Research & Development news

• Weave’s $8K Laundry Robot Still Needs Human Help

  13-02-2026 20:46 via eweek.com
  If you were hoping for a home robot that could finally handle laundry for you, Weave Robotics has an answer — sort of. The company’s new Isaac 0 folding robot is now shipping in the Bay Area, but it can’t do the job alone. The roughly $8K device folds common garments in 30 to 90 minutes and improves through weekly AI updates. When it gets stuck, remote human specialists step in to correct mistakes in real time. Isaac 0 offers a candid look at where home robotics will
  
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• Elon Musk Slams Anthropic AI as ‘Evil’ After $380B Valuation

  13-02-2026 19:54 via eweek.com
  Anthropic should have been popping champagne. The AI startup recently announced a massive $30 billion funding round that reportedly values the company at roughly $380 billion, cementing its place among the most valuable private AI players in the world.
  But instead of applause, the company got a public broadside from Elon Musk.
  In a sharply worded post on X, the xAI founder accused Anthropic’s models of being “misanthropic and evil,” igniting yet another high-profile clash in th
  
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• Waymo Begins Deploying Next-Gen Ojai Robotaxis in the US

  13-02-2026 18:01 via eweek.com
  Waymo is putting its most advanced self-driving system yet on the road.The Alphabet-owned company announced on Feb. 12 that it has begun fully autonomous operations with its sixth-generation Waymo Driver system. The new fleet, built on base vehicles from Chinese automaker Geely, represents the company’s most aggressive push yet to scale its technology while driving down costs.“This latest system serves as the primary engine for our next era of expansion, with a streamlined configurat
  
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• Hackers Try to Clone Google’s Gemini With 100,000+ AI Probes

  13-02-2026 17:49 via eweek.com
  Google built Gemini to answer questions. Now attackers are using questions as lockpicks.In a surge of more than 100,000 carefully engineered prompts, threat actors have been hammering Google’s Gemini chatbot in what the company calls “model extraction” or “distillation” attacks. By systematically probing the system, adversaries attempt to reverse engineer the model’s underlying logic, reasoning patterns, and chain of thought to build rival AI systems without p
  
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• ByteDance Launches Seedance 2.0 AI Video Model to Rival OpenAI, Google

  13-02-2026 17:31 via eweek.com
  ByteDance just fired a starting pistol in the AI video race… and it is not aiming for second place.The TikTok parent rolled out Seedance 2.0, a video model that quickly went viral in China, and highlighted major upgrades to its Seedream image tools. The company has designed Seedance 2.0 for professional film, e-commerce, and advertising production, signaling its latest foray into multimodal generative AI. The launch puts ByteDance into direct competition with OpenAI, Google, and Alib
  
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• OpenAI Debuts GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark, a Near-Instant AI for Real-Time Coding

  13-02-2026 16:53 via eweek.com
  OpenAI has released a research preview of GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark, a lightweight version of its latest Codex system built specifically for real-time coding. The model is designed to deliver rapid responses for tasks such as editing functions, refining logic, or adjusting interfaces inside development tools. According to OpenAI, the model is optimized to feel “near-instant” and can produce more than 1,000 tokens per second when running on ultra-low-latency hardware.At launch, Codex-S
  
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• Figure Launches Humanoid Robot Upgrade Helix 02 for Full-Body Autonomy

  13-02-2026 14:36 via eweek.com
  Figure has introduced Helix 02, its most advanced humanoid AI yet, designed to control an entire robot’s body as a single coordinated system. The new model allows a humanoid to walk, handle objects, balance, and adapt continuously without human input, marking a significant step toward practical robot autonomy. The company says the system moves beyond short demonstrations and scripted motions, enabling robots to perform real-world tasks from start to finish.To showcase the upgrade, Hel
  
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