IBL News

Author: IBL News

  • Runway Issues Its Model ‘Gen-4’, Which Allows to Generate Consistent Characters

    Runway Issues Its Model ‘Gen-4’, Which Allows to Generate Consistent Characters

    IBL News | New York

    Runway released its most advanced video generator model called Gen-4 for paid and enterprise customers last week.

    The AI video tools startup claimed it can generate consistent characters, locations, and objects across scenes, maintain coherent world environments, and regenerate elements from different perspectives and positions within scenes “without the need for fine-tuning or additional training.”

    To craft a scene, users can provide images of subjects and describe the composition of the shot they want to generate.

    On the other hand, Runway AI Inc. announced that it raised $308 million in a new round of funding, which more than doubled the company’s valuation. The deal pushes Runway’s value to just over $3 billion. Private equity firm General Atlantic led the round, which closed late last year. Other investors included Nvidia Corp. and SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund 2.

    The company has been able to differentiate itself, inking a deal with a major Hollywood studio and earmarking millions of dollars to fund films using AI-generated video.

    Runway says that Gen-4 allows users to generate consistent characters across lighting conditions using a reference image of those characters.

    “Runway Gen-4 [also] represents a significant milestone in the ability of visual generative models to simulate real-world physics,” said the company.

    Like all video-generating models, Gen-4 was trained on many video examples to learn the patterns and generate synthetic footage.

    Runway refused to say where the training data came from, out of fear of sacrificing competitive advantage and also to avoid IP-related lawsuits.

     

  • Anthropic Launches ‘Claude for Education’ Program to Compete with OpenAI

    Anthropic Launches ‘Claude for Education’ Program to Compete with OpenAI

    IBL News | New York

    Anthropic launched a specialized version of Claude tailored for higher education institutions this week to answer OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu plan.

    The Claude for Education initiative seeks to equip universities with AI-enabled approaches to teaching, learning, and administration.

    With this program, Anthropic is trying to boost its revenue in the university space, where it competes with OpenAI. The company already reportedly brings in $115 million a month.

    Claude for Education includes what Anthropic calls a Learning mode. This mode is based on guiding students’ reasoning process rather than providing answers, helping them develop critical thinking skills. This feature works within Projects and saved conversations, where students can organize their work around specific assignments or topics.

    The solution will be embedded into CanvasLMS and extended with a program called Claude Campus Ambassadors, which will offer API credits for students who build projects.

    Anthropic said it collaborates with Northeastern University, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and Champlain College.

    The AI start-up summarized its offer in these terms:

    • “Students can draft literature reviews with proper citations, work through calculus problems with step-by-step guidance, and get feedback on thesis statements before final submission.
    • Faculty can create rubrics aligned to specific learning outcomes, provide individualized feedback on student essays efficiently, and generate chemistry equations with varying difficulty levels.
    • Administrative staff can analyze enrollment trends across departments, automate repetitive email responses to common inquiries, and convert dense policy documents into accessible FAQ formats—all from a familiar chat interface with enterprise-grade security and privacy controls.” 
  • OpenAI Launches Its Academy as a Resource Hub⁠

    OpenAI Launches Its Academy as a Resource Hub⁠

    IBL News | New York

    OpenAI launched its academy this week to help people acquire AI literacy and unlock economic opportunity. The academy encourages learners to use the company’s tools and resources.

    It’s a free, community-first approach online platform designed for students working toward a meaningful career, teachers reimagining their classrooms, and professionals exploring their next move.

    “It’s a central hub for learning how to use AI. From ChatGPT on Campus and ChatGPT at Work to Sora tutorials, Build Hours, and monthly webinars—plus resources from global partners including leading universities—this is practical, real-world learning in one place,”  explained Siya Raj Purohit, manager at OpenAI, in a post on LinkedIn.

    She added, “OpenAI Academy is our answer to the question, How can I use AI to get ahead?”

    OpenAI Academy announced its educational initiative will offer a mix of online and in-person events, including workshops, discussions, and other digital content ranging from AI basics to advanced integration for engineers and developers.

