Hottest toy for Christmas? Nvidia CEO plays with adorable Microduck robots, 20,000 sell

The robots, stomping their little feet and making tiny R2-D2 noises, sat, fell down dead for a “nap,” and summersaulted on voice command.

Left alone with nothing to do, AI agents started playing

MIT researchers marooned 13 AIs on a virtual island, and they responded by inventing games, mourning a lost ring and, eventually, getting better at their jobs.

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Arc browser sunsets December 22 as The Browser Company doubles down on Dia

Arc was fiercely beloved by a dedicated group of enthusiasts, but it never quite became the mass-market Chrome alternative its makers once envisioned.

Canva releases its first image generation model

Canva is making its new image model available to all users, promising better, more customizable performance at lower costs.

Year-old AI lab Flapping Airplanes raises $1B at a $6B valuation

Just 9 months after raising an $180 million seed round, Flapping Airplanes has landed $1 billion Series A for its mission to build AI models “without ingesting half the internet.”

Recursive launches Flint, a laptop coding model it says was largely built by AI

Startup Recursive has released Flint, a free, laptop-sized coding model built largely by its own AI research system, as an early test of AI that improves itself.

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Anthropic pitches AI safety bill that may block a model if 50+ people could be killed

The proposed policy seems to offer protections against AI run amok but actually forbids federal agencies from blocking a model’s release without the permission of a judge.

Hugging Face CEO warns that Netflix’s OpenAI hack documentary isn’t accurate

Before you share the Netflix documentary “AI Gone Rogue” take note. Clem Delangue, Hugging Face’s co-founder who is featured in the film, says it went “full doomer mode” and isn’t accurate.

OpenAI acquires startup Orchestra Bio⁠ to beef up its biotech business

OpenAI says it’s adding Orchestra’s team and technology to work on Rosalind, its AI model for life sciences research, and to its related Rosalind Workbench tool, a harness that aims to help researchers plan experiments and analyze results.

Google has joined Amazon in attacking Nvidia’s stronghold with AI app developers

Google has joined Amazon in releasing a developer tool that makes it easy for PyTorch users to move their apps off Nvidia GPUs.