Research & Development news

• Google Unveils Gemini 3.1 Pro, Touting a Leap in ‘Complex Problem-Solving’

  19-02-2026 20:34 via eweek.com
  Google has officially introduced Gemini 3.1 Pro, the latest update in its Gemini 3 family of models. The company describes the release as the upgraded core intelligence behind last week’s Gemini 3 Deep Think update and says it is now bringing those gains to a wider audience. The release marks Google’s attempt to reclaim the top position in the fiercely competitive AI race, a throne it has traded back and forth with OpenAI and Anthropic in recent months.In a blog post announcing
  
  Read more

• Meta’s ‘Malibu 2’ Smartwatch to Focus on Health Tracking, AI

  19-02-2026 19:13 via eweek.com
  Meta is reviving its long-rumored smartwatch effort, with reports indicating the company plans to launch its first wrist device in 2026. The device, internally known as “Malibu 2,” is expected to focus on health tracking and include a built-in Meta AI assistant, according to a report by The Information.The move marks a return to a product Meta previously explored but ultimately shelved. The company had worked on smartwatch concepts roughly five years ago, including versions with
  
  Read more

• Meta Patents AI That Could Keep Users Posting After Death

  19-02-2026 17:16 via eweek.com
  Meta has been granted a patent for artificial intelligence that could allow a person’s social media account to keep interacting after they die. The system would use a large language model trained on a user’s historical activity to simulate how that person behaves online, potentially responding to posts and messages as if they were still present.Filed in 2023 and approved in late December, the patent lists Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth as its primary author. It describ
  
  Read more

• Netflix Calls ByteDance’s AI a ‘Piracy Engine’ in Escalating Copyright Showdown

  19-02-2026 15:40 via eweek.com
  Netflix has grown tired of AI remixing its hit shows. The streaming giant this week sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, accusing its AI video model Seedance 2.0 of copying characters, costumes, and scenes without permission. ByteDance, the Chinese tech company that owns TikTok, now faces mounting pressure from some of Hollywood’s most powerful studios over what they describe as widespread intellectual property violations. The confrontation marks a new phase in the entertainme
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• OpenAI Just Showed That AI Can Drain a Crypto Wallet… on Purpose

  19-02-2026 15:32 via eweek.com
  Here’s a sentence that should make anyone with crypto slightly nervous: OpenAI’s newest coding agent (GPT 5.3-Codex) can successfully hack and drain funds from vulnerable crypto smart contracts 72% of the time.OpenAI (alongside crypto investment firm Paradigm) just released EVMbench, a new benchmark that tests how well AI agents can find, fix, and exploit security vulnerabilities in smart contracts (the self-executing code that manages over $100 billion in crypto assets).Quick refres
  
  Read more

• China’s Unitree Aims to Ship 20,000 Humanoid Robots in 2026

  19-02-2026 15:24 via eweek.com
  The post China’s Unitree Aims to Ship 20,000 Humanoid Robots in 2026 appeared first on eWEEK.
  
  Read more

• Google’s Lyria 3 Arrives in Gemini for Custom Music Creation

  19-02-2026 14:23 via eweek.com
  Google is putting a music studio inside Gemini. The app now lets users generate 30-second AI tracks on demand, turning simple prompts into fully formed songs.The update brings DeepMind’s Lyria 3 model directly into Gemini, allowing text or photos to be transformed into custom music with generated lyrics and shareable audio, according to a Google announcement.Text in, music outUsers can describe a genre, mood, memory, or inside joke, and the system composes an original track complete with v
  
  Read more

• Saudi Arabia Invests $3B in Elon Musk’s xAI Empire

  19-02-2026 12:20 via eweek.com
  Money talks.In AI, it also buys megawatts.
  Humain says it has poured $3 billion into Elon Musk’s xAI, a move that spotlights how the AI race is shifting from splashy launches to buildout math: capital, compute, power, and the places you can actually build. It’s also a rare case where a state-backed AI push shows up as a direct stake in a US frontier lab.
  Humain disclosed the investment on February 18, 2026, and said it was made during xAI’s $20 billion Series E round that close
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• OpenAI’s Tata Tie-Up Puts 100 MW of AI Compute on the Table in India

  19-02-2026 11:25 via eweek.com
  OpenAI’s India push just got a serious power upgrade.
  In a new partnership with the Tata Group, OpenAI will anchor Tata Consultancy Services’ (TCS) HyperVault data center platform with 100 MW of AI-ready capacity, with an option to scale to 1 gigawatt over time, as reported by TechCrunch and the Times of India.
  OpenAI’s pitch is simple: bring more compute closer to one of its largest user bases while meeting enterprise requirements for data residency, security, and compliance.
  
  Read more

Follow @R_and_D_News on Twitter!