AI News – June 27
Grok 3.5 gets dumped and will jump straight to Grok 4. OpenAI adds web search capabilities to more of its models. HeyGen unveil a creative operating system for video and robotics creeps ever closer to human form. Here’s today’s AI news. After months of waiting, Elon Musk has announced that there won’t be a Grok 3.5 release after all.
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Instead, xAI will be moving straight to Grok 4 and Elon claims that it will be going live shortly after July 4th. We’re excited to see what they’ve been cooking up and whether it is really worthy of a jump straight to version 4. OpenAI has introduced web search capabilities for its o3, o3-pro and o4-mini models.
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This allows these models to integrate real time web information into their reasoning processes, enhancing their ability to provide accurate and up to date responses. The web search feature is priced at $10 for 1,000 calls, significantly lower than the 4o and 4.1 models.
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HeyGen have announced a new feature they’ve called ‘HeyGen Video Agent’ and they have labelled it as a “creative operating system”. You upload various assets and a prompt and it will analyse your input, write a script, select shots, cast your actors and generate the footage. So it’s designed to take full control of your creative output with a simple, small amount of input.
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You can claim your place on their waitlist now. And finally, AheadForm is a Chinese robotics startup that specialises in creating hyper realistic robot skins. They use advanced features like soft actuators, real time emotion synthesis and facial control mapped to muscle groups to create robots that are emotionally engaging in a way that you won’t get from the likes of Optimus.
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We’re expecting to see all of these technologies converge rapidly over the next year and we’re going to see robotics taken to a whole new level.