The releases stories our desk judged worth your time, written so anyone can follow them.
TextNow's new Yello phone costs $150 with a $20 monthly plan. Parents choose who can call or text, and kids cannot install apps.
Read more: TextNow Launches a $150 Kids Phone With a $20 Monthly PlanDeepSeek is publishing the software it uses to run its own AI at scale, which could lower the cost of AI tools for businesses that pay for them.
Read more: DeepSeek releases free software to cut the cost of running AIOpenAI added ChatGPT Slides, which turns chats, files or outlines into editable decks you can present or export. Access depends on your plan.
Read more: ChatGPT can now build and present slide decks for youCloudflare has released Clairic in preview, an AI model that pulls fields like invoice totals out of documents faster and cheaper than chatbot-style models, it says.
Read more: Cloudflare's new AI reads invoices and forms faster and cheaperElevenLabs released two voice agent models that handle listening, thinking and speaking in one piece, which could make phone and intake bots simpler to build.
Read more: ElevenLabs launches voice agent models that handle the whole callGoogle, Red Hat and IBM released llm-d 1.0, free software that helps companies serve AI models faster, with Google reporting big gains on one test.
Read more: Google and partners release free software to run AI models fasterGoogle now offers a ready-made AI search tool that runs fully offline inside secure networks, so sensitive files never leave the building.
Read more: Google adds private document search with Gemini AI for locked-down networksMeta has released Muse Spark Open, an open source AI model, and is working with Apple so it can run on your own device. Here is why that matters for cost and privacy.
Read more: Meta releases a free AI model and teams up with Apple to run it locallyGoogle has released a preview of an AI agent for government work. It is meant to cut paperwork and review time, and it affects anyone who serves or contracts with agencies.
Read more: Google launches a Gemini AI agent for government agencies, in previewA reviewer used the $449 Chuwi UniBook as a daily work laptop for two weeks and found it far more capable than cheap Windows laptops usually are.
Read more: A $449 Windows laptop that holds up better than you would expectAndroid Authority says a new Ultra phone could get a major zoom camera upgrade in 2027. It is early talk, so no details are confirmed yet.
Read more: A new Ultra phone may get a big zoom camera upgrade in 2027DeepSeek has made DeepInfer, the engine it says runs its large-scale AI services, free for anyone to use, though only part of it is released.
Read more: DeepSeek releases the software it uses to run its AI modelsGoogle Sheets on iPhone is getting Gemini, Google's AI helper, which Android users already had. Here is what that could mean if you track money or orders.
Read more: Google Sheets on iPhone now gets Gemini, Google's AI helperGemini Notebook, formerly NotebookLM, now lets you approve a slide outline or video plan first, so you are not stuck regenerating a whole deck.
Read more: Gemini Notebook lets you check slides and videos before it builds themChatGPT can now turn your chats and uploaded files into slide presentations, but Plus subscribers do not get the feature.
Read more: ChatGPT can now build slide presentations from your chats and filesOpenAI added live teamwork to ChatGPT Slides, so several people can edit one deck together. It is limited to Pro, Business and Enterprise plans.
Read more: ChatGPT Slides now lets teams edit the same presentation togetherAnthropic says Claude Code now starts replying about three times sooner in local sessions, but the gain is about the first reply, not finished work.
Read more: Claude Code now starts replying sooner, Anthropic saysInception says its new Mercury 3 model answers 4x to 8x faster than similar AI models. The claim is unproven, but speed could change how useful AI feels.
Read more: Inception's Mercury 3 AI model claims 4x to 8x faster answersMistral's Voxtral 3 helps businesses build voice assistants that answer calls, book appointments and speak in dozens of languages, with audio kept on their own servers.
Read more: Mistral releases Voxtral 3 for building voice agents that take callsAmazon's AI service can now force Claude to answer in a set structure, so apps that fill forms and records get fewer broken or missing entries.
Read more: Claude on Amazon Bedrock can now return data in a strict, fixed formatAnthropic's new small AI model, Haiku 5.5, lists at 90% lower prices, but the real saving is closer to 75% and older code can break.
Read more: Claude Haiku 5.5: what's new and how to use it for cheap workflowsAWS says a change to how vLLM shares saved work between servers cuts the wait for a first reply by up to 3.3x in long, multi-turn AI chats.
Read more: Bi-directional KV transfer cuts vLLM time to first token up to 3.3xGoogle Cloud published a guide to building interactive apps that run inside Gemini Enterprise chat, so users can click and adjust instead of typing every change.
Read more: Google shows how to build interactive MCP Apps inside Gemini EnterpriseAnthropic's coding tool, Claude Code, has made plugins an official feature in version 2.1.302. It is a developer update, and most readers need to do nothing.
Read more: Claude Code, Anthropic's coding tool, makes plugins official
