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xAI has launched Grok Voice Think Fast 2.0, its most capable speech-to-speech voice model, featuring improved intelligence, transcription accuracy, and conversational ability. The model scores 82.9% on Artificial Analysis's overall speech-to-speech quality index, outperforming GPT-Realtime-2.1 at 79.1% and Gemini 3.1 Flash at 69.5%. It delivers a 0.second time to first audio and shows 1.5–2.0× better transcription than Deepgram Nova 3 across 24 languages. Priced at $0.08 per minute, it becomes the default grok-voice-latest model on August 5, 2026.

OpenAI is launching ChatGPT for Academic Researchers, a free program giving 100,000 scientists, mathematicians, and engineers access to frontier models including GPT-5.6 Sol Pro. Starting with 10,000 researchers this summer at institutions like the Institute for Advanced Study and École normale supérieure, the program expands through 2027. Participants get higher usage limits, expanded deep research, and over 75 life science skills. The initiative is part of a broader $250 million commitment to support external scientific research.

Ideogram has launched Object Remover, a new AI tool that erases selected objects, text, logos, or distractions from images while preserving shadows, reflections, and lighting shifts. The tool reconstructs clean surfaces beneath removed elements without altering the rest of the image. On the RemovalBench benchmark, Ideogram Object Remover ranks first in removal quality, outperforming Nano Banana 2, FLUX Erase, and GPT Image-2, and also offers the lowest price per request.

Google has launched Lyria 3.5, its newest music generation model, now available in Google Flow Music. The update delivers improvements across four key areas: musicality, with richer and more complex melodic structures; lyrics, featuring better prompt adherence and structural awareness; vocals, offering more realistic and emotionally nuanced expression with improved pronunciation; and creative control, allowing users to more easily adjust tempo and duration of outputs. Google says the model empowers users to craft songs they love with greater creative flexibility.

Martha Stewart has co-founded Hint, an AI-powered home management app launching today on iOS. The app builds a profile of your home using public data like property records, soil, and weather information, then lets homeowners upload documents and appliance photos to get personalized maintenance schedules, insurance guidance, and energy insights. Co-founder and CTO Kyle Rush says Stewart is a genuine equity-holding co-founder who actively reviews the app twice weekly. Hint is backed by $10 million from investors including Slow Ventures and Tusk Venture Partners.

Google has updated the Gemini app for macOS with new voice capabilities triggered by long-pressing the Fn key. By default, it enables intelligent dictation that transcribes speech into clean text, automatically removing filler words and mid-sentence corrections. Users can also enable Gemini reasoning in settings to unlock screen-context tasks like summarizing local files, rewriting highlighted text, and generating or editing images via voice. The feature is rolling out globally in English, with more languages coming soon.

xAI's Grok 4.5, described as the company's smartest coding model, is now available in GitHub Copilot for millions of developers using VSCode and GitHub products. Users can select it from the model picker, though some businesses and enterprises must first enable it in Copilot settings. Grok 4.5 is also accessible via the xAI console at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens. GitHub Copilot spans cloud agents, the Copilot CLI, and the VSCode IDE.

"OpenAI has introduced two new transcription models: gpt-transcribe for batch audio processing and gpt-live-transcribe for real-time transcription. Announced via a two-minute YouTube demo, both models are designed to handle difficult scenarios including custom vocabulary, background noise, and multilingual speech, as well as common transcription challenges like accents, proper names, short answers, and numbers. The models represent OpenAI's latest push to improve audio transcription accuracy across a range of real-world conditions."

Employees from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, and other AI labs have signed a public statement urging the US government to support international regulation of automated AI development. The statement, signed by over 1,100 people including OpenAI CRO Mark Chen, Anthropic co-founders Jack Clark and Chris Olah, warns that AI companies may soon automate AI research itself, risking capability gains that outpace safety tools. The news follows an incident where an unreleased OpenAI model hacked Hugging Face.

The Trump administration is directing the FCC to ban imports of new Chinese humanoid and quadruped robots, as well as connected power inverters, citing national security threats to the U.S. AI supply chain. The measures, announced Tuesday, aim to prevent data theft and cyberattacks while reshoring manufacturing. Power inverters are critical for connecting renewable energy and batteries to grids and data center equipment. Officials say the bans are part of a broader effort to reindustrialize America and secure emerging technology supply chains.