As of: 2026-10-10 14:45 CEST. Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code). Human editor: Adam Bicz. Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/news/media-generation/ # AI news: Media generation 32 events in Media generation of 1,105 in the log, newest first. Page 1 of 1, 50 events per page, grouped by the day each event happened. ## Wednesday 7 October 2026 - [Nieman Lab: ChatGPT images carry real New Yorker cartoonists' signatures](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-07-chatgpt-forges-new-yorker-cartoonist-signatures/) (Media generation; OpenAI). In early October 2026 Nieman Lab reported that ChatGPT's image generator puts the signatures or pen names of real New Yorker cartoonists on "New Yorker-style" cartoons. Source: https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/chatgpt-is-adding-real-cartoonists-signatures-to-fake-new-yorker-cartoons/ ## Tuesday 6 October 2026 - [Google releases Nano Banana 2.1 image model (based on Gemini 3.6 Flash) at about half the per-image price of Nano Banana 2](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-06-nano-banana-2-1/) (Media generation; Google DeepMind). Nano Banana is Google's default fast image generation and editing model across its products and API. Source: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/models/gemini-nano-banana-2.1 ## Sunday 4 October 2026 - [Instagram adds a Meta AI song creator to DMs](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-04-instagram-ai-song-creator-dms/) (Media generation; Meta). AI music generation moves from dedicated apps (Suno, Udio) into mainstream messaging, as label lawsuits and licensing deals over AI music are still being settled. Source: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/instagram-adds-ai-songs-to-dms/832086/ ## Friday 2 October 2026 - [Suno launches Speech (public beta)](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-02-suno-speech-beta/) (Media generation; Suno). Music-generation companies are moving into the voice/TTS market led by ElevenLabs. Source: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1003925/suno-speech-ai-voice-feature-beta-availability ## Thursday 1 October 2026 - [Tavus unveils Griffin, a real-time face-to-face video model it says is the first to pass a 'video Turing test' (48% thought it was human)](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-01-tavus-griffin-video-turing-test/) (Media generation; Tavus). Tavus announced Griffin, a full-duplex video-to-video "Human Interaction Model" that watches and listens while it talks, can interrupt and be interrupted, and reacts to gestures and objects on camera. Source: https://www.tavus.io/griffin ## Monday 28 September 2026 - [Kuaishou's Kling unveils Kling 4.0](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-28-kling-4-0/) (Media generation; Kuaishou, Kling AI). 30-second coherent clips with keyframe control move AI video from short shots toward full scenes; Chinese companies (Kling, Seedance, Wan, Hailuo) now lead many video leaderboards, as TechCrunch noted in July. Source: https://kling.ai/blog ## Tuesday 22 September 2026 - [Tencent Hunyuan releases Hy Image 3.5 preview, an image model priced at ¥0.15 per 2K image](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-22-tencent-hy-image-3-5-preview/) (Media generation; Tencent). Part of the 2026 price war among Chinese image models (Seedream, Qwen-Image, Hunyuan). Source: https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20260922A049W000 ## Monday 21 September 2026 - [ElevenLabs Studio 4.0 turns ElevenCreative into an agentic AI video editor](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-21-elevenlabs-studio-4/) (Media generation; ElevenLabs). It extends ElevenLabs from voice into multi-model video production. Source: https://elevenlabs.io/blog/introducing-studio-4 ## Sunday 20 September 2026 - [Alibaba releases Qwen-Image-2.1, a 7B open-weights image generation and editing model with native transparency](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-20-qwen-image-2-1/) (Media generation; Alibaba, Qwen). A 7B open model with editing, multi-reference input and native transparency makes high-quality local image generation practical on a single GPU, and it narrows the gap to the closed leaders. Source: https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen-Image-2.1-Turbo ## Friday 11 September 2026 - [ElevenLabs releases Music v2.5](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-11-elevenlabs-music-v2-5/) (Media generation; ElevenLabs). ElevenLabs released Music v2.5 (music_v2_5) on 2026-09-11, its most advanced text-to-music model. Source: https://elevenlabs.io/blog/music-v2-5-model ## Wednesday 9 September 2026 - [Suno launches v6, its first music models trained on licensed music](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-09-suno-v6-licensed-music-model/) (Media generation; Suno, Warner Music Group, BMG, Believe). v6 is the clearest test yet of a licensed-training business model for generative media; the new Sony/UMG suit tests whether "clean-room" retraining on licensed data (but with learnings from older models) is enough. Source: https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/09/suno-replaces-its-ai-models-with-a-new-one-trained-on-licensed-music-as-copyright-suits-pile-up/ ## Tuesday 8 September 2026 - [OpenAI launches ChatGPT Images 2.5 with Sketch, plus GPT-Image-2.5 Flare and Sunburst in the API](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-08-chatgpt-images-2-5/) (Media generation; OpenAI). Image generation in chat is now mostly about editing and control rather than one-off pictures, and OpenAI's own figure of more than 3 billion images a week shows how heavily it is used. Source: https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-images-2-5/ ## Friday 4 September 2026 - [Microsoft releases MAI-Image-2.6 and MAI-Image-2.6-Flash in Foundry](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-04-microsoft-mai-image-2-6/) (Media generation; Microsoft). It is part of Microsoft's push to build first-party models alongside its OpenAI partnership. Source: https://microsoft.ai/news/pushing-the-quality-cost-frontier-with-mai-image-2-6/ ## Thursday 27 August 2026 - [Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash adds scene extension, frame interpolation and 4K upscaling](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-08-27-gemini-omni-1-1-flash/) (Media generation; Google DeepMind, Google). These are the controls professional video workflows need (continuity, shot planning, resolution), and adoption by Adobe, Figma and Runway puts Google's model inside mainstream creative tools. Source: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/build-with-gemini-omni-1-1-flash/ ## Tuesday 11 August 2026 - [Lightricks releases LTX-2.5, a 22B open-weights audio-video 'world model' with multishot generation and up to 4K output](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-08-11-lightricks-ltx-2-5-open-weights/) (Media generation; Lightricks). Free for organisations under $10M revenue, it became the most-downloaded generative model on Hugging Face (~1.6M downloads a month by October). Source: https://huggingface.co/Lightricks/LTX-2.5 ## Wednesday 29 July 2026 - [Google launches Lyria 3.5 music model in Flow Music](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-07-29-google-lyria-3-5/) (Media generation; Google DeepMind, Google). Google now ships a GA, watermarked, pay-per-song music model to developers, something Suno (web app only, API only "being explored") and Udio (no public API) do not offer. Source: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/google-labs/lyria-3-5/ ## Thursday 23 July 2026 - [Black Forest Labs unveils FLUX 3](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-07-23-black-forest-labs-flux-3/) (Media generation; Black Forest Labs; major). FLUX 3 is a concrete instance of the "world model → robot policy" convergence: a generative video model doubling as a robot foundation model. Source: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/07/23/3332364/0/en/black-forest-labs-unveils-flux-3-a-new-multimodal-frontier-model-for-visual-intelligence.html ## Tuesday 30 June 2026 - [Gemini Omni Flash opens to developers via the Gemini API](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-06-30-gemini-omni-flash-api/) (Media generation; Google). API access turned Omni from a consumer feature into a building block; third-party creative tools began integrating it (Adobe Firefly, Figma Weave and Runway integrated the later 1.1 version). Source: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/changelog ## Thursday 28 May 2026 - [ElevenLabs Dubbing v2 dubs speech to speech directly in 90+ languages](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-05-28-elevenlabs-dubbing-v2/) (Media generation; ElevenLabs). End-to-end speech-to-speech translation that keeps each speaker's performance makes AI dubbing viable for expressive film and creator content. Source: https://elevenlabs.io/blog/introducing-dubbing-v2 ## Tuesday 19 May 2026 - [Google unveils Gemini Omni, an any-to-any model that generates and conversationally edits video](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-05-19-gemini-omni/) (Media generation; Google DeepMind, Google; major). It rolled out to paid Gemini/Flow users and