26 h. ago ByteDance unveils new AI image model to rival Google DeepMind’s ‘Nano Banana’

TikTok-owner ByteDance has launched its latest image generation artificial intelligence tool Seedream 4.0, which it said surpasses Google DeepMind’s viral “Nano Banana” AI image editor across several key indicators. ByteDance’s Seed department, which oversees the tech unicorn’s AI development efforts, said on Tuesday that Seedream 4.0 had strong image editing capabilities, putting it in direct competition with Nano Banana, officially known as Gemini 2.5 Flash Image. The US model has received...

Culture

54 h. ago Baidu updates AI reasoning model to rival systems from DeepSeek, OpenAI, Google

Baidu, one of China’s artificial intelligence champions, on Tuesday released an updated version of its proprietary reasoning model with comparable performance to advanced AI systems from DeepSeek, OpenAI and Google. Citing data from third-party AI benchmarks, Baidu chief technology officer Wang Haifeng said at a developer conference in Beijing that the firm’s X1.1 reasoning model had surpassed the performance of DeepSeek-R1, while it matched OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro. “From...

Politics

3 d. ago Alibaba releases biggest AI model yet to rival OpenAI and Google DeepMind

Alibaba Group Holding continues to scale up its artificial intelligence efforts with the release of its biggest AI model to date, joining the ranks of OpenAI, Google DeepMind and other major players with trillion-parameter models. Qwen-3-Max-Preview, the company’s first model to have more than 1 trillion parameters, was released on Alibaba’s official cloud-services platform and the large language model marketplace OpenRouter on Friday. The model is the latest in the Hangzhou-based company’s...

Politics

2 w. ago Hong Kong researchers develop AI model that can detect fertile sperm

A team of Hong Kong researchers has developed an artificial intelligence model that can identify fertile sperm more accurately compared with traditional methods, paving the way for faster and more effective fertility treatments. Researchers from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) said on Monday that the AI model had an accuracy rate of more than 96 per cent when it came to identifying fertile sperm after being trained with over 1,000 images of male sex cells. The team further developed the model...

Politics

3 w. ago Swatch says sorry for ‘slanted eyes’ ad after social media backlash in China

Swiss watchmaker Swatch has issued an apology for a “slant eye” promotional image that has triggered strong criticism on Chinese social media, with the gesture widely considered offensive to Asians. In statements posted to Instagram and China’s Weibo on Saturday, the Swatch Group sought to “sincerely apologise for any distress or misunderstanding this may have caused”. The company said it had taken note of the “recent concerns” regarding the portrayal of a model in images for a men’s watch...

Politics

3 w. ago Swatch says sorry for ‘slant eye’ ad after social media backlash in China

Swiss watchmaker Swatch has issued an apology for a “slant eye” promotional image that has triggered strong criticism on Chinese social media, with the gesture widely considered offensive to Asians. In statements posted to Instagram and China’s Weibo on Saturday, the Swatch Group sought to “sincerely apologise for any distress or misunderstanding this may have caused”. The company said it had taken note of the “recent concerns” regarding the portrayal of a model in images for a men’s watch...

Politics