funding for its efforts to train video-analyzing models. The San Francisco-based company has received strategic investments from notable enterprise infrastructure providers Databricks and SK Telecom as well as Snowflake Ventures and HubSpot Ventures. Twelve Labs targets customers using video across a variety of fields including media and entertainment, professional sports leagues, content creators and business users. The funding coincides with the release of Twelve Labs’ new video foundation model, Marengo 2.7, which applies a multi-vector approach to video understanding. Continue reading Twelve Labs Creating AI That Can Search and Analyze Video

Pika Labs has updated its generative video model, Pika 2.0 adding more user control and customizability, the company says. Improvements include better “text alignment,” making it easier to have the AI follow through with intricate prompts. Enhanced motion rendering is said to deliver more “naturalistic movement” and better physics, including greater believability in transformations that tend toward the surreal, which has typically been a challenge for genAI tools. The biggest change may be “Scene Ingredients,” which lets users add their own images when building Pika-generated videos. Continue reading Pika 2.0 Video Generator Adds Character Integration, Objects

Elon Musk’s xAI has been rolling out an updated Grok-2 model that is now available free to all users of the X social platform. Prior to last week, the “unfiltered” chatbot — which debuted in November 2023 — was available only by paid subscription. Now Grok is coming to X’s masses, but those on the free tier can only ask the chatbot 10 questions in two hours, while Premium and Premium+ users will “get higher usage limits and will be the first to access any new capabilities.” There is also now a Grok button featured on X that aims to encourage exploration. Continue reading Grok-2 Chatbot Is Now Available Free to All Users of X Social

Amazon is testing a new way to provide viewers with content recommendations with AI Topics, now in limited beta release for Prime Video. AI Topics eschews traditional recommendation algorithms in favor of AI that “discovers” Prime Video content based on a combination of viewing history and personal interests. Users can request “mind-bending sci-fi” or “fantasy quests,” then navigate seamlessly through topics curated for them that appear on the Prime Video home page. Once a topic is selected, movies, series and linear channels will populate alongside additional related topics. Continue reading Amazon Testing ‘AI Topics’ Recommendations for Prime Video

Meta’s FAIR (Fundamental AI Research) team has unveiled recent work in areas ranging from transparency and safety to agents, and architectures for machine learning. The projects include Meta Motivo, a foundation model for controlling the behavior of virtual embodied agents, and Video Seal, an open-source model for video watermarking. All were developed in the unit’s pursuit of advanced machine intelligence, helping “models to learn new information more effectively and scale beyond current limits.” Meta announced it is sharing the new FAIR research, code, models and datasets so the research community can build upon its work. Continue reading Meta Rolls Out Watermarking, Behavioral and Concept Models

Google has unveiled Android XR, an operating system for computers and smart glasses powered by Google’s Gemini AI large language model. Samsung confirmed that it will release an extended reality headset that runs on Android XR sometime in 2025. Samsung worked closely with Google and Gemini throughout 2023, leading up to the Galaxy S24 series of smartphones that debuted at CES 2024 last January. Google announced the release of the Android XR SDK Developer Preview kit so new apps can be built and existing ones ported over to the new platform to support Samsung’s new headset and other devices. Continue reading Android XR Powered by Gemini OS for Samsung’s 2025 Headset

With AI powering a range of new world-building apps, 2025 could be the year the metaverse finally makes an impact. Midjourney joins the world-building club with Patchwork, a collaborate canvas for creating “infinite” fictional worlds. Now in research preview, the tool is being developed as a standalone app, though preview access requires a Midjourney Discord account linked to a Google account. Users are able to connect characters and worlds, and “share” their developing world — evolving as a “board” — with up to 100 collaborative partners on Midjourney (though the company recommends fewer participants for a more focused experience). Continue reading Midjourney Touts Collaborative World-Building App Patchwork

Ayar Labs, which develops optical interconnect chips for large-scale AI workloads, has secured $155 million in financing, including from competing processor companies Nvidia, Intel and AMD. Founded in 2017, the Silicon Valley-based company is pursuing a different processing path — combining photonic elements with electronic circuits on each chip for what it says provides faster, more efficient processing for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. “This brings the company’s total funding to $370 million and raises the company’s valuation to above $1 billion,” Ayar notes, adding that the new funding allows the company to scale its optical I/O tech. Continue reading Nvidia, Intel and AMD Invest in AI Chiplet Developer Ayar Labs

YouTube’s Playables, a no-download app for light games, is testing a multiplayer feature for select titles. The Playables multiplayer lets users play games in real time with others on the platform. The test kicks off with two games available on both desktop and mobile, “Ludo Club” and “Magic Tiles 3.” YouTube launched Playables to all users in May with more than 75 titles and announced this week that it plans to introduce more features and content in the future. Gaming is a “sizable” viewing market for YouTube, according to Statista, which says its most-subscribed game channels each average about 47 million monthly subscribers. Continue reading YouTube Playables Experiments with Live Multiplayer Gaming

Ten months after its preview, OpenAI has officially released a Sora video model called Sora Turbo. Described as “hyperrealistic,” Sora Turbo generates clips of 10 to 20 seconds from text or image inputs. It outputs video in widescreen, vertical or square aspect ratios at resolutions from 480p to 1080p. The new product is being made available to ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers ($20 and $200 per month, respectively) but is not yet included with ChatGPT Team, Enterprise, or Edu plans, or available to minors. The company explains that Sora videos contain C2PA⁠ metadata indicating that they were generated by AI. Continue reading OpenAI Releases Sora, Adding It to ChatGPT Plus, Pro Plans

World Labs, the AI startup co-founded by Stanford AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, has debuted a “spatial intelligence” system that can generate 3D worlds from a single image. Although the output is not photorealistic, the tech could be a breakthrough for animation companies and video game developers. Deploying what it calls Large World Models (LWMs), World Labs is focused on transforming 2D images into turnkey 3D environments with which users can interact. Observers say that reciprocity is what sets World Labs’ technology apart from offerings by other AI companies that transform 2D to 3D. Continue reading World Labs AI Lets Users Create 3D Worlds from Single Photo

Hundreds of thousands more YouTube channels are gaining access to its AI-powered auto-dubbing feature, which generates audio translation tracks for YouTube videos, helping to make the platform’s content more accessible to viewers around the world. The expanded rollout targets informational channels in the Partner Program, such as tutorials on cooking, sewing, tourism and home improvement. Availability “will expand to other types of content soon,” according to video streamer, which began testing the feature with select creators last year. Based on technology developed by Aloud, YouTube’s auto-dubbing emerged from the Area 120 internal incubator program. Continue reading YouTube Expands Access to Improved AI-Powered Dubbing