Midweek Tidal Wave of New Releases
Google, OpenAI, Eleven Labs, and more
Once again, I got very little real work done yesterday, as I kept getting distracted by the press releases and the YouTube demos. The singer PJ Harvey states in her classic song Good Fortune:
Things I once thought, Unbelievable, In my life, Have all taken place.
When I last addressed my students on June 10, I said that he summer was going to have some big releases. And even though I cover this stuff every day, yesterday blew my mind. Today is just going to be a brief recap, with a longer analysis by Friday
Google Lets the Genie out of the Bottle
Google’s Deepmind released Genie 3, which is like a cross between their VEO3 video generator and immersive worlds seen in video games. It’s generates a virtual world from a single prompt that you can move around with your keyboard arrows. However, it doesn’t build the whole thing first, it generates additional frames in real time as you navigate the space. It’s not playable or interactive like a video game, but it’s a huge leap forward as a creative tool in this trend of “Virtual Worlds”. Currently it’s only available to a small number of “Academics and Creators”…so if anyone has a connection, let me know. Check it out or Read about it
OpenAI Lets You Run It’s Newest Model Locally
If you’re tired of sacrificing your privacy, paying subscription fees, AND you’ve got enough hard drive space, you can now run the latest LLM locally.
The wait is over for OpenAI’s open‑weight models. For the first time since GPT‑2, OpenAI is giving developers access to the raw model weights. No API, no cloud dependency, no rate limits, and no vendor lock-in. You download them. You run them. You own the infrastructure. After five years of locking things behind an endpoint, OpenAI has released gpt‑oss‑120b and gpt‑oss‑20b under an Apache 2.0 license. Shelly Palmer
Eleven Labs Releases New Music Generator
I’ve been using Eleven Labs for a few years now, and while imperfect, it’s been the gold standard for AI voice generation. Well, things just got a lot closer to perfect with their new Music Generator. Suno and Udio are already embroiled in legal controversy, but Eleven Labs says it has a way forward for commercial use. Read about it or just play the video. Or check out the demo. The quality is out of this world!
Alibaba’s Qwen Renders text in English and Chinese
A young girl wearing a school uniform stands in a classroom, writing on a chalkboard. The text "Introducing Qwen-Image, a foundational image generation model that excels in complex text rendering and precise image editing" appears in neat white chalk at the center of the blackboard. Soft natural light filters through windows, casting gentle shadows. The scene is rendered in a realistic photography style with fine details, shallow depth of field, and warm tones. The girl's focused expression and chalk dust in the air add dynamism. Background elements include desks and educational posters, subtly blurred to emphasize the central action. Ultra-detailed 32K resolution, DSLR-quality, soft bokeh effect, documentary-style composition.
That’s it for today, but I have a ton of other articles I want to write about. I hope you’re feeling super creative and you’re accomplishing great things. If you’re curios about anything, just send me a message. Or sign up for my free class on Maven. Vibe Coding for Designers and Product Managers
