TechCrunch Friday August 29, 2025
Google is upgrading its Gemini chatbot with a new AI image model that gives users finer control over editing photos—a step, notes TechCrunch, meant to catch up with OpenAI’s popular image tools and draw users from ChatGPT. The update, called Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, is rolling out to all users in the Gemini app. Google’s new tool has already drawn attention: Social media users raved over an impressive AI image editor in the crowdsourced evaluation platform, LMArena. The model appeared to users anonymously under the pseudonym “nano-banana.”
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By
David Schonauer Friday August 29, 2025
The fight is on between Big Film and Big Tech: Earlier this summer, Disney and Universal sued Midjourney, calling its popular AI-powered image generator a "bottomless pit of plagiarism" for pirating
their libraries. As we noted this week, Midjourney has fired back, saying, "Copyright law does not confer absolute control over the use of copyrighted works." Midjourney also argued that the studios
are trying … Read the full Story >>
Sports Illustrated Thursday August 28, 2025
There’s already been a photographic controversy at this year’s US Open. But now the focus is on Italian photographer Ray Giubilo, who captured what Sports Illustrated calls “the photo of a lifetime” while covering a match between fellow Italian Jasmine Paolini and Australia's Destanee Aiava. On Monday, Giubilo posted a photo of Paolini to his Instagram account, featuring Paolini's eyes, nose, and mouth lined up perfectly with the design on her racket. “…and it’s not Halloween,” he wrote.
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The Times of London Thursday August 28, 2025
Marco Confortola, one of Italy’s best known mountaineers, has been accused of using stolen pictures and photoshopped images to fake the number of summits he has scaled. The 54-year-old climber announced last month that he had climbed all 14 peaks of more than 8,000 metres in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges — including Everest — joining an exclusive club of about 50 mountaineers who have managed the feat. But, reports The Times of London, he was challenged by fellow climber Simone Moro, who claimed Confortola had photoshopped himself into a picture previously taken by another climber at the peak of Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest mountain.
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