Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

China’s Moonshot AI, which is backed by the likes of Alibaba and HongShan (formerly Sequioa China), today released a new open-source model, Kimi K2.5, which understands text, image, and video. The company said that the model was trained on 15 trillion mixed visual and text tokens, and that’s why it is natively multimodal. It added that the models are good at coding tasks and handling agent swarms — an orchestration where multiple agents work together. In released benchmarks, the model matches the performance of the proprietary peers and even beats them in certain tasks. For instance, in the coding benchmark,…

AI is remaking creative industries at breakneck speed. And the growing pile of AI tools is turning the creative process into a game of model-hopping as artists, designers, and writers bounce between different platforms.Founded in Brooklyn, New York, in 2024, FLORA wants to help creatives streamline those processes. On Tuesday, FLORA revealed it had raised $42 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures. The company has raised $52 million in funding to date.FLORA combines the latest AI models — such as Google’s Nano Banana and OpenAI’s ChatGPT 5.1 — into a single interface that lets teams collaborate on…

Flora, a design tool used by designers at Alibaba, Brex, creative agency Pentagram, and entertainment company Lionsgate, has hit a new milestone. The startup has raised $42 million in Series A led by Redpoint Ventures, it announced on Tuesday. Generative AI models can be used in the design process via prompts and other multimodal inputs. Software companies like Adobe, Figma, and Canva have also added features to make AI more central to their products. Meanwhile, newer design startups believe that to accommodate AI and test the capabilities of different models, you need new workflows and a different interface. To address…

AI isn’t just reshaping the role of software engineers — it’s also making them more skilled.That’s according to Avishai Abrahami, the CEO and cofounder of website management company Wix. He told Business Insider that the technology equips developers with “superpowers” and that the value of smart, talented engineers will be “dramatically enhanced” with AI tools.”What would take you a month, you can do in a few hours,” Abrahami said, adding that not every task can be reduced in this way, but most can.What entry-level candidates needA Google Cloud report released in September found that AI adoption had surged to 90%…

A new risk assessment has found that xAI’s chatbot Grok has inadequate identification of users under 18, weak safety guardrails, and frequently generates sexual, violent, and inappropriate material. In other words, Grok is not safe for kids or teens.  The damning report from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that provides age-based ratings and reviews of media and tech for families, comes as xAI faces criticism and an investigation into how Grok was used to create and spread nonconsensual explicit AI-generated images of women and children on the X platform.  “We assess a lot of AI chatbots at Common Sense Media,…

Ever since the introduction of ChatGPT, companies have been eagerly anticipating the day AI will turbocharge their workers and forever transform their businesses. Three years later, they’re still waiting. Why? And what’s the fix?These two questions dominated pretty much every single conversation I had with executives in Davos last week — including a Business Insider roundtable I moderated with 15 chief people officers and other senior executives.One explanation that came up again and again was incomplete adoption among employees. Many professionals are understandably worried about what these tools will mean for their jobs, or at least skeptical of their usefulness…

If your techie friend is texting a lobster, here’s why.Clawdbot is an open-source AI agent that works around the clock and can connect to many common consumer apps. Users have asked their Clawdbots to organize their schedules, monitor vibe-coding sessions, and build new AI employees.It’s scored some high-profile fans, from Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan to multiple Andreessen Horowitz partners. Many have praised it, others have meme’d it, and some have warned people about potential security concerns.What is Clawdbot?You can spot Clawdbot by its friendly lobster mascot.Founded by Peter Steinberger, Clawdbot is an AI agent that manages “digital life,” from…

Forget robotaxis — a man and his robo-snow blower were the envy of X during the weekend’s winter storm.More than 250 million Americans are thawing out after a massive winter storm swept the country with freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall.Tom Moloughney, however, stayed inside. He watched a nearly 230-pound robot clear his long New Jersey driveway, documenting the process in a video posted to his X account.Winter Storm Fern has descended upon NJ this morning and my @yarboglobal autonomous snow blower went into action. This is going to be a great test to see if this robot can handle a…

Dario Amodei still has a lot to say.On Monday, the Anthropic CEO dropped an over 19,000-word essay entitled “The Adolescence of Technology” on the future of AI on Monday, opining on everything from his fellow CEOs to feudalism, and even the Unabomber.Best known for his warning that AI could eliminate up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs in the next 1 to 5 years, Amodei has tangled with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and the Trump White House over his views.Here are seven of the most alarming and surprising quotes.’This is a serious civilizational challenge’Amodei remains optimistic about AI overall, but…

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — The sun has not yet risen in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, but about 100 people in swimsuits and life jackets already crowd a section of beach, ready for aquagym class.In the chilly Atlantic, 63-year-old Aminata Sall is soon kicking in rhythm with others, foam noodles tucked under her arms. On the beach, people with limited mobility are buried knee-deep in the sand and gently rotate their torsos in a therapy session meant to ease pain.Sall’s doctor once warned her she could lose the ability to walk within five years because of rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that…