The pulse of generative image & video AI.

Amazon MGM Studios is betting on generative AI to power a new wave of animated children's programming, with three shows greenlit following presentations at the AI on the Lot conference. COO Albert Cheng and the creators behind each project made their case for using AI tools in production, though the results have drawn skeptical early reactions. The move signals a significant shift in how a major studio is approaching animation pipelines and content development.

Amazon MGM Studios and AWS are launching a "GenAI Creators' Fund" that gives filmmakers money and access to the in-house AI platform "Project Nara." Three animated series are already in production - the teams had five weeks for their pilots. Amazon says it now has the "only end-to-end AI content ecosystem in the industry." The article Amazon builds its own AI production platform and greenlights three AI animated series for Prime Video appeared first on The Decoder.

DiffusionBlocks converts residual networks into independently trainable blocks by interpreting layer updates as reverse diffusion denoising steps. The post Sakana AI Proposes DiffusionBlocks: a Block-wise Training Framework That Converts Residual Networks into Independently Trainable Denoising Modules appeared first on MarkTechPost.

Google's new Gemini Omni artificial intelligence (AI) model can do some wild things. The model's key promise is to create anything from, well, anything. [Read More]

Microsoft's MAI-Image-2.5 ranks third on Arena's text-to-image leaderboard, on par with Google's Nano Banana 2 but still behind OpenAI's Image-2. The model shows clear gains over its predecessor, especially in rendering text inside images and commercial visuals. The article Microsoft's MAI-Image-2.5 pulls even with Google's Nano Banana 2 on benchmarks appeared first on The Decoder.

It should be easier to tell at a glance if a YouTube video will contain AI-generated gunk.

YouTube is tightening its AI labeling rules. Labels for photorealistic or heavily AI-altered content will now show up in more visible spots, below the player for long videos and as an overlay on Shorts. Starting May 2026, an automatic detection system will flag AI-generated content even if creators don't disclose it. Recommendations and monetization won't be affected. The article YouTube will try to automatically flag AI videos starting this month appeared first on The Decoder.

YouTube will now automatically label videos that use significant photorealistic AI, instead of relying solely on creators to disclose AI-generated content themselves. It's also making AI labels more prominent.

Digital asset platform Artlist is launching Artlist TV, a streaming platform that appears to be exclusively populated by AI-generated shows. [Read More]

Post-processing has long been the most time-consuming part of a photographer's workflow, and the numbers back that up. According to the 2026 Zenfolio State of the Photography Industry report, about 70% of photographers spend between 26% and 75% of their working time on editing. Only 5% of photographers surveyed feel they are managing the stress of running their business well. [Read More]

Pope Leo has released an encyclical about artificial intelligence, urging authorities to regulate the technology and warning that AI image tools have become a "powerful amplifier" for those spreading disinformation. [Read More]

The owner of the Danziger Gallery has released a statement defending his actions after putting an AI-generated version of Ansel Adams' Moonrise on sale at The Photography Show in New York. [Read More]

The New York Danziger Gallery displayed for sale an AI-generated version of Ansel Adams' photo "Moonrise Over Hernandez" without consulting the photographer's trust, effectively stealing the legendary artist's work and dramatically altering it with AI for the sake of profit. [Read More]

Google launched Gemini Omni Flash at I/O, a multimodal model that accepts text, images, audio, and video as inputs and generates or edits video through conversational prompts. The model is already powering a YouTube Shorts remix feature and will feed into Google Workspace tools. SynthID watermarking is embedded in all output.

Google's SynthID invisible watermarking standard is being adopted by OpenAI, Nvidia, and others, marking its most significant expansion since launch. OpenAI has confirmed that images generated through ChatGPT, Codex, and its API will carry both C2PA metadata and SynthID markers. The parallel adoption of two complementary standards could finally give AI content labeling real coverage.

ByteDance's Intelligent Creation Lab has open-sourced Lance, a multimodal model that handles image and video understanding, generation, and editing within a single 3B-parameter framework. The unified architecture is designed to avoid the fragmentation of maintaining separate models for each task. Code and weights are publicly available.

Luma AI and Wonder Project have jointly launched Innovative Dreams, a production company aimed at using AI video tools for longer-form narrative content rather than short clips. The partnership reflects a broader shift among AI video companies toward working with professional production pipelines rather than pitching consumer tools directly to audiences.

Adobe is extending its Creative Cloud connector to Google Gemini, following a similar deal with Anthropic's Claude announced weeks earlier. The integration lets Gemini orchestrate Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and Express directly, with users describing what they want and the Adobe tools handling execution. Rollout is expected within a few weeks of Google I/O.

Google DeepMind has connected its Genie 3 world model to Street View data, letting users drop a map pin and receive an interactive, explorable environment generated from real-location imagery. The demo is immediately interesting for games and creative tools, but the longer-term intent appears to be training AI agents and robotics systems on grounded spatial data.

A US federal law mandating that online platforms remove nonconsensual sexual deepfakes and intimate images within 48 hours of a report has come into effect. The Take It Down Act creates a legal removal obligation that did not previously exist at the federal level, applying to AI-generated content alongside real imagery used without consent.

Announced at Google I/O, Gemini Omni Flash is a multimodal model that takes text, images, audio, and video as inputs and generates or edits video through natural conversation. Google says the model draws on its knowledge base of science, history, and cultural context to improve physical plausibility in generated footage. A SynthID watermark is embedded in all output.

OpenAI announced it will embed Google's SynthID watermark in images generated through ChatGPT, Codex, and its API, layering it on top of the C2PA content credentials it already applies. The two systems are designed to complement each other: C2PA carries detailed provenance metadata while SynthID provides a signal that can survive format changes and metadata stripping.

