Latest AI News
Microsoft Launches Three Models to Reduce Dependence on OpenAI
All three models are available through Microsoft Foundry and the MAI Playground in the US.
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Google DeepMind Launches Gemma 4 Amid Competition from Chinese Open Models
The models can be fine-tuned efficiently across Android devices, laptop GPUs, developer workstations and accelerators for research and production use.
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Microsoft takes on AI rivals with three new foundational models
Microsoft AI, the tech giant’s research lab, announced the release ofthree foundational AI modelson Thursday that can generate text, voice, and images. The release signals Microsoft’s continued push to build out its own stack of multimodal AI models — and compete with rival AI labs — even though it remains tied to OpenAI. MAI-Transcribe-1 transcribes speech across 25 different languages into text and is 2.5 times faster than Microsoft’s Azure Fast offering, according to a company press release. MAI-Voice-1 is an audio-generating model. This voice model allows users to generate 60 seconds of audio in one second and allows users to create a custom voice. MAI-Image-2 is a video-generating model. MAI-Image-2was originally released on MAI Playground, a new large language model testing software, on March 19. Now, all three models are being released on Microsoft Foundry and the transcription and voice models are available in MAI Playground as well. The models were developed byMicrosoft’s MAI Superintelligence team, an AI research team led by Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, that was formed and announced in November 2025. “At Microsoft AI, we’re building Humanist AI. We have a distinct view when creating our AI models — putting humans at the center, optimizing for how people actually communicate, training for practical use,” Suleyman wrote in theblog post. “You’ll see more models from us soon in Foundry and directly in Microsoft products and experiences.” In an increasingly crowded LLM market, MAI hopes a selling point for these models is that they are cheaper than those from Google and OpenAI, the company wrote in the blog post. MAI-Transcribe-1 starts at $0.36 per hour. MAI-Voice-1 starts at $22 per 1 million characters, and MAI-Image-2 starts at $5 for 1 million tokens for text input and $33 for 1 million tokens for image output. Despite releasing its own models, Suleyman reaffirmed Microsoft’s commitment to its partnership with OpenAI in aninterview with VentureBeat— although a recent renegotiation of that partnership allowed Microsoft to truly pursue this superintelligence research,Suleyman told The Verge. Microsoft has invested more than$13 billion into the AI research laband hosts its models in its various products through a multi-year partnership.Microsoft takes the same stance with chips; it both produces its own and buys from outside players as well.
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OpenAI acquires TBPN, the buzzy founder-led business talk show
OpenAI has acquired popular tech industry talk show TBPN — Technology Business Programming Network — making this the AI giant’s first acquisition of a media company. The show will report to OpenAI’s chief political operative, Chris Lehane. TBPN, hosted by former tech founders John Coogan and Jordi Hays, is a daily live show that airs on YouTube and X for three hours, focusing on tech, business, AI, and defense. The show has gained a cult following in Silicon Valley, a safe space where industry power players can speak candidly and be questioned by fellow insiders. The show has a reputation for being something of a Sports Center for the tech industry — a place where top tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, Marc Benioff, and, yes, Sam Altman, come to chop it up, react to the news of the day, and occasionally make some of their own. TBPN will continue to live on as its own brand, which OpenAI will help scale. Not that it necessarily needed help on that front; TBPN has grown into an empire that’s on track to pull in more than $30 million this year, according toThe Wall Street Journal. OpenAI already has its ownpodcastfor long-form conversations with the people building tech at the company. OpenAI will also tap the founders’ “amazing comms and marketing instincts” outside the show, according to OpenAI’s head of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, who said TBPN will “bring AI to the world in a way that helps people understand the full impact of this technology on their daily lives.” Simo went even further, noting that TBPN’s prowess is necessary for an atypical company like OpenAI where “the standard communications playbook just doesn’t apply.” She said TBPN will have editorial independence and continue to “run their programming, choose their guests, and make their own editorial decisions.” Still, the acquisition might give some pause. After all, OpenAI is a valuable AI lab on the brink of an IPO buying a buzzy talk show that often discusses the company and its competitors. And once the deal closes, TBPN will operate under OpenAI’s strategy team and report toChris Lehane, the man who invented the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy” as a tool to deflect press scrutiny of the Clinton White House. Lehane, who has been described as a master of the “political dark arts,” is also behind the crypto industry super PAC Fairshake, which spent hundreds of millions to kneecap anti-crypto candidates in the 2024 election. He joined OpenAI that same year and has been in President Trump’s ear ever since, whispering recommendations for sweeping and controversial policies likepreventing states from regulating AIandeasing environmental restrictionsthat might slow data center construction. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who said in asocial media postthat TBPN is his favorite tech show, seems to believe the acquisition won’t change TBPN’s commentary and even criticism of the company. “I don’t expect them to go any easier on us, am sure I’ll do my part to help enable that with occasional stupid decisions,” he wrote. TBPN, meanwhile, sees the acquisition as a means to do more than just commentary. “While we’ve been critical of the industry at times, after getting to know Sam and the OpenAI team, what stood out most was their openness to feedback and commitment to getting this right,” Hays said in a statement. “Moving from commentary to real impact in how this technology is distributed and understood globally is incredibly important to us.” Got a tip or documents about the AI industry? From a non-work device, contact Rebecca Bellan confidentially at rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com or Signal: rebeccabellan.491.