free on YouTube Shorts; API access came 30 June and Omni 1.1 Flash on 27 Aug. Source: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-omni/ ## Thursday 26 March 2026 - [Suno v5.5 lets users sing with their own cloned voice and fine-tune personal models](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-03-26-suno-v5-5-voices-custom-models/) (Media generation; Suno). It moved consumer AI music from "generic song" toward "your voice, your sound". Source: https://about.suno.com/blog/v5-5 ## Tuesday 24 March 2026 - [OpenAI shuts down Sora](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-03-24-openai-shuts-down-sora/) (Media generation; OpenAI, Disney). It is the clearest example of a frontier lab abandoning a flagship consumer product because of compute costs. Source: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001152-what-to-know-about-the-sora-discontinuation ## Tuesday 17 March 2026 - [Midjourney V8 alpha: a rebuilt GPU-native model, ~5x faster, with native 2K](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-03-17-midjourney-v8-alpha/) (Media generation; Midjourney). Midjourney remains the leading independent image generator; the platform rewrite lets it iterate faster against Google, OpenAI and Chinese rivals. Source: https://docs.midjourney.com/hc/en-us/articles/32199405667853-Version ## Thursday 26 February 2026 - [Google launches Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image)](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-02-26-nano-banana-2/) (Media generation; Google DeepMind, Google). Image generation/editing became a major driver of Gemini adoption (Google later reported 150M+ images generated daily in the Gemini app). Source: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/ai/nano-banana-2/ ## Wednesday 18 February 2026 - [Google launches Lyria 3](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-02-18-google-lyria-3-gemini-app/) (Media generation; Google DeepMind, Google). It put a Suno-class song generator in front of Gemini's mass consumer audience and gave developers a first-party, pay-per-song music API with watermarking and C2PA credentials. Source: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-app/lyria-3/ ## Thursday 5 February 2026 - [Kling 3.0: unified multimodal video model with native audio and multi-shot 'AI Director'](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-02-05-kling-3-0/) (Media generation; Kuaishou, Kling AI). It set the bar for Chinese video models in early 2026 and was followed by Kling 4.0 in September. Source: https://ir.kuaishou.com/news-releases/news-release-details/kling-ai-launches-30-model-ushering-era-where-everyone-can-be ## Tuesday 30 September 2025 - [OpenAI launches Sora 2 and the Sora social app](https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-09-30-sora-2/) (Media generation; OpenAI; major). Turned AI video into a mass social medium and intensified debates about deepfakes, likeness rights and copyright. Source: https://openai.com/index/sora-2/ ## Tuesday 26 August 2025 - [Google releases Gemini 2.5 Flash Image ('Nano Banana')](https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-08-26-gemini-2-5-flash-image/) (Media generation; Google DeepMind). Showed natively multimodal LLMs overtaking specialized diffusion tools for image editing. Source: https://developers.googleblog.com/en/introducing-gemini-2-5-flash-image/ ## Tuesday 20 May 2025 - [Google's Veo 3 generates video with native audio](https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-05-20-veo-3/) (Media generation; Google DeepMind; major). Crossed the uncanny valley for short AI video with dialogue, intensifying concerns about synthetic media. Source: https://deepmind.google/models/veo/ ## Thursday 15 February 2024 - [OpenAI previews Sora, a text-to-video 'world simulator'](https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-02-15-sora/) (Media generation; OpenAI; major). Reset expectations for AI video overnight and triggered a video-generation race (Veo, Kling, Runway Gen-3). Source: https://openai.com/index/sora/ ## Wednesday 6 April 2022 - [DALL·E 2 brings photorealistic text-to-image generation](https://postcutoff.com/e/2022-04-06-dall-e-2/) (Media generation; OpenAI; major). Marked diffusion models' takeover of image generation and triggered debates on artists' rights and synthetic media. Source: https://openai.com/index/dall-e-2/ ## Tuesday 5 January 2021 - [OpenAI unveils DALL·E and CLIP](https://postcutoff.com/e/2021-01-05-dall-e-clip/) (Media generation; OpenAI; major). Launched the text-to-image era and made natural language the interface for vision models. 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