Google is bringing AI content verification to Chrome and several Search surfaces, including Lens and AI Mode, letting users check whether an image carries SynthID markers or C2PA content credentials directly in the browser. The expansion, announced at Google I/O, coincides with OpenAI and Nvidia both adopting SynthID, pushing the watermarking standard toward broader industry use.

Google launched Pics, a new AI image generation and editing app for Workspace, with an interface that lets users click on specific parts of an image and annotate what they want changed - similar to leaving a comment in a Google Doc. The app is powered by Gemini and Google's Nano Banana 2 image model.

Google DeepMind has integrated its Genie 3 world model with Street View imagery, allowing users to drop a pin on a map and generate a walkable, interactive AI environment based on that real-world location. The project makes nearly two decades of Street View data available as grounding material for generative world-building.

Google has added a remix option to YouTube Shorts that lets viewers restyle clips or insert themselves into other people's videos using Gemini Omni. Creators can disable the feature for their content, and all remixed output carries a SynthID watermark.

Hell Grind, a 90-minute sci-fi heist film produced entirely with Higgsfield AI, is screening at the Cannes Film Festival. Made with a team of 15 filmmakers who generated over 16,000 clips to produce 253 final shots, the production cost under $500,000 - a figure the company contrasts with a claimed $50 million equivalent using traditional methods.

Beeble AI has released Canvas, a node-based visual compositing platform that integrates AI video models, traditional compositing tools, and workflow automation in a single environment. The system includes native access to Beeble's SwitchX and SwitchLight models and supports external generative models for batch iteration across multiple shots.

A US federal law requiring social media platforms to remove nonconsensual intimate imagery - including AI-generated deepfakes - within 48 hours of a valid request has come into force. Experts have raised concerns that the takedown mechanism could be misused for censorship, and that practical enforcement for victims remains uncertain.

Announced at Google I/O, Gemini Omni Flash is a new multimodal model that accepts text, image, audio, and video inputs to generate and edit video through natural conversation. The model embeds SynthID watermarks automatically and is positioned as a broader platform that will eventually handle more modalities beyond video.

OpenAI announced that images produced through ChatGPT, Codex, and its API will now carry both C2PA content credentials and Google's SynthID watermark. The dual approach is intended to maintain traceability even when metadata is stripped, since the two systems work differently and compensate for each other's gaps.

We’re introducing new multimodal capabilities into Google Ads’ Asset Studio — your creative destination to create, build and test your assets.

Remember that lull from the past few months where we didn’t get the surprise announcement of another new “revolutionary” AI video model every single day? Well, that lull is over as the AI wars are heating up once again. However, with this AI revolution now several months and years old, it is admittedly getting harder to keep up with what every model is offering these days. We’re also several years into generative AI video, and it still hasn’t taken over in any meaningful way. Will this new Gemin

If robust AI labeling was in place when these swagged out images of Pope Francis went viral, it may have been easier for people to tell they were fake. | Image: via Reddit We're about to find out if the systems designed to make deepfakes and AI-generated content easy to spot are actually up to snuff. SynthID and C2PA Content Credentials, two distinct technologies for invisibly tagging image, video, and audio files with information about their origins, are getting their biggest expansion to date,

OpenAI has announced that images generated with ChatGPT, Codex, and its API will include C2PA metadata and a SynthID watermark -- the two leading protocols in identifying AI images. [Read More]

What's new? Gemini Omni Flash is a multimodal AI model that takes text, image, video, and audio inputs. It supports video editing and embeds a SynthID watermark.

Today at Google I/O 2026, the tech giant announced that it is bringing a new AI image creation and editing tool, Google Pics, to Workspace. [Read More]

NVIDIA has published a detailed walkthrough on fine-tuning its Cosmos Predict 2.5 world model using LoRA and DoRA techniques, specifically targeting robot video generation. The guide, hosted on Hugging Face, offers a practical path for teams wanting to adapt the model to domain-specific physical AI applications without full retraining.

Netflix is building a small internal team called Inkubator to explore generative AI workflows in animation, starting with short-form content. Job listings include CG artists, compositors, and a Head of Technology, suggesting a production-ready ambition rather than a pure research exercise.

In a TechCrunch profile, Runway laid out its thesis that video generation is the foundation for building general world models, framing its position outside the large-lab ecosystem as a strategic advantage. The piece offers a candid look at how the company sees its long-term competitive footing against well-resourced rivals like Google.

YouTube is rolling out its likeness-detection feature-previously limited to creators and public figures-to all users over 18. The tool uses a face scan to flag potential AI-generated lookalikes on the platform, after which users can request removal of matched content.

Director Steven Soderbergh has confirmed that his documentary 'John Lennon: The Last Interview' incorporates AI-generated imagery, offering one of the more prominent examples of a name-brand filmmaker deliberately weaving generative visuals into a non-fiction work. Soderbergh discussed his reasoning publicly, adding a notable data point to the ongoing conversation about AI's role in documentary production.

Hasselblad has removed a shortlisted entry from its Masters 2026 competition after determining the image involved generative AI, following public scrutiny of the work. The case adds to a string of similar disqualifications at major photography competitions and highlights the continued difficulty of detection at the judging stage.

The software, called Delulu, is marketed specifically to streamers and lets them easily transform into other people including George Floyd, Jeffrey Epstein, and other streamers.

OpenAI announced two new measures to help detect AI generated imagery: joining the open C2PA standard and adding Google's SynthID to its products.

Google didn't forget AI creators in its latest round of Gemini announcements.

Google is bringing its AI-detecting feature to more of its products to make it easier for people to verify if something was generated or edited with AI.

Ground your snow-globe worlds in real-world locations from Google Maps.