AI News Express 20250730

Generative AI

ChatGPT “Study Mode” Launched, Free 24/7 Tutor

1. OpenAI introduces “Study Mode” for ChatGPT, using a Socratic step-by-step guidance approach to help users understand complex concepts deeply.
2. Available for free to all Free, Plus, Pro, and Team plan users, featuring interactive prompts, step-by-step solutions, and personalized support.
3. The mode’s prompt was discovered and shared by developer Simon Willison, revealing that the system adapts teaching strategies based on users’ educational background and knowledge base.

Grok to Launch “Imagine” Video Feature, Challenging Google’s Veo 3

1. Elon Musk’s xAI is set to launch the “Imagine” image-to-video generation feature for the Grok iOS app, supporting video generation with audio and producing up to four video segments at once.
2. Testing shows realistic results with rich details, supporting various styles, and allowing creation via voice or text descriptions.
3. Imagine will have a dedicated tab, offering near-real-time image generation and preset modes like Spicy, Fun, and Normal, directly competing with Google’s Veo 3.

Kunlun Tech Open-Sources GPT-4o-like Multimodal Model Skywork UniPic

1. Kunlun Tech open-sources Skywork UniPic, a multimodal unified model with just 1.5B parameters, achieving performance comparable to specialized models with tens of billions of parameters, running smoothly on consumer-grade GPUs.
2. The model uses an autoregressive architecture, deeply integrating image understanding, text-to-image generation, and image editing, similar to GPT-4o’s technical approach.
3. Through high-quality small-data training, progressive multitask training, and a proprietary reward model, UniPic achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance on benchmarks like GenEval and DPG-Bench.

Image Editing Model SeedEdit 3.0 Enables Photo Editing via Dialogue

1. Volcano Engine releases SeedEdit 3.0, integrated into VolcanoArk, focusing on instruction following, subject preservation, and generation quality control.
2. The model supports image editing tasks like removal, replacement, and style transfer via natural language instructions, matching GPT-4o and Gemini 2.5 Pro in scenarios like text modification and background replacement.
3. Built on the Seedream 3.0 text-to-image model, it uses multistage training and adaptive timestep sampling to achieve 8x inference acceleration, reducing runtime from 64 seconds to 8 seconds.

NotebookLM Introduces Video Overviews Feature

1. Google updates its AI note-taking tool NotebookLM with a “Video Overviews” feature, automatically generating structured videos from uploaded notes, PDFs, and images.
2. Users can customize video content based on learning topics, knowledge levels, and goals, enhancing personalized learning experiences.
3. Now available to all English users, NotebookLM’s Studio panel is upgraded to save multiple output versions in one notebook, with four new shortcut buttons for audio, video, mind maps, and reports.

Frontier Technology

Former Google CEO Schmidt: “Open Weights” Key to China’s Rapid AI Development

1. At the WAIC conference, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt noted China’s significant AI progress in two years, with models like DeepSeek, Mini Max, and Kimi reaching global leadership.
2. Schmidt highlighted China’s “open weights” strategy as a key differentiator from the U.S., driving rapid AI development.
3. He advocated for stronger U.S.-China AI cooperation, emphasizing open dialogue and trust-building to address AI misuse risks and ensure human safety and dignity as shared goals.