31 Aug 2025

AI News Digest

🤖 AI-curated 4 stories

Today's Summary

Microsoft is leveling up its AI game with its own MAI models making their debut, which are set to shake up how they integrate AI into products like Copilot. Meanwhile, Samsung’s 2025 lineup of smart TVs and monitors will come equipped with Microsoft Copilot, bringing conversational AI into living rooms and signaling how AI is becoming an everyday home companion. Over at Google, the Jules coding agent is stepping out of beta, offering developers a way to automate routine tasks asynchronously, hinting at a future where AI is more of a silent partner in coding. Plus, if you’re looking to dive into AI yourself, Tech.co’s roundup of free training courses is a solid starting point to get those skills going without shelling out cash.

Stories

Microsoft unveils its first in‑house MAI models (MAI‑Voice‑1 and MAI‑1‑preview)

Microsoft AI launched two homegrown models — MAI‑Voice‑1 (a high‑speed, expressive speech generator) and MAI‑1‑preview (an instruction‑following LLM) — which are already being integrated into Copilot features and released for limited public testing. This marks a strategic shift toward building Microsoft’s own model stack (trained on large NVIDIA H100 clusters) while continuing to orchestrate multiple specialist models across products. The move reduces Microsoft’s operational dependence on external model providers, gives it more control over product integrations (voice, on‑device performance and latency), and reshapes competitive dynamics among Big Tech AI offerings.

Microsoft Copilot lands on Samsung’s 2025 smart TVs and monitors

Samsung and Microsoft announced integration of Microsoft Copilot across Samsung’s 2025 TV and smart‑monitor lineup (Micro RGB, Neo QLED, OLED, The Frame series and smart monitors). Copilot on the big screen supports voice interactions, content discovery, personalized recommendations and on‑screen assistance via Tizen OS and Samsung Daily+. The partnership brings generative AI experiences into living‑room hardware, accelerating the mainstreaming of conversational AI in consumer electronics and strengthening Microsoft’s presence beyond PCs and phones.

Google’s Jules coding agent exits beta — an asynchronous AI that can run in VMs and open pull requests

Google took its AI coding agent Jules out of beta (Aug 6, 2025). Jules runs asynchronously inside Google Cloud VMs, integrates with GitHub (including automatic pull requests), and can be given tasks to run while developers step away — a different approach from synchronous copilots. The rollout adds structured pricing tiers and clearer privacy language, and positions Jules as a hands‑off automation tool for bug fixes, refactors and other developer tasks — potentially shifting how teams delegate routine coding work and accelerating ‘vibe‑coding’ and agent‑based workflows.

Best free AI training courses for August 2025 — a practical roundup to learn AI and build skills

Tech.co published a curated guide (Aug 4, 2025) listing high‑quality, free AI and coding courses — from IBM’s introductory AI tracks to hands‑on API and developer lessons like Codecademy’s OpenAI API course. The roundup is a useful, practical resource for people who want a fast way to learn AI concepts, APIs, and applied engineering without cost, and it highlights short, project‑focused courses that help learners build immediately useful skills for AI tooling and app development.