generative AI
15 published articles
AI Video Generation
Alibaba's Wan3.0 sells video by the second: $6 for a 30-second clip
Wan3.0 can turn a PDF or a brand deck into a 30-second video in one generation, with per-second API pricing that tops out at $0.20 for 1080P. We break down the per-clip math and the gaps Alibaba admits in its own testing.
2026-08-16
Video generation
MiniMax scrapped its proven architecture to make H3 do everything
MiniMax says H3 unifies text, image, video and audio generation in one model, prices 2K output below a third of mainstream models, and plans to open the weights within days. The small print is the real story: the company abandoned the architecture that gave it an edge to get there.
2026-08-07
Generative AI
Pippa pays artists $0.005 per image. Its models still train on scraped art
Pippa promises artists a cut of every generation made in their style: $0.005 per image, $0.003 per video second, plus a share of a 5 percent royalty pool. With around 800 subscribers and four signed artists, and base models still trained on scraped content, the ethical pitch has a math problem.
2026-08-07
AI Video Generation
Wan3.0-Video charges by the second: a 30-second clip runs to $6
Alibaba's Wan3.0-Video bills per second on DashScope, with a 30-second 1080P clip costing $6 per generation. We break down the pricing tiers, the multi-input workflow, and the questions the listing leaves unanswered.
2026-08-07
Alibaba's generative world model, in gray testing
One photo, a drivable 3D world: Alibaba's HappyOyster bets on persistence
Alibaba's HappyOyster 1.0 is billed as the first proactive real-time interactive open-world model, letting developers and creators build explorable virtual environments from text or images. The gray test offers SDKs for Android, iOS, and Web, and the real question is whether it can keep the world coherent for more than a minute.
2026-07-24
AI Research
MiniMax's VTP learned to understand before it learned to generate
MiniMax's VTP framework rethinks how visual tokenizers are pre-trained, replacing pure reconstruction objectives with a mix that rewards semantic understanding. The result: a tokenizer that actually scales with compute, and a 65.8% FID improvement on downstream generation.
2026-07-22
Machine Learning Theory
Google just proved why diffusion models invent, not just copy
Google researchers reveal that the creativity of diffusion models stems from a 'score smoothing' effect caused by neural network regularization. This theoretical framework explains why models interpolate between training data points rather than merely memorizing them, opening the path for controlled novelty in generative AI.
2026-07-16
AI Infrastructure
Ollama's 85 percent stat means exactly what you think it means
Ollama's $88 million raise leads with an 85%-of-Fortune-500 stat that sounds like saturation and proves almost nothing. An analysis of why this specific move has become the default opening line of AI infrastructure funding announcements, and what's actually driving the real money into open-weight inference.
2026-07-14
Funding round
Ollama's $88 million bet that open-weight models will do what Docker did for containers
Ollama raised $88 million to make open-weight models the default way to run inference, betting the Docker playbook works for AI. Investors include Benchmark, Theory Ventures, 8VC, and Y Combinator.
2026-07-14
Transparency
Google ads now carry a mandatory AI label. The enforcement gap is the real story.
Google adds 'created or edited with AI' labels to ads across Search, Discover, and YouTube. Automatic for Google's own AI tools. For everyone else, it is an honor system.
2026-07-09
Artificial Intelligence
The AI writing generator that made me rewrite this lede three times
AI writing tools are evolving from spell-checkers to co-authors, raising questions about originality, voice, and the value of the human rewrite.
2026-07-09
Artificial Intelligence
The editor's job is not dead. It just got harder
AI writing assistants are forcing a long-overdue redefinition of what editing means. The role isn't disappearing, it's evolving into a hybrid discipline that pairs human judgment with machine speed.
2026-07-09