New Modes, Leaks & $500K Prizes — Welcome to AI December

Welcome Back! Here's What Happened in AI While You Were on Holiday

Thought the AI world would slow down over Thanksgiving? Not a chance! While you were enjoying turkey and time with family, the AI industry kept moving at full speed.

Here are the highlights from just the past two weeks:

• Claude Opus 4.5 launched by Anthropic
• Kling O1 video editing model released
• Kling 2.6 adds native audio support
• Retake tool launched by Lightricks
• Gen-4.5 video model unveiled by Runway
• FLUX.2 model launched by BFL
• Gemini 3 Deep Think now live for Ultra users
• Workspace Studio by Google lets you build AI agents
• OpenAI Code Red alert issued internally
• Garlic model teased (yes, that’s the name!)
• OpenAI leaks show ads in chats being tested
• Perplexity AI adds memory to conversations
• DeepSeek rolls out V3.2 and Speciale models
• Mistral 3 models now available
• Suno x Warner Music announce major partnership
• Stories feature launched by Character AI
• NotebookLM introduces slide-deck creation

Some of these stories—like Gemini Deep Think and the $500K Google hackathon—are so exciting, we’ve broken them down in detail just below. 👇