NVIDIA just unveiled Cosmos at CES, a platform of open generative world foundation models designed for physical AI like autonomous vehicles and robots. Built into its three-computer AV pipeline, Cosmos turns thousands of human-driven miles into billions of synthetic driving miles to stress-test edge cases. The models are already available under an open license.
Google DeepMind is building a new team dedicated to AI that simulates the physical world, led by former OpenAI Sora co-lead Tim Brooks. The group plans to build on Gemini, Veo, and Genie to advance visual reasoning, robotics planning, and real-time generation, viewing world models as essential on the path to AGI.
VanceAI just launched Video AI, an all-in-one video enhancement tool capable of upscaling footage to 8K. It also packs frame interpolation up to 120 FPS, SDR-to-HDR conversion, denoising, deinterlacing, and stabilization into a single suite for restoring and polishing clips.
YouTube just launched a new opt-in system that gives creators control over which third-party AI companies can train on their videos. The feature defaults to blocking all third-party scraping, offering a whitelist of 18 firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Apple. The catch: Google itself will still train its own models on creator content.
Google just unveiled Veo 2, a new video model that generates clips up to 4K resolution spanning several minutes while understanding cinematic prompts like lens focal lengths and depth of field. Alongside it, an upgraded Imagen 3 launched globally in ImageFX, also powering a new image-remixing experiment called Whisk. Veo 2 is currently rolling out via a waitlist on VideoFX.
NYU Tisch just partnered with Runway to embed its AI video tools into a new graduate virtual production course this spring. Based at the Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center, film students will experiment with generative video across the entire workflow, from initial concepting to final thesis projects.
Pika just launched Pika 2.0, upgrading visual fidelity and text alignment across its video generator. The headline update is Scene Ingredients, a new feature allowing creators to upload reference images of people, places, and objects to maintain visual consistency across generated shots.
Amazon is testing a new Prime Video feature called "AI Topics" that replaces traditional recommendation algorithms with AI-generated thematic categories. Instead of generic genres, viewers get tailored suggestions like fantasy quests or character journeys, with options to keep refining results. It is currently rolling out to select living room devices like Fire TV in the US.
TwelveLabs just locked in $30 million in fresh strategic funding, bringing its total to $107.1 million, to advance its dedicated video search and analysis AI. Backed by Snowflake, Databricks, and In-Q-Tel, the startup also hired former SK Telecom CTO and Siri architect Yoon Kim as president. Why it matters: While tech giants push general multimodal models, TwelveLabs bets purpose-built video models will dominate enterprise archives and security workflows.
Runway just launched its Student Ambassador Program to get AI video tools into college classrooms. Enrolled students receive 100k free credits, a complimentary Pro plan, and direct networking access to the Runway team. The initiative is already working with universities like NYU and USC to back young creators.
YouTube just rolled out its AI-powered auto-dubbing to hundreds of thousands of knowledge-focused channels in its Partner Program. English uploads now get automatically dubbed into eight languages, with creators able to preview or delete tracks before publishing. The voices still sound robotic, but updates to match emotion and environment are coming.
NVIDIA Research and the University of Maryland just introduced QUEEN, an AI model that enables streaming free-viewpoint 3D video. By reusing renders of static regions and focusing on dynamic content, it renders at roughly 350 frames per second on Tensor Core GPUs. Why it matters: It makes real-time, multi-angle streaming feasible for live sports, virtual meetings, and robot teleoperation.
Researchers just introduced TARFlow, a scalable architecture that pairs autoregressive Transformers with exact-likelihood normalizing flows. By revamping traditional coupling layers and borrowing guidance techniques, it achieves diffusion-level quality across images and video while remaining fully invertible.
OpenAI is gearing up to launch Sora v2 very soon, according to creative director Chad Nelson at a London keynote. The upgraded model can generate videos up to one minute long, adding image-plus-text and video-to-video capabilities alongside standard text prompts.
OpenAI is launching 12 consecutive days of product releases and demos starting December 5th. Sources tell The Verge the announcements are expected to finally include text-to-video tool Sora, a new reasoning model, and a holiday-themed voice for ChatGPT.
AdCreative.ai just launched Product VideoShoot, an AI model that turns static product images into 16-second 1080p commercials. Powered by an ad-specific LLM trained on 840 million high-converting campaigns, it prioritizes performance metrics and brand guidelines over generic aesthetics. The feature is currently live in beta for Pro and Enterprise tiers.
Google DeepMind just introduced Genie 2, a foundation world model that turns a single prompt image into playable, action-controllable 3D environments using standard keyboard and mouse controls. It can simulate physics, lighting, and character interactions consistently for up to a minute. Why it matters: It cracks a major bottleneck in robotics and embodied AI by providing endless synthetic playgrounds to train and evaluate future agents.
Google just opened its flagship Imagen 3 generator to all Vertex AI customers, while launching video model Veo in private preview. Veo produces six-second clips from text or image prompts with localized editing support. Google is finally pushing its top creative models to enterprise clients, though Veo remains gated behind early access.
Amazon just unveiled Amazon Nova, its new lineup of foundation models spanning text, multimodal reasoning, and image/video generation. Available in Amazon Bedrock, the Micro, Lite, and Pro models claim to be the fastest in their classes while slashing costs by at least 75%.
Hailuo AI just launched I2V-01-Live, a new image-to-video model built specifically to animate 2D illustrations. It delivers smoother character motion, subtle micro-expressions, and speaking animations across various art styles, turning flat concept art into lively video.