    The Academy began as a series of in-person programs focused on developers and technical users.

    This next phase will broaden it to educators, students, job seekers, nonprofit leaders, and small business owners.

    It will start with educational materials created by Common Sense Media. Later, it will include in-person AI literacy workshops hosted in collaboration with institutions like Georgia Tech and Miami Dade College; workforce organizations like CareerVillage, Goodwill, and Talent Ready Utah; and mission-driven nonprofits such as Common Sense Media, OATS from AARP, and the Fund for the City of New York.

    Goodwill Keystone in Pennsylvania—an early adopter of AI in the nonprofit sector—will co-develop a hands-on AI literacy workshop, training employment specialists to use ChatGPT to support job-seekers with resume feedback, mock interviews, and career guidance.

    • ChatGPT on Campus resources for students

  • Salesforce Launched ‘Agentforce 2dx’, Letting AI Agents Run Autonomously Across Systems

    Salesforce Launched ‘Agentforce 2dx’, Letting AI Agents Run Autonomously Across Systems

    IBL News | New York

    Salesforce will release Agentforce 2dx in April, a significant update to its digital labor platform. This platform uses autonomous AI agents to work across enterprise data systems and user interfaces without constant human supervision.

    Agentforce 2dx has a new set of low-code and pro-code tools for Salesforce developers, paired with advanced analytics to help teams monitor, debug, and optimize agent performance with real-time data and guidance.

    To experiment with these tools, Salesforce now offers the Agentforce Developer Edition, a free environment where developers can prototype agents using Agentforce and also explore the capabilities of Data Cloud, Salesforce’s data engine.

    Salesforce announced AgentExchange, a marketplace and community with 200 initial partners built into Salesforce.

    Salesforce said customers like The Adecco Group, Engine, OpenTable, Oregon Humane Society, Precina, and Vivint have already adopted Agentforce.

    AgentExchange includes a library of ready-to-use templates and actions while it also enables partners to list their components for sale.

    “Unlike traditional AI chatbots, which require manual prompts or rigid programming, agentic AI dynamically responds to live data and evolving business needs by embedding AI seamlessly into apps, workflows, and processes,” said Adam Evans, EVP and GM of Salesforce’s AI Platform.

    For example, with agentic reasoning, customers can trigger an agent when an ERP order is created or kick off a loan application process automation.

    Dion Hinchcliffe, VP and Practice Lead, CIO Insights, Futurum Group said, “89% of CIOs identify AI and automation as critical to their digital strategy in 2025, yet 60% of AI projects fail to deliver clear ROI. Agentforce bridges this gap with pre-built workflows that deliver measurable impact fast. While DIY agent-based AI projects can take up to a year to implement, Agentforce customers go live in just 4-6 weeks, realizing value 3-4 times faster. As AI agents become embedded across business operations, from engineering to go-to-market, they will fundamentally reshape how teams engage with customers and partners. Instead of siloed interactions across CRM, support platforms, and marketing tools, AI agents can coordinate responses, escalate issues, and optimize workflows in real-time. Companies that harness this shift — especially in their partner ecosystems — will gain a competitive edge in both performance and market reach.”

  • Morehouse College Launched An Innovative Pilot to Integrate AI Mentors and Avatars

    Morehouse College Launched An Innovative Pilot to Integrate AI Mentors and Avatars

    IBL News | New York

    Morehouse College launched an innovative pilot initiative in the spring 2025 semester that will allow faculty to integrate AI mentors and avatars into Computer Science, Philosophy and Religion, Education, Business, and Online courses.

    The initiative is named the “Artificial Intelligence – Pedagogical Innovative Leaders of Technology (AI-PiLOT) Fellows Program! 🚀

    “With the help of cutting-edge tools from ibl.ai integrated into the Canvas LMS, five faculty fellows will work together to develop AI-enhanced course modules using novel AI pedagogical tools with their own AI avatars and AI mentors,” Juana Mendenhall, Ph.D., Vice Provost at Morehouse College’s Walter E. Massey wrote in her LinkedIn account.

