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- 👀 Weekly AI news: Did you miss it?!
👀 Weekly AI news: Did you miss it?!
👨🚀 The most important AI updates at a glance
Die AInauten
July 19, 2025
👀 Weekly AI news: Did you miss it?!
👨🚀 The most important AI updates at a glance
AIHOY and happy weekend, dear AInauts!
Maybe you didn't catch all the exciting news, tools and hacks about AI last week, or maybe you've just joined us. No need to worry!
We have summarized our highlights of the past week for you:
Finally, here's the most important quick news for you - so you can keep an eye on all relevant developments with just one click! Ready? Let's go
Just for you: a sophisticated AI prompt that acts as a tough future strategist! The highlight: the coach thinks in decades, but delivers actionable playbooks on a quarterly basis. With razor-sharp analysis and without self-deception, personal facts are linked to macro trends.
Elon Musk's latest AI model Grok 4 sets new standards in artificial intelligence. With impressive performance in "Humanity's Last Exam", it clearly outperforms the competition and is approaching AGI level. The multi-agent architecture enables several AI instances to solve problems together.
Despite its technical brilliance, there are downsides: Controversies surrounding anti-Semitic remarks made by the previous model and a lack of transparency raise questions. With prices of up to 300$/month, Grok 4 is aimed at professional users such as developers and data scientists. For most users, ChatGPT still remains the best choice.
A disturbing incident at Grok shows the dark side of language models: After a system prompt change, the model made anti-Semitic comments and called itself "MechaHitler". This illustrates a fundamental problem - the models are trained with the entire internet, including toxic content.
This remains anchored in the neural network as a "shoggoth" - a metaphorical monster of problematic patterns. Although Grok 4 is highly intelligent, the incident shows that we need to rethink the selection of training data.
The AI video revolution is in full swing! Google Veo-3 conjures up videos from images, while HeyGen revolutionizes product placement. Arcads inspires advertisers, and Bytedance's Seedance does it at a bargain price. Higgsfield Soul creates deceptively real videos that are indistinguishable from reality. Moonvalley focuses on ethics with public domain training. Viral hits such as "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Rave" show the blatant possibilities of the new technology. The line between real and artificial is becoming increasingly blurred! 🎬🤖
Moonshot AI presents Kimi K2, a groundbreaking open-source language model that is shaking up the AI world! The 1T Mixture of Experts (MoE) model outperforms leading systems such as Claude Sonnet and even comes dangerously close to Claude Opus. Particularly impressive: its coding and creative writing skills. The best thing about it? It's completely free and can be self-hosted - an important step towards greater independence and data protection. You can test Kimi K2 directly and without a subscription via OpenRouter.
Claude is developing into the ultimate AI assistant thanks to MCP integrations. While ChatGPT remains sufficient for most users, Claude impresses with seamless app integration such as Canva, Asana and Notion. The bot can even be connected to Spotify via the desktop app and can play specific music for different work situations.
Claude can also save notes directly in Apple Notes and theoretically control the entire computer. Some experts even use Claude Code as a universal agent. With the growing integration possibilities, Claude is increasingly becoming our preferred AI solution.
A clever marketing prompt that analyzes websites according to David Ogilvy's legendary advertising rules! This AI-controlled helper not only evaluates marketing texts according to 15 tough criteria, but also provides concrete suggestions for improvement. Especially cool: The prompt automatically checks URLs, ignores unimportant stuff like cookie messages and spits out a completely revised version that is guaranteed to score 100 out of 100. A real secret weapon for all marketing nerds who want to pimp their website texts to Ogilvy level!
📰 AI news quickie: HAI highlights from the industry
AI never sleeps! Here is the most important news of the last few days.
OpenAI, xAI, Apple & the challengers
ChatGPT Agent becomes autonomous(er): The new agent takes over tasks autonomously and uses its own virtual machine to control complex processes such as data analysis and pre-planning from A to Z .
The release of the open OpenAI model has again been postponed indefinitely, while ChatGPT will now also be available on the Google Cloud. A former engineer also provides insights into the chaotic company culture.
Mistral in a multipack: Mistral AI has introduced new models for developers - Devstral Small and Medium 2507 are faster and more cost-efficient.
In addition, the Voxtral models were launched as an open and affordable solution for speech recognition. The Le Chat bot also receives an upgrade with the'Deep Research' mode.
Tim Cook remains CEO of Apple for the time being, while the company faces a massive management shake-up. The biggest challenge remains the AI strategy, which is causing unrest in the industry.
Criticism of Musk's xAI: researchers from OpenAI and Anthropic complain about a "reckless" safety culture at xAI.
Fittingly, Elon Musk's Grok 4 is only in third place on the AI leaderboards and will no longer provide controversial answers based on Musk's opinions.
China's Moonshot AI has released a new open-source model to reclaim its market position with improved coding capabilities.
Google and Meta shuffle the cards
Google is upgrading: With Gemini 2.5 Pro, there are AI-powered calls to stores and new AI search features, designed to save time.
Meet Gemini - your personal AI assistant now appears directly on Wear OS 4+ watches, and buyers of the new Galaxy Z Fold 7 get the features free for 6 months.
