Google launches Gemini 4 Argon, claims #1 on Vals Index

Google's announcement arrived alongside a reminder that popularity does not guarantee survival in AI. Character.AI, one of the earliest conversational AI services, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after what the company described as a year of legal, regulatory and operational headwinds. Disney has reportedly bid $20 million for some of its assets. The service remains operational for now — paid subscriptions continue and users can export their data — but the sale outcome will determine whether it continues at all.

Separately, Anthropic's safety team ran an experiment in which 15 no-brand Android TV boxes, each costing around $55, collectively ran a 26B model at 0.39 tokens per second. A smaller 9B model successfully performed the setup on 8 of 9 device types tested. The researchers suggest that if small AI models keep growing at their current pace, they could reach this capability within the year, though the setup still produces errors in end-to-end runs.

On the product side, Google Play opened a mechanism for users to install AI-built apps privately on their own Android phones, initially for US users aged 18 and over, with a path to share with trusted contacts and eventually publish publicly after review. OpenAI also highlighted Higgsfield, which extended AI-generated video from 1 minute to over 10 minutes using GPT-6 Astra, GPT-Image-2.5 and GPT-Live.