    Morehouse College’s goal is to lead the way in establishing how to use AI tools in Liberal Arts education while remaining human-centered.

    • LinkedIn. ibl.ai and Morehouse College: 2025 AI Initiative

  • Harvard’s $255.6M in Contracts and $8.7B in Multi-Year Grants Under the Federal Microscope

    Harvard’s $255.6M in Contracts and $8.7B in Multi-Year Grants Under the Federal Microscope

    IBL News | New York

    The Trump Administration announced yesterday it will undertake a “comprehensive review of federal contracts and grants” at Harvard University and its affiliates to combat anti-semitism and purge pro-Palestinian voices.

    Harvard is the latest Ivy League institution to be targeted by President Trump after Columbia University agreed to comply with demands.

    The Departments of Education (ED), Health and Human Services (HHS), and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) will review, through the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, the more than $255.6 million in contracts between Harvard University, its affiliates, and the Federal Government.

    The review will also include the more than $8.7 billion in multi-year grant commitments to Harvard University and its affiliates “to ensure the university’s compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities.”

    “Today’s actions by the Task Force follow a similar ongoing review of Columbia University,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.

    That review led to Columbia’s agreement to comply with nine preconditions for further negotiations regarding the return of canceled federal funds.

    Ivy League universities — and Columbia in particular — were an epicentre of pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the U.S., after Israel launched a war against Gaza in October 2023.

    Similar protests around the country followed by student encampments on Columbia’s lawn in April and May 2024, as campus activists criticized school ties to Israel and called for an end of the war in Gaza.

  • OpenAI Valued at $300 Billion after Closing $40 Billion In Funding

    OpenAI Valued at $300 Billion after Closing $40 Billion In Funding

    IBL News | New York

    OpenAI announced on Monday that it closed a $40 billion funding round, the largest private amount raised by a private tech company.

    The $40 billion financing valued the ChatGPT owner at $300 billion. This valuation puts OpenAI only behind SpaceX at $350 billion and TikTok.

    The financing round included $30 billion from SoftBank and $10 billion from a syndicate of investors, including core investor Microsoft and Coatue, Altimeter, and Thrive.

    According to a blog post, OpenAI plans to use the fresh capital to “push the frontiers of AI research even further” and scale its compute infrastructure.

    About $18 billion of the funding is expected to be used for OpenAI’s commitment to Stargate, the joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle, which President Trump announced in January.

    The initial funding will be $10 billion, followed by the remaining $30 billion by the end of 2025. However, in an updated disclosure on Monday, SoftBank said that its total investment could be slashed to as low as $20 billion if OpenAI doesn’t restructure into a for-profit entity by Dec. 31.

    The pulling into a for-profit conversion will need the approval of Microsoft and the California Attorney General. Elon Musk, who was one of the co-founders of OpenAI in 2015, when it was started as a non-profit research lab, challenged in court this effort of OpenAI.

    On the other hand, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced yesterday that the company is planning to release its first open-weight language model with reasoning capabilities since GPT-2 in the coming months.

    The generative AI market is poised to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade. Companies from Google and Amazon to Anthropic and Perplexity are racing to announce new products and features, especially as the race to build “AI agents” intensifies.

  • Columbia University Replaced Its President as the White House Threatened Funding

    Columbia University Replaced Its President as the White House Threatened Funding

    IBL News | New York

    Dr. Katrina Armstrong, president of Columbia University, left her post this Friday after her leadership threatened $400 million in federal funding. She was Columbia’s third leader since August 2024, when the university became a hub of a campus protest movement against the war in Gaza and the Israelis.

    Claire Shipman, a journalist with two degrees from Columbia and co-chair of the university’s board of trustees, was named the acting president and replaced Dr. Katrina Armstrong.

    One week before this abrupt replacement, Columbia University bowed to a series of White House demands, and no resignations seemed involved.

    However, a leaked revelation pointed to comments from Dr. Armstrong at a faculty meeting last weekend saying privately that the school would not stick to some of its agreements with the Trump administration.