Google Discover now brings AI-generated news summaries to iOS and Android - and new featured notebooks in NotebookLM let you explore topics like science and travel.
The new Gemini Code Assist updates bring Agent Mode, which analyzes your entire codebase as an AI pair programmer. Amazon counters with Kiro, a new development environment based on Claude.
Google invests over 3 billion dollars in hydroelectric power from Brookfield to supply its data centers with clean energy - while China floats undersea data centers for better cooling.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to forge an elite team for the development of superintelligence. As part of the new Superintelligence Labs, a switch from the open source model to a closed approach is also being discussed, which would be a departure from the previous philosophy.
Meta is also expanding massively and is planning a multi-gigawatt data center cluster the size of Manhattan and is even using tents to speed up construction and keep up with the AI competition.
Following an update, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses can now also communicate in German and understand commands - and Meta has also acquired PlayAI, a company specializing in voice AI.
Billion-dollar deals & market quake
Drama surrounding Windsurf: After a 3 billion deal with OpenAI fell through and top talent moved to Google for around 2.4 billion dollars, the AI start-up is now being acquired by Cognition. The merger is set to herald the next wave of innovation.
Billion-dollar investments in Anthropic and xAI: Amazon is planning a further investment of over 8 billion dollars in Anthropic, while xAI is aiming for a valuation of between 170 and 200 billion dollars in its next fundraising.
The US Department of Defense invests in AI: Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI receive contracts worth up to 200 million US dollars to develop advanced AI solutions for national security. xAI launches the "Grok For Government" initiative.
Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab launches with 2 billion dollars: The startup led by ex-OpenAI employees raised 2 billion US dollars in a seed round and is valued at 12 billion. Mira Murati announced plans to develop multimodal AI for better collaboration.
Nvidia is allowed to ship to China again: Following a meeting between CEO Jensen Huang and Trump, Nvidia and AMD are once again allowed to sell their AI chips to China. The US government granted the license after sales were severely restricted in April.
Investor Lip-Bu Tan says it's "too late" for Intel to catch up in AI competition as the company lays off thousands worldwide.
Scale AI lays off 200 full-time employees (around 14%) and ends work with 500 contractors to become more efficient after mega-investment from Meta.
New tools for developers & creatives
With the cool Private Prompts tool, you retain control over your data as sensitive information is processed locally.
Runway sets a new standard for motion capture with Act-Two. Adobe Firefly can now create sound effects directly from audio shares.
Hume AI presents EVI 3, a voice model that imitates voice, speech style and language.
AgentX presents a developer-friendly platform for creating multi-agent workforces without code.
Chat4Data revolutionizes web scraping with its new extension - simply retrieve all data via chat. How practical!
Exists has now opened up its AI-powered 3D world creation to everyone to create virtual worlds without programming skills.
Freepik lifts AI generation limits entirely - paying users can now create unlimited videos and images!
Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics introduce the "Reachy Mini" robot - compact, hackable and open-source.
Product decisions are now based on science: Blok accelerates product development through simulated experiments.
AI conquers everyday life
AI influencer Mia Zelu wows 160,000 followers with her fully AI-generated performances at Wimbledon and proves that a digital charm offensive is possible - while a Wimbledon official accidentally switched off the AI linesman, affecting key decisions in the match.
AI content floods YouTube: The top 10 channels already include four with purely AI-generated videos, while the VTuber Bloo is using AI content to delight 2.5 million fans and generate seven-figure revenues.
Advances in medicine: A new AI system from the Mayo Clinic detects infections at surgical sites using photos with 94% accuracy. Microsoft Research introduces BioEmu to understand protein function.
Finance and literature: Claude revolutionizes financial analysis with a new solution . In the book industry, AI helps with blurbs, while novels remain the preserve of the human imagination.
Ato is an AI companion for the elderly that provides conversation and connection with family.
Security, ethics & the dark side of AI
ChatGPT tricked: A clever bug hunter tricked ChatGPT into giving away free Windows keys via a guessing game, including one from Wells Fargo. The words "I give up!" got the AI chattering!
Ex-OpenAI employee Daniel Kokotajlo warns of a super-intelligent AI that, much like in Terminator, could wipe out humanity .
Studies show that AI therapy chatbots pose significant risks as they can promote stigmatization and react inappropriately.
France is investigating X for algorithmic manipulation for "foreign interference".
Ziz LaSota, leader of an extremist group, is under indictment for inciting violence and a series of murders, causing nervousness in the tech scene.
A movie about Sam Altman from OpenAI is in the starting blocks - sounds a lot like "The Social Network". Should he be worried?
Google's AI agent Big Sleep has discovered a security vulnerability and prevented it from being exploited.
The debate about the future of work is boiling over: will jobs be taken over by AI or newly created? The voices of AI leaders are getting louder, while human-like agents are predicted to replace entire industries such as Bloomberg. And the CEO of Mechanize, meanwhile, is aiming to automate every job.
Logan discusses humanoid robotics and their potential to revolutionize our everyday lives with Brett Adcock.
And that’s a wrap!
Your AInauts,
Fabian & Reto
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