world models

World Labs, co-founded by Fei-Fei Li, has released Atlas, an omni-model that generates camera-controlled video, reconstructs 3D scenes from as few as two images, and simulates environments for robot training. The company claims Atlas outperforms specialized 3D and video models on internal benchmarks, though it is currently limited to an early-access program.

Black Forest Labs has released Flux 3, a multimodal foundation model trained jointly on images, video, and audio that generates videos up to 20 seconds long with synchronized native audio. The company also introduced Flux-mimic, a robotics action model already being tested at Audi.

Yann LeCun, former Meta chief AI scientist and founder of AMI Labs, called Elon Musk's xAI a "failure" that won't be able to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic. LeCun warned that AI labs are at risk of a "big bubble explosion" because current pricing doesn't cover operational costs, with services funded primarily by investors.