    Following this punitive approach at Columbia, the Trump Administration is now threatening to end the funding of billions of dollars to several universities across the country. Many colleges are facing inquiries from agencies that range from the Justice Department to the Department of Health and Human Services.

    DEI Scrutiny

    • Two days before Columbia announced its decision, the government said it would withhold about $175 million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania because the school allowed a transgender woman to be a member of its women’s swim team in 2022.

    • Last week, the University of Michigan announced it will close its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) office due to recent executive orders from President Trump and funding uncertainty. The institution had spent $250 million on DEI efforts through last fall and had 163 DEI personnel.

    This DEI closure announcement comes as federal funding for schools has been under scrutiny by Trump.

    Antisemitic Scrutiny

    Another focus from the Trump Administration is what is considered antisemitic activity on campus following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. On March 10, the White House warned 60 institutions that they risk losing federal government funding.

    Moreover, nineteen of those academic institutions are under investigation for antisemitism by the Trump administration, according to Reuters.

    “Universities are experiencing distress because they don’t even know the nature and extent of the allegations against them,” said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the advocacy group American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU).

    Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said Jewish students at “elite U.S. campuses” are in fear for their safety. “American colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by U.S. taxpayers. That support is a privilege contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws.”

  • OpenAI’s Studio Ghibli Style Generated Images Flood Social Media with Memes

    OpenAI’s Studio Ghibli Style Generated Images Flood Social Media with Memes

    IBL News | New York

    AI-generated memes in the style of Studio Ghibli—the cult-favorite Japanese animation studio behind films such as “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Spirited Away”—are flooding social media, forcing OpenAI to put a rate limit on image generation requests, according to CEO Sam Altman.

    “It’s super fun seeing people love images in ChatGPT, but our GPUs are melting,” he posted on X today.

    The newly improved image generation of GPT-4o, released this week, is resulting in creations that are more realistic than before, and even users can take them in any number of directions.

    Usually, users upload existing images and pictures into ChatGPT and ask the chatbot to recreate them in new styles. OpenAI’s and Google’s latest tools make it easier than ever to re-create the styles of copyrighted works — simply by typing a text prompt.

  • Mistral Releases an Open Source Model that Outperforms Gemma 3 and GPT-4o Mini

    Mistral Releases an Open Source Model that Outperforms Gemma 3 and GPT-4o Mini

    IBL News | New York

    Paris–based Mistral AI unveiled Mistral Small 3.1, a new multimodal open-source model. According to the company, it is “the best model in its weight class ” and “outperforms comparable models like Gemma 3 and GPT-4o Mini. “

    Released under an Apache 2.0 license, Mistral Small 3.1 has an expanded context window of up to 128k tokens and a delivery inference speed of 150 tokens per second.

    Experts say that Mistral Small 3 is competitive with larger models such as Llama 3.3 70B or Qwen 32B and replaces opaque proprietary models like GPT4o-mini.

    Mistral Small 3 can be fine-tuned to specialize in specific domains, creating highly accurate experts. This is particularly useful in fields like legal advice, medical diagnostics, and technical support, where domain-specific knowledge is essential.

    This model sets the stage for increased competition in a market dominated by U.S. tech giants. Mistral’s open-source approach highlights a growing divide in the AI industry between closed, proprietary systems and open, accessible alternatives.

    After raising $1.04 billion, founded in 2023 by former researchers from Google DeepMind and Meta, Mistral AI has rapidly established itself as Europe’s leading AI startup, with a valuation of approximately $6 billion. While impressive for a European startup, this valuation remains a fraction of OpenAI’s reported $80 billion.

    Mistral Small 3 Human Evals

    Mistral Small 3.1 joins the company’s rapidly expanding suite of AI products.

    Earlier this month, the company introduced Mistral OCR, an optical character recognition API that converts PDF documents into AI-ready Markdown files. This addresses a critical need for enterprises seeking to make document repositories accessible to AI systems.

    These specialized tools complement Mistral’s broader portfolio, which includes Mistral Large 2 (their flagship large language model), Pixtral (for multimodal applications), Codestral (for code generation), and “Les Ministraux,” a family of models optimized for edge devices.