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Slack Upgrades Slackbot With New AI Features to Turn It Into an Enterprise Agent
Slack is bringing more than 30 new artificial intelligence (AI) features to Slackbot. The new capabilities for the Salesforce-owned platform's AI assistant are aimed at turning it into an AI agent for enterprise needs. Most of the new features take advantage of the existing apps inside Slack, which connect third-party enterprise tools and platforms with the workspace messaging platforms. Now with the agentic extension, Slackbot can perform complex work-related tasks autonomously on behalf of the user.
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Google now lets you direct avatars through prompts in its Vids app
Google on Thursday added new features to its video editor app Vids, including directing and customizing avatars through text prompts, Veo 3.1 support, the ability to export videos to YouTube, and recording with a Chrome extension. Users will be able to use natural language prompts to direct avatars to “act” in a scene. This can include the avatar interacting with a product, a prop, or a piece of equipment. The company said that despite the dynamic nature of the output, Vids maintains character consistency. Google said that based on the theme of the video, users can customize characters by tweaking appearance, changing apparel, and creating new backgrounds through prompts. Last month, Google added itsLyria 3andLyria 3 Promusic creation models to Vids to let users add sound effects or music to their clips. With this rollout, Google is bringing Veo 3.1 video generation model, which can create eight second clips within the video editing tool. The company is giving out 10 free generations per month to all users. The company said Google AI Ultra and Workspace AI Ultra accounts can generate up to 1,000 Veo videos per month. What’s more, Google is adding the ability to export finished videos directly to YouTube, saving the hassle of downloading and uploading them to the channel. All the exported videos are by default private, so you can review the video before making it public. The company is also adding a new screen recording Chrome extension to the video suite, allowing users to capture the screen with audio or video. Google has constantly added features to Vids after first unveiling the product in2024 to cater to enterprise content creation. Last year, the company broughtAI avatars to Vids and expanded access to consumers. In February, the company added 2D and 3D cartoon-style avatars and added language support for seven new voiceover languages, includingFrench, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Japanese. Google Vids faces competition from the likes ofSynthesia,HeyGen,D-ID, andLemon Slice.
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No One Wants to Talk About the Dirty Secret Messing Up Indian IT M&As
Cultural clashes, client churn, and weak integration rigour derail value in IT acquisitions.
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Inside Artemis II: A Human Mission to the Moon After 56 Years
An Orion spacecraft carrying four astronauts was launched into deep space, beginning a 10-day mission that will test humanity’s next lunar ambitions.
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Anthropic’s Claude Code Update Leaks Source Code, Reveals Always-on Agent and Memory Optimisation: Report
Anthropic might have accidentally leaked part of its source code for Claude Code. As per reports and social media posts from users, the information was leaked with the latest Claude Code 2.1.88 update, revealing critical details about the product's architecture, memory utilisation, and under-development features. The reported accident could also reveal the company's critical source code to rival companies that might become aware of these implementations, and bad actors who might find ways to exploit the system.
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Birlasoft Witnesses Exits of 3 Senior Executives, Company Signals Leadership Reset
The company did not directly address whether the simultaneous exits of three senior leaders were part of a planned restructuring or independent decisions.
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India’s ₹1,005 Cr Antariksh VC Fund Rollout Gets Pushed to 2027
The fund received approval in 2024, SEBI registration in October 2025, and achieved its initial close on November 10, 2025.
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Robots Cannot Feel on Factory Floors, But This Hyderabad-Based Startup is Changing That
“What’s easy for humans is difficult for today’s robots, and we want to change that,” says Mrutyunjaya Nadiminti, Co-Founder of Hyderabad-based robotics startup Perceptyne.
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