Launch: Latest AI News

Midjourney Adds a Lightbox Editor to Alpha for V8.2 Image Edits

The Alpha update puts instruction-based edits, reference inputs, and a session edit record in the image viewer. But key choices about settings persistence and defaults are still unresolved.

Last week

8 stories

Aug 30, 2026Products

Launch Products

Apple Launches AI-Powered Siri as Third-Party AI Fees Head Toward $1B

The new assistant gives Apple a first-party AI product, while estimated fees from subscriptions to outside AI apps already point to a separate services opportunity. Cook has identified iCloud+ as a possible future route for more capable Siri models.

Aug 30, 2026Startups

Launch Startups

Jeff Dean Leaves Google to Build Discovery Loop, a Science AI Startup Backed by Radical Ventures

The new public-benefit company has an unusually experienced founding team and support from both Radical Ventures and Alphabet. Its central technical question is still unanswered: what system will turn the ambition to automate research into a usable product?

4 min

Aug 29, 2026Products

Launch Products

Apple’s iOS 27 Nears September Release With Siri AI, but EU Access Is Limited

The coming update would move Apple’s AI from isolated features into search, automation and editing workflows—while a regulatory dispute leaves some of its headline tools unavailable in the European Union.

Aug 27, 2026Models

Midjourney Opens V8.2 Image-Editing Tests With Up to Four References

The test brings instruction-led edits, canvas expansion, and multi-image generation into one workflow, while Midjourney asks users to identify failures and help reshape the interface.

Aug 26, 2026Models

Z.ai Says 100,000 Chinese Chips Serve GLM-5.3-Flash; Shares Rise More Than 8%

The low-cost model is a test of whether China-made hardware can support a public AI service at scale, but Z.ai has not named the chipmakers behind the system.

Aug 26, 2026Models

Google Puts Gemini 3.5 Transcribe in Preview With Live and Recorded-Audio APIs

The release turns speech recognition into a Gemini product layer for developers and Google surfaces, but a product-specific price remains unavailable for teams weighing production use.

Aug 25, 2026Products

Launch Products

Google Cloud Launches Gemini Enterprise Agents for Finance and Legal, Starting in Preview

The new packages put specialized skills, data connectors and partner agents around regulated workflows. Their first test is whether a broad enterprise platform can become useful inside capital-markets, banking and legal operations.

Aug 24, 2026Models

Thomson Reuters Puts Its First Legal AI Model Into CoCounsel Document Review

Thomson Reuters will use its new legal model for specialized tasks while retaining third-party frontier models elsewhere in CoCounsel. Its performance claims have not yet received extensive independent validation.

August 2026

1 story

Aug 22, 2026Models

Ox Alpha Offers a Million Tokens, but Not a Name

The anonymous model exposes multimodal and agent-oriented features, but its architecture, benchmark record and price after the free preview remain unknown.