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The long-awaited Gemini 3.5 Pro, which Google has been promising since May, will apparently never see the light of day. Last week, Google instead announced the powerful Gemini 4 Argon. Unfortunately, most of us don’t yet have access to the model, which so far has been available only to Google engineers. Google describes Gemini 4 Argon as having a strong cybersecurity focus, placing it in direct competition with security-oriented models like GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5.1. And according to Google’s own results, Gemini 4 Argon vastly outperforms both models on a number of LLM benchmarks.

Two weeks back, we covered the Trump administration’s plans to create a new “AI Force.” Now, that plan is coming to fruition, but with a twist. Instead of a plain ol’ AI Force, Trump announced the task force as a “Super Intelligence Force,” which unfortunately muddies the terminology a bit, as “superintelligence” typically refers to AI that surpasses the capabilities of even the most intelligent humans. Terminology aside, the task force will be led by National Intelligence Director Jay Clayton, alongside Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson and defense official Emil Michael. The announcement follows meetings with major tech leaders after Trump rejected government regulation in favor of self-regulation by AI companies.

Last week, OpenAI launched "Dots," a friendly personal AI helper powered by GPT-6 Astra. These digital assistants work continuously in the background to complete tasks like fixing software bugs or analyzing data with minimal user supervision. ChatGPT Pro and Business Premium users can access Dots directly through platforms like ChatGPT, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

Lean TECHniques works alongside Midwest companies to leverage technology for business impact. Through advisory, coaching, and embedded delivery, Lean TECHniques helps organizations develop high-performing teams, create environments that fuel innovation, and deliver best-in-class customer experiences. Core areas of expertise include software, cloud, artificial intelligence, product management, and technology leadership.

Ideogram has officially launched Ideogram 4.5, a new model designed specifically to solve one of the most frustrating challenges in generative AI: image drift. When performing multi-turn edits on AI-generated images, models often introduce unwanted pixel shifts, color alterations, and texture artifacts over time. Ideogram 4.5 dramatically reduces this drift, preserving consistent details across multiple rounds of editing.

We tested out Ideogram 4.5 ability to edit an image without unwanted image drift.

AI video avatars may be crossing an important line in realism. Tavus says its new Griffin model can interpret speech, facial expressions, tone, gestures and pauses while carrying on a real-time video conversation. In a company study, 48% of participants believed they were talking to a real person after a one-minute video call, compared with just 2% for previous systems. Tavus sees potential uses in tutoring, tech support and practicing difficult conversations, but the result also raises some obvious questions about disclosure and how we’ll know when the person on the other side of a video call is actually a person.

Agentic AI: An AI system that doesn't just answer questions but plans, uses tools, and carries out multi-step tasks to reach a goal. In a regular chat, you drive every step. With agentic AI, you hand off an outcome ("research three venues, draft an email to each, and summarize their rates"), and it breaks the work into steps, carries them out using tools like search, calendar, or email, and adjusts if it hits a snag.

Agentic AI runs on the same large language models that power chatbots. The difference is what's built around the model: tools and a loop that lets it keep working and decide what to do next without a human prompting every step. Agents can fix some of their own mistakes but can also compound them, so most real-world uses still keep a human reviewing key steps.

Miss out on any previous AI terms of the week? Check out our Glossary of AI terms, where we’re collecting all entries in the series. And if you want us to define a term in an upcoming newsletter, let us know!

The Innovation Profs are Drake University Professors Chris Porter and Chris Snider. Porter leads Drake’s Artificial Intelligence major and Snider is a multimedia professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.