Stay ahead on AI.
All in ONE place.

Anthropic has launched Claude Code Mods, small TypeScript functions that let developers customize how Claude Code behaves and looks. Mods can rewrite prompts, block or retry tool calls, redraw UI elements, add buttons, and replace built-in features like the /diff command. They ship inside plugins and work in both the CLI and desktop app. Mods are not sandboxed and run with full machine access, so users should only install trusted sources. Team and Enterprise plans include a sec-default security mod that loads first to prevent risky overrides.

Strands has released Decider 2B, an open source billion-parameter decision model optimized for fast local AI inference. Unlike LLMs, decision models choose between predefined options and assign confidence scores rather than generating free text, making them faster and lower latency. Built on a Qwen3.5-2B backbone with a custom pointer head, it achieves median latency of 115ms on an Nvidia RTX 3090. It ranks 3rd of 33 in its class on JevBench. Weights are available on Hugging Face and code on GitHub.

Microsoft launched MAI-Transcribe-Streaming, debuting at number one on the Artificial Analysis leaderboard for accuracy in both final and partial transcripts. The model delivers real-time transcription in 60 languages with first hypotheses in just over 100ms, priced at $0.54 per hour. Microsoft also announced MAI-Voice-2.1, a multilingual text-to-speech model supporting 23 languages at $22 per 1M characters, and MAI-Voice-2.Flash, a faster variant with 150ms latency priced at $15 per 1M characters.

Google has launched Guided Vision in Gemini Live on Android, offering real-time conversational visual assistance for blind and low-vision users. Developed with accessibility organization Aira and stress-tested by over 1,000 members of Aira's Trusted Tester network across tens of thousands of hours, the feature lets users share their camera to receive audio descriptions, follow-up answers, and verbal reframing cues. It supports tasks like reading fine print, locating objects, and matching outfits, and is available on Android 9 and above.

Microsoft has launched MAI-Voice-2.1 and MAI-Voice-2.Flash, two text-to-speech models offering instant voice matching from a short reference clip with no fine-tuning required. The standard model targets high-fidelity use cases like audiobooks at $22 per million characters with roughly 550ms latency, while the Flash variant suits real-time applications like call centers at $15 per million characters with just 45ms latency. Both support 23 languages, granular emotion control, and zero-shot voice prompting.

Shopify has launched Canvas, a new AI-powered store design tool that lets merchants build custom online stores using Sidekick, Shopify's AI agent. Canvas provides a visual workspace where merchants can see all store pages laid out together, pan across them, and zoom into details while Sidekick makes real-time code changes. Sidekick has already made over 25 million theme edits in early 2026. Canvas is rolling out to merchants over the coming days and does not yet replace Shopify's existing editor.

Ideogram has launched Ideogram 4.5, its most precise image editing model, designed to minimize pixel shifts, color changes, and texture artifacts that accumulate across multi-turn edits. The model outperforms GPT Image 2.5 and Nano Banana in side-by-side comparisons, where competing models become unusable within a few edits. Ideogram 4.5 also supports high-resolution editing up to 24.2 megapixels, allowing users to edit cropped regions and stitch them seamlessly back into the original without downsizing.

Inception Labs has launched Mercury Voice, a diffusion LLM designed for low-latency voice agents, now generally available for enterprise customers. The model delivers a median time to first answer token of 320 milliseconds, 5.9x faster than GPT-6 Luna, and outperforms Gemma 4 31B, GLM-5.Flash, and Qwen3.5-397B on agentic and conversational benchmarks. It supports 128K context, three reasoning effort levels, and is priced at $0.20 per million input and $0.75 per million output tokens at launch, roughly $0.009 per minute of conversation.

Runway has launched Runway Ads, an autonomous AI engine for performance marketing that generates video and image ads, publishes them directly to Meta, Google, and TikTok, reads performance data, and iterates creative based on what earns spend. Built on infrastructure Runway used internally, the system grew their weekly ad volume from 77 to 900, doubled return on ad spend, and cut cost per subscriber 41%. Human approval is on by default. Early access is available at runway.com/product/ads.