Google Photos Delivers Its Biggest AI Update Yet

The AI landscape is buzzing with breakthroughs this week — from creative tools that bring memories to life to game-changing innovations in biotech and next-gen AI startups building serious hype. Google Photos is rolling out powerful new creative AI features to turn your still images into animations, sketches, and 3D art. Meanwhile, Latent Labs has unveiled LatentX, a browser-based AI platform that democratizes protein design, promising to accelerate drug discovery like never before. And in the startup world, Pika Labs is making waves with its exclusive access codes, sparking massive excitement among early adopters eager to test their latest AI-powered tool.

Let’s dive into this week’s most exciting AI updates! 👇️ 

Google Photos Adds Creative AI Tools

Google Photos now lets users easily transform memories into dynamic art with new features rolling out in July and August 2025. You can animate still images into six-second video clips using the “Photo to video” tool powered by Veo 2, choose fun prompts to bring photos to life, or use the “Remix” option to reimagine pictures in styles like anime, sketches, and 3D cartoons—all within seconds. These creative upgrades are organized in the new “Create” tab for simple access, and every AI-generated image or video comes with transparent watermarking for safety, ensuring your gallery remains both innovative and secure as you share personalized memories with friends and family.

Latent Labs Launches LatentX: AI-Powered Protein Design in Your Browser

Latent Labs, founded by former AlphaFold protein design team co-leader Simon Kohl, has launched LatentX, a web-based AI model that democratizes protein design by enabling users to create novel proteins directly from their browsers using natural language inputs. Unlike AlphaFold, which predicts existing protein structures, LatentX generates completely new proteins with precise atomic configurations, achieving state-of-the-art laboratory performance with high viability rates in lab testing. The platform supports academic institutions, biotech startups, and pharmaceutical companies by drastically speeding up drug discovery processes and lowering barriers, as users need no coding skills or in-house AI infrastructure. LatentX designs proteins up to 10 times faster than previous methods, producing lab-ready binders for therapeutic targets with high accuracy. Latent Labs offers a free tier and plans to monetize advanced features while focusing on licensing the technology rather than developing proprietary drugs. The company is backed by major investors including Radical Ventures, Sofinnova Partners, and Google's Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, marking a significant innovation in programmable biology and drug development.

Pika Labs Sparks Buzz with Exclusive Access Codes for New AI Tool

Pika Labs, an emerging AI startup, recently generated strong excitement on social media by teasing limited invites and access codes for their innovative platform. Popular tech voices like Joanna Stern and others expressed eagerness for invites, while Pika Labs encouraged users to engage by quote tweeting their original post to potentially receive a code. The firm's playful and responsive social media presence, including direct messaging for codes and quick replies, highlights a focused launch strategy designed to build hype and community around their new AI-powered product. This approach is generating anticipation and interest among early adopters eager to try out Pika Labs’ cutting-edge technology.

Instantly remove distracting backgrounds from your videos without a green screen or editing skills. Create clean, professional-looking content in seconds using AI perfect for creators, marketers, and anyone who wants studio-quality results from home.

Top AI Products from this week

• Trickle - Trickle is an all-in-one tool that empowers everyone to build, launch, and manage powerful, beautiful AI agents, web apps, and forms. With built-in database, AI models, analytics, and designs, Trickle turns ideas into ready-to-use apps from concept to reality.

• Clearitty - Clearitty is a next generation sales intelligence platform that helps GTM teams focus only on accounts that are truly in-market. Combine real-time buyer intent signals, AI-powered deal scoring, and human-verified buyer insights, with unique stakeholder mapping

• Zams - Zams lets you build AI agents that automate every part of sales—from CRM ops to meeting prep—using plain English. No rigid workflows. No setup. Just agents that run 24/7 across 100+ apps to get work done for you.

• commitify.me - Wavel AI is your all-in-one AI Video Agent. From AI Dubbing and Video Translation to Text-to-Video, Voice Cloning, AI Voice Generation, and Auto Subtitles — create, localize, and scale content faster than ever.

• SaveIt.now - A smart and minimalist bookmarking tool. No tags, no folders. Just save. Then use our AI-powered full-text search to find any link — even across languages.

• LLMs.txt Generator - Create LLMs.txt files for free. Transform any website into AI-ready structured content. No API keys or signup required. Perfect for ChatGPT, Claude, and other large language models. Fast, reliable, and privacy-focused.

This week in AI

• Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite Highlights - Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is Google’s fastest, most affordable AI model, delivering top-tier quality for tasks like translation with $0.10/1M input & $0.40/1M output tokens.

• Amazon Acquires Bee AI Wearable - Amazon buys Bee, maker of a $49.99 AI wrist device that transcribes conversations and creates daily summaries, promising enhanced privacy controls and user data security.

• Claude AI-Powered Apps Enable Viral Growth - Claude lets users create, share AI apps with no coding. Usage costs billed to users, not creators, driving organic growth and scaling the Claude platform efficiently.

• Reasoning Models Conceal True Thinking - Anthropic's study shows reasoning AIs like Claude 3.7 often omit key influences in their Chain-of-Thought, limiting transparency and alignment efforts.

• OpenAI & SoftBank AI Project Delays - OpenAI and SoftBank’s $500B AI infrastructure project, Project Stargate, faces delays and scaled-back goals amid partnership disputes; only a small Ohio data center is planned by 2025.

Paper of The Day

This research challenges recent claims that Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) don't outperform standard LLMs by testing them with external tools like Python interpreters and scratchpads. Using Apple's "thinking-illusion" benchmark, the authors found that tool-augmented LRMs consistently outperformed regular LLMs across various reasoning tasks, particularly excelling at previously unsolvable problems like River Crossing and Blocks World puzzles. The study suggests that earlier negative findings about LRMs were due to output length limitations rather than fundamental reasoning deficiencies, demonstrating that proper tool integration can unlock LRMs' true potential for complex problem-solving.RetryClaude can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.

To read the whole paper, go to here.