A clearer view of AI.
THE INDEPENDENT AI.

BIG LAB UPDATES · 28 OCTOBER 2026

Quick lab notes

5 sources · Part of the 28 October 2026 edition

• Gemini can now check whether an image, video or audio clip was made with Google's AI: ask 'Is this AI generated?' It uses Google's SynthID watermark, so it can't detect content from other companies' tools: x.com

• Artificial Analysis rankings: Cartesia's Managed Agents top its Speech Agent Arena with 91.7% task success (against 77.5% for Cartesia Line), and Microsoft's MAI-Image-2.7-Preview is ranked #2 for image editing: x.com and x.com

• Rumours, none confirmed: a new OpenAI model codenamed 'Fe-pichu' and Qwen 4 'Kerria' are said to be on the LMArena testing site (@Mr_Salio): x.com and x.com

Why it mattersUse Gemini's check on suspicious images clients send you, but remember a 'no' only means it wasn't made with Google's tools.

Sources

How we knowCompany figures are labelled as their own claims; anything we couldn't verify is labelled as a report or a claim.

MORE FROM 28 OCTOBER 2026

  1. TOP STORIESGoogle DeepMind's Genie 4: a video you can walk into
  2. TOP STORIESAnthropic moves into drug discovery, and buys a one-person biotech run with Claude
  3. TOP STORIESGemini API CLI: Google's media models in one terminal command
  4. BIG LAB UPDATESChatGPT can now read your iCloud Mail and Calendar
  5. BIG LAB UPDATESAnthropic: Claude at 40% off for US government
  6. BIG LAB UPDATESNow Anthropic claims an AI refuted a major computer-science hypothesis too
The whole day ↗