On Monday, Chinese tech giant Alibaba released Qwen 3, an open-licensed family of AI models that "match and in some cases outperform" Google and OpenAI's offerings, available on Hugging Face and GitHub. With support for 119 languages, these "hybrid models" integrate thinking and non-thinking modes via a configurable "thinking budget," and some use a mixture-of-experts architecture. Qwen 3's largest variant, Qwen-3-235B-A22B, competitively trades blows with o3-mini and Gemini 2.5 Pro on a variety of benchmarks, even triumphing on some coding and math ones, though this variant is not publicly available yet.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Musk's xAI Holdings is in early discussions to secure a $20 billion funding round, which would value the combined AI and social media venture at over $120 billion and rank as the second-largest private startup raise in known history, trailing only OpenAI's $40 billion. The extra cash would significantly reduce X's debt load, currently costing it $200 million in monthly servicing fees and over $1.3 billion in annual interest. A fundraiser of this magnitude likely shows the underlying investor allure of AI along with Musk's ever-growing controversial presence in US politics.
According to a company-wide email sent by co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn, Duolingo will gradually cease using contractors for work that can be done by AI, along with an announcement that the company will become "AI-first." The email, which was posted on Duolingo's LinkedIn account, also details adding "a few constructive constraints," plans to revamp the company's hiring processes, and using AI in performance reviews. However, public reception hasn't been nearly as optimistic, with many arguing against the shift as the move comes off as largely divisive.
Meta found itself in a bit of trouble earlier this week as Meta's AI chatbots were found engaging in sexual roleplay with accounts flagged as underage, the Wall Street Journal reported. In tests, both official and user-created bots, including those voiced by celebrities like John Cena, Kristen Bell, and Judi Dench, would not only indulge users but also steer conversations toward very explicit scenarios despite the bots acknowledging the illegality of such acts. Meta, which denies lax safeguards, says it has added measures to prevent such misuse again.
In a defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems' ex-employee, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's attorney Christopher Kachouroff submitted an opposition brief riddled with "nearly thirty" fabricated citations, including "cases that do not exist." Only after Judge Nina Wang pressed him did he admit he "did, in fact, use generative artificial intelligence" and "failed to cite check the authority in the Opposition after such use before filing it with the Court." Judge Wang has ordered explanations by the 5th of May or will refer both Kachouroff and Lindell's other attorney, Jennifer DeMaster, for professional discipline.
Beijing startup Butterfly Effect has locked in $75 million in a Series A2 fundraiser that values the company at roughly $500 million - five times its previous worth. The funding arrives two months after it opened invite-only access to its quickly popularity-gaining Manus AI agent, which showcased website development, real-estate research, and more, though it suffered from occasional crashes and task failures. In late March, the company monetized Manus by introducing two paid tiers to the platform at $39/month and $199/month, which puts it in direct competition with the likes of OpenAI's Operator.