Multimodal models
7 stories. An explainer is being written.
Multimodal models in the news
·Hugging Face
Swiss AI releases Apertus 1.5 with vision, audio and longer context
The open-weight 8B and 70B models add multimodality, but still trail frontier rivals
·Hugging Face
Meta releases Muse Spark Open, an 816B-parameter MoE model
Open weights, four modalities, a million-token window — but 1.5TB to serve
·Transformers releases
Transformers v5.20.0 adds Meta's 816B-parameter Muse Spark Open
Seven new model families land alongside breaking changes to cache and config APIs
·Google DeepMind
Google DeepMind launches Gemini 4 Argon for robotics
A physical-reasoning model that writes its own simulations before touching hardware
·llama.cpp releases
llama.cpp adds image-embedding support for Qwen3.8 Flash Next
A single pull request, the release notes offer little else
·Transformers releases
Transformers 5.18.0 adds four model families, breaks six APIs
Hugging Face's release adds Nemotron 3 diarization and NemotronH Omni alongside six backwards-incompatible fixes.
·Google DeepMind
Google adds a talking avatar to Gemini 3.8 Live
The enterprise feature pairs real-time video with speech, lip-syncing across 97 languages and running background tool calls.