📫 Subscribe | 🗣️ Hire us to speak | 🎓 Online Courses | 📅 Events
Latest Gen AI News
China's Moonshot AI unveils Kimi K3 model
Beijing-based startup Moonshot AI unveiled Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight model that outperformed Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 in general text rankings and beat top OpenAI and Anthropic models in front-end coding tests. The release significantly narrows the technological gap between Chinese and American AI labs while operating at roughly 40 percent lower costs than leading U.S. rivals. This performance challenges the pricing power and high valuations of major American tech firms. Moonshot AI plans to release the full downloadable open weights on July 27. Meanwhile the Trump administration is showing signs it could ban cutting-edge Chinese AI models.
Google AI search threatens open web traffic
The New York Times reported that Google's AI search features are sharply reducing web traffic to publishers. According to Cloudflare server logs, human visits to software, IT, retail, and finance sites fell up to 40% in under a year as Google AI Overviews answer queries directly. This threatens the ad-supported search model that has long funded online writing, forcing publishers to prepare for “Google Zero.” Even The New York Times saw its search traffic share fall from 44% in 2022 to 37% in 2025. Looking ahead, Cloudflare will default to blocking AI crawlers on ad-supported pages starting September 15, 2026, giving publishers potential leverage for licensing deals.
Thinking Machines Lab Releases First Model Inkling
Mira Murati's startup Thinking Machines Lab has released its first AI model, Inkling. The new 975-billion-parameter model was trained from scratch to process text, audio, and video. Unlike closed systems from competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic, Inkling is an open-weight model, meaning developers and enterprises can freely download and modify the underlying code to build customized, cost-effective solutions. This launch positions the startup to compete directly with leading open-weight models from China and proprietary American models. The company plans to expand this family of models, including the upcoming release of a lighter 12-billion-parameter version called Inkling-Small.
Support our sponsor:
Transform Your Technology into a Competitive Advantage
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.
Free AI Update Aug. 26
Sign up for our free Back to School AI Update on Aug. 26. We will walk you through the latest news in the world of AI - from the government reviewing models to Work/Cowork to the Pope’s warning on AI and more. This event is offered free thanks to a sponsorship from technology and management consultancy, Lean TECHniques.
Sign up for online AI classes:
Quick Hits
Want your brand in front of AI-forward professionals?
We're looking for a sponsor for our Fall AI Lunch Club – four virtual events that draw workers from Central Iowa and across the country who are actively figuring out how to use AI in their jobs.
That's a specific, engaged audience you can't reach with a generic ad buy. Get the details here – or just reply to this email with questions.
Tool of the Week: Canva Code 2.0
Canva released Canva Code 2.0, bringing AI-powered vibe coding directly into familiar design workflows. Users can generate interactive websites, apps, and landing pages using plain-language prompts or HTML imports, then edit them visually using Canva's standard tools, brand kits, and content libraries. Canva Code 2.0 is available across free, pro, business, enterprise, and education tiers.
AI-generated image of the week
This week, we were testing out images to help promote our Back to School AI Update. ChatGPT helped write the prompt for this and Gemini made the image. How many Innovation Profs can you find in the image?
Prompt: Create a highly detailed, playful seek-and-find puzzle illustration promoting an event called “Back to School AI Update.”
The scene should resemble a busy, colorful back-to-school activity book. Fill the image with dozens of small characters, objects, and humorous mini-scenes connected to both school and artificial intelligence. Include students arriving at school, teachers organizing classrooms, parents dropping off children, marching band practice, football and soccer activities, a school bus, a cafeteria lunch line, a science experiment, an art class, a library, backpacks, lockers, notebooks, pencils, laptops, robots, chatbots, holographic screens, AI-generated artwork, presentation slides, charts, coding projects, and people experimenting with generative AI tools.
Hide the two men shown in the uploaded reference photos somewhere within the crowded scene. Reproduce their recognizable facial features, hairstyles, glasses, and general appearance, but dress them in fun back-to-school outfits that fit naturally into the illustration. Make them challenging but possible to find. Place them in different parts of the image and do not make them larger or more prominent than the surrounding characters. What we found
Google is picking up the slack after OpenAI shut down Sora. Google Vids now lets users create a custom digital avatar that looks and sounds like them based on a selfie and a voice recording. You must be 18 or older to create personal avatars.
